Venezuelan Barbecues

Recently someone told me about an email sent from abroad which said that those of us Venezuelans who stay here do so because we are well-connected to the government, and that “those little barbecues” we have on weekends are for cutting “deals.” I suppose there may be some who do that (I don’t think it’s even 1% of the population), but here most people live honestly, working very hard to move their families forward.

What does strike me is that at the barbecues and gatherings we hold in this country every weekend, to see each other and relax a little, things happen and subjects come up that are not common in other parts of the world.

For example, I recently celebrated my daughter’s birthday. It was a birthday where the crisis and the party got mixed together. She wanted me to give her friends a baking class before the family arrived. When I called to invite the girls, the mothers, delighted that I would teach them to cook, very kindly said: I have a package of sugar hidden away that I can send you, or one of flour, or about six spoonfuls of milk. That’s how I sorted out the ingredients. The girls made and decorated their cakes, and some of them started talking about very honest business: “When I grow up I want to have a cupcake shop. Do you think we could work together?”

Then came the second part of the party and the odyssey of collecting napkins, cups, plates and plastic spoons. For several years now I have washed and kept everything disposable!, so I had various things from other years that didn’t match very well, but who cares! Meanwhile my husband went from bakery to bakery looking for two loaves here and four there, until he had gathered twenty! If the price-control agency had come to my house looking for hoarders, they wouldn’t have found a trace, because in less than an hour the fifty hungry cavemen who came, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, devoured EVERYTHING! In short, we had a wonderful time and managed to ease a little of the tension of the crisis we are living through. Before going to bed my daughter told me happily: “Mom, this has been the best birthday of my life.”

But the most striking thing about the party (for me!) was what we talked about. Besides “we have to keep fighting” and “we have to be brave,” things were said that aren’t said everywhere.

One of my sisters-in-law had just arrived from Barinas and told us they had broken down at three in the morning. We gave her a good scolding: how could they think of traveling at that hour? She said that from the moment she got in the car she started praying, and when they broke down she prayed even harder. Ten minutes later a car with two men stopped. Her prayers grew more fervent, thinking they were robbers, but it turned out the two men were mechanics; they fixed the SUV, and since they were heading to Caracas too, they escorted them the whole way. She told this in front of all the kids, whose ears were pricked up, listening to every word. At the end she said: “When I’m outside Venezuela, I never pray in the car.”

Then my sister said kidnappings had started again where she lives. I asked her whether she had heard the Barinas story. So she said to my 12-year-old nephew: “What we’re going to do is pray the rosary whenever we’re in the car, do you hear me?” And he answered: “Yes, Mom, that’s what we have to do.”

The next morning I thought about how, when I was little, nobody ever talked about praying at a party. It made me happy, because despite the terrible times we are living through, our children are enjoying their childhood and adolescence in homes where honest people, who are the majority!, talk about courage, about fighting, about working and about praying. Here in Venezuela!, alongside the degradation of a few, a generation is rising that is working hard at its studies and knows that up above is their Father God, who will never! abandon them.

That faith our grandmothers taught us, which has left its mark in a popular piety hard to find anywhere else in the world, is what will save Venezuela, and maybe even the whole world, because in many parts of the planet people have forgotten God. Here we keep Him very present, day and night, and we know He sees everything from up there. And we know (even the insiders who hold barbecues to cut “deals”) that sooner or later the hour will come for all of us to give an account of what we did on this earth. And we also know that God is going to help us!

Every day I am prouder to be Venezuelan, because there are so many good people here who love God. And that is why this country will be saved one day. And that day we will throw a Great! party, give immense thanks to Our Father in heaven, and never, never! forget Him.