Venezuela in Darkness. 60 Hours and Counting
Dear Steemians,
After more than 60 hours without power (in some areas of the country people have been without electricity for as much as 80 hours), I am borrowing some wifi signal to ramble about these unusually dark, hot, and desperate days. People say we will have more blackouts in the next hours. We'll see.
I think that the only good thing that has come out of this massive blackout is that we have been doing some star gazing.
We have also shared more time as a family, having all our devices' batteries dead and no credit in our phones.
But none of that provides more than temporary consolation. The crude reality is that with every hour in darkness we grow more hopeless, more desperate, more dangerous.
I will not speculate about the causes or whether or not the problem will last days. If anything, we have learned that even when we have electricity and all the services kind of working, we are always suspect of any information.
We don't trust the government, but neither do we trust any other voice, no matter how well-intentioned it seems.
One thing is true: this crisis was a chronicle of a death foretold.
We had been having similar outages in years past. At some point people in the public administration sector were working only 3 days a week.
The history of lack of maintenance and investment not only in the electric sector, but basically in every single area of importance, is a long and sad one. If only Bachelet (UN High Commissioner for HR) could visit hospitals, schools, jails, and just walk the streets to see how our sewage systems had collapsed way before the gringoes started the blockade; how our streets stopped being paved, the trashed stopped being collected, and the water we consume stopped being treated.
Whether the damn yankees found a way to hack an analogic system and damage our whole power infrastructure with the utter disregard for the death of innocents that characterizes them, or whether the pathological liars that govern Venezuela found another way to distract the world's attention from their sickening destructive strategies is something that every person will have to conclude on their own.
I can only say that it is hard to think about art, beauty, stories, and literature when you have to find a way to prevent your only piece of meat to go rotten, desperately look for ways to remain calm and mentally sane and grow an unprecendented patience to see days come and go without having news from your loved ones or a clear explanation of what is happening.
We have moved a step closer to the kind of obscurantism we attribute to centuries past, where knowldge was hidden from the common folks and beliefs were held regardless of how wild they were.
This is awful to hear, and it sounds truly scary. I think you can't imagine what this is like until you are living it. I wish you strength and stay connected at least through Steem. I hope lighter times come soon <3
Thank you very much, @soyrosa.
I hope so too.
Today, I have posted a pending story I had promised for a contest some people believed I should participate in.
As I wrote the story and hastily selected the images trying to take advantage of the connection we have right now before it runs out or we get another blackout, I felt as prisoner who has one chance to send a message out before he is locked out or worse.
It is hard to choose one's final words, if those were.
Praying for you in thought's of support. You, and all in Venezuela, going into those dark times I think many others over the world will begin to have to enter too. I read your posts not so much as an SOS, but as a map.
So much empathy for you and yours and will go about my day thanking the electricity, the clean water, the refrigerated meat I have so easily right now.
Thank you so much for your kind words. True we may take many things for granted
I have been trying to bring awareness of this issue to people that I know. Many Americans simply have no idea since we are so consumed with our own lives and the chaos that is modern living. Only a select few of the people I have spoken about this to have an inkling of what is actually happening down there.
My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your people :)
Thank you very much.
I try to do the same, at least with normal people who are willing to at least ponder about views other than their own.
Some Steemians, lamentably, whose accounts carry a certain weight and could serve noble causes, have only contributed paradoxically to the perpetuation of the injustices they allegedly abhor.
Someone may think that your article is a bit obscure (not only because of the circumstances that led to it), but also because perhaps it doesn't glimpse any clarity in the present. I understand that perspective and that feeling, @hlezama. Sometimes I've heard the expression: "It's always possible to fall more" or "You never know when you hit bottom". And that, certainly, can be. I will never wish it, but neither can we feed the naive illusion of the immediate solution. I hope that we can truly glimpse in the midst of that darkness the certain point of clarity.
Thanks for stopping by. I share your feelings. I don't want to be a prophet of disaster, but everything that has happened so far, especially the position and behavior of the military, suggest no easy or pretty way out.
I cannot imagine what you are going through. I am sorry for my government's actions and am ashamed that most Americans are asleep. I try to wake them up.
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Thank you for stopping by. It's a complex situation. Not easy to take sides, not easy to understand the mess, not easy to find the truth behind every event.
But one thing is true, venezuela is suffering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, especially considering that no war and no natural disaster has hit yet. Only under such circumstances has people suffered what we are suffering.