Caracas has a mysterious black highway goo that has killed 1,800 people
by Ellsworth Toohey · Boing BoingIn 1986, road crews repairing 30-year-old pavement on the route between Caracas and its airport spotted a 50-yard smudge of greasy black gunk. It looked like chewed bubble gum, made the road slick as ice, and swelled in hot, wet weather, then shrank when things turned cold and dry. By 1992, the goo — locals call it La Mancha Negra, the Black Stain — had been blamed for around 1,800 deaths on that airport road.
Nobody has figured out what it is. President Carlos Andrés Pérez brought in specialists from the U.S., Canada, and Europe in 1991. The Venezuelan Ministry of Transport eventually called the stuff a slurry of dust, oil, organic gunk, and synthetic compounds. Another analysis called it used engine oil cut with corrosive brake fluid. The leading guess blames thousands of leaky old cars dripping fluids that bond with the asphalt in the heat. Other theories floated raw sewage from hillside slums and bad asphalt sweating oil.
Cleanup ran through every trick the city could think of. Pressurized water did nothing. Detergent scrubbing failed. Crews ripped up the road and resurfaced it, and the goo came back. They dumped pulverized limestone, which kicked up choking dust. Imported German equipment worked for a while, then stopped working.
The political accusations are almost as strange. In 1992, Pérez's opponents were accused of dumping oil to embarrass him. In 2001, when the stain reappeared on five Caracas avenues, including Baralt and Urdaneta, the chavista mayor Freddy Bernal claimed the opposition was paying homeless people to smear the goo around at night with plastic sacks.
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