Rayma's poignant cartoon the day after Chavez was announced dead.
So, like some of you have read already on the news, Hugo Chávez Frías, the "president" of my country, died 3 days ago.
I feel like to properly paint a picture of how we feel as a country, I have to go back at least 3 months.
Chavez's cancer got worse after winning reelections(which is another story altogether), so on Dec. 10th, 2012 he went back to Cuba for more treatments.
He was supposed to come back before January 10th, to be sworn into office officially(Inaguration, I think you guys call it?).
Alas, Dec. 10 would be the last time any Venezuelan would hear or see from Chavez for a long time. The new year came and went and no news of the president's health were recieved.
Of course rumours started flying like crazy. Even now, after his death, there's fights about when he "REALLY" died.
The constitution is very clear about what should happen if a president is not sworn in(the leader of parliament should take over in the interim, etc etc) but of course, every facet of the goverment, house of representatives, national assembly, etc is dominated by Chavistas who do with the constitution(The one that Chavez twisted to his liking a decade ago) whatever the hell they want so they declared that Chavez was in a "leave of absence" and that he could be inagurated, basically, whenever it was that he arrived from Cuba.
Chavez "arrived to Venezuela" sometime during mid Fabruary and still we didnt see a single picture(apart from one very doctored picture of him in Cuba with his daughters, no one had seen him since December the year before).
Days and days passed and not only did Chavez not inagurate himself, neither did he appear on television to give a speech(his favourite pastime!), or even show a picture of himself.
This is when students of Venezuela said "ENOUGH" and went to chain themselves in PEACEFUL PROTEST in Chacao, in front of some goverment-related buildings, to demand that we be told the truth about Venezuela's president health status.
Hardly a insane demand, right? We were basically being governed by a ghost, as far as we were concerned! (click for bigger pics)
Notice the police behind them "protecting" the TSJ(Supreme Justice building). I actually had to walk through that building going to work some days ago and had to pass through a line of armed guards like those. *shudders*
So the police, as is known to do in Venezuela, tried to kick and beat the shit out of (and shoot with bb bullets) the students for asking the logical question in everyone's minds:
"WHERE'S THE PRESIDENT? WHY WON'T THEY TELL US ANYTHING?"
Soldier: "Do you see, Sargeant? I just beat up a student for asking the same question I make [to] myself every day...."
Studen't sign reads: "Where's the president?!"
(and fast forwarding for a second here, this is what happened to the tents the students were sleeping in an HOUR or less after Chavez was announced dead:
Chávez sympathisers came in motorcycles and set them tents on fire. Thankfully no one was inside.)
So yeah, this was the political climate that greeted me on March 5th, two days after my birthday.(I turned 24 years old. I was 9 when Chavez came into office. Lets just let that sink in. Over half of my life has been spent under Chávez's regime)
Now this is why on top of everything, this is a day I will never forget:
I GOT MUGGED AT GUNPOINT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT IN A CROWDED BUS STOP.
Thankfully, they only took my phone(Samsung Galaxy SIII, which I bought for 7,000 bs.F in March last year and now costs 15,000 bs.F because our money keeps getting devaluated more and more and our economy gets worse and worse) but the nerve of it all was that the dude took my phone and didn't even run away.
HE WALKED AWAY. went calmly down the stairs to the subway, phone and black gun, which he pointed at me, in hand.
There are cops on the other side of the plaza. I always see them. But I didn't go to them. In Venezuela, the idea of police is not comforting to me for reasons like the pictures above.
I'm even hesitant to ask cops for directions, fearing that they will see me as weak or lost and kidnap me or send me to a dark street where a buddy of theirs(or themselves) can mug me.
So I just stood there in the same spot for 20 minutes after getting mugged, waiting for the bus to arrive.
I got to work(I'm working for a florist and balloon-gift websites) and that was that. My father tried to convince me to go home early because I'd been mugged but I told him that no, I'd stay until 6:00 like always but that I would appreciate it if he picked me up at work so I wouldnt have to take the subway(and bus) back home.
at 5:30 PM, I was ssoooorta asleep XD(WHAT. I'd finished working and I was alone in the office. shhhh! first time I do this, I swear! XD) when the phone rang.
I picked up the phone and it was my boss, calling from the other office down the street where everyone but me works:
"CLOSE UP AND COME DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW. WE'RE LISTENING TO THE RADIO AND CHAVEZ JUST DIED."
me: *IS THIS A DREAM???* "wait, are you fucking kidding me right now?"
boss: "HE'S REALLY DEAD. COME HERE NOW."
So I close up and while I walk down the street, I hear ppl's bits and pieces of conversations and they're all about Chavez and hospitals and stuff and I'm thinking "is this really true? is he really dead?"
When I get to the office, a girl who works there is running towards me, coming from the bus stops.
She says that she was going to Plaza Venezuela(WHERE I WAS MUGGED THAT MORNING ) and that the bus driver, who knew her, told her midway to turn around and go home since things were apparently getting ugly in Pza. Vzla.
She walked the way back and passed a sorta mall we have nearby and everyone was pulling down their businesses' roller shutters and that banks were closing up and putting up alarms, expecting people to go ballistic.
We went inside, where I proceeded to take the company's phone to try and call my father to tell him I was waiting for him in the other office but absolutely no phonecalls went through. The phone lines were as collapsed as on New Years Eve.
I managed to call a friend's house and told her to keep calling my dad, cuz I was going to the ATM to get some emergency money with my boss.
While we were waiting for our turn at the ATM, a police car passes us by broadcasting on their PA system that there was to be no public transportation that night(!!!) I still saw a couple of buses go around but everything was clearly unstable and I thanked my stars that I made my father agree to pick me up before all of this happened.
We went back and I saw my father, agreed with my boss that the day tomorrow would be too unpredictable and it would be foolish to go out so we wouldnt go to work the next day.
I went with my father to pick up my sister and her boyfriend from a funeral home(her bf's grandmother had passed away) and we went to our Grandma's place to wait till things calmed down a bit. I talked to hanachan on the phone(lol) while my family was glued to the TV. We went home at around 11PM and the streets were absolutely deserted.
That night, 7 days of "Official Mourning" were declared.
...(going to continue on next post cuz this feel ridiculously long and also im afraid of losing all the stuff I've written so far.)
--k.