 |
| Red and black phallickerry |
The Siete Dias section of El Nacional today describes to us how some countries have been preparing for their bicentennial, also coming this year. Everywhere public spaces are created, museums opened, literary or assay contests held, etc, etc... And this over the whole bicentennial year. In contrast in Venezuela we only see a general improvisation, and very late at that. Nothing new is being built except for a ridiculous phallic symbol at Plaza El Venezolano who bears no meaning, is totally out of architectural context and sports red and black colors because we must assume a totally red obelisk was just too much even for chavismo. Let's just say that for the French side of this blogger the Louvre Pyramid was less shocking than the red and black chavista dick.
What chavismo is trying, without much success, is a two pronged approach. One is to make the 19 de abril a military event at all costs. For that, besides rewriting history, Chavez has called for tomorrow a gigantic "civico-militar" parade for which folks have been training in past days, including an airplane show that is driving mad, and scared, Caracas residents during training.
The other approach is to ridicule the event as a way to make it insignificant next to the date that Chavez really, really wants to celebrate: the bicentennial of Carabobo in 2021. If this April plans have late or nonexistent I am willing to bet that Chavez in his dreams is already wondering what will he do for Carabobo. I am not sure how conscious that strategy to diminish 19 de abril is but I see plenty of evidence of the chavista subconscious in the farce preparations for tomorrow.
Firts, since something had to be done, Chavez decided to call for an ALBA summit and had Cristina Kirchner invited as the official guest speaker for the date at the Nazional Assembly. As such Caracas streets where the luminaries will pass by have been quickly cleaned up and repainted. Newspapers have a field day showing the contrast of what is make up against the crumbling of the rest of the city a few yards away. Even Potemkin would have been more careful. And since something had to be built as Chavez is kind of late in building monuments to his glory an obelisk would do, without any commission planning, historical study or anything, just some sycophant that thought of it and voilà. Here, in San Felipe, as far as I know, nothing of note has been prepared for the momentous commemoration. As you must understand no local chavista authority would dare to initiate anything without the appropriate clue from Caracas.
Second, invite irrelevant people, and if their invitation is insulting to the fatherland notion, even better. That is why an quickie ALBA summit will be held, about the only way for Chavez to attract some pseudo celebrity to commemorate our Independence. For the insult part, the Argentine president, Cristina Kirchner has been invited for the key note. That is right, no Venezuelan historian or writer or personality was good enough to visit the Nazional Assembly. The good ones would have refused anyway, though they could have accepted if notified on time and if Chavez were using the opportunity to reconcile the country. But three days ago he made sure to remind us that reconciliation was impossible. So Cristina it is.
I cannot tell you how insulting it is for educated Venezuelans to have the Argentinian pimp come and give us our independence day speech. This is the woman, who besides being and Argentine always a handicap anywhere in Latin America, is one of the main recipients of Chavez corruption schemes. Or has anyone forgotten the 800,000 dollars bag intercepted at the Buenos Aires airport to illegally finance her campaign? Just to name a famous occurrence.... If you think I exaggerate read the outrage of my esteemed colleague Juan Cristobal.
I need to stress that the problem here is not only that Cristina is highly objectionable, immoral and unfit for the job, it is that no foreign leader should even make a speech tomorrow in Venezuela! In her discharge I will say that she has a unique chance to redeem herself, here and at home, by supporting democracy, freedom of expression and condemn antisemitism and Iran at the same time since Argentina has been a direct objective of the Mullah's hell. Let's say that I am not holding my breath, money talks and she is always short of cash.
By now you should be getting my point: there is nothing to celebrate tomorrow. Chavistas will celebrate the glory of Chavez pretending to believe that he is the guy that really brought us independence whereas the majority of Venezuela will either ignore the whole sick show or cry bitter tears that our bicentennial anniversary comes at a time when our independence is seriously compromised if not all but lost. But few of us will be giving a hard look at the date which started the 14 months road to proclaim our Independence and open our most glorious page of history, a page for which today we still pay a price for all its unresolved issues, something we would be better off spending time on rather than building useless dildos to the glory of Chavez..
--------------------------------------------
1) In an inspired OpEd in El Nacional a few weeks ago Pedro Llorens described chavismo as "fascismo marginal" an expression so rich that I have been playing for a while making a full post of it. Let's say, to simplify this post, that "marginal" is a term rich in social meaning in Venezuela and that for today's purpose we could call it "white trash fascism" for those who know what white trash means in the US-