La Posibilidad de una Eleccion Presidencial

The taxi we took from the airport to Caracas quickly stopped for gas. Sitting next to the pump I watched the meter tick up from 10 liters to 20 to 30 until stopping at 40 liters. The cost: 8 bolivares. If one were to exchange American dollars on the black market, as many people do to avoid the foreign currency controls imposed by the government, they might recieve ~16 BS./ Dol. This adds up to gasoline that costs about 7 cents/ gallon or less. The driver said "es la unica beneficio de ser un venezolano".

Lea and I drove for 3 hours through the traffic of Caracas, where the roads were better than those in Maine, speaking to our fair-haired chauffeur about this and that. Suddenly, while passing the airport that is reserved for the president and other diplomats, she spoke with indignation of Chavez's flight to Cuba the night before. "Wasterful Liar!" she said in Spanish. "He says this and that, but he does nothing, just fills his pockets." I thought nothing of the news, afterall, what is wrong with a follow-up with your doctor after repeated surgeries for cancer.

Skip ahead to this evening. Tia Berta y yo, after a dinner of Mero (Grouper) and watery beer in Hotillo (un pueblo adentro de Caracas), spoke as she washed the dishes. I leaned, suave, over the dish rack and listened as she explained her, let us say, "opposition" to Chavez. Twenty minutes later she scampered from her room, her robe barely intact, shouting, "He rezado y, dios, me contaste". She turned on the television and I saw quickly the headline that Chavez once again has cancer, and he is preparing, if his health does not improve, to step down from power. If he were to do so there would be an election 30 days after his retirement and, if such an event were to occur, his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, would run on the Bolivarian Party ticket. As it happens, Nicolas Maduro was a conductor of a Caracas Metro train before he became vice president. At this moment, I am sure he is looking down at his hands wondering when this dream will end. He pinches himself and thinks "this is still real?"

My heart is racing from the news. I have done nothing, yet the feeling I have as my great aunt jumps up and down clutching the front of her robe is of revolution. Yet of what kind? A revolution where the capitalism and conservatism displaces socialism and progress? I don't think so. It is that I feel, in so short a time, being Venezuelan is no longer a matter of history (of my mother and some distant immigration to the west) but of the present. The revolution is not political, but internal. More quickly than I could have ever have imagined, I am becoming Venezuelan, and I have family to prove it. I have been welcome around every corner. Offered food, love and time both left and right. There are names that have been stored deep in memory that are appearing, once again, in droves. Yes, I will see a presidencial election in Venezuela, but I wonder when it comes whether I too will have some choices of my own.


Frase del dia: "Huevos sin sal" - This is a phrase particular to Tia Berta. It was used to describe someone with a bland personality. There is also the conotation of huevos (balls) with no flavor, a man with masculinitym, a man without salty.......you know...... balls.....