Massimo's photoblog

Pico del Aguila, Venezuela (Dec 22, 2004)

My family in Italy had always celebrated Christmas with a lunch on December 25th. In Venezuela the important day is the Christmas vigil on December 24th. Mayli family reunites on December 24th at her grandmother’s house (“la Finca”) to spend the vigil together and eat sancocho (meat soup) and hallacas (hallacas explained here). Venezuela is a conservative catholic country (even though some protestant evangelical cults are making serious inroads), and the church is still a powerful force in the society (and, as in Italy, you can find churches everywhere, even at a pass over 4,000m -15,000ft- as in the photo above). So Christmas is deeply felt, and in Mayli’s family is very important to be at la Finca for the Christmas hallacas.

The whole day was in preparation to this event, with the exception of a short visit to Alejandra (one of the physicists in this photo) who had also returned to Merida, and was preparing her hallacas with some friends. I showed her the photos on this blog, and some of the comments I posted triggered a discussion about politics (about the “bolivarian process” from the point of view of university professors), unfortunately cut short because we had to leave early for la Finca.

Mayli’s family is quite large, and most of it tries to be at la Finca on Christmas night. Of course it is impossible for everybody to give presents to everybody else, and this logistic problem has been solved with the “intercambio de los regalitos”. It works like this: each person is randomly designed to get a present for another component of the family, getting in exchange a present from a third family member. This way everybody gets and receives one present. Mayli and me had two of the many Mayli’s cousins as present recipients. After the intercambio we sat down in groups for the midnight dinner, where again I was involved in a conversation about politics with one of Mayli’s uncles (about the “bolivarian process”, from the point of view of a priest working in a poor neighborhood).

All these talks about politics are something new. The first time I visited the country, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, nobody was talking about politics. One of the consequences of the strong polarization of venezuelan society (some say this polarization was created by the divisive attitude of the president, but I think these divisions were already present before, but hidden by the repressive society), is that politics is now an important issue concerning everybody. People is often wary to talk freely, because the polarization is so strong that more than one such discussion has ended with fist fights between members of the same family. Once triggered, however, people is likely to vent off their frustrations, especially with an outsider like me who is happy to listen to both sides.

To understand what is really going on in this country one would have to spend several months traveling in every corner of its territory, visiting each small village in the Andes, the flooded plains or the Amazon, or living a few months in the slums surrounding Caracas where the human life is worth less than a few dollars. Touching with one’s hand the situation of the 80% of the venezuelan population living below the line of poverty is probably the only way to go past the propaganda from both sides, and to form an independent idea of what it is really happening. As a tired astrophysicist in a family visit during Christmas holidays, this is however not going to happen, and all I can do is to listen to middle class people seeing the situation through the lenses of their own situation, which is like trying to understand how is life in Los Angeles by asking to a New Yorker. It doesn’t work very well, because the segregation in Venezuelan society is very strong, and people of different classes barely talks to each other, and when they do is never on equal basis.

Differences, however, do exists. People removed from the daily lives of poor classes tends to complain that the government is not doing enough, and that the measures that are actually carried on are just populist acts which do not change the roots of underdevelopment of the country, while the corruption and inefficiency is as as rampant as ever. Other people who have instead a greater contact with the struggling lower classes generally have a more positive view of the government initiatives, and reports a significative improvement in their lives.

Who is right? Maybe both, from their own point of view. Maybe it is true that all the “misiones” are just “pañitos calientes”, palliatives that won’t solve the structural problems of the country. But is also true that previous governments, when the poor where rioting for food, were sending the army to shoot them down. Now the army is used to distribute food and build schools. Too little? Maybe. Better than nothing? Maybe.

Marry Christmas.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.