ONE ECONOMY TO RULE THEM ALL:

An image of Hugo Chavez's eyes used to peer down on Venezuela from seemingly everywhere: the rooftops of government offices, housing developments, even the scanners at airport customs.

Today, Venezuelans are more likely to find an advertisement for makeup or jeans than a tribute to the country's revolutionary icon. 

President Nicolas Maduro's shift from socialism to a more capitalist approach, a key tenet of his bid to halt a years-long economic collapse, is showing up in many forms, from the widespread use of US dollars to the imported, gourmet foods filling store shelves. But few are as noticeable as the makeover taking place in public spaces once littered with Chavista propaganda.

Gone -- or, at least, disappearing rapidly -- are many of the formerly ubiquitous odes to "revolution," such as the Orwellian depictions of Chavez's eyes, slogans slapped on billboards with some version of the message "socialism or death," or huge murals of Fidel Castro and Simon Bolivar. Most of those that remain are badly faded. Instead, city highways are crowded with billboards advertising cosmetics, food and new clothing brands. 

"Political ideology has been replaced by a drive for consumption," said Jose Carvajal, director of Ciudad Laboratorio, an urban studies think tank in Caracas. Socialist iconic billboards promoting the idea that Venezuela "belonged to everyone,'' he said, have given way to a Dubai- or Miami-style landscape, with rows of palm trees along its main highway. In many ways, it marks something of a return to the pre-Chavez era, when multinationals hawked products of all stripes on billboards across Caracas. "Now Venezuela, like never before, belongs to a few who can succeed."

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