This Is How We Live, but We're Not Leaving!

I have just seen the news that shots were fired during candidate Henrique Capriles’s walk through Cotiza, and that Ismael García’s son was wounded. A big fright gripped my heart at the thought that something bad might happen to this candidate, for whom millions of Venezuelans have just voted and for whom surely many more will vote on October 7.

I know he is a young man of great faith and fortitude and this will not stop him. And his team will know how to handle this delicate situation from now on, because this, everyone, is no game. We have already realized that this is serious and that we have to take care, just as each of us Venezuelans who live in this country tries to take care every hour of the day and night.

But the subject of this article is not only whether or not they might kill the unity candidate. Here I want to describe how those of us who have decided to stay and fight for our Homeland live in Venezuela, those of us who, as a friend told me recently, are so used to this war (because it is like a war) that we cannot afford the luxury of being afraid now that we can see the end of the tunnel we entered several years ago.

Some days ago I said goodbye to my little daughters like this as they left for school: “My darlings, you know that if there’s a shootout at school you throw yourselves on the floor and start praying.” The day before, a very organized group of people had invaded the land next to the school, and we had to rush out to pick up our children in case something bad happened. Thank God nothing serious happened and the situation was resolved, but my daughter tells me the girls were crying in the classroom because they were very frightened.

Many times I have sat down with my six children and told them: “Kids, if you ever get kidnapped, stay very calm, don’t even talk, just start praying while your father and I take care of rescuing you.” Every time they go out to the movies or a party I ask them: “You’re ready and you’ve been to confession, right? In case there’s a shootout at the mall (as has already happened several times) and they kill you. May God bless you and protect you.” And I say goodbye thinking that maybe I will not see them alive again.

From the moment I open my eyes (and sometimes I even get up in the middle of the night when they are sleeping away from home) I pray that God will protect my children, because sadly in this country there is no protection for anyone’s life, whatever their social class or politics (except for those who go around with a thousand bodyguards, armored up to their eyeballs).

Some days ago a friend told me he had come back to Venezuela because he loves this country, but that it was impossible for his daughter, who was born in Minnesota, to adapt to this kind of life, because she was used to the calm of the developed world. And that is completely understandable. Sadly, we have spent decades in which crime has knocked directly at our door, several times, in cases less serious or very serious.

But do you want me to tell you something? WE ARE NOT LEAVING! And we don’t care that, if we manage to survive this war, our life expectancy may be sixty (because by forty, with this anguish, and even though we pray, we start having heart trouble, we get a thousand gray hairs and we have no “quality of life” at all).

And many of us Venezuelans who could leave and do not, don’t care one bit, because we are sure, absolutely sure, that we will pull through. And that good will triumph over evil. If we have to shed our blood we will, but they will not take our country, our beloved Homeland, away from us. And since I am already over forty and know I have only a few years of life left, I shout to the whole world that in Venezuela there are thousands of brave young people who, for as long as they have been aware of anything, have lived in this war and know they could be kidnapped, killed and so on, and who are here fighting so that one day we may come out of this nightmare that only God knows why we have had to live through. Soon we will realize it was worth being here, praying, fighting, suffering, laughing, crying and loving our dear country, which came to this for a reason but which will also come out of it sooner than many of us imagine.

So let us not lose hope! And much less be afraid! Because if God is with us, what shall we fear?!