The following text is a letter written by a Venezuelan cousin of a recognized Uruguayan musician named Jorge Drexler. The author of the letter is also the daughter of Uruguayan exiles who fled to Venezuela from the 1973 – 1985 Uruguayan dictatorial regime. It is important to know that the dictatorship in Uruguay focused in prosecuting, principally, those citizens with leftist tendencies. It is assumable that the parents of the author of this letter were leftists and that the author herself was educated in a leftist environment. The content of her worlds are of such impact, especially because of her background, that I considered that it should be translated to English so it could be more widely known. “During these days I saw a picture of the Latin-American Presidents posing with Raul Castro in Cuba. A curious picture, so to say, of various men and women who, most of them, spent half of their lives trying to convince their fellow citizens that they were the best possible option of government in their countries, fighting for their ideas, fair or unfair, winning with great effort presidential elections, all of them were smiling next to the designated heir of the Cuban monarchy. As every time that I see something like that, I remembered Yoani Sanchez, I imagined her on the floor of a car being kicked on her face, that other time when she was taken away for the writings that she had posted on a blog, and I asked to myself if the rain of hits would have been perhaps different if she had known that the one who was going to come up on her defense and to accuse the regime’s henchmen was not, let’s say, that animal that is George Bush. When I think of the Cubans I always end up repeating the same thing to myself: We abandoned them. The picture was before the demonstrations in Venezuela began. It is clear that I was not going out to demonstrate, no because there were no plenty of reasons, but because it looked to me that it was a call to overthrow the government. It was then when once again, another girl from the University of Tachira was attacked by thugs on plain daylight, she was just about to turn into one more of the tens of thousands of people killed annually in Venezuela (official statistics), and the guys said enough. And they went out, and protested, and misbehave, burnt tires, shot streets down. A bunch of them were captured, and were sent, without being processed at all, straight to Coro’s jail, 1000 kilometers away. In one of these surreal situations to which we Venezuelans have got in use with, the population from the penitentiary violently protested and made clear that those boys were not going to be allowed in that prison, here there are only criminals, they said, the students should not be here. That is how everything started, and here in Merida that very same afternoon the students were protesting. And Leopoldo Lopez came out to call for a march. I was not going to that one either, I don’t like Leopoldo Lopez at all, although we have common enemies, and I think that Henrique Capriles was much right and much more courageous by calling to do not go out to discharge the frustration without clear goals, risking the students’ lives. But it happened that the night before to the march they came out with much more strength than ever the so-called collectives. In Merida are called Tupamaros. We all know them well. They ride motorbikes, they go in pairs. The one behind carries the gun. They cover their faces. Most of them live in some buildings that used to be student dorms, and where nowadays the police don’t access. They also have a civilian arm, let’s say, who participates on elections. That afternoon they went out, they torn down the doors of a building where some of my friends live and broke into, riding their bikes. Shooting. Like that it happened in various buildings that are residence of students that always go out to the protests. They went around the city, and the police riot-control ‘whales’ were coming guarding the rear, backing them up. The pattern has repeated itself every day during the demonstrations everywhere in the country: the collectives are released as a vanguard, on their motorbikes, armed, and the National Guard comes behind. What happens is that I live here in Merida and I did not see that in a twitter’s pic: I saw it. That is why I went to the march, dress in white as everybody. Not because the empire conspires to overthrow Maduro and I am a participant of the cue, neither because I was convinced with a CIA’s handout to stop being the daughter of a political exiled from the Uruguayan dictatorship to turn into an extreme right-winger fascist, to use the term as our president calls me. I went out, scared because I don’t like bullets, to tell to the motorbike criminals that the city is not theirs, is ours, that we can walk its streets when we want, that they cannot tell us with their bikes and their guns where we can’t go. I went out because if my father was alive, he would have gone out with me holding hands with the students. And it was beautiful, and we sang, and the whole city joined us in the greatest demonstration that had been seen until then. And then the night dropped in, and again the bikes went out. A girlfriend called me, trenched in her apartment: the ‘tupas’ are coming, the police are protecting them, and who defend us? The ‘tupas’. The name was not chosen randomly. They chose it knowing that there are many, way too many, sad intellectuals of the so-called Latin-American leftists, to whom the speech and the name mean everything. You say Tupamaro, and they think of the tortured by the Uruguayan dictatorship, they don’t think of the boys that yesterday went about showing their wounds that the Bolivarian National Guard gave them when they were detained. They are the kind of people that if you say guerrilla fighter, they think of a handsome bearded boy wearing a black beret with a silver star, instead of an unscrupulous old Colombian drug trafficker who is willing to kidnap children to take them as fighters to the jungle. They are the kind of people who think that Chavez nationalized the oil industry and never looked at the date. They are the kind of people that when you tell them that the Venezuelan politicians of the opposition are not seen in any of the Venezuelan television networks because it is not allowed, and respond: yeah, but… And one knows that if tomorrow in their countries the opposition politicians were banned from the public media, they would be outraged. They would not be happy if they knew that a third part of the government ministries are military. If they knew that officially, there are not independent powers. The highest rank officials of the military had sworn that never again an opposition party will win any elections in this country. The National Electoral Council’s president celebrates every year, the anniversary of the Chavez’ cue attempt. And I’ll stop because the list is way longer. On this moment there is a tragedy happening on Venezuelan streets. Not because of the riots and the riot control squads shooting tear gas and someone dies, is not that, which regrettably happens all over the world every time. It is because there are armed groups, financed by the government, shooting and killing. And there is a total informative black out. It sholud be enough to know that, it should be enough to know that in Tachira the internet was shot down and that war planes are flying above the cities, that the cable channels which were reporting news from the ground were also closed, it should be enough to know that reporters are under attack, that there are death students, it should be enough for the leftist intellectuals to finally raise their eyes from the nth edition of ‘The Open Veins of Latin-America’ and look around, find out that is the 21st century, the Berlin’s wall fell down, the boys from Sierra Maestra are old and now they don’t let their grandkids to govern, neither let them to write a new newspaper, nor let them go out of the country, found a political party, scream anti-government slogans. That if in Venezuela there’s not enough money for bread; neither for medicines, nor for milk is not because Obama is conspiring day and night against us. We are perfectly capable of economically sinking a country without the help of any imperial transnational power. People over here think that Latin-American governments are not saying anything because they have economic interests. I do not think so, I think that is because of the same reason for which they took that photograph: because they live in the past century. Yes, Maduro says that I am a violent extreme right-winger fascist who is part of an international conflagration to overthrow his government. Let him say so. Tomorrow I will go out again with the guys, to demand the government that the collectives ought to be disarmed, to say that the streets are ours, to remember that girl student who died with a bullet in the back of her head, to give strength to the other one who lost an eye. And I will go exactly, with the very same pride, innocence and happiness that every student from Latin America go out with, to scream long live to the U, long live to the University, death to the bo, death to the boot worn by the military. And I will not explain to the nostalgic leftist what is going on, neither I will show them the videos and swear them that is truth, nor will I sit with them to argue such elemental things as the right to freedom of speech, because I am, we are, fed up. It is visible, look at it, look at us. I am sure that there will be (that there are) many who will understand, and they will not abandon us.”
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 01:20:14 +0000