As young people that we are (I just turned 24 last week), my friends and I are always rambling about our future. We talk and talk about what are we going to do after we finish the university (many already did), if we are going to stay in that job for long or seek for another, the scholarships we heard about here and there, the masters and PhD programs that are constantly flirting with our ambitious minds and then the emotional side that it can't hardly be openly admitted and that we always talk about it in codes. Are we going to marry with our current significant others? Are we going to have kids? To make a family?. We often confuse the real plans with the dreams but always, at the end of those "future" coffee talks, there's one question we never miss: "What if Chavez stays?" Then, all our plans and dreams are made under that conditional "if Chavez stays...". "If Chavez stays I'm not going to have kids... at least not here" - One says. "I would like to specialize in Public Policy but if Chavez stays I would think of something else, because I don't want to work for his government" - Says another. "Only if Chavez leaves I will start a business, I don't feel like making an investment here right now" - Says another.
In a normal situation we wouldn't be making plans under that conditional, because we could take for granted that the president would leave his office at the end of his term, just as the Constitution states. But in Venezuela the president is threatening us every single time with the idea of staying till 2021 at least, staying forever at best.
Last year he promoted a Constitutional Reform which would allow him to be reelected indefinitely. The reform was reject on popular elections as you might remember. And for a moment, my friends and I forgot the "if" conditional that imprisoned all our talks about our bright futures, because we knew he could only stay till 2012 and that’s probably before we even start sharing the world with our possibly hypothetical future kids.
But now he brought up the topic again, commanding his party to find the way to make him be reelected indefinitely. Even if its illegal I know they can find a way to make it legal. I started thinking again on that endless collections of "If Chavez stays" that always eclipse my dreams of a better future.