Now anger is all around

I was feeling guilty because I went out twice in the same week for a lunch. What does that mean? During the days of strongest protests restaurants and discos were open, with customers, and you don´t need to know someone who may have been at, you don’t. You just need to check for a while your social network accounts: people praising the dissidence during the day and shaking drinks when the sun leaves it. 

I didn’t bring this up to expose those people for a judgment, I’m saying this because it is important to understand that such things happens because we simply are not used to be involved – consciously – in politics. Now we are. Some might say we’ve been since Chavez got elected, but I refuse to it because we were able to spend a partition of dollars per year and with that people went abroad and came even with more bolívares than before. So while this was happening, while the airport were full and shopping centers got crowded, the political conscience was more like the taste for music… but not everyone. Everything that implies disagreement with the government laid on the middle class mostly, and the middle class isn´t growing anymore.

We became the newly poor, like some chavistas are newly rich, especially those with access to preferential dollars. What’s that? The dollar controlled by the government which exchange rate is the lowest and privileged too, but it is practically forbidden for regular people, especially for newly poor. So new poverty is like a complain feast, everyone has a daily story of how extraordinary it is to do something normal. Like the magical realism of literature: finding bread in a bakery, medicines in a drugstore, getting money from an ATM in ten minutes, and so on. Little by little Venezuelans will be the only ones who understand such an exceptional normality.

But not every poor person is actually newly poor. This is important, many people were already poor before the twenty first century socialism and, yes, a very significant group of those gives all support to Maduro because he’s supposed to keep going on with the Chavez legacy. At least that’s what the propaganda wants you to believe. So you have to be poor to actually understand it, and it is a problem for the government: there are more poverty, yes, but also more hate…

You see, if you used to be middle class you don’t take nicely, nor peacefully, the fact that bread became unaffordable with current salaries, and the only chance to get it it´s by doing a two hours line to get the special poor edition of the bread, which is normally called: regulated.  It is a real issue for the newly poor, but let’s talk a little about the other poor: not all of them feel bad at this situation, many of them actually enjoy it even make it profitable.

Old school poor spent decades collecting resentment due to their status. Let’s take an example: a credit card used to be a middle class instrument; forbidden to the poor. Restaurants: owners kept the right whether or not let someone in. Private schools, which continue being very popular: personnel analyzed the parents’ jobs to see if the kid could be in; not because of the money entirely, but the position. Besides that; services: no cable, no phone, no electricity, different food, different brands for product, a whole social class separation… until the revolution arrived and empowered them… spiritually at least and it was almost enough. Everything started to change but not for the poor, but the middle class as I said at the beginning.

Now anger is all around

The goal

Poverty is not a consequence but a resource. A good one to second class politicians. There’s this sort of pushing on mantra we’re used to hear from anything and anywhere that encourages happiness among the poor. Chavez did it well from a TV constant broadcast and, in time, poor became proud. I’m not against it, I’m not. I think it is accurate for the poor not to feel miserable. We all understand misery implies unwilling; not cheering at all, at anything, of course. There has to be some purpose, some motivation to go and hang on, but it doesn’t mean poverty is a free ticket Disney Park stay because it is not. We’ve been told for years that our situation is how it is, due to the politics of some other countries, and somehow – despite there’s always a joy because we’re free – it affects us all because our economy depends on them.

It might not be entirely false; we do depend, but this is neither why we’re poor nor why we’re supposed to be proud of, and I want to talk about this pride: if you feel proud of being poor – because the government makes you believe so – you just stop trying to improve your situation. If you believe there’s no need to move from where you are, because it’s ok living in a rancho, you just won’t push yourselves hard anymore, and what’s the deal of it? It is everyone’s problem, right? It is, it’s true, but the moment you accept it, you open yourselves up to the speeches of the politicians, and that moment is going to seal your perception for good. From now on you won’t question, hesitate or complain. From now on you believe… like the inquisition did. This time not in the name of God, but in the name of the revolution.  

Pride did not come by chance, it didn’t. This pride is the result of many years of rejection, that’s why many people went for it, embraced it, because they were tired of seeing how chances were set up to others and not to them. To those, the political speeches brought hope, and hope is powerful, especially when you’re poor. We let it happen, we let hope became pride without warning, instead, we fooled at it, criticized it. We set the distance that politicians took as a road, and the road led them to victory, and poor became deaf to middle class… now middle class joined the poor without the pride, therefore this poverty is not resourceful to the chairmen, this poverty is a pretext.

At the end of the thinking, poverty is the goal and they’ve pretty much achieved it.