I don't intend to write this rant to the best of my capabilities, or to prove my capacity to be eloquent. This disclaimer comes beforehand because I know I'm writing this one from the gut, and I fear I may appear dumb or overly too passionate, and give the impression that I don't judge things with the cold-minded objectiveness that people normally expect from anyone to consider their opinion valid.

But I can't.

Rory Carroll's article "Looney Tunes in Caracas" (link at the end) is the latest example of someone making an assessment of our situation and, in their efforts to be intellectual and witty, failing to see the point entirely. I dare accuse people like him of being hypocritical, of pretending that you can understand what is happening to us by just taking a mere dip in the waters we drown on.

So, what the hell are you talking about, good sir? Do you even KNOW what we've been through?

Just like his, dozens, if not hundreds of articles have been written on Venezuela. Most of them will lean one way or the other: they will praise Hugo Chavez for his "politics for the poor", or denounce him as a comical little modern-day autocrat, a curiosity, a little oddity in the southern latitudes (funny thing since we're slightly north of the equator.) In turn, the opposition will be labeled with generalized tags: we're either "rich bureaucrats and oligarchs who hog the money and hate the poor" or, in the best case scenario, just "the democratic opposition, which loses all the elections."

Hugo Chavez is a coupist and a murderer.

I'm a Venezuelan. I have lived here through the entire regime. Eight years of my life, and that is a whole third of it, I've seen what is going on, and I know the foreign media doesn't get it. The world doesn't get it, and yes, I say that with full awareness of how arrogant and overblown my argument may sound, but it's true.

You can't sum up the whole of Hugo Chavez' regime on his so-called aid to the poor, on his charisma, or on his little rants where he calls Bush the devil. Hugo Chavez is a thug. Day after day, stories of abuse from his followers reach us, and on the unluckiest of occasions I myself have been the victim of them. I don't think anyone would understand them if they weren't here to live it, if they weren't venezuelans and had to put up with it, though, so in part, I almost don't blame the reporters who write such things. Almost.

But I do blame them. I point fingers at you, because you sell the world the wrong idea, and you underestimate the weight of our suffering.

On the earliest years of the revolution, hundreds of former judges who served during the previous administrations were investigated, prosecuted by newly formed committees that unabilitated them from ever serving such charges again. My dad was one of them, and the reason was that he once made a decision that didn't favor someone who eventually made part of the chavist regime. When he went to formalize his defense, he was laughed at, and when he called people on the inside, they told him that ALL defense allegations were trashed.

I have been manhandled up by pro-chavist people at the University, people that have wormed their way into the faculty and have become thugs, mobs, mafia within my Alma Mater, within campus. It's no secret that they hide behind the skirts of the authorities and behind the governor of our state - a pro-chavist governor.

I saw Hugo Chavez take over all TV signals on April 11th, for no other reason than to cover up the massacre that was going on while he delivered an unnecessary speech to the nation. I saw all the conspicuous details that day: how his followers were assembled in key locations, how a black cloth was used to cover the side of Puente Llaguno, the bridge from where his followers shot the opposition march. I have suffered the slander from, yes, foreign reporters who in documentaries (the most famous "the revolution won't be televised") have twisted the facts with altered images that were later proven manipulated.

I saw the killings of Plaza Altamira, by Joao de Goveira, a man that Chavez would latter refer to as a gentleman and whose innocence he vehemently defended, even though he was captured on camera, shooting, admitting to his deeds.

In my mind, I still hear women crying "THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE!" when the national guard stormed the homes of oil workers who went on strike on December 2002, and who were fired bur refused to leave their state-given households. Tear gas was launched into their homes. I saw people running, babies asphyxiating, minors, old people, pregnant women taking the blunt end of it.

I have seen our struggles. Our marches. I have seen people being repelled with tear gas, beaten by the army, I have seen reporters being shot point blank with pellets on their back, on their legs, simply because the national guard refused to be taped committing their atrocities.

I remember the assault on the march on Valles del Tuy. I remember the way a national guard slammed a woman down to the ground by her hair on the takeover of the Polar Industries on January 2003.

I saw Maritza Ron being shot by pro-government supporters who would be supposedly imprisoned for being caught in fraganti, but who were then seen at the funeral of a famous pro-government attorney.

I saw the gruesome photographs of the murdered soldiers of Fort Mara, who were burned alive followed by an investigation that never yielded results. The only man who dared voice his opinion, who explained how it might have happened, was put to jail for explaining on TV how a flame-thrower might have done it, under the argument that by doing so he was slandering the army by calling them responsible for it.

I have seen the political manipulations, the lies, the corruption, our money being given to foreign states in exchange for political support. I have seen dozens of more cruelties, each equal or worse to some of the ones listed before.

I have lost all faith, as should all of you, in international law. There will be no one to come help you if your country falls into something like this, believe me. I too thought that Human Rights associations would be here for us, that the UN would not stand for it, that America would act and that the world would denounce it. But they haven't, and we've let them know what's going on. We've gone to the International Penal Court, to the Hague, we've used up all recourses available to us, and nobody came. They won't come when it happens to you, either.

And when I've lived all this, do you think anything you say about Chavez in such a tone will do any more than insult me? Than anger me? Do you think that anyone would stand for their tragedy being thought of as a simple silly mess in a simple, silly country?

Hugo Chavez hasn't helped our poor. With the oil income we've had in years, he could have easily turned them from being poor. In eight years, there's been more oil income in Venezuela than there was in the past 40 years. Hugo Chavez's "social missions" where he supposedly delivers food, medicine and services to the poor have been petty alms, proportionately small so to keep them poor, and they haven't been done out of the goodness out his heart. The physicians serving in the slums are brought from Cuba. They don't just spread health, they spread propaganda for the Cuban regime. The so-called food for the poor is still sold to them, and is of highly inferior quality. Hugo Chavez has appropriated most of the food industry, particularly the meat and dairy, bringing it to going bankrupt. We have to buy meat and milk on limited numbers now. You will only be allowed two or three liters of milk per family... here! In Venezuela! An oil-rich country with massive, spacious farmland!

And the opposition isn't made of Rich people, nor are Chavez' supporters the poor and the outcasts of some right-wing regimes. This myth has to die. The rich of Venezuela, nowadays, are only those who stand by Chavez' side, his closest acolytes, who steal by millions and billions, and who have gone from living in mid-class homes to owning three or four houses in the US, in the course of a year when their supposed salary would've never allowed it. The "People" remain poor.

For that matter, the poor here live in slums, but have you seen the slums? I have. I counted DirectTV antennae by the dozens, two out of three houses with zinc roofs and construction blocks, no bigger than my bedroom, had cable. What are you talking about, when you say the poor?

If anything, there are more poor. There are more peddlers on the street than ever before, more children without homes, more crime (and more deaths here than in the Iraq war due to crime, for that matter.)

As for the opposition, no, we are not high-class right-wing racists, my friend. I for one don't even care about the left, or the right, and I was raised to believe that there's no such thing as superior races. All colors all the same, all humans are born with the same rights, all people deserve the highest amount of happiness possible, and I did not hate people simply for having a lower income than I did. My father was low-class, he worked his way up to bring us to being middle class, and we are not upperclass by all means.

So no, I don't think of Chavez as a "black monkey." I have never judged him for reasons of race or ethnicity, or raising or breeding. I have judged him because in Febraury 4th, 1992, he led a coup against a democratically elected government. For all the aforementioned reasons. I have judged him because history has taught us about men like him, about men who desire absolute power. Democratically elected or not, it doesn't matter - was not Hitler democratically elected also?

And I know a lot of people think the way they do. The majority of the opposition. Yes, yes there are small cases of racism, but they are not only minor cases, never representative of us, but also poorly founded. Venezuela has 95% race-mingling, and almost everyone, myself included, comes from a coctail of races that makes it impossible to call oneself white, black or native. I am all of that, and I am neither. I am simply Venezuelan.

We are not the white against the black.
We are not the rich against the poor.
We are not the right against the left.
We are not oligarchs against the proletariat.
We are not mere symbols, numbers, mere oddities in the course of history, Xs and Ys. We are not, or at least, we hope not to be the anonymous figures in your history books (that probably will never tell the story right), the people who are often not named but rounded up by the hundreds of thousands who died or fled country something-or-another during the reign of tyrant Z.
We are not a cartoon, a TV show, a clip in Youtube, a story that should only raise an eyebrow, make you cry or bring a smile on your face. We are not a political occurrence, a phenomenom, or a quirky little twist that should have political scientists squealing over our rarity.

We are human beings.

And please, stop thinking we're not, because you are too, and like so you are as close as we are from being in our place.

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The article:
[link]