What Is It About El Ávila?

Before I begin my article, a small clarification for those who would like to correct me that El Ávila is no longer called El Ávila, and that its official name is now Waraira Repano. I apologize in advance and tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that I am not getting used to that name, nor do I think I ever will, because those words do not stir in me the emotion of the word Ávila. That word has awakened such special feelings in me since I was a little girl that I find it enormously hard to describe them in writing.

So for me El Ávila is El Ávila, and so it will stay, and that is what I will keep calling it with my children, every day! And I suppose they will do the same with theirs. Because I can’t imagine myself stuck in a monster traffic jam, taking the kids to school and saying: “Children, look how beautiful the Waraira Repano is today.” No, sir! What sounds Beautiful, Delicious and Grand is to say, or almost shout: “Kids, look how spectacular El Ávila is today!” “Doesn’t it give you strength to start the day right, my little ones?” And some who were half asleep perk up and start sighing in the car over their Ávila mountain, just like me. We forget about the traffic for a good while and start talking about the shape and colors our majestic mountain is showing us today, because it is unique every day, whether it wakes up clear, cloudy or misty. El Ávila always shows us something different and special.

And don’t get me started on the colors it shows in these January days! It seems like a gift at the start of the year to give us strength, which we need plenty of, to keep going in the daily struggle. Sometimes I feel that El Ávila is trying to tell us (with its flawless, majestic shape): Take heart! Here I am, covering this great city with beauty! Unequaled beauty, God’s gift through His creation, to give us strength so that we can keep going!

The best time to contemplate it, without a doubt, is at dawn (with a nice hot cup of coffee) or between five and six in the afternoon, when the most marvelous natural show of light and color we will ever see in our lives begins. It is a show of yellows, oranges, browns and reds at the hour when many of us are heading home, tired from work, from our problems, from the traffic… Could it be that El Ávila, among other things, is what keeps us happy and in good spirits in this city, in spite of everything?

But what is it about our Ávila mountain? I honestly can’t explain it. I love every corner and every landscape of Venezuela: its plains, its beaches, its high moors, its lakes, its rivers. But every time I travel outside the city, as soon as I get close to Caracas I start looking for the shape of El Ávila. I need to see it so I can sigh and say: “There it is. We’re back in our city. The fight is on!”

Sometimes I don’t understand my feelings for El Ávila, just as I don’t understand many… many things. I find it hard to understand this passion that overflows for my native Caracas, for my beloved homeland Venezuela and for all my dear fellow Venezuelans. It is something so great, so very great, that it has no explanation. Because it is a passion that, even though it is full of problematic objectivity (let me explain: I understand that we live with many serious problems!), I cannot let go of a Hope for a better future that withstands everything. Because nothing and no one can take it away from me!

Some of us Venezuelans are definitely crazy, but crazy with love for our country. Every day I thank God for feeling what I feel, because thanks to it we live happily, and thanks to it we keep praying and fighting, with more fortitude than ever, for a better city and a better country for all our wonderful fellow Venezuelans.

Forgive me if I get emotional, but writing in front of El Ávila, about El Ávila and about my beloved Venezuela, is too much for my heart. As our dear Brother Ginés (founder of the La Salle Society of Natural Sciences) used to tell us, who deeply loved his Ávila mountain and his adopted Homeland, Venezuela, let us always go: “Onward and upward, even when the slope is steep and sometimes slippery.”