They have arrived, they are here, but they won’t get off the boats. Everything seems like a futile act. A desperate neighbor from the Francisco de Miranda neighborhood in Maracaibo.
This is how Venezuelans live today, like Beckett’s characters in “Waiting for Godot,” trapped in space and time, lost in a world of madness and doubt.
Meanwhile, in Nepal, Morocco, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Angola, and even Peru, the so-called Generation Z has risen, expressing their outrage through protests against authoritarianism, corruption, and the negligence of their leaders. Most Venezuelans have witnessed our own Generation Z, “the youngest and humblest souls,” from impoverished neighborhoods and middle-class areas, fall victim in the streets of our cities to bullets and repression from the regime’s security forces, while we all complained about “the spikes” damaging our car tires.
Here in Venezuela, they have also been the ones who most rebelled, albeit at the cost of their own lives.
Now, let’s not fool ourselves, a significant majority of Venezuelans are waiting for salvation from abroad. That foreign force is Donald Trump, whom many Venezuelans are banking on to free us from shame, as Elías Pino says, being the liberator of today’s Venezuela.
I confess, I don’t suffer from this condition that was instilled in us since elementary school, “Imperophobia.” In fact, I admit I admire much more than I condemn the Spanish colonization (for what it left us as a legacy: language, religion, laws, universities, cities, customs, both good and bad, and for not taking what we were always told they took: gold and silver, since it has been proven that illegal mining and chavismo have extracted more gold in 27 years than what the Spaniards took in 300 years of rule), yet I am against the fascination (that frightens me) that some (many, I would say too many) Venezuelans have for Trump, as he will surely, if he isn’t already, be the worst thing to happen to the U.S. and, undoubtedly, to the world.
With a “grotesque narcissism,” manipulative and cynical, as well as misogynistic and xenophobic, he is not exactly a lover of differences, which is what makes us democratic. Furthermore, he “is not known for the firmness of his word, nor for the clarity of his decisions…. A man of whim and volatility, he lacks the elements to inspire trust in those who see him as a savior. Enmeshed in countless tangled issues of his own making, he leans on a supposed omnipotence that he must prove in an unusual case, in our case, a world he barely approaches without mastering even its alphabet…” Thus, he is characterized by Elías Pino, in his piece published Thursday in El Nacional and “La Gran Aldea.”
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There is certainly a strange atmosphere in the country; uncertainty, doubt, fear, and the majority of the population trapped in the most absolute “precarity,” characterized by inflation reaching nearly 300% that devours miserable salaries and a bonus policy that fails to cover even a quarter of the food basket. This has led a significant portion of the population (I would say most) to retreat into their private lives. They’re nearly living like the story where “the patient tells the psychologist: – I had to stop watching the news; it was making my own problems seem insignificant.”
However, they are not idiots in the Greek sense of the word; rather, the fear is immense and has prevented, until now, any mass mobilization that could turn into a “major uprising,” simply because they are unaware of the power they possess. They also overlook that there’s nothing to lose, except for the terrible life they have been forced to live.
It’s essential to admit that political leadership, commentators, and even analysts have, at least fundamentally, diagnosed the regime based on “the brutal set of facts” committed over two decades while neglecting its limitations, weaknesses, and that its displays of strength are merely manifestations of its fragility.
Once again, I quote Elías Pino Iturrieta: “…they don’t have a single leader who raises a fist when trying to speak to the people, not a meager message capable of inspiring the masses, nor a single promise with substance. Nothing that comes from their ranks is credible. Not one of their presences generates enthusiasm. There is no joy in their celebrations. On the contrary, they dishearten and bore, taxing the patience of the populace and feeding sterility. An immense solitude, a wake increasingly desired or implored, a popular disdain so evident …”
Now the regime has only the option left to dramatize the situation. This drama materializes in the ridiculous military exercises of a militia predominantly composed of the elderly and women, who in the event of an armed confrontation with forces dispatched by the U.S., would serve as cannon fodder instrumentalized by the regime to defend Maduro and his clique. The drama encompasses letters sent to Trump, flattering him and asking for dialogue, or the one addressed to Pope Leo XIV, asking for Vatican diplomacy to mediate the problem “and embrace Venezuela.” Well, to be fair, not everything is a drama; some actions are sheer comedy, for example, Maduro’s incredible offer to Trump to betray one of the criminal gangs which the regime has denied the existence of hundreds of times, with words to the effect of: “I will hand over the leaders of the Tren de Aragua.”
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When will the uncertainty end? I don’t know. No one knows with certainty what the future holds. In the meantime, we must deal with influencers, Instagrammers, and Venezuelan TV presenters who now have their own YouTube channels, selling Trump as “the benefactor authoritarian” (his resemblance to Hugo Chávez’s narrative is not a coincidence), contributing to the “voluntary disempowerment” of Venezuelans who will have to wait for Trump “who will arrive on Monday afternoon or Tuesday or the….”
@enderarenas