“We are living under generalized unsafety. We are on our own, even in front of the police,” said José, a 50-year-old man from El Valle, an important urban neighborhood in Caracas.
We met José at least three years ago while conducting fieldwork with victims of armed violence and supporting small community get-togethers to ensure the well-being of the residents of his street.
Despite having limited resources, José was always hopeful that he could take care of some situations: for him, helping a young man to find a pair of donated shoes was already an achievement. “Before he didn’t have any shoes and now he does, the job is done.”
José never chose to showcase his work, he always operated from the unnoticed. He was also skeptical of participating in interviews and videos, although he was always ready to have long walks through El Valle while telling interesting stories about the neighborhood or anecdotes about his life as a bus driver.
We recently began to note with concern how more and more requests for help came to his phone. They overflowed his ability to respond, as he could not read all the messages or answer all the calls. Something new was going through his mind; the quarantine was causing José more inconveniences than he had anticipated.
During the first week of quarantine, he continued to support some people out of his pocket. He shared with us how he saw the community calm and protected: “people comply with the measures, even though we don’t even have running water”. In the second week, his finances began to dry out: it was no longer easy to buy a bag of flour or some bananas, and his network of contacts began to be scarce. Helplessness was knocking on his door as a new visitor in his life.
When we met José we were amazed at his strength. Doing social work in Venezuela has always been an uphill race and more so in recent years. José strove to stay “out of politics,” as someone who does not want his actions to have a political color, even though his work was fundamentally political: serving others.
In the third week of quarantine, we began to discuss the idea of recording people’s experiences, with short voice memo interviews. José does not have a smartphone, so he borrowed a neighbor’s phone to leave us a voice note. When we listened to it, we felt this was not the José we used to know. His classic “Vamos pa´ lante” (Let’s move forward) motto became complaints and regrets. And with good reason, since he was no longer solving the most basic problems.
Emotions and feelings are not presented to us in a univocal way, discriminating between them is an arduous and complex job. Talking about emotions in the pandemic is unprecedented. We look for similar situations to compare: extreme violence, armed conflicts, massive displacement are some of the references. But, part of these calamities had already been experienced by José: one of his sons migrated to the south of the continent and another was assassinated; he has been robbed numerous times and had to collect donations to feed acquaintances. Being on the verge was part of his day to day.
Even with all his expertise, José stopped being José, or at least the man that we knew. His helplessness loomed like rage and pain. The quarantine and its social impact made him go beyond unthinkable limits: “I cannot buy cooking gas because it is too expensive, now I go to the dump to collect firewood to cook. I built a cooking pit on the roof ”.
When roaming the neighborhood, we saw many young and old people scavenging from the garbage. We were moved by these images, and José, with his classic sharpness, told us: “you have to have balls to do that, not everyone does it,” with a tone of cynicism and pessimism at the same time as if rescuing a trace of humanity amid the most dehumanizing environment. Next, José tells me he must go to the dump and look for firewood to cook. He does not tell us that it is a brave act too, nor do we have the courage to remind him of his own words.
He says to be enraged enough to take to the streets and shout what happens, but he also feels the uneasiness of someone who seems to have lost everything.
Quarantine is bringing about many breaks. The breakdown of close human alliances, the fall of the small cultural capital that many people like José employed to fend for themselves and support others. Quarantine is eliminating the possibilities of autonomy for many people, and dependence on aid – from the government or political actors – is not an option that ensures survival.
Translated by: José Rafael Medina.
