Same spot; different trash; same end.
Solid waste disposal in Venezuela has never been a sight to see, but at least years ago we did not have to deal with the sight in our surroundings. For decades Venezuela has relied on the landfill technique for the disposal of solid wastes in ways that might have worked 50 years ago with a lower population and more resources, but which in time became unmanageable and counter-productive. We can’t blame the Bolivarian revolution for the problem itself, but we CAN blame them for not only having done nothing in 20 years to at least stop contamination and use the fortune we received from $100-barrel oil exports (way before there were any sanctions) to modernize our waste management system, but also for having made it worse.
We can and should blame them especially because they have bragged to the world about the moral superiority of their plans and ideas and even for “showing” (with the help of amazingly expensive propaganda machine) that they have done better than the capitalist world that only consumes our resources and destroys our planet. That we can’t argue against, but most capitalist resource-consuming countries have done more than the Bolivarian regime of chávez and maduro so that their people can at least live under the illusion (in many cases it is actually a fact) that 1) they are working on contaminating less and creating alternatives to reduce the impact of human activity on the environment, and 2) people can at least enjoy a nice-looking environment around them (whether they are nice urban settings or man-made parks).
In Venezuela, we don’t have any of that and we have not had it for a while now. It’s not because of the alleged blockade; not because of the pandemic. It’s because of an ill-conceived revolution whose only end was to end life as we knew it, break our spirits, enrich the leaders of said revolution and guarantee the irreversible course of their power and influence.
I have posted on several occasions similar pictures of piles of garbage in the streets of Cumaná, minus the fire. Today (yesterday by the time I am finishing this post), I had the chance to pass by one of these revolutionary pyres, which seems to be the only method “the people,” now empowered and more conscious of their historic role in the world, came up with to both make garbage disappear and save the planet at the same time.
They called that revolutionary project the “Plan de la Patria” (Fatherland Plan). That was supposed to be chavez’s legacy to the world. You google that and you find the amazingly detailed and rhetorically pompous plan in the CEPAL’s website (The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, known as ECLAC), a website that seems to have been designed and maintained by the revolution. It reads at the end of the plan that
Con miras en un horizonte temporal a 2030, sus objetivos coinciden con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de la Organización de Naciones Unidas
(aiming at 2030 as temporary horizon, its objectives coincide with those sustainable development of the UN).
Yet, nothing is said about the fact that this is the third edition of that gorgeous plan, which after more than 12 years of “execution” has zero results to offer and lots of images like the ones I am constantly showing here to prove the opposite. If the UN finds nothing problematic with that fact and just promotes the rhetoric of socialism as a better alternative to capitalism even without tangible results, then we are really fucked as a world and more countries will join Venezuela in the near future with the blessings of the “International Community.”
El Plan de la Patria: Tercer Plan Socialista de Desarrollo Económico y Social de la Nación de Venezuela es un plan a mediano plazo para el período 2019-2025, que contiene los lineamientos generales para su implementación.
(The Plan of the Homeland: Third Socialist Plan for Economic and Social Development of the Nation of Venezuela is a medium-term plan for the period 2019-2025, which contains the general guidelines for its implementation.)
Here you are a summary of some of the 5 main objectives. I know it sounds marvelous for an outsider and some may wish their governments could draft something close to this, but for any Venezuelan with some neurons left, after witnessing what these bastards have done in two decades, to read this is both funny and offensive.
Grand historical objective No3 (they might have just said, objective No3): "To turn Venezuela into a social, economic and political power country, within the great nascent power of Latin America and the Caribbean, which guarantees the creation of a zone of peace in Our America".
After 13 years (give or take), you tell me how this is going.
Grand historical objective No4: "To contribute to the development of a new international geopolitics, in which the multicenter and pluripolar world takes shape, which allows achieving the balance of the universe and guaranteeing planetary peace."
You can see where this is going, right? and why it has been so important for Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran to make sure that Venezuela remains under their control. We are surely achieving universal equilibrium with the help of these good fellas.
And my favorite, and the reason for this post:
Grand historical objective No5: "To contribute to the preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human species".
The pomposity of the rhetoric alone, after such a nefarious and disastrous record, makes me sick.
They can't keep the garbage out of sight; they can't keep a single town in a 30-million people country clean, but they think they can contribute to save the whole planet.
What have they done with the garbage all these years once they collect it from the streets? (which happens about every month if you're lucky).
This is very common in EVERY single town in Venezuela. Just a few miles from every town a landfill welcomes visitors with smoke signals. I wish I could reproduce the smell here for you.
In this video you see lots of poor people (most of them natives or indios) eating from the garbage they rumage every day as their way of life. This is in the State of Bolivar, south of Venezuela, the richest region in the country (becasue of the mineral reserves and natural resources).
What have they done with the sacred indian lands, the lands of the first peoples that were massacred and exploited by the imperialists and neo-imperialist?
They gave it to the Russians and Chinese "investors", as well as to the colombian and local mafias so that they could treat Mother Nature the way those savage capitalist never learn how to.
As they point out on the Observatory of Political Ecology of Venezuela's website:
[The exploitation of the mining arc, as they called this area of our Amazonia] "violates the rights of indigenous peoples and other local populations, and may even lead to their massive disappearance; threatens to irreversibly affect the biodiversity of the entire region, causing irreparable environmental damage to the health of human beings, ecosystems and protected areas, compromising the hydrological cycle of the basins protected by international conventions."
So, when I see garbage burning in the streets of my city, I see more than just that. I see a dot from an infinite number of dots that, once connected, gives us a grim picture of what a totalitarian regime can do, disguised behind a embellished discourse of justice and equality for all, but which in fact only pursues power as an end it itself. I see it as my ethical duty, too, to denounce all these practices and the imposed conditions under which every citizen of the country somehow, by actions or omissions, becomes complicit in these crimes.
