On my first night in Caracas I had two bad scares. It was already 10 o'clock at night when the taxi dropped me at the hotel. But these were my first moments in an unknown continent and I was so curious to take a look that I could not resign myself to staying in my room. As it was quite hot, I went out in shirt-sleeves.

First I found myself in a nineteenth century-style square paved with marble flagstones, adorned with an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar and flanked by two rows of palm trees. It looked very much like the Ramblas of Barcelona. Except that 100 yards further, a two-tier expressway seemed to tunnel into a sky-scraper, as does Park Avenue into the towers of Grand Central. I walked along the pavement and turned into a boulevard: a line of neon-lit bars opened up before me and, in front of these, loafed sinister-looking men with their hands stuffed deep in their trouser pockets. I told myself it must be a rough area and that I'd better return in the day-time. So I wandered down some other boulevards but, wherever I went, I noticed those same faces and those hands stuffed deep in pockets as if gripping a revolver or a flick-knife.

I stopped in front of a poster which announced, "catch: El Selvaje contra El Gladiator Croata". It had to be the big wrestling event of the season because television generators were parked on the pavement and the price of tickets was high. I bought myself an armchair seat near the front and, for about ten minutes, I didn't regret my purchase. The show was taking place in the auditorium as much as in the ring. The sturdier looking El Selvaje punched El Gladiator Croata so savagely that the latter chose to wriggle through the ropes and take refuge among the spectators. Goaded by the onlookers, El Selvaje pursued him and floored him on the spot, while the audience booed the beaten man and spat Coca-Cola and chewing gum at him. When the referee tried to step in, he too was knocked out and the same would have happened to the police officer who tried to take his place. Just then, El Gladiator Croata managed to escape from his adversary and stagger to his dressing room: his face was bleeding and he was apparently incapable of holding himself upright. But on reaching the door, he suddenly changed his mind: as El Selvaje strutted around the ring bowing to the cheers, El Gladiator, now miraculously revived and wearing his most ferocious scowl, came back at a run, leapt over the ropes and attacked the victor from behind. Combat ended with El Selvaje tangled in the ropes and El Gladiator Croata borne in triumph by his admirers.

At that moment I remembered that, in my haste to see the sights, I'd forgotten to deposit my money in the hotel safe, and that I had stashed the $ 2,000 in 100 dollar bills-which were supposed to last me till the end of my journey-in the back pocket of my trousers. Could I check if they were still there without drawing the attention of all the rowdies around me to that particular point? I chose the moment when the excitement of the audience was at it its height to slip my hand into my pocket with all the circumspection and feigned nonchalance of which I was capable. The bills were still there! But worry had dulled my interest in the wrestling. I left the ringside without waiting for the next round, my hands thrust deep in my pockets just like those of the natives (except mine were in my back pockets, so my stance must have looked less natural) and went back to the hotel as quickly as possible.

And yet my curiosity was not satisfied. A few minutes later I ventured out again, provided with only a few pesos this time, and lingered on the streets till the early hours. At a certain point, I sensed a hard object pressed to my back while an authoritarian voice repeated a Spanish word which sounded something like "pétéjé". I was rash enough to turn around. The hard object was the barrel of a submachine gun and the three fellows standing behind me sported dark glasses, moustaches, shirts spilling out of their trousers and faces yet more sinister than those I'd already encountered. But they only wanted to see my papers, and P.T.J. stood for Policía Técnica Judicial, the secret police force set up to counter urban guerilla warfare. Once they realised I was a foreigner, they apologised very politely and I, for my part, was thrilled to have been mistaken for a native.

I was able to get a clearer picture of Caracas on the following day. The city sprawls between two chains of mountains and exhibits three types of building, each corresponding with three successive eras, but often jumbled in surprising juxtaposition like geological strata brought to the surface by unknown vicissitudes. The structures pre-dating the dictatorship are either large official buildings with vaguely classical columns or bourgeois blocks of flats four or five stories high. Caracas must then have been a small capital on the edge of the world, whence members of the privileged classes would journey to Paris once in their lives to return with tourist souvenirs and postcards which served as inspiration to the local architects.

Then there is the Caracas of Perez Jimenez, the general who became the virtual owner of the country in the first decade after the War. That was when the West depended on Maracaibo oil, first because of the Korean War and Mossadegh's revolt in Iran and then because of the Suez Crisis. Caracas became the most expensive city on the planet, skyscrapers sprouted like mushrooms and adventurers from all over, but mostly Italians, came to find their El Dorado. In the bars of the centre of town you still meet a few survivors from that time savouring their espresso and evoking nostalgically "il bel tempo della dittatura" (the good old days of dictatorship).

If the boom had continued, Caracas would today be one of the most modern cities in the world. Even so, the Centro Simon Bolivar remains a pretty impressive complex, with its two administrative buildings of 30 stories apiece, a shopping centre, three levels of underground parking and an urban expressway serving the whole. But the most successful architecture is in the university complex and was conceived by renowned avant-garde designers to rival the campus of Mexico City. Further away, towards the outskirts of the city and spread out over the surrounding hills, one can make out the superblocos, vast units of popular housing.

From a distance, one is impressed by their geometry and the harmony of their arrangement in space. From nearby, as I discovered a few days later, one realises that the blocks are jerry-built and already half broken-down. But the most spectacular achievement of the Jimenez era-if only it had been completed-would have been the Elicoïde, a kind of Tower of Babel encircled by a double carriageway spiralling up and down a hill. The scheme, consisting of both buildings and roads, was intended as a luxury shopping centre where cars could park in front of any shop without meeting vehicles coming the other way and without causing traffic jams. After the dictator's downfall, building was suspended due to lack of funds.

The third architectural style in Caracas is that of the morros, the shanty towns clinging to the mountainsides, where people live without running water or drainage and often without electricity. The inhabitants are Indios from the countryside who were lured by the construction boom and are now reduced to hopeless unemployment.

My overwhelming feeling in this city is an impression of strangeness. And yet the architecture is not very different from that of Europe or the United States, people dress like everywhere else, the cars are American, the coffee machines are from Italy, the churches look like those of Spain. The Castilian spoken here is more or less easy to understand, depending on the education of the speaker, but at least the sound of the language is familiar. Yet, to me, this universe seems much stranger and less comprehensible than India or Japan.

I wondered whether this feeling came from imagining the possibility of violent death which seemed inscribed in most of the faces I saw. Gun-battles are played out almost every night and, every morning, the local news delivers the body count. Of course the press blames the guerilleros but in fact the country has always been characterised by violence.

Venezuelans, I should add, are proud to boast they are the most bellicose people of Latin America and never fail to remind one that Simon Bolivar's revolt started here. Weapons are everywhere: when visiting apparently peaceable intellectuals, I spotted a revolver lying on a bedside table where I'd normally expect to find a torch. "You never know," said the owner, "better to have it within reach."

This sense of strangeness may also be due to the typically Amerindian features evident on most faces. I feel further removed from these people than from the people of India or Japan whose civilizations are just as different from my own. Except that, with Indians or Japanese, I feel that an approach would be possible if I became familiar with their religion, their philosophy, their arts or even their cooking. With the Indians of America, all channels of communication are broken since the colonisers destroyed most of their culture. Looking at their faces and their bearing, one has the impression that even they would not know how to express whatever sets them apart and places them irremediably beyond our reach.

One wonders to what extent the outrages committed on the Indians since the Conquest have generated this strain of potential and ingrained violence that one encounters in both the North and the South of the American land mass. In any case, my stay in Caracas allowed me to observe this violence in one of its phases of active eruption.

Since Perez Jimenez was ousted, the political struggle has taken the form of permanent guerilla warfare. Communists are outlawed and the newspapers of the far left are banned. It is said that the body count announced each morning in the government press radically understates the real number of those killed in shoot-outs or tortured to death by the secret services. Police jeeps comb the streets day and night, as do PTJ teams in mufti, like the one I encountered on my first evening.

According to a tacit convention reminiscent of the medieval custom whereby outlaws could seek refuge in churches, the University is strangely free from this police presence. Consequently the pro-Castro militants have found sanctuary on campus and have taken possession of it almost officially, so that a foreign reporter cannot enter without their approval.

In order to get in, I sought the good offices of a journalist friend and asked him to put me in touch with some leaders of the left. "Nothing easier," he told me. He dialled the number of the university, asked for Professor M. and exchanged a few amiable words of which I only caught snatches. "The Professor is expecting you," he announced, "he's just back from Moscow. He's regarded as one of the leaders of the movement."

The campus is in effect a pro-Castro enclave in the middle of a country engaged in a civil war against precisely this movement. I was told that the extra-territorial status of universities is deemed a traditional prerogative in Latin America, comparable to that enjoyed by embassies. It serves, in some way, as a counterweight to the vagaries of revolution and counter-revolution: by leaving open the possibility of refuge to their adversaries, the rulers reserve exit routes for themselves in the event that they should end up on the wrong side of a golpe.

In the University compound, the pro-Castro leaders walk about openly and the walls are covered in revolutionary posters: Marxist cells meet in lecture halls, weapons are stored in basements. All this seems rather paradoxical given that the University is wholly financed by the State. Besides, these places have an air of good living: the buildings are modern and well maintained; they are spread about a park and connected to each other by covered walkways, like on campuses in the United States. Classical music floats from loud-speakers hidden in ceilings or amongst palm-trees.

A symphony by Tchaikovsky plays outside Professor M.'s lecture hall. The Professor is giving a class and suggests I attend. He is talking about freedom of the press, explaining that, in capitalist countries, this freedom is only theoretical due to the financial interests which control the media. In fact, true press freedom only exists in socialist countries.

At the end of the class, M. devotes all his attention to me. Venezuelan Marxists want the capitalist press-be it free or not-to write about them and have even resorted to kidnapping foreign personalities with the sole aim of attracting public attention. I tell him I would like to photograph the way people live in the superblocos, the other power base of the pro-Castro forces, where neither police nor pro-government journalists can penetrate. He summons Comrade B., the head of the students' federation. "The periodista wants to visit the superblocos: see he's accompanied."

The atmosphere in the federation offices reminds me of films on the Spanish Civil War or the French Resistance. "I can't go with you myself," B. tells me. "My photo and wanted notice are in all the police stations. Hundreds of comrades have already died under torture and I don't fancy ending up like them. But a less high-profile comrade will take my place."

The young man who escorts me is called José. His parents live in the superblocos and he is well-known there. "Otherwise they wouldn't let us go in. We'll go to the Cinco de Mayo: they're los mas rojos (the reddest of the lot). The cops don't dare go near the place: they hide in the blockhouse opposite and fire on the building with submachine guns. You'll see the bullet marks. You'd be kidnapped if you went alone. The people who live here are pretty much bandidos. They're even suspicious of us Marxist students."

As we arrive at the Cinco de Mayo, we realise that police are actually inside the building. On the previous night, bursts of gunfire from the superbloco killed two policemen and, as a result, the police raided the buildings and removed all the men. Tearful women tell us the story and conjure up visions of torture. I see walls riddled with bullet marks, smashed down doors, policemen carrying out searches. I try to take a photo, but my film is immediately confiscated. "If you want it back, you'll have to come down to the station and speak to the tenente."

It's a good opportunity to see the other side of the coin. A barracks yard, a shed with iron bars at the windows, behind which prisoners kick up a racket and plead for cigarettes. Maybe they're the ones rounded up the night before -but they don't seem in bad shape.

El tenente is in pyjamas and looks short of sleep. He returns my film without a fuss. I ask him if I might accompany a patrol. He sends me to a public relations officer who escorts me to the prefect's office; the prefect introduces me to the head of the anti-guerilla squad, who telephones patrol headquarters. The local commander happens to be briefing a unit about to leave on its tour of duty. "We're wasting too much ammunition," he tells them; "some of you pull the trigger the moment you hear a shot fired and let loose any old how. I'll be keeping tabs from now on."

I spend the day in a patrol jeep going up and down the same roads, making frequent stops at different bars where my three policemen have "fiancées". At one point they arrest a boy suspected of working for the insurgents. He is driven to the central police station where I see about 30 other suspects who will be interrogated in turn. They don't look especially terrified: if there is torture, it's not happening here.

In the evening, I return to the University. When I tell the young people what I've seen on the other side, they poke fun at me: "Do you really think the police would show you their torture chambers? But we can show you our comrades who've lost the use of their legs and their hands!" I reply that I don't question the existence of torture, but I feel sure they do all they can to provoke repression. "The cycle of terror is to your advantage: you shoot at the police so the police rounds up all the men in a superbloco. Next day, after being tortured or merely slapped about, these men will want to shoot at the police in their turn. And so the cycle will get wider until it all blows up, which is exactly what you hope for." They smile with the wholesome smiles of well-fed young people from middle-class families. "Did Fidel do any different in Cuba? We march in step with history."