Pain for Venezuela

I don’t know whether it is my immense love for my homeland or what it is, but these days I have felt great pain for Venezuela. On Mother’s Day I thought a great deal about the many Venezuelan mothers who are going through hell to provide for their families, if they have not already had a husband, a loved one or, the greatest pain in life, a child killed. But my article today will not be about crime. My article today will be about food. Yes, my dear readers, about something as basic as food: food to survive. For more than a year now, acquaintances of mine, ordinary people from small towns, have been calling me in Caracas to tell me the terrible things they are going through in some states of the interior just to feed their families.

One woman told me that several of her appliances had broken because of the constant blackouts, including her refrigerator, which meant that some of the food meant for her four children had spoiled. Another told me she had had to close her food stand more than a year ago because she could not find flour, milk, butter or sugar to make the cakes she sold to oil workers to support her children. Another told me that one day she went to buy chicken and waited six hours for the refrigerated truck to arrive; when it came, people threw themselves at it as if it were a piñata, and she left with nothing because she had her daughter in her arms and did not want to risk her little girl’s life. Someone called me in great desperation, saying he was tired of standing in line for everything, and asking how it was possible that to buy a package of flour he had to wait four hours in line.

They told me these things over the phone, and they caused me great pain. But my pain reached its peak when I saw the photos published last week showing our beloved people standing in lines blocks long! to buy a package of Harina PAN. Photos in which people show their arms marked with a number: 459, 460, 461… as if they were people in a concentration camp. And all to buy a package of Harina PAN! because at home their families, their children!, are waiting for them so they can eat the day’s arepa. It isn’t right! Here is the link to see the photos: http://yoyopress.com/2013/05/09/en-fotos-las-impresionantes-colas-para-comprar-harina-pan/

How is it possible that this is happening in a country with so much natural wealth, with so much oil? And worst of all, while many are living a true ordeal, a few steal and squander our wealth in the most shameless way imaginable. Those are sins that cry out to heaven, and God is seeing every one of them. Every single one! I think God’s heart must also be wrung every time he sees his Venezuelan children suffering as they are. And who knows what He feels when he sees someone stealing and squandering. Read the Letter of James on this (5:1-6). It’s enough to make your hair stand on end!

I also read in another news story that several women were injured when a truck of chickens arrived at a market in the interior of the country. Then I remembered the woman who had told me about it on the phone, and I understood why she preferred to go without the chicken rather than risk her little girl’s life. Just as you hear it: here there are people risking their lives for a chicken, because when a child is hungry a mother will do anything, even risk her life!, to get food for her children.

A week ago I went grocery shopping here in Caracas, and some supermarkets already have a rationing list. There are many things you can no longer find here, though of course never as bad as in the interior, where people are truly having a very hard time. But where will this end? I know very little about economics, but I do know a good deal about love, above all a mother’s love, the love of a mother who does not want her children to go hungry, among other things. And it must be terrible not to have food to give them.

I began my article sharing a pain, but I end by sharing hope, because I know there are many, many! here who will go on with great patience and fortitude, enduring and above all fighting! for a Venezuela worthy of everyone, where our resources are used well, where our people are respected, where truth and justice are lived. Some will think this is a dream, but I am sure that every day we are closer to seeing that dream come true, because there are millions of upright Venezuelans giving their very marrow to have a better country. Pain will not make us surrender. I only ask God and the Virgin to help us keep going with great fortitude, joy and peace.

Long live Venezuela! And long live our dear, long-suffering Venezuelan people! Venezuela does not deserve what we are living through! Venezuela deserves a better future, and we are going to achieve it!