Once upon a time, there was a beautiful country named Venezuela. This small nation, which sits upon the northern edge of South America and is gently caressed by the Caribbean Sea, had a little bit of everything: beautiful beaches, breathtaking landscapes, delicious food, celebrated heroes of independence, territorial disputes, a robust oil industry, the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and even unique wonders of nature like the Catatumbo Lightning and the Angel Falls.
But far more important than its rich natural resources and awe-inspiring scenery, the shiniest treasure of this country is, without a doubt, its people: friendly, wisecracking, hard-working, and always willing to face the day with a smile no matter how adverse the circumstances may be.
Today, this beautiful country that I have the honor to call my birthplace is mostly gone. What little remains of it has been twisted, perverted, and its bright future cruelly mutilated by its despotic rulers.
This country is no longer known for its beauty and peace — no, it is known for something else: death, despair, misery, the unraveling of the fabric of its society, and the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere, one that can go toe-to-toe with Syria’s and Ukraine’s even though not a single bomb has been dropped in its territory and no actual war is taking place there.
Such is the deadly power of Socialism, a single word that destroyed an entire nation. A word that can rival even the most advanced missiles, tanks, and planes when it comes to ushering death.
Like every other country in the world, Venezuela was not without its fair share of problems, even before all of this tragedy happened. I was born in January 1988, and by then, Venezuela’s erstwhile golden economy had fallen from grace and those that preceded my generation had gone through some rough times. By the time I started giving my parents restless nights through my incessant baby crying, Venezuelans had lived through some periods of social unrest that had done a number to its society.
But then one day, a man named Hugo Chávez, who had unsuccessfully attempted to take power by a coup in 1992, was elected President in December 1998. The rest, as they say, is history, a tragic history…
Like the pied piper of Hamelin, Chávez managed to convince the country that only he and his “Bolivarian Revolution” could solve the woes that had befallen upon Venezuela after roughly four decades of uninterrupted but objectively flawed democracy that, as the second law of thermodynamics dictates, began to suffer from entropy.
It didn’t take long for some to realize that Chávez’s promised remedy would end up being worse than the disease it promised to solve — like the piper of the fable, his song, slowly but surely, led my country to an untimely demise that presently continues more than a decade after his death.
Chávez, posthumously referred to his followers as the “Supreme and Eternal Commander of the Revolution,” left behind an authoritarian regime that unleashed terrible consequences that have led to political, ideological, societal, and economical repercussions that stretch far beyond Venezuela’s borders and which continue to have disastrous consequences all around even to this day.
Many around the world continue to be allured by socialism’s promises. This allure can come in many forms, languages, and styles. It has been presented by men and women of different shape, size, and color, but it is ultimately the same false song, one that offers you salvation from the inequalities of life, one that promises you a just, fair world but leaves ruin, entropy, and pain instead.
Many fantasize daily about a socialist utopia — I sadly had to live through one for a quarter of a century.
It is very easy to be seduced by these promises, even in first world countries like the United States. Like I said, no country is perfect, and every country, no matter the political or economical system it employs, has and will continue to have its problems — life will never be fair, it simply is what it is. You can live the most righteous of lives, follow every tenet of your faith, and life will still find a way to kick you in the nuts. Meanwhile, less righteous men will live better lives than yours.
But at some point, those that so fervently yearn and clamor for the socialist dream to descend upon their nations need to wonder themselves: Why, given this gift, do the inhabitants of these socialist paradises so desperately end up fleeing to other nations? Why forsake utopia in a bid to live in that which these socialism-yearners claim is a dystopia?
This series is about the consequences of socialism, a malignant concept that refuses to die.
This is a personal account of twenty five years of my life, lived under Venezuela’s “Socialism of the XXI Century” a song that pushed my country to the brink of complete ruin, and which pushed more than eight million of my brethren — myself included — to flee to other nations across all four corners of the world.
I’ll go through many events in these entries, from the mundane to the bizarre; from the deadly serious to the comically absurd. I want to give you an account of the past twenty five years of my life, which I lived under a “Bolivarian, Socialist, Anti-imperialist, and profoundly Chavista” Revolution — words that took so much from me and my people, from time, sanity, happiness, to loved ones.
The consequences of socialist regimes are felt in all areas of human activity, even for me, who lived an atypical life, one that despite not being considered “normal,” was not exempt from being scarred by socialism. Mine is but one story out of roughly 30 million other Venezuelans who, regardless of their size, skin, shape, and faith, have also suffered through the inexorable consequences of socialism.
I want to begin it all with events that transcurred at the end of March 2018, the worst days of my life. These events, which perhaps left me permanently mentally scarred, are a microcosm of the final consequences of socialism.
I want you to take the words that you will read through these entries as a warning, in the hopes that this colossal mistake is never repeated again.
But far more important than its rich natural resources and awe-inspiring scenery, the shiniest treasure of this country is, without a doubt, its people: friendly, wisecracking, hard-working, and always willing to face the day with a smile no matter how adverse the circumstances may be.
Today, this beautiful country that I have the honor to call my birthplace is mostly gone. What little remains of it has been twisted, perverted, and its bright future cruelly mutilated by its despotic rulers.
This country is no longer known for its beauty and peace — no, it is known for something else: death, despair, misery, the unraveling of the fabric of its society, and the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere, one that can go toe-to-toe with Syria’s and Ukraine’s even though not a single bomb has been dropped in its territory and no actual war is taking place there.
Such is the deadly power of Socialism, a single word that destroyed an entire nation. A word that can rival even the most advanced missiles, tanks, and planes when it comes to ushering death.
Like every other country in the world, Venezuela was not without its fair share of problems, even before all of this tragedy happened. I was born in January 1988, and by then, Venezuela’s erstwhile golden economy had fallen from grace and those that preceded my generation had gone through some rough times. By the time I started giving my parents restless nights through my incessant baby crying, Venezuelans had lived through some periods of social unrest that had done a number to its society.