Disrupted by darkness, my mood has turned toward a place where it is hard not to rant. I do not wish to rant, however, because it is simply unproductive and perpetuates the mood I am trying to fight. Yet I cannot avoid it. Every molecule in my being is aching from the mistreatment received. I hate to complain, but I hate my situation so much that there does not seem to be any other motivation than to fight it.
And I cannot fight. There is nothing I can do except research and distribute information, but I am so tired, fatigued, exhausted from three days of no electricity, of a week and a half of no running water, of food scarcity, of being hungry, alone and bored for 12 hours straight during the night, while I am awake in the dark with no entertainment or possibility to be productive, turning and hurting on my bed trying to avoid the realisation of my misery.
I feel humiliated and it is hard not to seek blame. I feel abused and it is hard not to complain. It is my right to spit out the darkness stored in my lungs, but violence begets violence and I want to deny this nature. I want to exist in peace, harmony and, if all else fails, in contemplation. I want to close my eyes and feel a world made of cotton candy, to float and smile, to laugh, but I can only feel screams building up in my throat and acrid poison oozing from my pores.
Alas, I cannot avoid the needles that puncture my nerves, and reflex and reaction are only natural. Avoiding my thoughts and turning my eyes toward lush candy gardens seems cowardly. Others did it: they blamed others and then relaxed and pretended that everything is okay. But nothing is okay.
Everything is broken, and I cannot add my voice anymore to the general complaint. We’ve been protesting, sharing information and demanding a change for years. In comes the promise of change; in comes the brutal repression, the reminder that we are all subjects in this reign of terror. Speaking up against the growing tide of denial seems like screaming at a falling meteorite that will crush us all to death.
Perhaps the best move is to realise how helpless we are and to move away and dodge the fall of our motherland. Perhaps the best move is to shoot poisonous thorns like a serpent-porcupine, and then close my eyes and feel the pain I have caused. I could then live in peace, harmony, contemplation and acceptance of my actions and situation: far away, mourning and never looking back.
Does that sound cowardly or pragmatic? I really do not see a way to prevent the destruction of Venezuela. Perhaps despair begets pessimism and broken measures.
Caracas metro shuts down amidst Venezuela power outage
- Vox.com (2016): The roots of Venezuela's appalling electricity crisis
- Washington Post (2019) - Rotting food and endangered patients: How Venezuelans are faring during continuing nationwide power outages
- Reddit user DulceEtDecorumEst: “This happened because they tried to fix it quickly, they half-assed it and now it's even more broken than before. They're going to blame anything other than themselves and Chavez's fuckup. It's most likely that the engineer that was congratulated for fixing things yesterday is today scared shitless.”
- Marco Rubio: Meanwhile the secret police of the #MaduroRegime detained an engineer from the power company. A few hours later that engineer was found dead.
- Manager of Guayana Corpoelec Headquarters Found Dead (in Spanish)
- Reddit user C--A--R--A--C--A--S: "People [are] dying from dehydration. Hospitals in my city [are] full of corpses of babies and their mothers after the blackout"
- NGO organization reports the death of 15 patients due to a lack of dialysis during power blackout