We Want a Homeland, and Toilet Paper!

Minister Jaua: last week I felt great pain when, after speaking about your pleasant visit to the Pope, you addressed a group of people (in language not at all fitting for the office you hold) and asked them whether they wanted a Homeland or toilet paper. That question filled me with immense sadness, because I, like millions of Venezuelans who live in this country and struggle day after day to provide for our families, want a great Homeland where we can have toilet paper and many other things too.

We want a Homeland, first of all, where our children and grandchildren are not killed in the street. Just last week a 19-year-old girl was killed next to her father, on Father’s Day of all days. How painful! Days later three young men from La Guaira were found murdered on the Cota Mil, and two more in Caricuao. We all want a Homeland where we don’t have to bury a child or a grandchild with a bullet in the head!

We want a Homeland where all the authorities set an example for others: an example of honesty, efficiency, integrity, good manners, respect, humility, sobriety and so on.

We want a Homeland where everyone who works at the state channel VTV uses respectful language. People still work at that channel, whom I will not name so as not to soil my column, who crudely denigrate our Church authorities. It is a matter of ethics, manners, respect and example, all the more so when the government is trying to get closer to the Pope and to the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference.

We want a Homeland where productive companies and land are not expropriated only to be run into the ground, so that we then have to go abroad to buy toilet paper or frozen food.

We want a Homeland where our oil industry is run efficiently by Venezuelans and not by foreigners who are profiting from the nation’s resources.

We want a Homeland that doesn’t need to hire companies from other countries to build highways, manufacture machinery, build housing and so on, because here there are plenty of competent, outstanding professionals, many of whom are driving taxis, selling food or doing odd jobs to provide for their families.

We want a Homeland that spends the resources, which belong to Venezuelans, on its hospitals, schools and universities… not a Homeland that gives dollars away to other countries to spare them “a civil war,” as happened last week with Bolivia, which was given 404 million dollars.

We want a Homeland independent of any foreign country! We do not want to depend on anyone, nor do we need to, because there are enough trained people and more than enough natural wealth here to be truly independent.

In short, we want a Homeland that not only has toilet paper but is truly independent; that has industries, jobs for everyone, fair wages for workers and well-equipped hospitals; where people don’t die waiting for a dialysis bed, as happened last week to Venezuelan sports legend Arquímedes Herrera; a Homeland with justice and with humane prisons…

I recommend that the ministers take a clear look at the country they are living in. It might do them a lot of good to go grocery shopping (standing in line for hours with their fellow Venezuelans), to buy medicines one day on a minimum wage, to ride in a shared taxi without bodyguards, or to go to a public hospital when they get sick or need an operation, put their name on the waiting list, and wait!

I also recommend that they pray and ask God to give them serenity and enlighten them, so that they understand that even the people who applaud them have families, and that when they get home the first thing they find is their children asking for food, and then for toilet paper.

Tell me, Minister, what will they answer their children if they don’t have it? If you have children, you know very well that it is impossible to answer them that what we have is a Homeland. And I want you to know that a mother’s or father’s pain at being unable to meet a child’s basic needs is very great.

So now you know: yes, we want a Homeland, but a great Homeland where the rights of all citizens are respected, above all the right to live with dignity, as a human being of the 21st century, in the country where one was born, a country with one of the largest oil incomes in the world.

I will keep praying hard for that Homeland we all dream of and that many of us are fighting to achieve. I will also keep praying hard for all our fellow Venezuelans and for all our authorities, and also to see if I can manage to find a pack of toilet paper.