We Are Near the End

Two days ago a plumber and his assistant came to my house, and as always we got onto the subject of politics. Both men confessed that they had voted for Chávez twice, then got fed up and stopped voting. And they told me: “But this time, ma’am, we really aren’t going to skip voting, because we’re sick of this madness.”

The older of the two said to me: “Look, ma’am, I have children and grandchildren, and I don’t want a ruined country for them. To every chavista I know (and thank God there are fewer every day) I say: don’t you think about your children, man, or your grandchildren?”

The next day I had to run some errands. On every corner, and when I say on every corner I mean on every corner!, people were complaining about everything: how expensive everything is! Crime gets worse every day! This is madness! This can’t go on!

My son needed a medicine. At the first pharmacy I went to there was no one and nothing! I couldn’t get the medicine there. The second pharmacy looked like a Bicentenario supermarket, it was so packed. The reason: they had sanitary pads at 300 bolívares. I waited an hour (with my little number) to ask about the medicine, and they didn’t have it either. So I got in line with my two little packs of pads and waited another hour. I thought about leaving, but I said: No! I’m going to use this time to invite people to vote in December. This time I didn’t meet a single undecided person; people were absolutely clear! Everyone had made up their minds to go and vote for change in the coming parliamentary elections.

My daughters are in high school, and I love studying Venezuelan history with them. As it happens, the topic we studied this month was the fall of Pérez Jiménez, the Punto Fijo Pact and the years of two-party democracy.

I realized how history was repeating itself. I felt exactly as if we were in the last days of the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship: the censorship, the political prisoners, the poverty and so on. And I also realized how many mistakes politicians made between 1945 and 1948 that led to Pérez Jiménez coming to power. All because of mistakes made out of pride, out of impatience, out of things they did that they should never have done.

But they learned the lesson, and after they overthrew Pérez Jiménez they tried not to repeat the same mistakes. We know it was very hard for them to establish a stable democracy in our country, but there is no doubt those were years of freedom, and the country moved toward development.

Until some politicians came along who began to squander, began to become corrupt and to think of themselves rather than the people. And the result: Chávez and his “robolution.”

The only thing I hope, and I believe it will be so!, is that when this ends, because it will end, and very soon!, the politicians will not repeat the mistakes of the past. I believe in the depths of my being that everything they and their families have suffered will make them realize that the first things that must be rooted out of this country for good are pride, corruption and inefficiency, and that they must hold power to serve, not to serve themselves.

Because all of us!, except the well-connected insiders (who will pay with prison for everything they have done), are sick of the proud and the corrupt. And neither the young people who are our next generation, nor the business owners who have seen their companies destroyed, nor the workers who earn a pittance, nor the farmers whose countryside was ruined, nor the drivers who can’t find spare parts, nor the police officers who are being killed like dogs, nor the Church, which sees the tremendous injustices being committed, nor the journalists, nor the engineers, nor the lawyers, nor the plumbers… will ever again accept the proud and the corrupt in power.

The end of this nightmare is near. We already have the date: December 6. Now let’s move fast so that millions of us go out to vote en masse, and the insiders, who rub it in our faces that they can cheat, realize that if we win by a landslide no cheating will do them any good.

All that is left is to pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on us. Pray and work 24 hours a day if possible! Let’s put our soul, mind and heart into this. It is a matter of life or death: the life or death of our homeland. The homeland of our grandparents, our parents, our children and our grandchildren…

With God’s help we will get out of this nightmare and be able to guarantee the people we love so much a future full of Integrity, Honesty, Truth, Freedom, Justice and Peace.