The Dependents

A new week has begun. Many of us got addicted to social networks, to TV shows; to vividly things without experienced them. That’s Caracas nowadays. No, not exactly. It is accurate to bring up some aspects: I am quite sure – at least I believe so – that our society has two important divisions which I’ll call: dependent and not dependent ones. What is it to depend on? On The State, on its administration, on its executive orders. You might wonder why if everyone sounds like to depend, but they aren’t. In Venezuela everyone does not depend on The State and this is what I want to imply: there is a very small and exclusive part of the population who have access to dollars and therefore do business with it. The issue with the dollar is that we live under a system which name in English could be: Currency Exchange Control, I’ll call it State Control over the Economy at Currency Exchange. It means that if any Venezuelan needs, wants, wishes, or has to travel and of course, shop and pay abroad, there has to be a sort of authorization from The State in order to do so, and getting authorized requires some considerations I’ll leave to a future post. The important thing from this is that the government – Yes, the government – decides how much a dollar worth in bolívares and how many of those dollars a Venezuelan is allowed to receive.

Over the last nine years the amount has been lower and lower and several restrictions were imposed whatsoever. Now The Dependents – where I’m in obviously, otherwise I won’t be complaining – must go to the so called Black Market, where one dollar equals almost twenty thousand bolívares; an amount that takes about two days’ work to get. This is how we live but... I started mentioning a very small and exclusive part of the population who have access to dollars and therefore do business with it. These people dominate the black market, these people are responsible of bringing food and supplies to the country, these people – although thousands of denials – are part of the government and in the name of the revolution, in the name of the eternal battle against imperial forces from the global right wings (wherever it is or whoever they are) and in the name of the freedom, we’ve been forced to depend on them.

The Dependents have their own scale. It’s not bold to say we have our divisions: The very poor ones; which just go for being fed at any ideological cost, the ones who support the government, the ones who don’t, and the remaining little merchants as to speak. Always arguing each other and fighting one another. Why? For whom instead. We set violent debates for the not dependent ones due to the group who support them and because of this claim that the crisis is not their fault. I don’t think so, but this is how we spend many of the days while getting poorer and they; they get richer. A new week has begun. Many of us got addicted to social networks, to TV shows; to vividly things without experienced them. That’s Caracas nowadays