The following paragraphs could be useful in order to answer some of the questions or concerns the reader might have about this blog, her author and the process of writing it.1. A NON-NEWS BLOG
Venezuelans and foreigners make blogs about what’s happening in Venezuela by commenting news and speeches, by talking about things that the people already know. But in a more "subjective" way, Do the people really know how the Venezuelans live this process? Beyond the news, beyond Chavez speeches on TV? Do the people know how it’s our daily life, how we feel about the events and how those events affects us directly? I don’t think many people know that. And that’s why I took the courage and started writing. That’s why many things that happen on the news don’t even touch my blog.
My blog is very personal indeed, as personal as I can make it without putting my identity into risk.
So my blog is not about news, there are many, many blogs about news and they are awesome blogs indeed. My blog is a testimony of someone who witnessed this crisis, who's living inside this crisis. And when you live here, you cannot be commenting the news all the time, or you will die of desperation. That’s one of the things I wanted to make people understand by writing this blog.
2. A NON OFTEN UPDATED BLOG
For several reasons, I don’t have time and inspiration to update this blog daily as I would want it in ideal terms. I write when for some reason, the stories came back to my head, or see something, live something, have a discussion and then feel the need of writing (another reason of why this blog is not about news). This blog can’t be written under the commands of a certain schedule. So I ask in advance, excuses to the readers who might wait too long before seeing the next entry.
3. THE LANGUAGE(AND THE PEOPLE WHO I'M WRITING FOR)
I want to provide to the people who is interested in any way about the current Venezuelan situation something different, something that makes them easier to put themselves in one shoes. And those people are foreigners, Venezuelan people even if they are abroad know about the things I write, for them my stories are like the bread they put on the table every day, quite obvious. But foreigners read about my country and no matter how concern they are, some of them are living in a free world, in a comfortable world, with no fear, where they take many things for granted, and because of that (and this is completely natural) they see our situation as something very distant.
That’s why I write in English, even counting that its very, very hard for me to write in English, and I could express so many things, and say so many things better if I could write in my language: Spanish. But I know that if I write in English I can reach to the people I want to reach to.
4. A BLOG WITH A NEITHER "LEFT" NOR "RIGHT" IDEOLOGY (THE AUTHOR'S STANCE)
I don’t know if I’m on the right side of this battle. And in this world, where the left consider as suspicious anyone who is not with them and the right closes their eyes to the fair demands of the ones who don’t have as much luck as they have, and they just don’t even sit for a minute to wonder why; its hard to even think about taking sides. I don’t know if the history will be fair to me and the ones who are going through this situation in the same way I’m living it. I even wonder who is going to write this story: the story of the Bolivarian Revolution, and based on what and in the name of who is going to tell the story of this events that will pass as history as far as the world concerns.
Because on those pages I could easily pass as a heroin or as a sheep of the imperialism, depends on the hand who writes it. And the funny part is, that I’m not neither or at least, I don’t feel like neither of them. I don’t think that Venezuelans can easily adjust their feelings to the labels that who ever writes or speak about this, journalist or politicians, put to us if we support one side or another side of the fight.
We are not sheep of the imperialism, or real committed and passionate fighters for democratic ideals. We are just people, people like anyone else. I’m just a Venezuelan, by birth, not by choice. From the middle class, again by birth, not by choice, who happens to be in the middle of this events and who for several reasons, that might be good or not (I’ll let the reader judge that) happens to not like the track that my beloved country is taking. Again a track that I’m living not because I choose to live it, but because I couldn’t choose. The reader must know that when Chávez won the first elections in 1998, I wasn’t old enough to vote, still missed 4 years to do that; and I don’t think I ever had the chance to vote in the same conditions that my parents did before 1998.
And since then, I have put all my energy on changing the course that the vote of others dictated when I was too young for being quite aware of the consequences. And I have not only, not succeed, but in fact; I failed enormously. And that’s because despite of my birth, and the conditions I have to live with, I have chosen now to at least, write about it. Because I have to give it a shot so that the history someone will read in some years about my country; tells not only the version of the winners.
I do not any longer seek for changes. I have lost the hope and throughout my writings, the reader will notice why I lose it. Now, I seek for nothing less and nothing more than understanding. And that’s the challenge I give to the reader.