When The Night Is Darkest

Anyone can be arrested without prior order, here we simply call it kidnapping. (Miguel Gutiérrez / EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Poleo, Caracas, 3 August 2017 — Many Venezuelans are exhausted, the dictatorship today posing to us a scenario of fear and despair. There is no public meeting or march that is not repressed even before it begins. The regime’s paramilitary and efectivos flood the streets of Venezuela with murders and arrests. Sniper rifle is no longer unusual at any demonstration, nor is it surprising that most of the bullet impacts against the demonstrators are directly to the head.

Nor are the arbitrary arrests of deputies or their relatives rare, in violation of their immunity. The rights of citizenship have ceased to exist, we are no longer judged by our natural judges, it is now military justice that is responsible for charging any citizen. Anyone can be arrested without prior order, here we simply call it kidnapping.

The most interesting thing about fear is that it leads you to attack those closest to you, who are just as vulnerable as you are. Fear makes you see your own weaknesses and leads you to blame your environment for your misfortune. It’s easier to distance yourself from what really terrifies you. And in psychological warfare this is well-known, demoralizing, deepening the differences, breaking the unit, fracturing it, so powerful is fear. That is why fear is a fundamental part of tyrannies, hope is eaten away, it neutralizes joy and devastates faith, demobilizes and in this spiritually devastated terrain, sows meekness, dependence, ideologies.

Division is good for dictatorships.

The currency is devaluing at a rapid pace. Just yesterday my wife miraculously got my medicine for tension, though they only sold her two boxes, and when I went to buy another two boxes (a month’s treatment) in the same place, just an hour and a half later, I paid twice as much.

The black market dollar, that is, the only one that obtainable, goes from a price of 10,389 bolivars per dollar on Friday, July 29 to 13,780 on August 2.

Every minute that passes, the darkness closes in on the noble nation of Simon Bolivar. My hope is set in the new dawn. These are hard times, the next few hours are decisive and I am sure that we are all going to put everything we have into survival of our country.

We are pacifists, democrats and a people of faith.

But the dictatorship can never underestimate the strength of a people when they close the windows of freedom. We Venezuelans have shown through 18 years that we are not going to put our knees on the ground. We are going to fight, have no doubt.

________________________________

Editorial Note: This testimonial is part of a text that the author has published in his blog and has shared with 14ymedio.