The Sambil Mall is a shithole. Let’s leave aside the fact that it supported the oil sabotage of 2002, and that poor people are routinely turned away. It has wireless, which doesn’t work all that well, but I guess that’s not the point. Also, no-one seems to use the wireless, but that’s not the point either. It’s more symbolic than anything: the reputedly largest mall in Latin America, playground for wealthy (and largely “white”) Creole elites, just should have wifi (pronounced: “wee-fee”). It has wireless for the same reason that it has shitty foreign food, and locales like “Macchiato Café” and “Wendy´s.” Not because it’s good or useful, but because the colonial structure keeps adding rungs at the top of the ladder of whiteness, and the colonial imaginary demands that aspirants continue to climb.

Wealthy caraqueños probably thought that looking comparably white, being ridiculously rich, and playing golf would be enough (hey, at least Latin Americans only need to bleach their hair, others need to “rounden” their eyes). But the joke’s on them: now they need to hang out in the Sambil and eat Church’s chicken (never mind the very different significance—racial and economic—that the latter has at the heart of the Empire). They need to eat expensive apples instead of cheap mangos, and expensive pasta instead of cheap arepas or rice. And not only that: they need to pay a lot for their shitty food, eat a couple bites, and throw it away in a city where malnutrition is the norm. That’s what really makes them white… but then, the prize of colonial privilege remains out of reach, seemingly just beyond their fingertips.