TIME OF WORD

A question of many countrymen is till when will they endure exclusion

CARLOS BLANCO , WWW.TIEMPODEPALABA.COM | EL UNIVERSAL Sunday, December fourth 2011 12:00 AM The Arrival A question that hangs in many countrymen of this corner of the world, ran by one of those saviors, who from time to time devastate disorganized countries, is till when will they endure exclusion. They meditate about the special state of mind one must have to bear the exclusion, which is much more than the political pursuit to the more distinguished political activists and to that selected collection of escape goats, whom certain regime heads have taken a liking to. An exclusion that is also the enclosure forced upon those who cant risk losing their jobs or the meager income the missions hand them; or those who have been seduced by a different future through blurry promises of houses or uncertain glory that will come if one keeps the ideology of closeness with the government, even if only by the chromatic dimension of the ideology that is dressing in red as a symbol of belonging to the club of the chosen ones. Theres also another exclusion. Its the internal banishment, within or outside the country, that stems from being and feeling apart from the polis, from the city, from the field of the socially shared that goes beyond the family and close friends. Businessmen, professionals, public or private employees that used to participate in gremial, social, cultural intellectual or political activity nets, now are confined to guettos that dont have wire fencings, but do have the invisible fence that draws frontiers of fear, that burn when crossed. SIZE OF THE EXILE. Its enough to think that in 2012 Chavez will have had 20 years gravitating over the citizen life, of which thirteen were as chief and owner of Venezuela; even more, of the Venezuelans; of that multitude of human beings that feel, even if they dont have political activity, even though having it theyre on the governments side, that their lives are yielded by a frame regulated by someone who shouts over there, always, to remember that hes the master and that one day he can decree that the company I work in doesnt exist anymore, that the bank in which I have my savings has evaporated, that the company I manage is in conditional freedom, that the contract I search in a legitimate way has a sudden overprice that looks to satiate the insufficiency of the flux of box of a Bolivarian national hero. Those who were 10 in 1992 and today are almost 30 havent lived in any way other than under the gravitating order imposed by Chavez. The ones who were in their forties at the time, transformed today to people in their sixties, that arent part of the pro-Chavez elite or of his parasitic management, have become refugees because of the imposed spiritual zero. When forty, a person has their whole life ahead of them; when sixty one has the sixties and eighties ahead. Some are persecuted, some arent, in reality everyone are refugees within or outside the country. The net they belonged to have been devastated and many have been destroyed. Hundreds of

cultural groups, guilds, sport association, literary circles, political parties have died and lost their reason to live due to this desolation. Between the government and the crime, be it political or common, the social and spiritual share capital that the Venezuelan society has accumulated has been wasted. There are many businessmen that continue but now are pariahs. They used to belong to a production and work elite; yes, of wealth but in unmanageable cases people of good upbringing, able of solidarity. Today they live in the margin, pointed by a regime that has transformed them in guilty of anothers misery, because of such a blurry guilt that is being capitalist and, by definition, enemy of the people to whom for perverse reasons open job opportunities. Some earn good money because theres no way this corrupted and rotten system can work just with the dedicated Bolivarians stuck to the court; that cloudscape that subsists from the red-less, private business sector is needed; but, one mustnt delude oneself, its members share the cave that confines them to their salvation delirium that inhabits an humanity dazed from the Leader. There exist other functionaries, businessmen, scroungers, that insert themselves in the process, not as victims but as third category beneficiaries now. Not only have they resigned from any right but they have also entered happily to the new order, that as mafia demands wholeheartedness and that admits new members but never a resignation: one can only get away dead or at cost of almost unpayable defamation. NOW OR NEVER. The clash that comes is political and ideological, theres no doubt about it. Nevertheless, it goes beyond that, its an existential conflict like the one Oswaldo Alvarez Paz once upon a time defined. Theres a major portion of the country, made up by a upright proChavez group and an anti-Chavez group, that is exhausted, that wants a change, some for a lighter pro-Chavez turn, while others place themselves on the opposite side. They want to exit the suffocation, exit the pestilent atmosphere that has become the day to day survival. If Chavez manages to tie in a situation in which he or his eventual successor impose themselves in 2012 there are thousands that have confessed to themselves that theres their end of the line, be it them trying to go away from the country or digging a cave even deeper and gloomy as a refuge. For that reason for the ones excluded, the irrevocable opportunity for change is in 2012; the opportunity to recover the freedom and build a society in which crime and that other manner of crime that is the government dont push the citizens to the internal banishment. The chances to accommodate oneself exist, but decrease. Theres not enough cash; there are already established mafias that control the sources of resources and dont admit new members; there arent spaces in which the dissent is respected anymore; the intolerance has settled in the spirit of the majority, be they pro-Chavez or anti-Chavez; theres tiredness even of the fury that every person possess (or that possess every person). Chavez, his closest group, and the Cuban mafia that makes and controls it arent willing to anything that isnt keeping the rule. They dont see themselves in peace, as members of a democratic opposition, on foot on the streets of Venezuela, on holidays in Playa El Agua or La Gran Sabana, enjoying a movie in a cinema, as normal human beings in a normal society. They see themselves ruined, returned to their previous, precarious existence, also many see themselves

accused and persecuted; the mirror gives them back a similar image to that of the anti-Chavez group they so ridicule. They arent willing to the price that is giving up their power. On the other hand, there are those who cant go on anymore. They arent willing to arrive to old age or to the graveyard under the fanatical and oppressive order of Chavez. Thats the reason theyll give everything they canand morebecause the approaching year will be the one in which freedom will be rescued. The clash looks inexorable. Twitter @carlosblancog