We buried my friend Chuy last Sunday. The kids from Conuco Colibri worked with extra entrega to finish our gardening tasks early – planting corn and building a hugelkultur this week– so that we could attend the funeral together.

I met Chuy 17 years ago when I was rather new to my rural community of Palo Verde. I was teaching a group of kids to play the cuatro. 

Venezuela has given me one of the greatest gifts of my life: music - via this lively, little four-stringed instrument. I have been working to to repay this debt of life by teaching others play it. Now, thirty years - and counting - of teaching, that debt is far from being paid.

But of the hundreds of young people that I have taught to play– Chuy was unique. That is because Chuy was blind.

At the time, two of my children were playing in the El Sistema Youth Orchestra, directed by their friend – teenager Gustavo Dudamel. In the violin section, my daughter Maia often sat next to Paola, a blind fellow violinist. At their concerts, Maia would tap Paola’s elbow to indicate when the next piece was about to begin, or when to rise for the inevitable standing ovation. I always wondered how Paola kept up with the others.

Chuy showed me how. He not only kept up, he led our little cuatro class. He practiced more than anyone, he listened more deeply to the nuances, he imbued more spirit into his strumming. As I placed my hands over his to guide him to learn new chords, a deep connection was forged.

Chuy and I and the other young musicians of Palo Verde played together for many lively Christmas seasons, tromping from mud house to mud house at 5 in the morning and at 8 at night, nine days in a row, playing our cuatros and tambores, drinking hot chocolate together, carrying out the centuries-old tradition of aguinaldos.

In 2004/5 I was absent from Venezuela for nine months, accompanying Maia in her last year of high school in New York. I returned to Venezuela late that spring, with a delegation in tow. It was one of dozens of groups that I brought to Venezuela to see first-hand the hopeful changes taking place in my adopted nation.

As our bus stopped for a drink in the plaza of nearby Sanare, I saw from the window of the bus as a rickety jeep pulled up to the plaza. Suddenly, I recognized the driver. It was Chuy. Chuy? Driving??

My partner Ledys raced out to bring Chuy into the bus. We embraced and with great emotion, Chuy told me and the delegation participants how he had been to Cuba twice over the past six months, and had free eye surgery that restored his sight. Blinded by diabetes as a teenager, now - some eight years later - he was gifted again with sight.

Chuy told me that he had recently seen me on tv, when I had been on Chavez’s weekly Alo Presidente shows. His mom had commented Chuy, that’s Lisa!

No it’s not! he responded. But then: well, actually I’ve never really seen Lisa.

For the next ten years I teased Chuy that he never imagined how beautiful I really was during his blind years of our friendship.

From then on, whenever I brought a delegation to Venezuela, I would invite Chuy to speak to them. His story was such a concrete example of the almost miraculous changes in the lives of Venezuelans, especially those living on the margins, like in my community.

I showed them the dozens of free new houses in my community, funded by the government. I showed them the lovely new free clinics that sprouted up in just about every barrios and village (and took several of them to be treated there themselves).

 I took them to classes where old and young who had been excluded from schools were proudly learning.

But it was Chuy’s story that most touched the heart. And somehow proved that, in spite of the massive media smear campaign against Chavez, those Venezuelans who had been marginalized , forgotten, relegated for decades, suddenly felt that they were empowered citizens, with full lives, healthy bodies, wide-open futures.

Even though Chuy was now a full-visioned person, he never stopped identifying with those who had no sight. He continued to run a radio show with the local association of the blind, attended their meetings and helped support their sale of crafts from his little store. Chuy radiated the solidarity and love of others that is deeply part of the Venezuelan character.

Early on Sunday afternoon, I walked alongside Chuy for the last time through the streets of Palo Verde that he and I had filled with song so many times. Along his coffin as well walked our kids from Conuco Colibri, and the whole village of Palo Verde. Chuy was beloved, and everyone had their own story.

We walked slowly, and sang the old familiar songs. No one wanted to hurry. No one wanted that street to be emptied of Chuy’s cheerful presence.

As the funeral procession approached the lush spring that marks the end of our village, Chuy’s coffin was loaded on a car for the remaining ride to the Sanare cemetary. Everyone - young and old, hopped on flatbed trucks, on top of jeeps and pick ups, squeezing in for the ride to his burial.

Only my partner Ledys and I turned around, and headed back to our little farm, at the far other end of the village. We walked slowly, remembering Chuy. We missed him so much, already.

In that backwards walk I felt the backwards tide of my adopted nation. Chuy’s sight had been restored by the concrete achievements in Venezuela over the past decade and a half. But now Chuy’s eyes had been closed forever as those achievements slip away. 

Our backwards journey as a nation meant that Chuy had been unable to find his medications regularly over the past two years due to massive scarcity of even the most basic medications. He had been unable to follow the most basic diet for a diabetic in that same time frame. 

My heart aches for Chuy. My heart aches for the dreams we held so close. My heart aches for what is to come.

While some raise molotov cocktails ,guns and shields to try to defend or challenge this stark status quo, I’ll continue to raise up my weapons of choice in this necessary battle to forge a new Venezuela. A hoe. A shovel. And a cuatro.