Because there is no rubbish collection, because the sewers cannot cope with solids, everything is simply thrown further downhill, in the hope it will rot away. Children with old, lined faces play there.Gladys de Tarate lives in a swollen sardine tin with her four children, her husband, and her mother She tells me: "This land was never meant to be built on It is not safe. They are connected by paths made of more of the same, with the odd bedspread tossed in.The barrio nestles in what looks like a river of trash and shit. But something is rumbling here in the barrios around Caracas, something that is causing tremors in the White House. A Salsa revolution is spreading out from the slums of Venezuela, and it is the first in Latin America to be both totally democratic and, gradually, startlingly effective. But to begin this story, I have to take you on a tour of the Old Venezuela. Barrio Nueva Tacagua is a shanty-town in the high hills that sprawl around Caracas, built by the government at the height of the 1970s oil boom.
The hundreds of homes here are made of pressed cardboard and rusting tin. Latin America is a graveyard of false prophets. On every corner there is a reminder of the political Messiahs who failed. Bol?r, Che, Evita, Fidel - all are remembered in statues and wall paintings that look out over a continent now almost as poor and unfree as Africa. He killed many of our imams." But Saddam still, it seems, can make a small profit for his former enemies More from Robert Fisk. "No, no to America" it says in Arabic along the lighter.But does a man who makes so much money out of Saddam have any affection for the old rogue?Mr Abu Mohamed doesn't hesitate "I am a Shia from Sadr City," he says "For a long time, I haven't liked him. In a good week, Mr Abu Mohamed might make $5,000 (£2,700), in a bad week, nothing, he says.There are packets of regime currency with a youthful Saddam standing proudly beside dams (250 dinar notes) or the Tower of Babel (10,000 dinars) and photographs of the banknotes of King Feisal I, the soon-to-be-executed President Kassim and President al-Bakr, predecessor of Saddam ("the great Uncle figure") who wisely gave up power to avoid losing his head.
These were the "gifts" Saddam would bestow on his faithful or on the most fawning of foreign Arab diplomats, officials or, dare one suggest, journalists. It was a gardener again who rounded up this little treasure-trove. "Pasha de Cartier" is engraved beneath the tip, still ready for its G-11 razor I hold it to my cheek. So this once cut the whiskers of the man found in a hole in 2003.But that is not all. Gardeners and staff at the Republican palaces across Iraq filched what they could when the regime fell, and a good deal ended up in Mr Abu Mohamed's hands.He has a stash of fine Longines watches for men and women - $500 if you're interested - a chic little head of Saddam on each face, slightly reduced if it's for a woman.