A Disease Called Power

Opinion:

By Noris Roberts
Lecheria Municipio Urbaneja, Venezuela

I will begin by pointing out that this is not intended as a partisan political statement, to attack anyone in particular or to offend. I write and declare my pain and astonishment seeing that my country is being systematically destroyed and its population humiliated and decimated. In the last years nearly 5 million people have emigrated, not because of a war, they’ve emigrated because they foresaw no future, because of hunger and lack of medicine, for not having personal or legal security and basically because they were psychologically affected for living in a permanent state of uncertainty.

The setback suffered by the country is so serious that it has been recognized by most countries in the world. No one questions or doubts that Venezuela is going through a huge crisis, although some countries, due to economic, strategic or “ideological” interests, deny it, minimize it or take advantage of it for their own political purposes. Venezuela was considered a “rich” country; today having an 85% food and medicine shortage seems implausible, a made-up story, but it is the reality of a country that was “impoverished and devastated” slowly, not because it was devastated by a war, but because it was the victim of a disease called power.

Our country is immersed in a crisis that was implemented, with cynicism and indolence, by Venezuelans themselves, although it was not created by all of them. The task was carried out by a large number of tiny economic and political groups that took advantage of the good faith of the majority of citizens and because a large part of the population, sunk in years of ignorance and overwhelmed by a permanent propaganda campaign, meekly learned to receive crumbs from the State, settling only for that; getting used to not making an effort to achieve anything. The destruction was also propelled and propped up by opportunistic groups and individuals who, like the suckerfishes accompanying the shark, aspired to acquire positions of power to make sudden fortunes. Perhaps one could conclude that the general stance of the population was one of complicity and indifference, only pursuing their own economic wellbeing without caring about the fate of the country. They remained silent, applauded, accommodated themselves and ultimately endorsed what was happening. Those who raised their voices, for dissenting and not bowing down or openly refusing to accept what was and is currently happening, were and are persecuted, censured, exiled or imprisoned. The result of all this is what we unfortunately have today as a country. 

An oil producing country with a small population; an enviable geographical location; an example for other countries during certain periods of its history; which had some cycles of amazing development; which has hydrological sources, fertile lands, forests, jungles and minerals of all kinds; brilliant men of science, literature, music and sports, lost its way and became a pitiful caricature of misfortune, corruption and idleness. It is not only that food and medicine are lacking; diseases that had been eradicated are resurfacing; aggressiveness, mistrust and violence are flourishing; corruption is indulged and justice is flagrantly distorted. For a long time now, decades, the country has been subjected to permanent destabilization and threat campaigns, caused and promoted premeditatedly by the Venezuelans themselves. The country, adrift, has watched with perplexity how some individuals became immensely rich while the country gradually disintegrated, fell to pieces and cornered itself in a somber moral, spiritual, and economic poverty.

A country in which the State is the owner of productive lands; of sugar refineries, coffee plantations, food processing facilities, cement factories, banks, hotels, sea and air transportation lines, the main telephone and Internet service provider; manufacturer of steel, aluminum; electricity, water supplier; radio stations, television channels, commercialization companies; builder of highways, houses and at the end…, ironically, does not produce anything because it is inefficient, but mostly because it is corrupt.

In order to cover everything up, since the State is never responsible for anything, it has sold the idea to the people, through continuous, grotesque, false and shameless propaganda campaigns, that against the country there is an economic war or a media war or a dollar war or an electric war, which is fomented and executed by political opponents or foreign interests… If so, the State has proven to be absolutely incapable and inefficient in its management to win these wars. This is clearly seen when, from 2016 to this date, an Economic Emergency was decreed (No.2.184) and renewed 13 times “to assure the population the full enjoyment of their rights, preserve internal order, timely access to goods and services, food, medicines and other products essential to life” resulting in the highest hyperinflation in the history of the world; public transportation depleted to 10% of its capacity and greater shortages of medicines and food. It is also evident that the State failed when the electrical installations were militarized since 2013 together with the “Great Electric Mission” and to that effect they announced: “We are going to militarize, that is the word, all these electric installations that, in addition, now become security zones to protect and avoid any type of sabotage”. In the end, the electrical installations were, according to the State, permanently sabotaged by lizards, lightning, cybernetic attacks, electromagnetic pulses, terrorists and snipers; however, there was not, nor has there been, proof of these alleged attacks. As a consequence of this “State and military protection” we have had permanent blackouts that seriously affected the economy, health, education, drinking water supply, general welfare and the mental stability of the population. The only war that the State truly won was the one to stay in power.

Historians will capture this period in the historical memory, highlighting it as one of the most macabre and nefarious in our history. These pages will not be written with ink, they will be written with tears and blood. They will describe a period in which love and peace were sung to the people, but at the same time they were subjected to a ferocious State policy of psychological terror, economic and social intimidation and falsehoods. A period that was promoted as a “great emancipating epic”, rhetoric propitiated by petty and perverse people, but in reality what was left aside were the interests and basic rights of the citizens. A period where the social pact agreed in the Constitution was violated; where, in addition, with the approval and encouraged by the State itself, many citizens became high level predators and others of low level, called “bachaqueros”; who immorally and unscrupulously took advantage, like cannibals, of the needs of others. In the pitiful history there will be a very special chapter highlighting the use of justice as a political weapon and a chapter that will have notorious components, unusual and unprecedented, of those who carried out the whole process, those who will have a privileged spot, those who supported the surrender of the sovereignty of their own country to other countries; of converting the country into a spillway for terrorist groups and for having had close ties with drug trafficking.

Whether we deserved it or not, or whether it was caused by the naivety of a people who believed in mermaid chants, or for not understanding the value of freedom and the fragility of democracy, is debatable. What is clear is that this is a lesson that must not be forgotten and must be engraved in the Venezuelan’s DNA so that it does not happen again. It must never be forgotten how the ruin and the future of several generations was executed, turning a country into a grotesque caricature caused by a disease called power.

Originally published in Spanish: APORREA March 2019
Click to read in Spanish: https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a277495.html

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