It is our story and that of many families.
When we emigrated, we went through a permanent mourning, to have fleeting reunions that we always long for when we visit Venezuela and to understand with deep sorrow that as time passes such encounters become increasingly scarce.
As every Venezuelan family, part of it is still here in my country and another emigrated, the general causes are known, and the personal ones are diverse and private. The fact is that we have become a globalized family.
The internet allows us to be in permanent communication and the distance is alleviated and every so often we share in the place of residence of each one with their respective families. In the end, what matters is that they are okay.
The reunion with the city and the country is an interesting experience and that everyone lives in the distance. Everyone has their own particular perspective of these difficult times. They all share the deep roots to our land and have passed on to daughters and sons, with their Venezuelan identity pride.
The plane is quite a symbol, all or almost all of us have ended up in "transit" somewhere.* We used to be tourists, now we are or can become emigrants.
Almost eight million in the diaspora are a lot of people, 25% of our population.
Neither in the War of independence, nor in the Federal War nor in our endemic civil wars of the 19th century, had my country suffered such a dramatic demographic and social impact.
Today the citizen of my country, being the same, is another. The country is different and the world too, and this is “not a complaint” but a confirmation of a more complex and dynamic reality, undeniable.
It is not a story to tell once... but of those stories, which from time to time we need to tell ourselves.
The drama is that my country is still disorganized, with a confused society and weakened hope, a perversely destroyed economy and a democratic political solution that is taking too long to arrive and a youth that is forced to see the future in another country.
I can feel that many families in my country live similar stories, and separation does not mean rupture. We have become a country of "goodbyes" with all its burden of pain, of absences and certain nostalgias, of melancholics and the inevitable quota of loneliness of the one who stays and the one who leaves.
It's a total cultural change.
Today I illustrate through this publication, how our life has changed, every step I take to go shopping, take a bus, buy bread or just take my pet to a park, they are full of reflections, from my beloved Maracaibo, a city with noble people who resist oppression.
Our homes, as in the same educational system.
It is vital to assume the principle-hope, not only the necessary voluntarism of optimism, but the deep faith in human time as progress towards a country and a better world than the one we have.
These endless goodbyes and reunions have made us value the love of our beloved country, love our family even more in the distance and appreciate the value of our friends more.
In the social moment that we have had to live, how much have we been educated to know what we want to do, be or live?.
Perhaps we will not see the rebirth of a new Venezuela, but I am sure that this unnecessary situation will be forever etched in our collective memory, allowing us to rise again from our ashes. There is no evil that lasts 100 years…
I don't use the goodbye to say goodbye, but the willful see you later.
Janitze.
In the cover photo, arriving in Miami, USA... I love to visit my parents
Separator made with Canva by @janitzearratia
Any images in this post are edited with Canva
Translation with |DeepL
