As you may have noticed in some of my previous publications, I feel a deep nostalgia for what my country was in the past, nostalgia for the level of economic, social and cultural development typical of the countries in full development and very close to it, which Venezuela enjoyed from the 1950s until a little over 20 years ago.

In the 1950s, despite being under a dictatorship, Venezuela experienced its period of greatest economic strength. The Bolivar with a price of 1: 1 against the US dollar, (there were even moments when it exceeded it) and a practically nonexistent external debt, unleashed an unprecedented economic opening, which together with the oil boom, gave way to the arrival of countless foreign companies willing to invest in such a formidable market.

In this opportunity I will refer to one of those companies that came from other latitudes and with which I feel a sentimental bond that I will explain below. This is the North American department store Sears, Roebuck & Co. founded in Chicago in 1886, and by 1950 was the model to imitate by other department stores. At the end of the 40s with the prosperity of the postwar period, Sears ventures to go beyond the borders of the United States and Canada and begins the expansion to Mexico (something logical for being its other neighbor besides Canada) and to the country with greater economic growth of all America for the time: Venezuela.

In 1950 the company had already been established in our country as Sears Roebuck of Venezuela S.A. and on March 29, 1950, the first Sears store opened in Colinas de Bello Monte, Caracas. With the inauguration of this, Sears opens its first store in South America and began in the country the department store format, for us a new concept that would have a huge success. The gigantic establishment had two floors and a total of 12,4861.36sq.ft. or 11,600m²  for various items, from clothing and footwear through fabrics, cosmetics and perfumery, small appliances, white goods, tools and hardware, gardening, furniture, disco store, optometric lab, photo studio, electronic, candy store and ice cream shop, accessories for vehicles, tires and service shop, among other things.      

For 1952 was the grand opening of the second store, the headquarters of Sears Roebuck Maracaibo, located on 5 de Julio Avenue in Maracaibo, capital of Zulia state (My hometown). For this occasion, the infrastructure was designed by the prestigious architect Tomás Sanabria (Designer of the headquarters of the Central Bank of Venezuela, among others) who designed the store according to the requirements of the North American company. It was a spectacular building, ultramodern for its time, with about 129,166.93sq.ft. or 12,000 m² of exhibition, distributed in a single level. It had more than 262ft or 80 linear meters of display areas and all the departments and services of the Bello Monte store in Caracas.  

The Sears Roebuck chain (which currently exists in the United States and other territories) is characterized by having the Own Brands philosophy, and for this reason, during the time it was in this country, we could count on excellent brands such as Kenmore and Coldspot in white goods, Sears CounterCraft in small appliances, Silvertone in electronics, Craftsman in tools, GoGoolagang in clothes and many other thousands of products that it marketed under the name of Sears, and best of all, with a first class quality and at unbeatable prices .  

Over the years, Sears came to have 9 stores throughout Venezuela, to Bello Monte was added Pro-Patria and El Marqués in Caracas. Maracaibo was joined by Ojeda in Zulia state and in the rest of the national territory the other stores were in Maracay, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Puerto La Cruz.

Unfortunately and due to the fall of the bolivar in 1983, Sears Roebuck & Co. decides to withdraw from the Venezuelan market and sells all its assets to the Cisneros Group, changing its name to Maxy's with a similar format, later this store would also close its doors. Currently, the building that was once the store of Bello Monte is Ciudad Banesco and the store of Maracaibo would become a supermarket of the chain CADA and after the expropriation by the government it became  Abasto Bicentenario. It should be noted that during the tenure of CADA, the building suffered a drastic and despicable remodeling, turning part of its commercial area into parking.  

At the beginning of these lines I mentioned that I feel a sentimental bond with Sears Roebuck from Venezuela, and it is due to the fact that my godmother of baptism, for whom I feel a deep love even though she is no longer on this earthly plane, was founder of the Maracaibo store and she served as Head of the Department of Fabrics and then the Department of Perfumery and Cosmetics for several years, impregnated during them, with the culture that brought Sears, and then pass it to their family environment. That's why many familiar objects are from Sears’s brands and I must mention that even a 1953 Coldspot refrigerator is still operational at home. 

The Venezuela of Sears Roebuck was a beautiful time that most Venezuelans yearned for and today, unfortunately, only these memories remain. It was a country of abundance. The country was not perfect, it had problems like any developing country, but there was quality of life, an economy that was very strong and Venezuelans were welcome anywhere in the world, like our currency. 

Source of information:  a b c 

Sources of the images:  

• A B C D E F G H I J L M N  
• K (Popular Mechanical Magazine March 1983)
• O P Q R   Family Collection