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On Knowing in Venezuela

In El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling) by Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Antonio Yammara encounters Ricardo Laverde, an older man who has just been released from prison after twenty years behind bars. After leaving the pool hall where they met by chance, Ricardo is gunned down in the street, and Antonio gets shot as a bystander. Antonio survives but becomes fixated on knowing more about Ricardo's life, this man whose death he became entangled in. In his search for knowledge, he goes so far as to track down the black-box recording from a plane crash that killed Ricardo's wife. In the midst of intense emotions, he thinks to himself:

no tenía derecho a escuchar esa muerte, porque esos hombres que viajan en ese avión me son ajenos, y la mujer que viaja atrás no es, nunca será, uno de mis muertos [I had no right to listen to that death, because those men traveling on that plane were unknown to me, and the woman at the back of that plan is not, and never will be one of my dead.]

Antonio eventually connects with Maya Fritts, Ricardo's daughter, and learns about Ricardo's involvement in the drug business as a pilot smuggling cocaine and marijuana into the United States. For all the information he gathers, Antonio never gets to the exact truth as to why Ricardo was killed, and is never able to satisfy her yearning to know, his belief that having certain knowledge will help him overcome his post-traumatic stress disorder.

It isn't Antonio alone who is driven to know. Maya contacts him the moment she finds out he was there when her father was assassinated, inviting him to meet with her: “quiero que venga a hablarme de mi padre, a contarme todo lo que sepa,” “I want you to come talk to me about my father, to tell me everything you know.” Knowledge serves as a catalyst for both Antonio and Maya to overcome pain and connect on a different level.

In the Argentinian film La historia oficial (The Official Story), protagonist Alicia is troubled when her friend tells her about being tortured by government officials who kept her in a building where pregnant women were separated from their babies. She is drawn to investigate how her husband Roberto adopted their daughter Gaby. At a demonstration, when the streets filled with grandmothers protesting the disappearance of their loved ones, children and grandchildren, Alicia starts to consider the possibility that Gaby may have been stolen from one of those families the dictatorial regime had arrested and, most believe, killed: los desaparecidos. Facing these abuelas, Alicia realizes that Gaby could be the nieta, granddaughter, of any of these women.

Alicia loves Gaby deeply, but she feels compelled to find out where her child comes from. As with Antonio Yammara, revelation of a little knowledge pushes Alicia to inquire, to uncover more facts, and to potentially enact change.

These examples are both fictional, but are useful as points of comparison with the current reality of ordinary people in Venezuela. Now more than ever before, Venezuelans have to deal with “high levels of criminal violence [growing] even worse,” with “devastating shortages of food and medicine”, and with a divided opposition that over the years has had many opportunities“to kick out Chávez and now Maduro, and they always fuck it up.” [1] The scarcity of food and medicine has given opposition leaders an occasion to unite chavistas and non-chavistas for street protests at the beginning of 2017, the first for six months. These protests resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people thus far [2]. As government security forces challenged the opposition, the protests dissipated. The ongoing crisis continues. Shortages and hyperinflation continue to ravage the Venezuelan economy. Democratic institutions continue to deteriorate. Maduro continues to reign, increasingly repressive. The nation's bureaucracies rot, ruined by neglect after years of populism and corruption. And as oil prices stay low, the redistributionist benefits won for the poor during the Chávez era begin to dry up.

There are three types of people in Venezuelans at present. The first type: those who have the resources to leave and are preparing to do so. The second type comprises those who cannot leave, and who as a survival mechanism suppress their knowledge of the painful reality they are living. They resort to conformity with the way things are. And the third type of Venezuelan is hopeful. They are mostly young. Many of them are university students. They work toward finding and supporting leaders who might defeat Maduro in the elections, despite the rigging of the electoral process.

Whether they are preparing to flee or to fight, or they have resigned themselves to fatigue and fear and are waiting for a chance to come when it will, those who are still in Venezuela are either consciously suffering or consciously avoiding suffering. For the average Venezuelan, knowledge feels like a doubling-down on their suffering. For people who can't stand up to such an authoritarian power, and worrying about how to rectify the country's political and social instability feels futile. Even so—ignoring their situation may be fatal as well. If knowledge is a curse, willful ignorance is suicide.

This dilemma is the reality of many young Venezuelans, and of their parents who every day have fewer ways of distracting their children. The people suffer a collective depression. In the absence of incentives to hope, to believe that change is possible, Maduro's administration holds on to its electoral power. Jordana Timerman, in a recent recap of election results, reports:

Venezuela's ruling party won municipal elections around the country yesterday—a bit of a foregone conclusion as leading opposition parties boycotted the vote. Nonetheless, President Nicolás Maduro celebrated victory in more than 300 of Venezuela's 335 counties. [3]

Results like this, and previous victories by Maduro in October's gubernatorial races, are the outcome of years of electoral fraud: campaign propaganda, the shunning and persecuting of opposition leaders, abrupt closing of voting centers, the presence of military personnel in voting booths, and the like. Very few people vote, because people choose to ignore what they know. They avoid knowing more. And they refuse to act on what they do know, because it seems pointless.

Although knowledge is in general empowering, sometimes it only serves to remind a person of their misery. When it does not lead to new action, or deeper insight, who can blame those who seek the bliss of ignorance? Both sides of knowing are on display in the present Venezuelan crisis: the knowing that pushes ordinary people to protest and pursue change, and the knowing which is so unbearable that it drives one to ignore reality.

REFERENCES

1. Jon Lee Anderson: “Nicolás Maduro's Accelerating Revolution”, for The New Yorker. 11 December 2017. // return
2. Sources from the Wikipedia article on the 2017 protest : “67 muertos en protestas en Venezuela hasta el #23May” (RunRun: 23 May 2017) and “Venezuela soldier held over queue killing” (BBC News: 1 January 2018). // return
3. Jordana Timerman: “Venezuela's government sweeps municipal elections, largely unopposed”, for her Latin American Daily Briefing. 11 December 2017. // return