Break time

I had scheduled long a go a break for this July to attend to some family obligations.  Thus I will be out of the country through July.  I am not planning to follow closely what happens inside Venezuela, regardless the recent decrepitude of Chavez.  So, what's wrong with this picture?

For those who are long time readers of this blog you know that historically the bases are always covered.  That is, my main hobby being reading boring historical books and memoirs (currently reading Bismarck, next on deck Cleopatra and just finished Polk) I try to have a sense for historical context and accuracy through my posts.  Thus, for me, missing the bicentennial of my birth country should be a no-no.  After all I lived in the US for its bicentennial (of the constitution, watching tall ships in Manhattan) and somehow I connected, making then the US my adopted country; and of course 1989 was an important commemoration for me, celebrating the best book on the French revolution: "Citizens" by Simon Schama while not celebrating at all the revolutionary carnage that started in 1789.

So how is it possible that I scheduled my departure before July 5th?  Because the country about to celebrate its bicentennial is not mine anymore.  I have been rejected by the chavista hordes who only want from Venezuela free-bees, and I have been alienated by the opposition who is unable to find a response to the take over of the country historical record, neither able to follow chavismo for July 5th nor able to take a stand and do its own celebrations.  Few seem to care really about our past.

While all of Latin America has been celebrating its bicentennial by opening new museums, building magnificent avenues, offering new hospitals, in Venezuela the only thing the regime is able to give us is white washed walls and yellow washed road sides.  April 19 last year was such a fiasco that I simply could not endure the promised embarrassment for this year.  Believe it or not, but our mediocrity as a nation has become oppressive for me.

But there is also another reason. I am really tired of chavismo.  I am perhaps even more tired of the opposition who scores one point after missing ten.  I am too bitter in my writing lately and I need to take some distance.  I think it is OK because the country is fucked up, because what is happening right now could be sort or predicted, the only difference being that Chavez sickness is speeding up the end. As a long time Cassandra I am being finally vindicated and yet I could not care less anymore, kind of like Cassandra, watching Troy burning while waiting quietly for her captors.

In other words it does not matter what happens to Chavez now, the dices are rolling and obsessing about it brings no dividend for people like me who have lost a decade of our lives trying to merely survive.  When you now that you are tonight's dinner, do you care how you will be fixed up?

Thus expect little posting through July though there might be rainy days where out of habit I might write, and hopefully not about Venezuela.  But if you want to keep discussing Chavez sickness gossip and send him further devil's eye, count me out until August.