It can hardly be said that the country is calm as the regime pretends to sell it to us. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, 9,633 protests were registered in 2020 and 6,560 in 2021. This decrease is explained by the serious health situation and the fear of contagion of a disease that the regime has not been able to control (see in Spanish figures from the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, in https://www.observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve/el-conflicto-de-la-semana/10-anos-de-protestas).
Different sectors are protesting in Venezuela. The workers of the different unions are protesting for their working conditions and their miserable salaries in hyper-devalued bolivars, the retirees and pensioners of the Public Administration, who amount to millions of Venezuelans going hungry with miserable allowances that are a minimum fraction of the basic food basket that is now measured in dollars. They cannot go to the bodegones and other delicacies that the regime shows outside as improvements in the country's economy. This is the population that cannot find a way out and is fleeing the country, and the count is already around 6 million people (see UNHCR-Situation in Venezuela, at https://www.acnur.org/situacion-en-venezuela.html).
The pandemic has been a paralyzing factor for the population to be inhibited from taking to the streets to form crowds against what is happening in Venezuela. However, little by little even that is losing its fear, because if you have to starve to death at home, at least you do it infected with COVID-19 protesting for your living conditions. What is happening in Venezuela is a slow motion mass murder of the majority of the population, in the midst of a renewed savage capitalism.
This very serious situation created, not by a natural tragedy or a war, but by the government of criminals, has broken Venezuela's social tissue in multiple parts. Let's look at that in more detail. According to the Mexican NGO Habitat for Humanity, the social tissue "is formed by a group of people who unite to satisfy basic or superior human needs, such as: food, health, education, social security, culture, sports, public services, transportation and everything that represents a better quality of life" (see in Spanish Social Tissue, at https://www.habitatmexico.org/article/el-tejido-social). In other words, we are talking about society as a whole, which in one way or another is protesting to recover those human needs that at this moment are not being met by the one who has the direct responsibility to do so, which is none other than the one who governs, whether legitimately or illegitimately.
As the social tissue is broken into a pile of pieces, each one of them fights for a part of the overall need. That is, teachers and professors fight for their demands and the necessary improvements in basic and secondary education, university professors fight on their own for their survival and for the recovery of what once was higher education in Venezuela and the recovery of the physical plant of the universities, doctors -those who are left- and nurses fight for better living conditions and salaries, The pensioners and retirees are fighting to improve the amount of their pyrrhic incomes, and what can we not say about the population as a whole who are in permanent struggle and take to the streets to block traffic due to lack of water, electricity or any other public service that does not work at a national level, and so on and so forth. These are the atomized and isolated protests reported by the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict.
What are we lacking in Venezuela to unite the parts of that broken social tissue? A common thread that gives enough confidence and legitimacy to that disappointed society to unite in a national protest that claims with a single voice the unsustainable nature of this situation. What has happened? Why is the political leadership no longer fulfilling that function? Because their credibility has crumbled and their leaderships are no longer valid to be able to unite the social tissue.
Distrust reaches such a level that a recent survey by Meganálisis (one of the few reliable pollsters in the country) points out that 82.3% of the population distrusts opposition politicians. And even worse, 78.1% of those polled "believe that the accusations that opposition parties "are sold out to the government of Nicolás Maduro and work for the government" are true" (see El Nacional, Meganálisis Survey: 78% of Venezuelans believe that opposition parties work for Chavismo, in https://www.elnacional.com/venezuela/encuesta-meganalisis-78-de-venezolanos-cree-que-partidos-de-oposicion-trabajan-para-el-chavismo/).
What remains to be done? To thread the Venezuelan social tissue. From the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, we extract the first meaning of the verb Enhebrar: "1. Tr. To pass the thread through the eye of the needle or through the hole of the beads, pearls, etc." (see Spanish DRAE, at https://dle.rae.es/enhebrar?m=form). It remains for civil society to face the challenge of becoming expert weavers and pass a thread of trust through each of these pieces, with a unique and credible discourse that satisfies each part of this important fabric and turns it into a single one. What a challenge!
But I believe that this challenge is possible. In the communication headed by the former Metropolitan Mayor, Antonio Ledezma, addressed to the President of the United States, in response to the famous letter of the 25, who requested the easing of sanctions against the criminals who rule Venezuela, the most diverse personalities of the civil society converged in a single strong idea: under no circumstances can we accept the narrative that we are heading towards "normality" and even less that this requires the easing of the sanctions imposed on the criminals who usurp power in Venezuela. This letter was signed in record time by more than 10,000 people inside and outside of Venezuela (see in Spanish Norbey Marin, ¡We raze!!!!! It was 10,000 signatures but the people surprised us, in https://youtu.be/pDtSFPNBeMk).
If this was possible, Venezuelan civil society and its natural leaderships in that social tissue could well coincide in a focused political discourse in which we all agree, led and sustained by each one of the leaders of that social tissue broken into pieces, requesting the mobilization of all Venezuelans. If so, the same -or perhaps greater- force that was used on April 11, 2002 to shake off the tyrant could be replicated. What should be avoided in advance is that if this effort is successful, the passions of power that caused the failure of the people in the streets on that historic date may be unleashed. If it is possible to unleash that force that already exists from within, due to the serious discontent of all Venezuelans, it will be impossible to stop the freedom of Venezuela.
Caracas, April 23rd, 2022
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