Caracas Chronicles

Photo: La Patilla

Yesterday, I was trying to catch up on my Caracas Chronicles reading and I came across a Vz on the Web written by Quico on the remarkable job done by our own Mr. Hernández on The New York Times.

Since this was a Vz on the Web, I didn’t expect to find anything that would upset me. I did struggle to make sense of the piece’s title, but decided to keep on reading. Quico’s kind words to Mr. Hernández were heartfelt and for a second there, I thought this was going to be a celebratory post in which we would catch a glimpse of Quico’s warm and fuzzy side. A tiny, epileptic, movie-like tear was almost at the verge of my tear duct when a wild, unsolicited very much annoying mood killer paragraph appeared.

It read:

Why, Q, why did you have to go and ruin it?

I have a great deal of appreciation for Quico. He’s a brilliant writer; for all intents and purposes, I consider him a mentor and someone to look up to. But from day one, I strongly disagreed with his views on this election. Of course he’s entitled to an opinion, but so am I.

I’ll start with the obvious: “Maybe if the Falcón campaign had focused its resources on mobilizing enough people…”

The Falcón campaign was so crappy that it didn’t have people to mobilize in the first place. The few who did vote for Falcón didn’t do it because of the guy’s charisma, they did it because they saw no other choice, because they thought something other than staying at home had to be done, they did it because they wanted to beat Maduro. Not because Falcón was, like, super smart and popular and all those things a presidential candidate should be.

The Falcón campaign was so crappy that it didn’t have people to mobilize in the first place.

Quico also assumes that people abstained to be part of a bigger scheme. While I don’t deny some didn’t vote because of the opposition’s crippled call to stay home, I believe most people refrained because they’d rather eat dirt than give any of the candidates a chance. Can you really blame them?

What bothers me about Quico’s analysis is its overly simplistic nature. Saying that if Falcón had somehow mobilized people early in the day it would have made more people think “Oh boy, the boycott failed” and, therefore, made them vote, sounds more like the description of a mosquito life cycle than an actual strategy.

But let’s say you’re right. Would it have made a difference? No.

Falcón isn’t fit to defend anything but his personal interests, so in the case of an eventual Andrés-Velázquez-scenario, I doubt he has the will or muscle to claim victory. To me, he didn’t want to win at all. Had he intended to, or actually wanted to do good for the country, he wouldn’t have ran in the first place.

To prove my point: Falcón himself, on election night, rejected the results arguing that “there were no elections at all” and the day was “full of abuse and wrongdoings.” So, the guy who worked as Capriles’ campaign manager woke up in the middle of Venezuela and found out this is a dictatorship just now? Seriously? This guy expects us to believe he was oblivious to Tiby’s wizarding I-make-votes-appear-and-disappear-at-will skills?

So, the guy who worked as Capriles’ campaign manager woke up in the middle of Venezuela and found out this is a dictatorship just now? Seriously?

People didn’t vote for Falcón because he was a lousy-ass candidate and nobody felt like taking part in a lousy Broadway show where the fat lady sings very late and a baranda has a solo act. There’s no point in making excuses for the guy, he brought this on himself.

The first thing you ask when investing money is, “What’s the guarantee on this?” Falcón had no strategy in case people invested their vote in him and something went wrong. So people didn’t buy his shit. Simple as that.

When Quico posted this other piece, I was advised not to read it, as it might increase my blood pressure levels (I’m a very opinionated and sensitive person, and living in this country has been detrimental to my cardiovascular system). Against my own medical advice, I did, and now that I’m at it, I will share some more thoughts:

Boss, you know I love you, but there is no goat and there is no rope. It’s naive to believe that this dictatorship can be overthrown with elections, or that some sort of magical transition will take place if the planets align. Time to wrap our minds around it.

Falcón knew what he was doing. I don’t think he was prepared for the catastrophic results, but he knew the conditions for the election, he knew the process wouldn’t be recognized by the international community, he knew he wasn’t popular, he knew he didn’t have support from the rest of the opposition.

Still, he ran. How is that not fishy to you?

Please, wake up and smell the communism. Better candidates have tried and failed; this is a ruthless, merciless dictatorship, a power hungry machine that feeds off of people’s sorrows and grief. Remember the AN election we won? Remember the Referendum we won? And where are we now?

People do remember.