I have observed that it has become fashionable to say that the referendum of tomorrow does not matter, that nothing will change and that what matters is the world crisis. I do concur up to a point with this view, and even expressed it in my rare electoral posts this time around. But I also think that tomorrow vote is much more important than what some people pretend it is. After all tomorrow we have a chance to validate one way to do politics or to reject it. I have also expressed it in no ambiguous terms: tomorrow if the SI wins Venezuela will be declaring that blackmailing, power abuse, corruption, insults form above and justice in the hand of a a single man are OK, are acceptable, are desirable even. As such Venezuela will reveal itself for what it might have always been and that we just chose to ignore: a wretched country where the people are always on the make, regardless of the consequences. We should have known better: Monagas, Guzman Blanco, Cipriano Castro, Juan Vicente Gomez, Perez Jimenez and now Chavez were not historical accidents, they were the expression of Venezuelan people, adapted to the times they lived. As such, the 1958-1998 period was the historical accident.
If the SI wins tomorrow, then indeed Venezuela deserved Chavez and they can enjoy it further. If the NO wins, well, maybe we will have a shot at another 40 years of relatively benign period once we resolve the exit of Chavez, and until a new one comes.
True, no matter what the result is tomorrow it will have marginal effects on the reality of the crisis coming towards us as the Western World seems unable to come up with any solution that might work some even in the 2012 horizon. The result tomorrow will only help fix the date at which Chavez will have to use outright repression before he gets overthrown by his own people. Just as it happened to the names in the list above except for Gomez who remained a grounded peasant all his life and thus died president. Chavez is not grounded so there is blood in our future.
I wanted to get this out of my chest because I have been meaning to write a post about the future of this blog since November 23 but the new amendment circus forced me to keep my nose to the grind. But before the results are in tomorrow I wanted to write something so nobody could accuse me of coping out if I wrote it later.
The thing is that I have been writing continuously since January 2003. That is right, this blog reached its six year anniversary last month and I believe that there has been at least a post every week since it started. No mean feat if you ask me. And I have been going places too.
But honestly: how many ways are left to me to describe what a fraud Chavez is? And when you read the editorial of the New York Times today, do I even need to keep writing? Who is left with a brain that thinks that Chavez is a great social democrat? It is time to change, my work is done here.
If the NO wins, I will get recharged, keep writing but this time about plans for the country because again I think it will be worth dreaming of a better Venezuela, that maybe in 2-3 years it will be possible to start more realistic policies and the input of all will be needed. It will be also a pleasure to narrate the slow demise of Chavez, slow maybe but demise at any rate.
And if the SI wins then why keep worrying about Venezuela? My divorce with my country will need to be pronounced as I will not feel at home anymore. The future will belong to my neighbor, a government contractor who has the chutzpah to put all sorts of SI stickers on his car and who probably 10 years ago was unable to hold a regular job. Not that I will abandon my country, but simply put it will not be my problem anymore: it will be time to think about me alone and find ways to avoid the nightmare to circle too close from me.
I did move a few weeks ago, a traumatic process, still not complete. However as I packed and unpacked I put together all the books that I have bought in recent years and have not read yet. I have the bad habit when I go to buy a book to leave the store with at least two other books in hand. Well, in the past decade I have accumulated nearly 200 books. Surely I need to read some of them.
A couple of weeks ago I discovered a video of Jason Mraz and got the CD from someone travelling to the US. I forgot the pleasure it was to explore new music, clever words. The way life goes on in Venezuela, the amount of time blogging took from me, I had forgotten all these "cultural" activities I used to take for granted and went down the drain when CADIVI was created.
And when I came back from Europe last fall I wrote that "Mallarme and me" post. That is what I want to write about if the SI wins, get my mind busy on other matters, escape the mediocrity of Venezuela, wait for the storm to go by, for chavistas to one day understand on their own the error they made. True, who knows what will happen to me but, dear friends, if the SI wins there is nothing anymore I can do about the future of Venezuela: I have done over these past six years more than most Venezuelans have done, and more successfully if I look at my track record of contacts overseas with media and people. At home I am ignored, but that is fine, none is prophet in one's country, and truly, who do I want to associate with? As an INTP my normal life is made of Introspective Thinking with limited contact from reality (look on the right side of my blog if you do not know what INTP means). Blogging forced me to bathe in crude reality for too long. One S.O. (in Caracas today for Saint Valentine because we do not vote in the same city), half a dozen of friends, 200 books, 700 CD, Venezuelan artisan's work on display, what else do I need?
So that is folks. If the SI wins I will cover the results, explain them and then slowly but surely retire to the great joy of PSF and the like, probably some of my competition even. But the blog will not die, the archive will be up if someone is interested in knowing the truth about Venezuela. I might even do an index of the main points when I am bored. And more or less regularly I will write for the few that might be interested about a new Mallarme or Mraz moment.
And if the NO wins? We'll see; let's decide what to write about when it happens and depending on how it happens. There will be new stakes for blogging.
-The end-