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johnheintz · 5 years

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Venezuela's Cultural Problem

March was a total apocalypse in Venezuela. We had many power cuts that lasted between 3 and 6 days. Food was scarce, hospitals were flooded with people. Renal patients who could not be dialyzed died and fuel was too hard to find for many hospitals’ power plants. Sum that with the fact that many of the cities that have suffered the worst parts of the crisis, like Maracaibo, generally have temperatures over 90°.

Ravaging was widespread. The owner of a bakery killed himself after he saw what angry mobs did to his business. At night, you could hear gunshots popping like fireworks on New Year. Some businesses were not looted only because owners and security personnel slept on the roof and were armed with pistols and shotguns.

It was like Mad Max, The Purge and a Western got mixed up in one terrible nightmare.

One of those days, I was in a long line outside a market trying to buy some food –whatever I found, for my family. In the line, there were a couple of people talking about the looting of a business the previous day.

“They were selling everything too expensive, they deserved it.” “You know, I even helped one guy move a juice cart he took. But he was too stupid to grab some fruit. How is he going to make juice now?” And then some people laughed.

Let’s move further to the month of June. In Maracaibo, where I live, the electrical situation was not solved: we still had (and have) daily power cuts of somewhere around 6 and 14 hours. In a good day, you may only have a 3-hour cut, in a bad one you may spend the whole day without power.

Also, the gasoline situation is hideous. 2-day lines to fill 20 or 30 liters of gasoline are the norm. If you want a full tank you have to give alguito to the tanker: a pack of rice, a coffee, a $1 bill or so.

If you’re having a good day, you may fill your tank in 10 hours. Obviously, there are ways to fill your tank in an hour. You pay $20 to the tank guy or the National Guard (yes, the stations are militarized) and you’ll fill your tank quickly. In a country where the minimum wage does not reach $10, that is not an option for many.

One of those days I was around 36 hours in a line. It was hell. People were selling their spots; others were trying to wriggle around the line. Dozens of people paying the guards to pass first, some paying to fill 20-liter containers to then re-sell them (20 liters of gasoline cost somewhere around $15 and $20 on the black market).

And it’s the same everywhere: if you want to renew your passport, you have to pay a hefty sum if you want it to receive it faster. If you need some dollars for traveling or saving, you’ve got to go to the black market. Maybe you need to register your college degree and do not want to lose a whole week coming and going to the registry? Then pay. And it’s all perfectly fine.

You see all this and you may reach the same conclusion of many Venezuelans: The crisis of Venezuela has a cultural root.

After all, we are the culture of Tío Tigre y Tío Conejo (Uncle Tiger and Uncle Rabbit), a group of Venezuelan folk tales where Tío Conejo always won using his wit and tricking Tío Tigre. We are a culture that applauds viveza criolla. That expression is a bit hard to translate directly, but it basically means being like Tío Conejo: not playing by the rules, being “street smart” to achieve your goals.

Is there a cultural and civic education problem in Venezuela? Definitely. Is that the root of our problems? Definitely… not.

After all, we are also a culture of hard-working people. Millions of Venezuelans have fled the country and there are many complaints about us in the host countries: that we are loud, that we take people’s jobs, that we complain too much about communism, and that our women rob husbands (In Peru they even made a song about that!), but they never complain about Venezuelans being lazy. Also, take a look at the people that are still here: Many of them earn a wage between $8 and $15 a month and still decide to wake up every morning at 5 a.m., walk for half an hour or more to the bus stop to reach their jobs where they probably won’t have electricity for around 6 hours, get back home around 6 p.m. and have a power cut at 8 p.m. And they still decide to go to work every day.

Also, if you read a bit about countries during great disasters like war, a natural disaster or a hardline socialist rule you’ll see the same stories: black markets, general loss of civility, and rampant corruption. When external conditions force it, the law of the strongest imposes: many people only care about surviving and many others see an opportunity in people’s pain. That’s not culture, it is biology.

Culture is dynamic. What builds civic culture is institutions and education. If institutions play by the rules and work correctly, if people earn livable wages and have access to decent services, the incentives for corruption are greatly reduced. If the government leaves their hands out of production and promotes a strong private sector, then a black market makes no sense. If people knew about the importance of being a citizen and cultivating civic virtues, maybe things would be different.

Venezuela has a cultural problem, but that’s not a root of the issue. It’s a systemic crisis: we have a social and political system that rewards being a Tío Conejo, not being a good citizen.

Edgar Beltrán is a 22-year-old political scientist and philosophy student from Maracaibo, Venezuela. He is passionate about discussing how politics affects the daily lives of people and about untangling the hidden structures of reality through philosophy.

#Venezeula #culture #crisis #corruption #ethics education #economics #international #government

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uniquewastelandmiracle-blog · 7 years

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2:13 AM 09/29/17

I should’ve kept writing on here every day. I’d love to save all these, even to my computer and one day when I’m 40 read it all. Maybe I’ll laugh it off, or cry it out- as long as I’m not dealing with the same issues. In the past few months I’ve learned that even though I want to be in a relationship with a man-especially since I have never been with anyone, or even hooked up with anyone, but I am by no means ready for one. I spoke to a boy a year older than me online for a couple months. And it was the second time I had spoken to a person where you’d think we’d have a thing going on. The first time was when I was 15. I had been introduced to an Afro-Latino boy (he was Dominican and Jamaican) at a mutual friend’s birthday get together, and we did not speak the entire time but started to on Facebook when we’d comment on all the tagged photos of us. I only met him once, we spoke for a couple months, he still made me cry, and I realized I was a rebound. I also found out that a few years later, all my friends cut him off- as he molested a drunken passed out girl at a party. To think, the first guy I ever spoke to even a bit romantically was someone that primitive…I can almost get angry at myself for having such poor judgement, but that’s exactly what the rest of the world wants me to do.

The second person, the recent one, was from the Netherlands, and racist, filled with creepy fetishes that I overlooked out of sheer loneliness. I don’t want attention from everyone, I would’ve easily gotten that one way or another if I wanted to, but I missed having friends and talking to someone. This second guy made me cry too. I cried hysterically because of both of them, in a way I never cried before. How pathetic! I skipped my AP bio class when the first guy decided to be mean and threw up in my school bathroom freaking out! Ugh! What was I? All for some sexual predator and another sexual predator in the making? Is this what I attract? Even with my usually modest clothes? I realized the whole modesty thing is bullshit, both of these men, and several others anonymously on tumblr and even this place called formspring would tell me that they had masturbated to my face alone. I have no idea how to feel about that. Should I wear a burqa then? I mean, I don’t care, but I know I’d never find them the slightest bit attractive. I graduated with my BA in 3 years in June of 2017 at 21, and I’m out, at home, trying to make this music thing happen.

I hate that the idea of having a relationship with the opposite is so foreign to me. After learning about what women have faced because of them, I’m genuinely terrified and do not trust them. Having step brothers who pretend you don’t exist for 13 years and refuse to even make eye contact or acknowledge you since the day of my arrival in the states, and a real father who beat your mother, threatened to abort me, and paid people to stalk us, only to have a stepdad who beat ME, and kept me caged for years…doesn’t help either. Now, even having a small circle of trustworthy girl friends to talk to has become foreign to me. I’ve gone from being someone that could easily communicate with all walks of life to literally feeling my heart race when people talk to me and I can somehow feel that they just don’t like me. Watching my rabbit yawn makes me feel better, he is so cute and innocent. When I want to stop thinking I just put on my favorites- South Park…or Rick & Morty- except these shows make me think even more due to the communal annotations!

I feel too anxious. I went from not caring about my life and hoping to die from age 12 to 17 with additional depressive, self destructive episode for another 2 years (so till fucking 19) to just being so worried about how I’ll turn out, or if it’s already happened. What am I going to do? How will I do it? What are the first steps I take? I still cannot figure out my personality. Day by day I am understanding what I am NOT, and trying to piece together the bits and pieces of what I like and am interested in. I love my mother, I think she might be my soul mate in a way, because she is the only one who has stuck with me since birth, nothing or no one else has. Her sacrifices and hard work and education are why I’m in a better, but still can be much better place. I’m super thankful.

We went from living in a 600 square feet apartment with 5 other people to living in a 6,600 square feet house in which we moved in this year. I’ve lived here for a month now. I love my room. I finally got my own bathroom after 21 years. I love my closet and the music studio I worked minimum wage for. I love that the gym is right outside my room and the backyard is beautiful. I love my avocado tree, the Ylang Ylang tree, the bird that keeps pooping by our pool, the iguanas that linger by our mango tree, and the turtles I feed in the evening. There’s a golf course right across out backyard, and usually men in polo shirts are there playing. I’m very scared of what I will be in the future and what I will make of myself, but I’m also thankful. In India, we didn’t even have water on demand. I remember one particular Sunday, yea “God’s day”, being so awful that we all smelled and didn’t get water till 6pm-7pm in the evening. And we had to rush out to buy water bottles just because the water decided not to pump through the system that day. This happened too many times. At least when this happened in Florida, it was because of a hurricane.

I remember hearing 3 bombs go off with my own ears due to Islamic terrorists before even turning six years old, predicting the blackout that followed after, and wondering each time what it must’ve looked like. I remember being yelled at for spending 30 rupees, on a book I bought from a book fair in school. That’s 50 cents. Today we have pillows in our house that cost 50 dollars each. It’s surreal to me the most because it’s all the work of my mom. She was so persistent. I certainly didn’t earn anything. I just tagged along like any other child, so my mom may have expected a well financial outcome, but I just don’t think I deserve it. Only she does. At this time of the year last year I was such an Indian nationalist. I had five flags planted in the corners of my room alone. I’d even considered getting it tattooed. I’ll always love India no matter what but recently I’ve begun to have mixed feelings about her.

I’ll be back when I regain the stamina to jot down my random thoughts.

Also I lost ten pounds somehow?? and my measurements changed too I think, Now they’re 32D-25-35

Interesting........not

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