The Metropolitan University was an excellent starting point for my literary education. My grandfather insisted that I must read the works of Rómulo Gallegos. My favorite book ended up being La Trepadora, a delightful novel about unchecked ambition, the blending of races in Venezuela, and the pursuit of economic and public power. In La Trepadora, the reader enjoys the landscape of coffee plantations nestled in the heart of rich Venezuelan valleys, where a great conflict over power, status, and money unfolds. Caracas’s East in 2013 reflects much of the ambition of the trepadora family: the Guanipas. Victoria, the daughter of a bastard, represents a kind of bridge between the barbarity of the countryside and the highest aspirations of society. It’s a superb work by a distinguished Venezuelan. However, there’s another novel we didn’t read at UNIMET, which is completely unrelated to local themes, yet perfectly illustrates today’s Venezuela, emphasizing the corrupt vanity fair where the lords of the valley, the apostles of Carlos Andrés, the corrupt of the fourth republic, and the huge new class known as the Boligarquía come together. It’s titled Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Orwell’s work suggests that the dictatorship of the farmer, where animals are exploited for profit, is challenged by an uprising from the livestock. All unite against the farmer and overthrow him. Horses, sheep, chickens, and pigs rise up together. In the end, the pigs take over the management of the farm, gradually adopting the privileges that belonged to the owner. Privileges like the farmer’s home and rations, even sleeping in the same bed as the farmer. Meanwhile, they impose a ruthless autocracy against the other animals. In the book’s final phase, the pigs negotiate with the farmer, throwing an extravagant party at the farm’s residence, barring the other animals from entering and participating. The curious and fearful animals creep closer to the window to catch a glimpse of the celebration. They realize something terrifying: the pigs are no longer walking on all fours; they are upright and dressed like humans. Moreover, the farmer no longer resembles a farmer.
In Orwell’s words: “There was no doubt about the transformation that had occurred in the faces of the pigs. The astonished animals looked from pig to man, and from man to pig; but already it was impossible to tell which was which.” The former regime and the revolutionaries are indistinguishable. And that, that! is what has happened in our Venezuela. Excluding a few select surnames, the country has lost shame, modesty, moderation, and decorum by mixing the best with the worst, all in the pursuit of the preferential dollar. All this is justified with the absurd excuse: “if we don’t do it, others will, so let’s take advantage since at least we are ‘better’ than them,” and thus we have squandered 100 years of oil revenues (accumulated in just 14 years) and the possibility of developing a country and becoming a first-world economic power. A development driven by pure cunning and, at its core, a lack of class.
Fundamentally, I am not a supporter of Chavismo, and I feel nauseated by the monsters that govern us. But I feel more disgust for the “nice” people who participate in legitimizing the reputations of those who have so terribly corrupted civil society and institutions, like decency and personal integrity. I’m not talking about supposedly “ethical” hackers who clean up the online reputations of any criminal in our nation who pays their fee. No, I’m talking about those who, by associating, give the green light to thieves who rob and destroy everything in their path.
I include a perfect illustration in this essay. Seated like a great lord, looking displeased, is the owner of the Venezuelan electric plant company that has embezzled over $2 billion. Along with his partners, this guy stole the equivalent of 427,350 years of a worker’s minimum wage. In other words: they stole the minimum wage for more than two years of work for the entire population of Boconó.
This individual is surrounded in this portrait by people of high birth and colonial lineage. From the most distinguished Venezuelan lineage, including beneficiaries of the most solemn and noble name in the history of what used to be the Republic of Venezuela. Also in the photo is the daughter of a zoologist who came from Germany and contributed decades of service to scientific education and environmental conservation in Venezuela. The picture also includes the grandchildren of one of the most illustrious doctors in the history of scientific advancement in Venezuela, a great accredited scholar, who almost won the world’s most coveted award, a Nobel Prize, for developing a vaccine against an infectious disease. In a stunning irony, this grandfather was a standout student of Rómulo Gallegos.
Where are they? On an Italian yacht, navigating the canals of Venice, heading to the wedding of one of the most notorious thieves Venezuela has seen in the last decade. Another owner of the same disgusting electric plant company, who has caused so much harm to Venezuela through his extravagance and cover-ups. The wedding cost a fortune, and all these sycophants, as we see them in the photo, are bowing and flattering a kid from La Lagunita, whom we called “chimbin,” who at 27 managed to steal a sum from the country that makes him feel untouchable and above the law. Instead of rejection, dismissal, and disgust, what we see in the photo is submission and approval. Here, there’s no shame or discretion, no behavioral standards, just the slogan “Long live the robolution! Party on!”
What kind of country has produced this scum? It’s not the one of Uslar. Nor the one of Gallegos. It’s one where we’ve forgotten how to recognize the grotesque, the absurd, and we’ve turned our “elite” into a laughingstock. The best lack conviction, while the worst overflow with passionate intensity. What a shock. What a shame. What a failure.
Next week, I will begin writing about the curious story of Carlos Eduardo Kauffmann Ramírez, a key prototype of the society of accomplices and an illustration of how the fourth melds with the dregs of the fifth. If you wish to contact me, please send an email to the editor’s address: [email protected] (in the subject “for Tomás Lander”).