Venezuela: Rise and rise up again
After 100 days, over 81 deaths, and more than 1,400 injured, this has become Venezuela’s fight for a new independence day
When Carlos Andrés Pérez warned about Hugo Chavez, amid of the 1998 elections, most took it as campaign rhetoric. Today, those words seem almost prophetic and even if he did see the road ahead, he couldn’t imagine Venezuela like it is today.
The mistakes made by the political elites, gave way to the rise of Chavez, and with him, the “Socialismo del siglo XXI”; Backed by a US100 oil barrel, he began a populist agenda, moving a philosophy of “Us vs Them”, the people against the Elites. That policy, to the date, makes him the most popular president so far.
Chavez destroyed the productive economy of his country. He seized companies and lands from anyone he deemed “enemy of the people” and established an exchange policy that starved the economy from the resources needed to maintain its productivity.
The year 2013 came with Chavez’s death, which lead to Nicolas Maduro’s presidency. Maduro lacks Hugo Chavez’s charisma, and the support from all factions within Chavismo. By 2014, the fall of oil prices, left Maduro without resources needed to maintain the policies started in 1998, so he resorted to authoritarianism to retain power.
The breakdown amid Chavismo’s ranks, political miscalculations from Maduro, and a tired society has brought a second independence struggle; This time from totalitarianism.
After 100 days of civic demonstrations, the only message left is: Rise and rise again until lambs become lions.
Venezuelans cannot stop, independently if you are from the left or the right; this is a call for the survival of the country. If you are Chavista, defend his legacy. Don’t let Maduro erase it in his hunger for power
If you are from the right, rise and rise up again for the right to feel free in your country, for the liberties that you know every Venezuelan deserves and should be granted
Rise and rise up again, against corruption, against injustice, against ignorance, against what Venezuela has become.
As people rise and rise again, so you stop being lambs and become lions who defend their own country
LatinAmerican Post | Ricardo Avella
Copy edited by Susana Cicchetto
