The Gringa Can't Read: Reflections from Venezuela

Confession: Unlike most English teachers, I struggle to read even the most riveting novel cover to cover. I find myself so frequently distracted by everything around me, it’s hard to commit. I read news because I believe it is a responsibility. I read poetry because it gives me intermittent shocks of illumination. But I read spaces, faces, and sounds because they move me to a deeper evolution of myself. Graffiti art, river-side philosophy, and bell chimes within a song are my favorite stories to read. Reading a good book, while undeniably enjoyable, is a conscious and deliberate act, yet reading a city for example, happens organically as you are defining a new “home” for yourself.
Reading is all about interaction-- I never hesitate to crouch down in the middle of the street to pick up a hand-written scrap of paper. Never have I passed a wall without scanning it for images, spray-paint proclamations of rebellion, love, or just mindless vulgarities. I simply must investigate a shred of purple something tucked into a crack in the sidewalk. Innate curiosity? Yes. But I think at the root of it is a genuine desire to build relationships with my surroundings. You can look at a map and understand a city’s layout but if you want to feel its pulse—if you want a conversation with the city, you will need to wander aimlessly, read it block by block, again and again. Stop to read every faded flyer pinned on lamp posts and every pothole full of murky water reflecting the cloud-laced pink sky. The stories abound.
In Maracaibo many protesters have been “trancando” or closing off the roads, collecting everything from street signs, old sofas, broken appliances, gutted cars, bags of trash, tires, tree branches, rocks, and wires to inhibit movement in and around the city. Some of these barriers are lit on fire and some are guarded and tended to. As the day goes on, the police clear the debris to the sides of the roads where they can. When I do walk, I stick to the three main roads considered “more secure.” I maintain a quick pace, stay away from the edge of the road, and now, keep an eye out for government-backed biker gangs. As a result I haven’t been able to read this space in the way I normally would. Wandering is too dangerous. But today, as I walked with a coworker down the avenue, I couldn’t bear to just pass by these debris piles one more time so I started collecting some of the bits and pieces I found en route. It was a gallery of stories. Among them 3 battered photographs, one of a smiling young woman on a couch. The notation on the back said 1997, Isla Margarita. “I’ve just cut my hair for the first time in 15 years.” Another photo showed a tall, dark, middle-aged man at a shipyard smiling, alone, and the last photo was of an empty street—no people, no cars, no identifiable focal point, a mystery. There was a “branch” from a fake plant, a flattened box of matches, and scattered, charred pages of books—one in Spanish, another in German.
Maracaibo has been a difficult city to read. I am told to be afraid again and again. I’m told to walk quickly, or better yet, not walk outside at all for my safety. Behind the walls of my pristine white apartment box within a box of many others I sometimes hear gunshots. I hear banging pots. I hear people chanting. I hear silence. The sounds surround me but still, they are out there and I am in here. I can’t get too close so I open my tiny bedroom window in my 7th floor tower, close my eyes and try to listen closer.
Emotions accumulate like the debris in the street, but where do I put them? How do I overcome them? I have lived in Maracaibo for only a little over a month, so I feel guilty for feeling what I feel and sharing these emotions. Does a gringa, especially a recently-arrived gringa, have a right to speak—to react to the injustice the Venezuelan people are fighting here? Do I have a right to feel angry, hysterical, hopeless, or heartbroken throughout the course of a day? Am I entitled to my sentiments infiltrating my daily interactions or lack there of? At times, I want to scream. And I think of the protests—the people out there, being brutalized in the streets after days of marching. I imagine they want to scream or cry for reasons beyond my comprehension. They have a reason and a right to be upset. Do we all?
I voraciously consume every video, every photograph, every news story I come across on Facebook and Twitter, day and night. I put all of those stories in my head in chronological order and I can hear the voices in my sleep--shaking with determination, passion, fear and sometimes I cry, sitting in silence. I’m a gringa in Venezuela who hates sitting in silence. I hate being a bystander. I hear, “relax Kali, this is not your battle.” How can something that evokes such a strong emotional response in me NOT be my battle too? No, I am not Venezuelan but my own national identity does not define me. My identity has been shaped by multiple countries which include but are not limited to the country in which I was born. I have been raised by people (origin/age/education irrelevant) who inspire me. I’ve been moved by the places which wrapped around me profoundly. My loyalty lies with all of them. And for this same reason my loyalty also now lies with Maracaibo and Venezuela…Although our “conversations” have been limited in my short time here, I am awestruck by the unity and determination I witness daily among the people in their fight for peace, justice, and representation. They have influenced me intensely in this short period of time.
The other day I spoke with a dear friend in Ecuador. We talked about why internalization without release is so destructive. I shared my frustration of being a witness and a bystander in this crisis, the feeling of absurdity while sunbathing by a swimming pool when people are out in the street fighting for their lives. She told me, “Kali—Just start creating. Make something.”
So I release in my way, cycling out what emotional debris gathers around these spaces. I vow to bring forth not just take in and in doing so, honor those bringing about change, by being one more person creating something rather than tearing it apart.