earned him the Earth Care award in 1975, the first time a Latin American leader had received this recognition. Congress gave Pérez a mandate to rule by decree for 100 days - and then for a further 100 days. He also had a fiscal fortune in his hands such as no Venezuelan president ever had. And Pérez didn’t lose time to start spending it. He commissioned a report on government, which was prepared and carried out by Arnoldo Gabaldón. It contained a blueprint for further large scale bureaucratic expansion. Gabaldón himself was named to a super-ministry, which combined public works and communications. Since it was impossible to hire every Venezuelan, Pérez decreed that all public places should have bathroom attendants and that every elevator the country over should have an operator, although Venezuela had only had one or two hand-operated elevators before the Pérez Jiménez building euphoria. Contracts were handed out with abandon, and Venezuelans applauded with gusto. Pérez proclaimed that the oil wealth would not be squandered and founded a huge fund for "productive investments". This fund was exhausted very quickly. Congress had surrendered its power of fiscal oversight, one of the historical bases of democracy. Corruption went up incalculably, and there was even a case in which Venezuela bought a meat-freezing ship named the Sierra Nevada, which was anchored to store part of the immense quantity of imports that were being handled. The commissioner's fee here was well known as well as its recipient, who was never even tried. Ferries were bought in Scandinavia for routes between Venezuelan and the offshore Dutch free ports. Their windows could not be opened, and they were not equipped for the Venezuelan heat. On any given day, one could see dozens of ships queuing to unload in all Venezuelan ports, which meant that demurrage charges were huge and were obviously passed on to consumers. But consumerism was the whole point of it all. The bolivar, Venezuela's currency, was so over-valued that almost anybody in Venezuela with a minimum of initiative could go to Miami and bring a suitcase-load of goods which were sold to customers, usually friends or neighbors. Even servant quarters were in the net of this informal import economy. In Miami, Venezuelans became known as "gimme two" (of anything, at any price). Only in the television market did Pérez show scruples against rampant consumerism: Possibly under pressure from retailers with