By Luis Manuel Aguana
At the moment of the effervescence
of the street movements of 2014 I wrote a note entitled "Kidnapped
Country" (see in Spanish at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2014/04/pais-secuestrado.html). I received some invitations from the radio and
television media to explain this note, in which I compared Venezuela to a house
kidnapped by a gang of criminals and a hostage situation is presented. Each
character in the plot had a role and a behavior: the kidnappers, the kidnapped
family, the policemen outside and the neighbors of the house.
At the time, more than 4 years ago,
when I realized this kidnapping, I said that we considered Venezuela to be "the house where we live and one day we
let people in peacefully because we thought they were going to help us fix our
house. As time passed, the individuals took over the house and relegated you
and your family to one room and established draconian rules for eating, using
the bathroom and moving around the house”. Well, the kidnapping is not over
and on the contrary it has been deepened with sophisticated tools for the domination
of the owners of the house.
These tools, the result of the
improper use of technology to control people, have become more sophisticated
with each passing day, as the country's political problem has not yet been
resolved. The kidnappers have gradually, using force at gunpoint, forced people
to do what they want to do to keep control of the situation, using the most
sophisticated surveillance and control instruments of the technological age in
which we live, which helps them to stay in power. It is in this context that we
must analyse the use of a card that has evolved into what is known as the
"Homeland Card".
I began reporting on this phenomenon
in 2013 (see in Spanish Más allá del racionamiento electronic, at
http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2013/06/mas-alla-del-racionamiento-electronico.html): "The government's intensive use of these
tools to influence people's lives without proper citizen control, as it exists
in other parts of the world-unless in Venezuela-leaves us, the technicians,
alone with some ethical responsibility to not allow it, to the extent of our
possibilities. But if they allow it, the experts become accomplices. We have
already published that Venezuela does not have the right to information
self-determination and that it is to some extent the reason why governments can
make indiscriminate use of citizens' information (see in Spanish Censo 2011 y
el Derecho a la Autodeterminación Informativa at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2011/08/censo-2011-en-venezuela-y-el-derecho-la.html)".
However, the opposition did not take
due account of the warning. The regime
continued its work as a spider, weaving a web that lasts a long time, wrapping
all Venezuelans in it. Politicians must
understand that this problem cannot be put off. And that is what the deputies
in the National Assembly are now doing by not taking the decisions that the
country demands of them. A minute goes by, a minute when we lose more of our
rights. That is why we cannot wait any
longer.
The following year 2014 I returned
to the subject (see in Spanish Control del Racionamiento o de la
Insurrección, at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2014/03/control-del-racionamiento-o-de-la.html): "As I pointed out last year, with a
government that has proven itself to be a criminal, retaliatory and open
practitioner of political apartheid, all Venezuelans should be very concerned
that this database of purchases is crossed with the very sad Tascón List and
the importance of preventing this from happening, why is the regime announcing
this card now and why is the Cuban scheme being deepened at this very moment?
Some might say that the economic crisis, for which they are certainly
responsible, forces them to ration and control the sale of basic necessities.
But from experience and from the blows we are suspicious that this is the only
purpose of this system”.
And indeed, that was not its only
purpose. Now they want to control who
can collect their pension that workers were entitled to receive during their
working lives, who can buy gasoline, who can or cannot have their money from
abroad, and in the future who can or cannot do anything in this prison that
Venezuela has become.
Faced with countless reactions
wondering what to do with this, the answers are not easy. The regime is encircling the few remaining
spaces of freedom and people are beginning to understand that there is an
authoritarian regime here that seeks to rule over the most intimate aspects of
their personal lives. Something I was
already warning about when I refused to census in 2011 (see in Spanish Porque
no les abriré mi puerta, at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2011/07/porque-no-abrire-mi-puerta.html), and in 2013 when I refused to vote and to
collaborate with a corrupt electoral system from that year on, until the rule
of law returned and we have genuine elections in Venezuela (see in Spanish
Porque no les daré mi voto, at http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2013/11/porque-no-les-dare-mi-voto.html).
On those occasions, make a very
personal decision, without recommending anyone to do anything. Every Venezuelan
must have a clear position on how to proceed with what the regime is doing and
act accordingly. My position has been
and will remain the same: Civil resistance against these criminals.
We must make decisions based on the
fact that we are kidnapped, and in a situation of resistance to the kidnappers,
waiting for help that should appear soon and in some way. The police outside
may or may not decide to enter, but in the meantime, I will not cooperate as a
hostage with the criminals who broke into my home, nor will I be thrown out of
it because it is my 200-year-old heritage.
They may
also impede me from receiving a pension that I paid and to which I am entitled,
even if it is not very much. But just as
in a hostage situation no one thought it would happen, but it did; and anyone
who cooperates does not help end the kidnapping. And if that means I don't get
my pension, because I don't sign this card that violates my rights, I will
consider it the aggression that the hostages who don't cooperate with the
kidnappers receive, and against whom I will continue to fight with the only
thing I handle: ideas and convictions. That's impossible to take away from me.
Caracas,
August 30, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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