By Luis
Manuel Aguana
I wasn't
introduced to him, he introduced himself. One afternoon he came to
my house because he wanted to know more about something that we had
started to plant in the country, the Project Country Venezuela
Reconciled Via Constituent. With that country-born tone that only the
country people have, he explained to me that he had been a
Congressman for the party of Rafael Caldera, that famous "chiripero"
who came to power in 1993 but who had retired from party politics
disappointed with the result of all that Chávez once called the 4th
Republic, but which had fallen into his hands through a common
friend, a copy of the book of the proposal for structural change of
the Country Project, and as the good engineer that he was, he
analyzed it and wanted to know more, not only about the proposal but
about those who had formulated it. The friend recommended that he
talk to me because he had already written enough at that time about
the proposal.
"If
this is true, it's something worth returning to politics for,"
Hinderburgo Becerra confessed to me without knowing him. But he made
it clear that he was referring to the other politics, to the real
politics, not the one that results from the conciliatory actions that
are made to reach power by itself, but to reach it to apply what is
necessary for the well-being of the people. If anyone was clear about
power and its ends, it was him. I confess that it disturbed me
because I did not know him. He asked me for many copies of the book
of the Project Country Venezuela to give to "his people" of
the State of Guarico to make them "an examination" and to
evaluate its application in the place of the facts. I confess that at
that time it caused me some distrust to give him so many copies that
they would end up anywhere, but in the group we agreed to give them
to him. Time proved that it was not a mistake but the best investment
of our project at that time. From his hand we traveled around the
State of Guarico with the Project Country Venezuela, in multiple
forums and enriching discussions, meeting valuable people we would
never have met otherwise.
Hinderburgo
Becerra was a born political operator of that policy that Venezuelans
know about playing "caribbean". He had moved in the highest
political spheres as President Caldera's personal conciliator,
managing like a fish in water among all the political factions of the
old Congress, in a government that was a clear minority in that
difficult period of Caldera's "chiripero", and getting
ahead. You had to be good in politics to achieve that, but
Hinderburgo showed me personally that not only was I good in
politics, but that to be successful in it required human qualities
and political savvy that rarely come together in a human being.
Nobody would believe that of a politician in Venezuela. Hinderburg
was the living proof that one could be a politician, an honest man
and a human being at the same time in Venezuela.
And
that's what happened yesterday, we lost a human being, a very
valuable human being. Yesterday Hinderburgo Becerra passed away. And
it is such a great loss that it will be difficult for us to ever
evaluate in its just measure what we lost, not only because of the
quality of the human being who left, as so many others have already
left in this long road travelled in our Project for a different
country, but also because of how difficult it is to achieve the
convergence in one person of the political knowledge of his country
and his State, the depth with which Hinderburgo understood the
proposal of the Project Country Venezuela and finally the application
of that proposal for his native State, the State of Guarico.
And
here I will selfishly refer to the heartbreaking pain of losing so
many valuable people when the country needs them most. Hinderburg
could have been another rich man of the 4th Republic, enjoying
millions of ill-gotten gains, as those who have not even acceded to
power since the interim government are now doing. He had retired from
politics disappointed and returned because we put ourselves in the
middle, asking him to accompany us to rescue what they had destroyed,
spreading a proposal that we consider the best for Venezuela. Hinder,
as we called him closely, decided after his old age to leave the
slippers of a comfortable retirement well earned from many years in
the service of the country, sick as he was from a cancer operation,
to devote himself to travel around his state and the country to
convince his people that the politics that had been his life, if it
could be interpreted beyond the banalities and the rampant corruption
of those who practice it now. That there is an opportunity, that not
everything is rotten. And his life of the last few years proved that
beyond all doubt. Nobody understood it better than he did, being as
he had been, an exceptional protagonist of the Venezuelan political
event of the last decades.
He
enjoyed his final years waving a new political flag - of politics
with a capital "P" - that worked intensely for his State at
a time when politicians only want a public position just to have
power and rule. He took the written basis of the Proyecto País
Venezuela, interpreted it and wrote it for his State.
It was an extraordinary and dignified work that every Guárico
citizen should know, study and apply. I am leaving you an address on
the web so that you can find out about "Propuesta Región
Guárico, Estado Federado" by Hinderburgo Becerra (download
proposal in Spanish in
https://tinyurl.com/ybuknwfq),
in which Hinder explains with the thoroughness that only an
exceptional engineer like him could achieve, how his State could be
transformed into an agro-food power, with projects in agro-industry,
railways, water and gas, with the slogan "El Guárico is enough
for everyone and there's plenty of it. ...How long will we be sitting
on our riches?"... That was represented by a homeless Guariqueño
Llanero, asking for coins when he was sitting on a gold bar. That was
his idea. I know because he made me draw it on that sheet that you
will see in that extraordinary work in which he really expressed what
we Venezuelans are. That is what we expect for each State of
Venezuela.
At
this moment, I cry the impotence of a Venezuela whose best children
are dying in the midst of unspeakable laziness and incomprehension.
But even worse is the deafness of a country that still hears with
rapture the hollow promises of a political class that refuses to die,
while at the same time unique Venezuelans are dying who leave behind
concrete political contributions to improve their country and their
region. What injustice is this, my God? And it is here that I begin
to understand the anguish of the Liberator in his last days...
I
never had any doubt about the incredible contribution of the llaneros
to the freedom of Venezuela. The only one who doubted it was Hugo
Chávez when he denigrated the historical figure of José Antonio
Páez. I affirm without a doubt that Hinderburg Becerra is the proof
of those contributions that the Guarico State will continue to give
to Venezuela. And this reminds me of the Monument to the Lancers of
the Vargas Swamp, located in the Department of Boyacá in Colombia,
considered the largest monument in that country, made in homage to
the charge of 15 lancers under the command of a Venezuelan, Colonel
Juan José Rondón, a plainsman from the State of Guárico, in the
Battle of the Vargas Swamp, and who ended up so far from his land
under the command of the Liberator, fighting for the freedom of a
continent (see it in
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanceros_del_Pantano_de_Vargas).
I am sure that in a Venezuela that I will not see, there will be a
monument in honor of the civil heroes who rebuilt this country, and
in one of them, perhaps the largest in his
Guárico State, there will be one leading Hinderburgo
Becerra, like that of Juan José Rondón in Pantano de Vargas,
charging victoriously against the ignorance, corruption and laziness
that plague his people.
Hinder
used to call me often very early in the morning to comment every time
he read in the morning some note that he had liked out of the many I
had published, referring undeservedly to me as "a man of
all-embracing thought”. I always laughed at that with him because
those who were are only in history books and of course dead. But I
was always struck by the term. Now that you have died, brother, I
realize that in you it does apply the term you undeservedly put on
me. You went beyond all expectations and left for the new generations
a deep legacy of love and future for your country and your state. You
have embraced all the facets that a human being can leave behind for
his people and his people in all possible directions, the human, the
ethical, and the political. From now on you cannot speak of political
decency in the Guarico
State without
mentioning your name, you have earned it. Rest in peace, brother,
you've done your part. It's up to those of us left to do ours...
Caracas,
April 22, 2020
Email:
luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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