'Westonzuela' offers expatriates a safe home away from home

[Mika]

'Westonzuela' offers expatriates a safe home away from home
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/fl-venezuelan-population-in-weston-20130317,0,5078279.story

Infused with the wealth and intellectual capital of upper-middle-class émigrés, Weston has become Venezuelans' self-fulfilled prophecy of sorts.

It is a place where their kids get a good education and play soccer, where they build businesses and socialize comfortably among their compatriots and where they easily find arepas or cheese turnovers and other comfort foods from home.

"The quality of education here goes hand in hand with the feeling of personal security," said Ramón Peraza.

[mwrguy]

1. Sounds like a bunch of 1%ers fled here seeking asylum from economic justice

[Bacchus4.0]

2. 1% would not live in Weston

if you are 1% and Venezuelan, you would stay put. Most of those are chavistas who have profited very nicely from corruption.

Weston is a planned city just a couple decades old. its pretty blah frankly.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks, Mika. This is the only article I've seen on Westonzuela.

Found this interesting:

"Here, you feel you're in an unreal world. Is it possible to live like this? Yes, it's possible," said Maria Antonietta Diaz, who escaped to the low-crime enclave of Weston after her father was kidnapped at random from the family's Maracaibo home in [font size=5]*1997.[/font] "If you have a family with small kids, (Weston is) a spectacular place for them to grow up."

*(Chavez took office February, 1999.)

Weston, one of Broward's newest municipalities, has become a suburban oasis filled with opportunity for exiles whose economic dreams were crushed and lives threatened under President Hugo Chavez's leftist-populist rule during the past 14 years.

Even before Chavez was elected president in 1999, many South Florida Venezuelans, such as Diaz, moved to Weston for a key reason, she said.

"It was the crime," said Diaz, who managed a cable television company in Maracaibo before emigrating to the United States with her husband and two kids. "Even though we were well off financially and had jobs, we didn't see a future for our children."

Her parents named her "Maria Antonietta Diaz"? Jesus H. Marie Antoinette Christ! Is that too silly, do you think?