Caracas Chronicles

The idea for The Tomb was born when I read Cinco Sótanos Contra el Sol, by Leonardo Padrón. The piece set something off inside of me. His reportage moved something so deep inside of me that doing nothing became unthinkable. From then on, it became my mission to win over every single person who could help me produce this short film. And I did it.

This project was an act of faith. We can’t stay silent about the Human Rights abuses taking place in Venezuela. We need to start to tell our own contemporary history. We can’t forget that three people who never should have spent a minute inside a jail are still living five levels under Plaza Venezuela.

We shot the film in three days, in Mexico City, with a crew made up of Venezuelans and Mexicans who volunteered their work. Nearly everyone involved in the short used an alias in the credits for fear of reprisals. I need to say a word of gratitude to EFD, Accion Politik, Sebastian Arrechedera, Social Content, and two other friends thanks to whose selfless support we were able to top up the money we crowdfunded to produce La Tumba.

Since the film came out, yesterday, we’ve been subjected to attacks on YouTube and Facebook. The film has disappeared from websites, embeds have stopped working, and it doesn’t turn up on searches despite having over 100,000 views. That just means we’ve hit a nerve. We want to ask everyone to download it, and upload it on their own pages.

Lately, I’ve been turning over an African proverb in my head: “if you think you’re too small to do something important, try to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

For Venezuela’s powerful, the room is filling up with mosquitos.