2012: Still Standing in the Fight

We would all like to have a crystal ball to see what is going to happen in Venezuela this year, 2012. It is truly hard to explain what each of us has lived through in this Land of Grace over the last two decades. They have been hard years, very turbulent, and full of uncertainty. Years of many rumors, of negative and positive news, and of many problems that have changed our lives.

They have been years of thousands of polls and figures, many of which we do not understand even when the best experts explain them to us. We all know that crime keeps overwhelming us: that is the word! Although they give us unemployment figures, they do not match the number of people we know who are out of work. But the most incomprehensible figures of all are the inflation figures. Week after week, every time we go to a grocery store or a pharmacy, we find what we need (if we find it at all!) at a higher price. Not to mention what we saw at Christmas in the main bus terminals with ticket prices: it was a real speculative assault on travelers. That is why I would like someone to explain those figures to me, because I truly do not understand! Could it be that the people who give them have never been robbed, never do the grocery shopping, never buy medicine, never travel by bus during the holidays?

Yes, this has been very hard, almost like a war. We had the political events of February 4 and November 27, 1992. Since the 1999 elections we have lived in an endless series of elections, which has meant, among other things, that students have lost hundreds of days of class. We lived through an oil strike that every Venezuelan will remember until the day they die. We have had to cope with daily problems that significantly affect our health, such as the state of the roads, the traffic and the chaos in public transport (with the Metro in first place). After all this, it is understandable why many Venezuelans have decided to go and live abroad, which has also caused great sadness at seeing families separated and so many of our Venezuelan brothers and sisters scattered across every corner of the planet.

But the saddest thing of all has been the terrible divisions we have seen among relatives and friends over politics. There is no explanation for that. At this point, after everything we have been through, I ask anyone who still harbors hatred in their heart today: what are you waiting for to get that poison out and go and ask forgiveness of everyone you have quarreled with for thinking differently?

In our beloved country we have also lived through great natural tragedies, which have taught us that the vast majority of Venezuelans have very big hearts, and that they know that to move forward we must work together, without hatred and without resentment, because problems can only be solved with everyone’s help. Today we should understand that we will only move forward if we work together, thinking of others and not only of our own “four walls.”

“Let each one examine himself,” Paul VI asked, “to see what he has done up to now and what he ought to do. It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustices and utter prophetic denunciations; these words will lack real weight unless they are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of personal responsibility and by effective action. It is too easy to throw back on others responsibility for injustice, if at the same time one does not realize how each one shares in it personally, and how personal conversion is needed first” (May 14, 1971).

So even if the outlook seems complicated, we must keep fighting to live with integrity and to fulfill our duties as well as we can. And with everything that lies ahead of us (including three elections), let us be sowers of peace, joy and service to others, because there is nothing worse than someone who is bitter, negative and does not live to serve.

Feel yourselves the protagonists of a wonderful war in which we stand firm, fighting to achieve full Peace and Justice in this Homeland where we were born, which we love so much and which needs us so much. And whatever happens, we will go on with a Hope and a Joy that nothing and no one can take away from us, because God and the Blessed Virgin of Coromoto are with us.