Welcome to the Nineteenth Century: Venezuelan Elections Hemispheric Institute; Calzadilla, Fernando performance performance studies, estudios sobre performance, estudios de performance journal, revista South America, América del Sur, América do Sul Latin America, Latinoamérica, América Latina ENG: On January 1, 1958 I saw warplanes dropping bombs over Caracas. Some fell in my neighborhood, not far from my own house. Luckily they didn’t explode, and the damage they caused was limited to the impact of a heavy object dropped from high up. I didn’t know that at the time. I was eight years old and didn’t even know what bombs were. 23 days of street battles ensued, and I saw bleeding people running down the street, I dodged machine gun fire, and slept on the floor under the bed because the mattress was a good protection for stray bullets. On January 23 at 2 a.m. we heard an airplane, and minutes later cars started to beep and people rushed to the street to celebrate the dictator’s departure with carnivalesque frenzy, including allusive floats. Marcos Perez Jimenez will be remembered as Venezuela’s last dictator. Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, New York University 2004-10-01 DCMI: Text Hemi: Text application/pdf/gif http://hemi.es.its.nyu.edu/journal/1_1/calzadilla_print.pdf eng http://hemi.nyu.edu/rights.html public