Shared Spaces speaks with Moisés Naím, Venezuelan Minister for Trade and Industry in the early 1990s, a former director of the Central Bank of Venezuela and Executive Director of the World Bank.

Moisés Naím, who was born in Caracas, is an eminent analyst of the international economy and politics. He was interviewed by Shared Spaces on the occasion of his visit to the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) to give the lecture “Who’s in Charge? The Mutations of Contemporary Power” on 13 November last year. Drawing on his own experience, Naím established a relationship of reciprocity between virtual public space and real public space, noting that, “as the importance of cybernetic public space has been increasing, the need for real public space has also become increasingly important”. He then spoke about public space under threat, saying that Venezuela has one of the world’s highest homicide rates and is a failed state, which is to say “a state where the government fails to provide people’s basic needs, for example guaranteeing the security of citizens”. Referring to the city of his birth, Naím said that, “when you go out into the streets of Caracas, there is a very high possibility that some kind of incident will occur”.