Greetings, every one
In 1998 Hugo Chavez promised there would not be abandoned children/beggars in the streets.
“Yo me prohíbo a mí mismo, Hugo Chávez se prohíbe a si mismo que haya niños de la calle en Venezuela. Me lo prohíbo, no puede haber niños de la calle en Venezuela.”
He "forbid himself" to contemplate such misery. 20 years later, not only did that promise remain unfulfilled, but now we have more children, young men/women, and elderly people in the worse conditions of human indignity imaginable.
In Cumaná, the city I have lived in for almost 30 years we have seen these kids become men and women, age, and die like stranded dogs. In the last years we have seen them multiply and we have witnessed the transformation of perfectly healthy and sane people into human waste.
I have tried to document their lives, but it is a difficult task. You can't help feeling immoral or irresponsible for taking anything from them, who have nothing, without giving them something back, without changing or improving their condition significantly. I can't help watching them. Sometimes I stop just to observe their behavior, to try to imagine what kinds of lives they lived before, what kinds of lives they might have lived had they not fallen pray to poverty, vices, and neglect.
The Model
There is one particular man I decided to draw. He sits every day, all day long, on the corner of Bermudez Av. and Vargas St. He usually has a notebook where he scribbles and a cushion he never sits on. Sometimes he stares at a piece of newspaper or magazine with the intensity of a feverish mind trying to decode the mysteries of the universe. This is my way of telling him that I feel sorry for all of them, that I wish I could change their lives and give them their humanity back, that I have tried to understand their condition and their suffering.
Process:
It has become increasing difficult for the average person to even provide some food, leftovers even, to these people. They might as well be invisible.
This is my way of making visible a shameful reality the chavista governments have consistently denied and censored.
How can something so big, so ubiquitous be hidden anymore?
The city keeps going and people keep moving regardless.
But now that we have experienced the dramatic realization that any of us can be a beggar any time, I think we should start looking at these human remains as mirrors.
Thanks for stopping by
All images from personal files
Visítanos en: www.equipocardumen.com.ve
