Ten years ago today I referred to Venezuelan Christmases with political prisoners, alluding to the fact that I preferred for obvious reasons to call them without political prisoners (see in Spanish Christmas With Political Prisoners, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2011/12/navidad-con-presos-politicos.html). I was not happy at that time because the few prisoners that existed at that time were unjustly locked up for the massacre that the same regime had caused in 2002. But now, not only am I still not happy, but now I add the concern of the continent because the regime has expanded the prison to the whole country where Venezuelans are locked up, increasing the number of political prisoners, civilian and military, inside its dungeons to hundreds. And that is not just anything for the world.
As a consequence of the above, what are Venezuelans doing? Those who can are fleeing. 6.03 million refugees and migrants in the world, more than 850 thousand asylum seekers from Venezuela in the world, more than 4.99 million Venezuelans living in Latin America and the Caribbean, of which approximately 1.84 million reside in Colombian territory as of November 2021 (see figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in https://www.acnur.org/situacion-en-venezuela.html and Plataforma de Coordinación Interagencial para Refugiados y Migrantes de Venezuela (Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela), in https://www.r4v.info/es/refugiadosymigrantes).
Now the prison has been extended to all of Venezuela and those of us who in 2011 were asking from outside the prisons for the release of those who were imprisoned at Christmas, are all in one way or another locked up in our own country desperately trying to get out. Those of us who for some reason are still in this great prison that the regime has turned our country into, try without success to somehow reproduce the quality of life that has escaped us in all these years. Year after year we keep hoping that the following year things will be different, trusting in those who politically lead this sinking ship called Venezuela on one side and on the other.
And here I do not place myself in the traditional position of opposition to the regime, but as a Venezuelan who simply lives in this battered country and patiently waits like everyone else for things to get better. And although I try not to hate or have any rancor against those who caused this tragedy we are living, it is impossible not to include in the analysis the dispute of the sides fighting for power in Venezuela, which in one way or another have put us all aside to satisfy their egos and political ambitions.
Christmas is synonymous with times of peace and truce. Armies in the midst of wars have taken a break from killing each other for a few hours to commemorate the coming of the Son of God who gave his life for all of us with no other aspiration than that humanity would be better in the eyes of God. But a truce in the midst of a desolate country is extremely difficult. What to say to a mother who has lost her family through illness, neglect or exile due to the irresponsibility of a State whose obligation is to achieve the greatest possible happiness for its people? What to say to a father who cannot feed his family this Christmas with the lowest minimum wage in the world, and who sees it vanish every day due to the highest hyperinflation ever recorded in the history of all countries? How to tell a young man to stay if he has no future here? Who has a future in a prison?
It is difficult in this hour of one of the darkest and most difficult Christmases we have ever lived, to ask Venezuelans to open our hearts to make a cease fire to those who have caused us such damage. Not even in a war could Venezuela be destroyed more. What we have left is to share the little they have left us with those who are worse off than us, in a gesture of solidarity and Christian charity to move forward together. If we are realistic, it will be many years before there is true justice to be applied to those who have physically and morally destroyed Venezuela, although we continue to work consistently so that this time will be as short as possible and we can fully reconcile this suffering people.
José Rafael Pocaterra described it extraordinarily when at the beginning of the last century (1922) he gave us in his Cuentos Grotescos, his beautiful story "De cómo Panchito Mandefuá fue a cenar con el Niño Jesús" (How Panchito Mandefuá went to dinner with Baby Jesus) (no Venezuelan can fail to read it: https://www.ciudadvalencia.com.ve/nuestros-cuentos-de-navidad-panchito-mandefua-de-jose-rafael-pocaterra/). This touching story shows the essence of who we Venezuelans really are, describing the story of a street child of the time, who had nothing for Christmas, but before dying, he shared the little he had in his pockets to avoid the punishment of a little girl. That lively, responsive character, to face life with personality, and above all to help those in need without having how describes us as a people. It was Panchito's profound and detached gesture that actually earned him the Dinner with the Child God, the greatest honor bestowed on any Christian.
And we Venezuelans are like that, we have demonstrated it many times in our history, especially when we welcomed with open arms the hundreds who fled from a Europe destroyed by war, those who fled from a Latin America full of tyrants and poverty, our neighbors who fled from the violence of an endless guerrilla war. We had enough to share and we shared it with them without a second thought. Of all nationalities they came to our country to make it their home, and now their governments send us back from their airports and persecute and discriminate against us in their countries.
I am proud to be Venezuelan and I will never regret fighting for and being part of a people that did nothing but help others in their need without expecting anything in return. I believe that Venezuelans would do it again as Panchito Mandefuá did because in our grief we would feel as he did "a kind of crazy inner joy...". And that is only felt when you help another human being with selflessness. Some will say as Panchito said to himself on the day of his death: "He was a fool! He only had twenty-six cents left on Christmas Eve... Who told him to protect anyone...". Well, we protected them without thinking about it, just as he himself did with the little girl Margarita. That is the great difference that we proudly have as a society from those who now feel they are better than us.
Pocaterra's Christmas story has a mixture of sadness and hope. That is what I feel we now have to bring to the Christmas Dinner of this year 2021 - more hope than sadness - for all that is happening to us as a country and that we are suffering our compatriots in Venezuela and in the rest of the world, because we blame ourselves hard for this misfortune we are an extraordinary people in spite of having made so many mistakes. "What the hell! The day of spending is spent "archipetaquiremandefuá..." as a challenging Panchito sentenced before the future, convinced that if today there is no money because we did what we did, tomorrow there will be because that is how we Venezuelans are, the size of the commitment that is presented to us.
And as prisoners that we are of this regime in this Christmas in a prison called Venezuela, I can not less than after 10 years to return to finish this Christmas note with the prayer of the same author of Panchito Mandefuá, and that now turns 100 years, dedicated in 1921 to the prisoners of La Rotunda, and that only God knows why it appears again just today, dedicated to all that compatriot who is vexed in Venezuela and anywhere in the world. We must recite this prayer again, with the favor of Almighty God, so that it may have the power to change things in our Venezuelan prison for the good of all, as soon as possible:
"Father our Liberator who art in Glory!
Ungrateful be thy name
May your genius come to us
Let your freedom be done, Lord, be it in my homeland or in America.
Our decorum, that of other days, give it to us today
And forgive us our infamies as we forgive our infamous ones,
And do not let us perish in decadence, but deliver us, Lord,
From all this sinister brutality.
Amen."[1]
So be it!
My best wishes to all of you for the best Merry Christmas in the world possible, whom I have been honored to count as my readers during this hard Year of the Lord 2021. God bless you...Amen....
Caracas, December 24, 2021
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
Instagram: @laguana01
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[1] José Rafael Pocaterra, Memorias de Un Venezolano en la Decadencia, Caracas, 1936.
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