Wrong Number!

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Imagine that US president Barack Obama were just a normal Venezuelan living in Venezuela. His ID would look very much like that on your left. He would be living in some nice middle-class suburb in Caracas, working at some university as a professor of law, and maybe moonshining at some law firm to fatten up his skinny university salary. His wife would maybe be a consultant for school meals, moonshining by selling low-carb home baked cakes and earning her wage attending a score of wealthy schools in the better parts of the capital. Their daughters would attend a decent high school nearby their home. And as every mortal under the hot tropical sun, Barack and his lovely wife Michelle would have to do their weekly shopping.

Now in Venezuela these days, doing your shopping means skipping and hopping from one supermarket to the other to get the things you need. And since the scarcity of everything from milk, meat and cheese to toilet paper and disinfectant has grown humongous, despite all efforts by would-be presidential colleague Nicolás Maduro to win that wretched “economic war” waged by an evil US government led by some white-skinned right-wing Republican president to destabilize socialist Venezuela, the scarcity and the screaming inflationary prices call for that proverbial extra mile to be run by the Obama’s (and everybody else who hasn’t connections). And off they rush in their blue 2009 Aveo in dire need of unavailable spare parts from one shop to the other, every Saturday, to look what they can get at the lowest price possible.

This week, a new plan was initiated at the order of Maduro’s government to regulate the shopping frenzy in the country. Now, it all depends on the last number of your ID to know on which days you are allowed to buy “regulated” goods, i.e. items that have effectively disappeared from the shelves – like milk, toilet paper and the like - but are now sold in a controlled way at subsidized prices. For professor Obama, the “1” at the end of his ID number (see picture) means that his shopping days are Mondays and Saturdays. Michelle, whose ID ends in “7”, gets Thursdays and Sundays. If the Obama’s want to keep Saturday as their shopping day, they will have to share that day with all other people showing 0’s through 5’s on their ID’s. That means that all the Saturday shopping would be done on Barack’s ID. Or, they can switch places during the week, meaning that Barack might take a Monday off from university, and go from shop to shop to see if there is any toilet paper. Michelle would then rearrange her schedule to go on Thursdays to look for milk, for example. Knowing that one half of all shoppers will storm the shops on Saturday and the other half on Sunday, the possibility is larger than life that everything will be sold out – no hay – by the time the Obama’s coughing Aveo finally finds a parking space at the shopping mall. It might give the Obama’s a better chance to get their shopping list done, if they do it during the week. Right?

Wrong. If only there were a regular flow of regulated items, this ID number system would be livable. But it isn’t. There is no way of knowing, except if you have insider information, WHEN or WHERE there will be rolls of toilet paper at the shops, for example. It could mean that professor Obama does take a Thursday off from his work, only to drive his poor Aveo into semi-retirement without having found a shop in the whole city in which he can get toilet paper. Same goes for poor Michelle, who has some disgruntled client having to rearrange their meeting because she might go on a Thursday in the hope of finding milk, frying oil, rice, maize meal – or toilet paper. And since Barack always takes the family car to his work, Michelle has to travel in a sweaty stuffed subway train with the airco broken down to reach some shops. I call it the food version of Russian roulette. Will he or she really get the things they looked for? Tune in next week to find out!

Or maybe the Obama’s could choose to become naughty citizens, like my wife and me, and many others I know who are sick of playing good citizens cheated by a rogue system of incompetent government members, corrupt insiders, bachaqueros or resellers, and bootleggers. For example, last Tuesday we went into a shop and saw – oh miracle! -  rolls and rolls of toilet paper and milk!  It felt like Christmas to us, really. Only problem, on Thursdays neither I nor my wife is allowed to buy those items. Wrong ID number! But since we were there, we tried anyhow. In Holland you say that you can always get “no” for an answer, but sometimes a “yes” might come your way. 

We loaded our shopping cart with overprized, non-regulated things and on top the regulated toilet rolls, two six-packs a person, and four packs of regulated powder milk. In front of us and behind us, shoppers were whispering. They all had the same problem – wrong number. None of them really could get those items in their carts on that particular day. But they tried. We tried. We picked a male cashier and let my wife’s charm loose on that young guy. Please, please, we haven’t had milk in weeks, and are totally out of toilet paper at home, she pleaded. The cashier wavered for some seconds, and then looked at our two ID’s. We got a No. It was either buckling under my wife’s irresistible charm or getting fired. Next to the cash registers, heaps and heaps of toilet rolls and bags of milk powder were waiting to be carted back to the shelves. Many tried, many didn’t make it. We neither. We felt like heroes, though. At least, we gave it a shot; we climbed that hill under heavy enemy fire, we slithered down, and as unsung heroes we will bear witness to the horrors of the Bolivarian Food War. 

Then, our eyes fell on some man doing his shopping too, at the other end of the supermarket, his cart groaning under an exaggerated load of Forbidden Goods. He was just one person, but by the quantity of paper rolls and powder milk bags, he appeared to do shopping for his whole family, grandparents and second cousins included. How could he? He could. By showing a collection of ID’s like some deck of cards to the cashier with a poker face, he effectively managed to buy everything and get his own private warehouse outside. We were astonished, as you can imagine. Enraged. My wife rushed back to our young cashier and told him what we had just seen. The young guy, ever so afraid of losing his job in times of low employment, played the game of the three monkeys – no hear, no see, no speak. We looked at each other. We had been naughty, but not naughty enough. Next time, so we told each other, we will borrow the ID’s of everyone we know, including my in-laws, and just go shopping on the day there is anything on the shelves we need. If we have to beat the system, we will!

But as born suckers, just like our poor professor Obama and his wife, we might not pull the trick as that certified stoned-faced bachaquero with his deck of ID cards. For to make it in today’s Venezuela, you have to be a bad-ass person, corrupt, reckless, without any consideration for your fellowman’s sorrows.  That way, you will always have the right number. Despite being completely wrong. It’s the world upside down, I agree completely with you. But what can you do?

Thanks for your reading. Please leave a comment behind or subscribe to my blog. Don’t miss it! Till next week!

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015

Hunger Diet

By Adriaan van Ginkel

 

The food shortage in Venezuela has finally reached our home. Since a couple of days, I feel physically weak. Normally being of sound health, I have my wife worried now. “You should go to a doctor”, she keeps telling me. But I don’t feel sick, really. Some weeks ago, eating less and less – as there is less and less (payable) food to be found – initially had brought me a nice side effect, i.e. I now fit into my suits and clothes I hadn’t worn in ages. No snacks anymore in order to save money. I try to eat my daily fruit so as to keep up my vitamins, as well as meals as healthy as they can be with fresh vegetables and salads. Junk food has disappeared from my diet since long for three reasons: 1) it is ridiculously expensive – check Venezuela’s ranking in the Big Mac Index; 2) it is junk that doesn’t feed you, basically, and 3) you can even ask yourself what the heck you’re eating! Plus, I hardly drink soda drinks anymore, too expensive really. Ice cold water with or without lime juice, coffee, tea or a beer once in a while will do. So, for a good while I felt lighter, leaner, meaner, looking better and my clothes fit! But these last couple of days, I have more and more trouble in getting up, going about and doing my daily routine. Now, the last thing I need in this country with its disastrous health service and lack of medicines is getting ill!

Yesterday, I realized that forcibly skipping one of two daily hot meals has me paying a toll: not enough protein intake. Since milk, meat and chicken have virtually disappeared from the shops, as I told you two weeks ago; fish is getting more and more expensive and harder to find, and even cheese, veggies and fruit are going through the roof in pricing - what I am experiencing now is undernourishment, no less than that. Vitamin pills are a thing of the past now. Sitting on the couch and typing this blog, while I’m keeping watch over two new-found kittens of no more than six weeks we’re busy finding a home for, has me feeling OK. But the moment I get up, start walking and doing things, I feel like an octogenarian grandpa.

My wife, who is a trained nutritionist, came to the same conclusion. My protein intake is less what my body asks for, making me feel weak and lose weight on a daily basis now. But there is no fresh meat available now, only processed meats of dubious quality which really should be avoided if you can. So today we will be busy finding some high-protein shake in the shops, but these too are now harder and harder to find. Apparently, I’m not the only one feeling like a truck ran over me. More and more people in Venezuela are now feeling the pinch of eating less and worse. Venezuela is becoming a country of undernourished people. And for those who can’t afford to buy a can of food supplement – I’m speaking of a majority - the outlook is bleak, especially when it comes to children. 

Yesterday I came across a supermarket bill of June 2012, almost three years ago. We were aghast to see what we were buying then, and at what prices. Everything we bought then costs TEN times as much now. And the items! Apparently we bought pears then, a distant memory now, like apples. The last time I made my renowned Dutch apple pie was two Christmases ago, with raisins and nuts soaked in rum. If I make that apple pie now, it would really cost ten times as much just to make it, if I can find apples and raisins of course. Till 2013, you still could find lots of items in the shops. Compared to the last “normal” year 2006 however the offer was already depleted. But now, things in Venezuela are looking more and more meager and grim. For the vegetarians and vegans among you here’s my message: don’t start cheering. The food supplements, vitamins and payable eggs and vegetables you need to maintain you healthy are absent – no hay. It’s a truly unhealthy panorama in Venezuela, nutritionally speaking. And apple pie? No hay, señor.

Without making any political statements, I think it’s a bloody shame that the country with the biggest proven oil reserves on this planet should be passing through this. I don’t see president Maduro getting leaner, quite the contrary. Same goes for head honcho’s of the opposition parties, by the way. Maduro and his entire government plus families keep looking well-nourished, meaning their tables are well-supplied. No “economic war” raging in the presidential palace or at the homes of the powerful. Calling himself a socialist, the hulky bulky president looks more and more like some fat-faced 18^th century crowned head with a handlebar moustache telling the hungry people they should eat cake. In fact, he was caught some time ago stating in public that Venezuelans were eating “too much” (quote!) and that it was causing food to be scarce (another quote!). Some socialism, you wouldn’t believe it if you weren’t here. 

I can state, here from my humble apartment in some corner in this country, that I don’t see people eat more and more, quite the contrary. If an item is available, it’s too expensive for most. If there’s a subsidized price tag to it, it’s hours and hours in a queue till it’s your turn and your get your item, should you be so lucky and it hasn’t run out before your turn – ¡no hay! It happened to me a couple of times, and yes, I have stood in a queue already for some soap and other things. Toilet paper? Grab a bread knife and saw a kitchen paper roll in three. You can try that at home. Sheer crisis magic!

So if Maduro and his team are squawking about people eating “too much”, maybe they mean the well-connected persons at the presidential dinner table stuffing their faces with goodies while people like me, the true working class who pay their taxes on time, go through the primary stages of malnutrition. Making some predictions on the fact that Maduro’s government seems to be living in total denial of what is happening in common Venezuelan homes at lunch and dinner time, the situation will worsen gradually. I have no doubt about that. And what are the chances of a change at the top, you might ask? Look at Cuba. 56 years already, right, a family living off a chicken weekly? There you go. Men will get accustomed to anything; the Castro’s and the Kim dynasty prove that day in day out. Hang a man from a tree, and wait for a couple of minutes, and you see how he’ll stop kicking. Sorry for this gruesome comparison, but it’s the way it is. 

Looking once more at the picture I put at the beginning of this blog, it represents a distant memory for me now. My wife and I love to cook, and she is a magician with whatever she can find to whip up a great meal. But even for kitchen magicians, times are becoming very meager here, almost war-like, and you depend more and more on your knowledge of the nutritional values of everything you can find. For me, watching a program on the gourmet channel on TV has become a torture, while in the good ol’ days of pears, apples and raisins, I loved it. We are eating healthier in a certain sense, free of yummy things and cut down to the essential stuff. But lacking vital ingredients like proteins, for which you now have to stand in a queue for hours to get them (and even that doesn’t give you enough to feed yourself well - what do you do with ONE poor meager chicken on a weekly basis?), we are crossing a certain threshold at this very moment. 

The blue-eyed kittens – no more than six weeks old – have eaten, been bathed and purged of parasites, and are free of fleas. Abandoned, dumped by some wretched person without a conscience and found by me this morning on the parking lot, they are happy and sound asleep, as I write. More and more people don’t have money to feed their pets anymore and they are abandoned – read kicked out - in an increasing rate to a sometimes horrible fate. With us, the kittens are safe now. We are busy finding them kind and loving homes, like we managed for so many before those two. For them, the future has become a bit more secure now. Looking at those furry little creatures, I sense that there is a lot of good to do here. I will be OK in no time, no doubt about it. As long as our own pets are well-fed, because they bear no blame in this man-made disaster. And then I’ll redouble my efforts in making paradise within this murky living hell that has become Venezuela. 

Thanks for your reading. Please leave a comment behind or subscribe to my blog. Don’t miss it! Till next week!

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015

Exorcizing A Country

By Adriaan van Ginkel

Although today’s urban culture world-wide is slowly but surely pushing Christianity into a back seat – in a way saying that two thousand years predominance have been enough and it’s now the turn of other creeds or anti-creeds to sit in front – its roots are still deeply embedded in Latin America. Even in Brazil, where so many religions and creeds live side by side, Christianity still is the common denominator. In santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion combining Yoruba and other African deities with Catholic and home-spun beliefs and traditions, only the very bold followers will shove away Christianity completely – and they are a total minority. Latin America is probably the most heterogenic continent on this planet, not only ethnically speaking, but also in matters of religion and beliefs. Here, you call yourself an atheist and still believe in spirits and/or follow Satanism, or follower of Ché

Guevara and Pope Francis at the same time. It’s common here to see people burn a candle in front of an image of the Venezuelan goddess María Lionza, say a prayer and then attend Mass like any other religious Catholic with a rosary in their hands. Religious freedom is a very holy thing to specifically Venezuelans, and open fanatical shows of religious fervor, like nailing yourself to a cross like on the Philippines during Easter, or shunning non-believers just for the sake of it, are not approved of at all.

If anything, Venezuelans show themselves very tolerant towards others and of course, themselves. Here, church bells don’t ring on Sundays, in a clear statement that the Catholic Church doesn’t rule the country anymore since the 19^th century. In small towns and villages, it is sometimes hard to find a Catholic church or chapel. Other creeds have put their marks on the streets, like the wildly proliferating Evangelical churches blown over from the Evil Empire of the North (= US) or Brazil. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses too are harvesting enough souls to fill their own temples. Local traditional creeds are everywhere, concentrated on animism and showing a mix of Catholic, African and Amerindian elements. The cult of María Lionza that I mentioned earlier, showing all three elements, is so important that it can even be found in the US nowadays and all over the Caribbean. Santería (left), which I mentioned above, was brought over by Cubans and Dominicans and has grown wildly popular in urban circles these last years. Look for white-clad persons on the streets, from head to toe. There they are. It is in fact Yoruba religion masked as Catholic devotion which evolved as African slaves in times past tried to practice their creed without waking up the Inquisition. African divinities like Ochún and Eleggua bear the names and appearances of Catholic saints like some kind of avatar, that of St. Barbara being the most important one. You see people here with a statue of this particular saint on their desk or in their car, and if you also spot the tell-tale yellow-and-green bracelet on their wrist, you know you have a santero in front of you. No problem, he or she is not going to bite you or cast a spell. Sadly for these people, their santería has been connected to bloody animal sacrifices, giving this “good” creed a certain degree of disrepute. Now, the “baddies” among them, or paleros, roam in cemeteries, stealing skulls and bones from the graves and using them in very dark rituals invoking the dead to do bad things to people they want to harm.  If you believe in the spiritual world or in these creeds, you will agree that these are no people to mess around with.

By the way – I tried to put a picture of a palero altar with skull and purple candles in this text block for your information, but it wouldn’t let itself be put where I wanted it. Every time I tried, it popped back to page two. I tried it with a similar picture, same story. Could it be there IS something in this whole story the rational mind cannot explain? My wife told me, don’t try. So I won’t. You google it and find out how these contraptions look like. 

Many, even born and bred Venezuelans, mix up santería with spiritism. Maybe at this point, you will also stop reading for a sec or two and try to figure out this wildly colored picture. Read on, because understanding this topic will bring you a giant step forward towards understanding what is going on in the Caribbean. There is a difference between the non-Catholic devotion of Catholic saints, santería, and the belief in the goddess, or “queen” María Lionza, who rules over a realm of spirits good and evil. Don’t mix the two up. La Reina, the queen, is one of three ruler spirits in what we might call a heavenly triad called The Three Powers (las tres potencias), or more commonly, corte celestial. Her triad mates are Negro Primero, an Afro Caribbean hero of the Independence Wars, and Guaicaipuro, a Carib Indian chieftain who fought against the Spanish conquistador centuries ago. There are cortes of all sizes and colors, even that of dead presidents and – believe it or not - Vikings. Google it if you don’t believe me! Even Christ is put in some high and powerful corte. There is even a corte made up of criminals, the corte malandra, in which dead assassins and burglars (above) will be revered and asked for their heavenly intervention against, let’s say, still living and killing criminals, you name it. Or they are invoked by those same hoodlums who want to clean out your apartment with no harm done.

You may laugh at it or find this ridiculous. But it’s the spiritual dust that blows over entire countries, among them Venezuela of course. Would you still be laughing if you found out that your own government – I am talking specifically about the Chavist one – brings out banknotes (left) with the heavenly triad stamped on in, surrounded by all kinds of weird stars and symbols? Spiritist money, no less! Spiritism, santería and all kinds of lesser and maybe darker creeds can be found up the top, in ministries and probably even in the presidential palace. It is widely known that Chávez was a spiritist himself, and Maduro shows all the signs of believing in something that is not orthodox at all, either.

And on an even broader scale, María Lionza is found smack in the middle of

Caracas, on a monumental scale (see picture), placed by an old follower in the 1950’s, dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Now if that doesn’t show the importance of those creeds in Venezuela….

Chavism as a relative newcomer on the spiritual scene cannot be overlooked. Despite being a political stream, it can also be viewed as a creed at the same time, centered on the Comandante Eterno Hugo Chávez. He is placed in the corte presidencial by the spiritists, you probably guessed it. In fact he ranks slightly below the father of the fatherland Simon Bolívar. But there are signs that Chávez is getting a niche of his own, with makeshift chapels showing his effigy surrounded by candles.  It explains in a great deal the puzzling 20% of the Venezuelans still believing - despite the economic and social disaster torturing the country - that following a dead president and his ideas is the right road. Being a Chavist is more than a political statement. Chavism is a credo, a statement of faith that will outlast its political grip on the country.  

But still, but still… on Holy Week or Semana Santa, countless of Venezuelans will flock to the Catholic places of worship to commemorate the week when according to the Bible, Jesus Christ was imprisoned, flogged and crucified, to resurrect on Easter Sunday. Because, despite the carnival of creeds I tried to describe to you, Venezuelans are basically Catholics or Christians, if not Jews or Muslims, of course. So, they will combine and mix all kinds of creeds to finally come to their own personal one, custom-made. Some will sacrifice black cats and dogs in santero ceremonies, but virtually every one of them will still state that he or she is Catholic or Christian. And this, my dear reader, you will encounter over the whole Hispanic Caribbean up to the US and down to Colombia. Stay broadminded, or stay out if you can’t stand it.

The Semana Santa started with Palm Sunday which was last Sunday. On

Monday and Tuesday, preparations for the Easter celebrations were feverishly made. No pagan Easter eggs or bunnies, forget those. Catholic traditions are followed. Yesterday, Wednesday, was the day of the big procession of the Nazareno, or the effigy of Christ flogged and bearing his cross. It’s done all over the country, with the statue sometimes weighing a ton or two born on the streets by an army of penitents, or people who pay for their sins by doing this.

In Caracas, a very particular Nazareno, that of the church of San Pablo, has become iconic. Many years ago, a scurvy epidemic was hitting Caracas. During the Easter procession in Caracas, the statue got entwined in a lemon tree, which was seen as a sign from heaven. People started eating the lemons and became cured. Don’t laugh, because people here believe it was a miracle. Since then,

the procession of the Nazareno de San Pablo through the old center of Caracas became a national Easter attraction, drawing thousands and thousands of faithful from all over the country. I was there some years ago. The sea of people was immense and the religious mood was intense. Most people who attend had prayed to the Christ bearing his cross, got their prayers answered and flock on that Wednesday to the procession dressed in purple. The procession, which lasts for hours and ends at night, starts and ends with a Holy Mass attended by thousands. 

In all previous years, the numbers of candles big and small plus all the other Catholic paraphernalia like rosaries, crucifixes and effigies of saints (including that of St. Barbara) were enormous during this period. But this year, reports came in of an enormous downfall. Candles were scarce and expensive due to a national shortage of paraffin. Rosaries and other religious objects are normally imported, but this year they became scarce and expensive thanks to the same evil befalling meat, milk and toilet paper – there is almost no money for importations. The imported fabric from which the purple tunics of penitents are made, have made these garments very expensive, almost unpayable for the humble faithful. One lady stated in an interview some days ago that paying 2,000 bolivars for her purple garment, a piece of clothing she might wear only once, that amount being maybe half her monthly salary, is her way of paying her penitence, and that is why she will buy it. For non-Catholics this may sound ridiculous, but such is the faith of so many Venezuelans that they keep believing that the crisis hitting their country in an unprecedented way, will one day be solved with the help of Heaven. Lacking all other hope, this is the only hope that keeps Venezuelans marching on through the scarcity of everything which now has reached critical levels.

Maybe in a desperate but massive attempt to exorcize Venezuela from all

evils that have fallen upon this country, religiosity has risen, not only within the mainstream faiths, but also in the religious fringe that I have described earlier. The people filling the streets honoring the Christ bearing his cross everywhere in Venezuela on Holy Wednesday each Easter, and specially this one, show the faith in that their country will come out of the horrible crisis that is causing children to lack milk and go to bed without supper. In a peaceful way, with no violence or bloodshed. The Nazareno of San Pablo (above and at the beginning), besides having the name of being miraculous, has a special characteristic: the centuries-old wooden statue is visibly bending more and more to the cross, like it is curving to its weight. Still, the statue stands strong, showing us that despite all the pressure and the weight, we should stand strong and not give in to anything that might push us in the wrong way.

Realizing this has made me understand why Venezuela is still holding on to a situation that would have caused violence in other regions. Red meat is GONE from the butcher shops, as is chicken. The scarcity has increased more and more, and the government, instead of addressing the problem, is mounting an enormous propaganda campaign against US president Obama freezing the US$ bank accounts of a bunch of corrupt Venezuelan generals and officials. A campaign that is followed only by Venezuelans, in fact, because the rest of the world doesn’t give a hoot about it. So, with the rest of the planet turning their backs on Venezuela, it is religion and faith that hold this country together. No matter the individual religion or creed.  

Thanks for your reading. Please leave a comment behind or subscribe to my blog. You will then have a message in your inbox every time a new blog is published. Don’t miss it! Have a great Easter weekend and till next week!

© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015