An earthquake struck Venezuela and shook the souls of Venezuelans in the diaspora. We didn't think twice — we tried to help however we could. Spreading aid channels, offering ourselves as vehicles for rescue. The volunteers worked with everything we had, but in a plundered country carrying an absurd foreign debt, we knew that help wouldn't arrive as soon as we would have liked.
The first night was for wanting to help. The morning was for grasping the magnitude of the disaster. But after thirty-six critical and brutal hours, the bodies from the earthquake were already beginning to smell. I don't know this because I was there, but because of all the accounts I saw on social media trying to classify, in some way, the data on missing persons, the supplies needed, the collection centers, the calls for help from people still trapped under the rubble who, by some miracle, could still send a message. A way of helping too modern for my family to understand, but worth continuing if people could be reunited with their loved ones. Thirty-six hours of keeping the operation alive by a thread dissolved when reports began arriving of more and more dead. People who held on as long as they could beneath the literal and metaphorical ruins — because in this situation a great many had their homes collapse on top of them, and all of us had the weight of a dictatorship that knows only cruelty fall upon us.
My son's insistence on playing made me disconnect. Everything around him is fine — except his mother. I have to fake it as best I can, while processing a grief that is not blood-bound but collective. I carry 27 years of this pain, settled into my soul, even as I have to be grateful for not suffering it directly. Now, the day after, I no longer know how to resume helping. Hundreds, if not thousands of volunteers have thrown themselves into verifying information about missing persons, because that is what is left for us to do.
There is no central body verifying all this information, and Venezuelans in other parts of the world took on that task ourselves. There is no government, no organization. At the disaster site, amid the rescue operations, many people with cars, motorcycles, trucks, and machinery showed up to help however they could. Neighbors were pulling out rubble with their bare hands. Families tried to extract their own from the ruins without protection, without training, without the slightest notion of what a wrong move might mean. Thirty-six hours after the earthquake, those people who perform a simulation of authority arrived to take photographs of the disaster. They always appear in public with a camera in hand.
My body had been waiting for the images of chavismo dancing through the scene. The frenzy of the disaster distracted us for a moment, but being outside and safe, the rage swelled like a float in a movie parade. With each video of the GNB preventing citizens from verifying what was being done, the balloon grew until it became a beast. The looting of stores, the thieves inside collapsed apartments — all of these have been infinite demonstrations of the low moral caliber of those who want to remain in control of a country buried under rubble. I tried to record those videos and images with patience, but I had already become a Turkish hot-air balloon, about to become a tourist attraction myself. I gave up again.
The titanic labor of the volunteers registering all this information is, in large part, an emotional labor. Seeing so much content affected me emotionally, and my body began behaving as if I were at the site. Again my son reminds me that I am not. I hug him and think that, in the long run, Venezuela is going to need a great deal of accounting for all of this history. The true account of what happened and how.
British journalist Catherine Ellis published a tweet this morning showing how chavismo is treating the international community of journalists who managed to enter Venezuela to document the tragedy. With an unprecedented express permit, a great many media outlets entered — and have been flooded with strict instructions and lavished with VIP treatment.
Because yes, chavismo has always cared more about the story told about it than about any real effort it might actually make. Remaining in the good graces of international observers is more urgent than attending to the victims who remain buried. Step right in and enjoy the banquet over the rubble.
Seeing the magnitude of lies heading our way, I decided to write this so that it serves as a record of the narrative that will be imposed on the country if we let it happen. The international community usually doesn't know what to think in the Venezuelan case; they are divided between official reports they have always considered reliable — because in any "normal" country the institutes that publish those reports are independent and can corroborate information with evidence. In Venezuela's case, the figures come from above, without support or evidence, simply so that the relevant institute can stamp a seal of approval and that becomes the truth they broadcast.
Many hands are needed to spread a message that contradicts the official one and to make the international community — including the media — take it seriously. Now that I am in the middle of a group, reading reports, tearing my soul apart with social media testimonies, now that I have participated in conversations with those in the affected zone, I can corroborate everything I am about to say — or rather, I am going to tell the story that ties together all the evidence we have at hand. We have more than enough proof, and that is precisely why they don't want us on the ground. Those of us Venezuelans abroad are too aware of everything we have suffered, and so, safe, with our families safe, our routines safe, some dreams and goals safe, some of us will keep fighting the tidal wave of lies crashing down on us after the earthquake.
They lie, always, and Venezuelans already know how to dismantle their lies. We will use the algorithm that feeds on our rage to throw everything in their faces — they have nowhere left to hide. We owe it to the victims.