After visiting Venezuela, it is difficult not to feel the need to reflect on what it means to strengthen democracy and stop any measure that may erode it
I recently had the opportunity to visit Venezuela for a second time. I made my first trip there in December 2018, when I remember witnessing an appalling shortage of food and medicine. This time, I found a different Venezuela, but in no better situation.
Venezuela breaks your heart but also fills you with humanity and affection. When one talks with Venezuelans, it is impossible not to reflect on how their democracy and institutions were progressively destroyed. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, created by the United Nations Human Rights Council, noted in its 2020 report that serious human rights violations have been committed in the country since 2014 and also identified “patterns of violations and crimes that were highly coordinated pursuant to State policies, and part of a widespread and systematic course of conduct, thus amounting to crimes against humanity.”
A recent report by the International Commission of Jurists found that the Supreme Court of Justice, under the control of the Executive Power, has directed the collapse of the rule of law in the country since more than 85% of its judges hold provisional positions, who are subject to political pressure and directly pressured to issue rulings in favor of the government and against human rights defenders and political dissidents”.
Violations of fundamental rights, a co-opted judiciary and prosecutor’s office, the lack of balance between public powers, the domination of the military over public management, corruption, the pandemic, the control of the government over food and fuel distribution, hyperinflation, the destruction of institutions, attacks on the media, journalists, advocates, and even humanitarian workers were the most common topics heard in the many conversations during my trip.
Some things can only be experienced and verified by visiting the country; Any preconceived idea is put to the test when looking at the reality experienced by the people, especially the most affected from an economic and social point of view. When one travels across Venezuela, it is impossible not to notice how the military and other security forces have taken over daily life, generally operating against the citizens. Driving through a checkpoint of the National Guard or any other public force may end in arbitrary detention, depending on the “criteria” of the officer.
In a road trip of 220 miles and many checkpoints – like the one I made from Caracas to Acarigua, where we drove through 16 checkpoints and were requested our documentation on one occasion – one can imagine what can happen. Many truck drivers transporting food or other products usually save some of the cargo for “giveaways” at each checkpoint en route to their destination.
The militarization of the country is not only evident in security issues or the surveillance and control of highways. The public food network, the administration of fuel and other basic goods and services, as well as the management of strategic ports, the mining industry, and even the direction of the Ministry of the Interior, Justice, and Peace (yes, justice and peace) are run by the military. Most of the people claim that the government has destroyed the institutionality –among other things– through corruption and the deprofessionalization of sectors that are fundamental for the functioning of the State, placing in key positions those who are “unconditional to the Bolivarian revolution”, rather than those with technical and professional skills.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of economic sanctions during a conversation. This and the fall in the price of oil – in a country whose economy depends greatly on oil exports – coupled with terrible decisions, such as the massive dismissal of many technicians who worked in this industry for many years and the lack of investment in the industrial infrastructure, have evidently made a dent in the Venezuelan economy.
Regarding the U.S. sanctions, it is considered that the government has used this as the main pretext to explain the humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is experiencing; Some people agree that this factor has deepened an existing crisis, but it is not necessarily “the causative factor” of the humanitarian emergency suffered by a good part of the population. Almost 6 million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years, not only due to hunger, unemployment, and lack of access to basic services but also due to lack of security.
In the Venezuela that I was able to live in at the end of 2018, shortages reigned and it was shocking to see empty store and supermarket shelves and people collecting food from garbage cans or struggling to have the basics to survive. The Venezuela of 2021 is full of bodegones, ubiquitous grocery stores with imported products at prohibitive prices, unaffordable for most. For example, if people lived only on their pension of roughly $ 3 a month, they could only afford a carton of eggs. Hyperinflation is unmanageable in daily life and there is a striking difference between those who do their groceries at the bodegones and those who visit popular markets or street vendors with very low-quality products.
A large part of the population, especially outside Caracas, lives in anguish and exhaustion due to the difficulty in accessing fuel, water, electricity, and gas. During our stay in Acarigua, we had to get up very early or very late – even at midnight – “to get some water”, because tap water is only provided at certain times and if you do not get up, you run the risk of running out of the precious liquid, something undesirable in the middle of a pandemic.
On my 2018 visit, I was surprised at the fact that a bottle of water was more expensive than filling a tank with gas. Three years later, gasoline has been dollarized, with prices ranging from $ 1.89 a gallon in Caracas to $ 11 in places far from the capital. Families and friends have simply stopped visiting and seeing each other. Traveling by car is now a luxury.
The pandemic adds up to the tragedies afflicting the people, and access to the vaccine remains uncertain or practically impossible in some regions. In desperation, people have risked getting vaccines on the “black market”, with the perils that this implies. In a country with opaque or non-existent official information, the data regarding the number of deaths from the pandemic is unreliable. This leads many people to believe that the virus is not a fatal problem. Many others simply cannot “stay at home” because they need to go out in order to eke out a living. With a collapsed health system, those who get infected and need hospitalization rarely get a bed in the public system and cannot go to a private hospital that charges thousands of dollars, out of the reach of those who earn 3 dollars a month.
Many things can be written about a collapsed Venezuela, but I also want to share the most valuable thing that I brought from that trip: Venezuelans. Human rights defenders who carry out an exemplary work every day amid all sorts of risks; journalists under persecution who decide to keep reporting; priests who deploy their work in violence-ridden areas and build citizen coexistence while working with young people; Humanitarian workers under attack who decide to keep providing assistance; teachers, professors, and intellectuals committed to providing education; people living with difficulties or on remittances from their relatives abroad who always offer the best they have on the table; lawyers who litigate whenever they can but drive taxis to support their families; poorly paid doctors who ride bicycles to treat patients for free or at a very low cost; all putting up an exemplary battle not only to survive but to continue fighting for their country.
“We are not just what you see,” people often told me, as to prevent me from bringing back home the image of a broken country but that of a country that is struggling to get out of the tragedy in which it is now immersed. There is no way not to feel twinned and united with Venezuelans. My deep admiration goes to human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian workers, who put their life and in everything they do and stay hopeful and dedicated in such an adverse context and the threat of criminalization.
Any parallelism between the situation in Venezuela and Mexico runs the risk of being simplistic and reductionist because our history has been constructed differently and has its own complexities, but it is difficult not to feel, after visiting Venezuela, the need to reflect more on what it means to strengthen democracy and stop any measure that may erode it. A government should not be measured by the ideology it promotes but by how it respects, guarantees, and protects human rights. Nothing is granted and not everything has been achieved in our countries: the fight for rights and democracy must be an everyday task to which we cannot renounce if we want a life of well-being, peace, and justice.
Translated by José Rafael Medina
