Greetings, everyone

This is my entry to the Sunday 5-minute #freewrite exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here.

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Disturbing Images I Want to Unsee

Disturbing is an adjective that accurately describes what the Venezuelan crisis has become. 2020 was a disturbing year that joined the collection of distrubing years adding disturbing events and images I wish I had not seen. I want to unsee the images of starving Venezuelan children and elders.

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I wish I had not witnessed the inhumane conditions of Venezuelan patients scattered on the floors of dilapidated hospitals that are supposed to be a model that Latin America is going follow.

I want to think that I just imagined, in my wildest nightmares, Venezuelan women delivering their babies in the dirt outside the hospitals; some lucky enough to at least have the assistance of some medical personnel; others just assisted by the instinctual Samaritan who just does what’s right no matter what.

I wished it was just a realistic CGI of some revolutionary Venezuelan film where I saw Venezuelan people slaughtered at bus stops as a result of gangs’ paybacks.

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I wish I had not opened the file I got of Venezuelans being tortured and dismembered alive by criminals who coldly document every victim on video to teach lessons or show power and impunity (how they manage to keep their Social Media accounts open is beyind me). Not very different from the tortures inflicted by law enforcement to Venezuelan political prisoners who are humiliated and killed in the most horrific ways, including being thrown off buildings and presented to the public opinion as suicides.

How do I unsee the images of Venezuelans being reduced to bloody shapeless flesh with high caliber guns as the big leaders of the main gangs across the country boast their fire power in their videos on SM.

It is disturbing to watch Venezuelan people set on fire or lynched in the streets as a result of political violence or just by people taking justice into their own hands given the high levels of impunity in our judicial system. It is disturbing to imagine how probable it could be for one to become the human pyre or part of the angry mob.

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It is disheartening to see drown Venezuelan floating in the water of what was supposed to be a sea of happiness, run over by trucks on South American roads, or young Venezuelan women raped and killed as a result of the sex traffic encouraged by the current migration wave.

How disturbing it is the normalization of Venezuelans eating from the trash piles in every corner of every city of the country, only to later see Venezuelan government officials delivering rotten food or food handled with zero sanitary conditions to the poor people of remote barrios. It is doubly disturbing to watch Venezuelan government officials lying about all this on live TV and on social media and still being applauded, victimized, and praised by people all over the world.

It is disturbing to remember that all this nightmare started with a charismatic man who promised to give voice to those who had been silenced, to those who had been exploited and discriminated, to those who had been condemned to abject poverty while a few lived like kings and queens. Those who promised are the new kings and queens; those who followed are now more silenced than ever.

Thanks for bearing with me. My appologies for the disturbing images and descriptions.