I just watched a video of Maria Corina discussing her project, her desire to become the first female president of Venezuela. She mentioned something that left me speechless regarding the horrific recent violations in La Concepción. Maria Corina said: “What is happening to us? This is not Venezuela.”
Maria Corina is mistaken. This is indeed Venezuela. In fact, she began her interview stating that the crisis is one of values. It is a moral crisis, and there’s no doubt about that. This moral crisis has affected all Venezuelans, so it is incorrect to say “This is not Venezuela.” I bring to mind a conversation with my father-in-law from a few days ago. The backdrop is Chavez ruling from Havana for three weeks, in clear violation of the constitution, along with an armed conflict lasting the same number of weeks between inmates and the National Guard at El Rodeo. When I asked, “So, how’s it going?” I was met with, “…everything’s fine man, nothing’s happening here…”
This is Venezuela—a nation filled with amoral people who have abdicated their civic power, along with the rights and responsibilities that come with it. It is a nation full of individuals who find it acceptable for a wretched apatrida to hand over sovereignty to Cuban communist dictators. It is a nation inhabited by people who have resigned their dignity and inalienable rights. This is a country full of intellectual eunuchs, people who do not question anything, and whose motto in life is, “let’s see how it goes.” It is a nation that has grown accustomed to seeing the extraordinary, the intolerable, the abhorrent, the amoral, the corrupt, and the bloody as normal. A country where appearance trumps ethics, where parents gift their teenage daughters breast augmentation surgeries for their fifteenth birthdays. A nation that allows all sorts of humiliations at the hands of public employees. It is a country filled with hungry people watching their resources being squandered and given away without consent to other nations. A nation governed by criminals, who feel they are beyond justice.
This is Venezuela, and this is the government and state of affairs it deserves. In light of the stagnation, indifference, and absolute moral poverty—across all socioeconomic levels—nothing else can be expected.