Why is a foreign person trying to explain my story to me?
I was 6 years old when I attended my first pacific protest with my parents.
I remember, after weeks of long and calorous lines to put some gas in our car, these guys at the capital said "this is injustice".
I can't remember much of those first days of my life, but I do remember that liberty didn't feel like such thing.
A couple of months later my parents bought me my very first TV. I only had access to open sign channels, and while I was watching "Parent’s trap" it cut to what I knew was a transmition of the president of my country. While he spoke, the tv screen cut into two, and parallel to his speech, there was a bunch of people in the middle of a big city in what it looked like a bridge. I saw, for the very first time, real-life people shooting others at the capital of my country.
My mom came to my room and turned off the TV.
I was scared and confused.
Next I heard from the news a guy who was protesting was tortured with cuts all over his body.
Since that day I saw the guy everyone called president as evil.
My life as a Venezuelan was, always, marked by classmates who reminded me that I didn’t have enough money to wear pricy brands, and knowing about some sort of political issue in the country. I used to think "there’s always something bad happening in this country."
Years passed, and the money became scarse, even if the work was harder. Streets became more and more dangerous. The town, my hometown, became ugly, dirty, dangerous, and forgotten.
People talked about everyday robberies and kidnappings. I became afraid of the streets, of the humans around me, of the dark and lonely spaces.
But there was hope and something good finally. In my teens, for the first time, my mom was able to buy a new car for herself.
Three weeks later, while arriving home, I was gathering my stuff to come out of the car, and I heard my mom screaming from outside, "VERÓNICA, LEAVE NOW! RUN!"I was annoyed. I knew I was always slow, but why so much hurry?
I came out of the car, turned around, and there was my mom, with two men to her side and one behind her holding a gun to her head. For a car. For her work of years.
I took my little brother’s hand and ran to the building, shouting the transparent door instantly while I saw my mom being weaponless in front of three huge men with guns.
The next thing I remember was the heavy sound of the cars engine leaving the street and we, avoiding for months, the apartament we called home until we left for another one.
The police never did anything. Some said they worked with delinquents in these stuff.
Years after, I could only think of wanting to leave the country. I was scared of it. Stopped feeling like a home long before. I was envious of those who felt safe and hopeful in their countries. I wanted that.
But money wasn’t enough for me to leave. It was something for wealthier ones. Luckier ones.
Finishing high school was my main goal. Enjoy that last year, and hoping for the future was the only thing that kept me moving ahead.
But - in this country there’s always a but - like those days when I was six, the streets became places for people to shout "liberty" and scream "injustice" from the top of their lungs. I, like a young person, became hopeful again. I felt powerful. I wasn’t alone in this weird feeling of being locked in a cursed place, forced by people who had power over me.
What I thought was a movement of peaceful protest that could turn into some good, became a batterfield between students and citizens who felt dissatisfied by the people in the government, against that same government. Militaries shooting gas to youngsters next to criminals shooting guns, it was those images from my old tv all over again.
No news channel was showing that. My social media was flowing with videos of violence, kidnappers with officials' uniforms, and teens learning how to fight a convoy full of trained military.
Those deaths became names of a list. A data.
I could think that it couldn't be worse than that. But it did.
For the next three years, I was focused on my university studies. I started to deeply understand the chaos around me through history, sociology, and politics theories.
I had a confusing identity crisis because I learned about left, center, and right. "Why, if my values and ethics look rather leftist, I hate this government so much?".
And that’s the thing.
I understood that being fascist, tyrant, and violent doesn’t have a political spectrum.
Hunger became the daily thing. While I was working my best at uni, in my house there was only platain, mangoes and some cheese. No matter the money, there wasn’t food or toilet paper on the supermarket, and the only ones with full meals were in the government or linked with it.
Why.
Along with it began the goodbyes. Everyone around me started to leave. My high-school friends, my brother, my cousins, uncles, the friends I just had made at uni, the neighbors of years... everyone was leaving. Tears and hopes in a "see ya later" were all I had. What I still have.
Again, why.
So, the goal became graduation and leaving.
But.
- in this country there’s always a but -
The spark of change. A glimpse of hope surrounded us again. "It’s now or never," we felt.
We marched as citizens with white clothes, with signs that spelled "no more dictatorship" and with big tricolor flags through the city, but the answer was the same as all those years before: gas, detentions and violence.
The next months I saw some of my classmates being hurt by the police and the military, detained just for holding a sing and the campus of my university, the only place that has felt like a home to me, full of tear gas and wounded friends.
Things cooled down. Fear, deception and fatigue won again. People in power won again.
Next years were a double life. Hating politicians, hating people in power, seeing how some tried hard to do something in institutions. More children on the streets are asking for money and food. The south of my country - the most gorgeous piece of natural land I have ever seen in my life - became a violent pollution center with sex trafficking and silent killing for gold. And my city, a huge hopeles forgotten trash can.
People became androids for work, food, a little bit of power, and a link.
Seven years later. Yeah, seven, we decided to believe again.
Sort of.
"Dictatorships don’t leave with elections."
"But we are not killers. We are just citizens."
"We are going to prove them wrong."
"There’s nothing left to lose..."
I saw, for the first time in my 28 years of life, the majority of my people with hopeful faces. Calm. Voting massively. United for real.
All that was crushed down that same night when, again, a big guy with power over all of us said the opposite of what we all witnessed in every voting center.
I, again with others, went out to claim for the truth. We have the proofs. Why do they lie so blatantly? Why? Why can’t they just leave us alone?
But no. Again, the answer was killing. Bullets through young people’s heads for asking for the truth.
Chaos, more than thousands of detained people in just three days. Officers asking for phones to check "if you have something against the goverment". My colleges disappear or hiding.
Again. So much fear and uncertainty.
I only have social media to know what’s happening. Media is blocked. Journalists disappearing. Chased citizens claiming for help and fairness through their profiles.
All these years of my life. All my life and yet, someone from another location who doesn’t even speak my language or has stepped a foot in my land, try to deny my reality? Why, after I myself have been chased, robbed, and doxed, there’s someone in another latitude trying to explain me my own life? Why, why after all that I wrote in these lines, there’s some rooted foreign media outlet doing videos that disclaim my reality? Why, if I have always been supportive of victims all around the world, BLM, Palestine, Hong Kong, Cuba, Arab Spring, Women in Mexico... why are they not supportive nor understanding of my cause?
Why, not only do I have to live in this God forgotten country but to prove others that what I live, we live, is real?
I just want to feel free, in peace and safe in my own country with my love ones and colleagues.