- Venezuela.The permanent crisis
Just a few sentences from Caracas bites (De Conatus) of the writer Héctor Torres (Caracas, 1968) to notice the patient's temperature:
- «In Caracas it is better not to take anything for granted».
- « The Caracas live by killing his body , drinking a cocktail of paranoia, rage, impatience, anxiety and terror all day.
- «Caracas is not inhabited, it is suffered».
Taxi drivers, sweepers at dawn, peaceful boys who, for fear of ridicule in their gang, arrive at the crime, messengers, policemen, "robbers who make their way between cars and pedestrians to the contrary", express kidnappings and dogs that perceive presences in the book parallel dimensions And someone who regrets with sneer: "The thugs would have to have a card and unions."
Does Caracas live an undeclared war? Yes. There are ingredients that make it very dangerous. There is a very high impunity because the police forces have overflowed, they cannot even investigate the crimes that are committed. There are even a large number of weapons in the hands of civil groups affected by the political project, which were armed for that purpose, to defend it. And there is huge inflation. The official minimum wage is something like seven dollars a month. Obviously armed people, with that high impunity and to be able to survive ... There is a story ( They are looking for you ) in which a motorcycle countryman policeman beckons a citizen to round the month. That is more frequent than one thinks. Many express kidnappings, by tactics, clearly have military training. Before they were very frequent, but they have gone down. There are no official statistics because we live in a permanent opacity. In the absence of an institutionality, there are organized crime groups that impose the rules, such as in jail. There were areas of peace, dangerous neighborhoods where the police did not enter, and that became shrines of the underworld. In the midst of all that the Venezuelan lives.And in this you arrive, who tells what you see on the street, you do not need to imagine anything.It is that traditional journalism, in some way, has fallen short to explain a reality that is so amazing that it's hard to explain. By self-censorship or fear of reprisal, wanting to explain what happens, we discover that it is insufficient. In addition to how you pass the callus in a reader who learned that during the protests between April and August 2017, 170 people died violently. Caracas bites was published in 2012 in Venezuela, what has changed? Now it is more intense. What this book seeks is to show that there is a vicious circle: the fear that produces violence that produces fear that produces violence ... In that circle people try to lead a normal life. Chavez had a charisma about his electorate that Maduro does not have and that has counteracted him with greater repression, but in these stories there are also poetic episodes, and even humor. And it snorts. Let the reader breathe. The only way to tell reality when reality has surpassed the capacity to be amazed is to offer a literary treatment, to give a point of view. How many copies did he sell of Carcas bites ? About 6,000. But in 2015 hyperinflation came and the publishing industry broke down. What is the reader's mouth to say? With what are those who are born in Chivacoa called? . Then , when the devil calls him to the scene , he tells how evil is perpetuated. And, somewhat less painful, the invisible nature of things . The beauty of the chronicle and the literature when they are in aid of reality is that, unlike journalism, they do not discard anything, nor the magical reading of the facts. As the site lavidadenos .com, a page I direct with the journalist Albor Rodríguez. The Russian roulette expression appears several times in Caracas bites . Even Venezuelan roulette. Yes: if you lose, you keep playing. Until it comes out, as seen in the drawing on the cover of the book [the drum of a revolver with a bullet]. You saved yourself from this but nobody tells you that you will be saved tomorrow. Caracas is a daily Russian roulette. In Presentimientos , a mother comes running home for fear of kidnapping her children. In Venezuela, saying "get well" when people say goodbye is not a phrase, it's a reality. Has something happened to you? Nothing worth telling [touches the wood of the table several times]. Well, all my children have had their phone removed, and my wife ... rather minor things. Getting home is worth celebrating, according to statistics. You do not know that you are privileged. Even Venezuelans who have a certain level of income that allows them to eat with decency have to beg for health because the hospitals were devastated and you have to go to expensive clinics. In a chronicle he writes that in one weekend there are 50 dead. opacity we were talking about. In the morgue of Bello Monte [of Caracas], the police show the relatives that if they speak with the press, they will complicate the procedures to give them the corpse of their relative, but he has also written that he loves Caracas. He is like the family ; Anyway, you love her. I could live outside but ... Many people, many writers are gone and that has strengthened my affection with those who stayed. I have to understand life beyond the political systems that we have had to live. His mother was reading Oscar Wilde. In my life is the absence of my father, who died when he was six years old. And a Jesuit who put us to read Allan Poe and Horacio Quiroga. And then Borges. I thought he was literature. That musicality with which I could only write a blind man caused me enormous perplexity. Then Carver, Paul Auster, Ishiguro and their magnificent tales of Nocturnals arrived ... Each era had its priest. Now Viktor Frankl, Rilke, his Letters to a young poet ... Or Joseph Campbell. People who explain to me how we can turn pain into music, into poetry. Because if one neglects one can go crazy. We must find a way out of the anguish. I have looked for authors that calm me or references to make literature, like Junot Díaz. I want to put the reader realities as accentuated as possible for him to say what he thinks. I am not interested in making pamphlets, or saying what I think. When you write, do you free yourself, do you distance yourself from reality? Reality must be transmuted into poetry. I have read a phrase from him: "What has unpredictable life is what makes it interesting." It's possible. I would not mind if it was mine. In the story And as a gift, what is left of life , a taxi driver, on the night before his retirement, goes from being killed to a client leaving a lot of money. This is how you live. Life is random, the good and the bad that comes to you. Years ago they tried to steal my car, they folded it, but in the end they didn't steal it. I was lucky There is a beautiful Venezuelan saying: «When it is for you, or that you take off; when it is not for you, nor that you wear ». Venezuela is a kind of trailer of what Latin America is: corruption, social inequality, flirting with organized crime ... Sooner or later it will pay. Someone said that Venezuela comes from the future. The man does not support too much reality. I wrote a story, The night life dawned, in which two neighborhoods killed each other until one day mothers got tired, gathered, prayed, things were told until dawn and reached a sane, forced The children reach an agreement. The killings were reduced to almost zero.According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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