Lisa's Lemons for a New Venezuela

Last Thursday, as Nicolas Maduro was being inaugurated to six more years as Venezuela’s president, I was busy climbing up and down my many lemon trees with friend Fabi, collecting scratches galore, along with 120 pounds of bright yellow fruit. We filled two burlap sacks and I glowed knowing that their sale would provide for necessary items we can neither grow nor barter: oil, salt, flour, toilet paper.

I never cease to be amazed at the beauty of what nature and I working together can produce. And I never cease to be amazed at the ugliness of what self-interest in Venezuelan politics can produce. Lemons - bitterness, beauty, thorns and all, seemed a fitting image to accompany this particular inauguration day.

In our Venezuela of the past, lemons were used to make lemonade, to squeeze over fried fish, to give a twist to a rum and coke. All the ingredients needed for those combos are long gone now.

With lemons seeming superfluous now, Ledys and I decided to allow ourselves to sell them, our first fruit sale in two decades of planting trees. All the other fruit we grow – mangoes, avocados, oranges, guavas, etc - thousands of pounds yearly – is given away to neighbors in ourd small village of Palo Verde. Their calories help to fill in the missing blanks.

After we dropped off the two sacks of lemons at the mega-cooperative CECOSESOLA (one of the few remaining projects in Venezuela that actually works, very well) we were given a receipt for Bss 21,800. About $20. 

We had to wait until the next day to collect the lemon payment, which made us a bit anxious. With inflation now pegged at two million percent annually, prices can double in two to three days (or two hours). When we finally received the funds - in cash, in a sack - it felt like we had won the lottery. And, we knew we had to spend it fast.

As we crossed the city from end to end end in search of open stores and affordable prices, we discovered that few vendors would accept our Bss 10 bills. By next week - they told us - those bills will be obsolete. After two days of supply-hunting, the sum of our treasures fit into one small Trader Joe’s tote bag. Still, with my tote-sized supplies for a month, I felt like a queen, crowned by my lemons. 

For his new term of presidency that began on my lemon-picking day, Maduro received a sash. But perhaps a crown of lemons would have been more fitting.

Lemons are both beautiful and bitter. To those who believe that some day Maduro will resurrect Chavez’s dream of 21st socialism, it would be a bright beautiful golden crown. They remember the free doctors on almost every corner, the classrooms bursting with students - of all ages - day and night, the cheap and abundant food, the two million free houses. The seemingly indestructible hope of a people who have been excluded for generations, upon suddenly being included. Who doesn’t want to hold on to that dream?

To the two or three million Venezuelans who cast their vote with their (tired) feet – some literally walking to Colombia and beyond - Maduro’s lemon crown is a bitter one. To those who struggle in vain to find enough food for their families on a $6 minimum wage, or who furtively search through garbage bags at night, it is a crown of thorns. To those who believed that votes could bring about change - but whose candidates were nixed from the presidential race – this is a crown not to be honored.

To China and Russia who hoist Venezuela up as a counterweight to US interests in Latin America, Maduro’s crown is a glorious one. They promise to defend it to the bitter end (encouraged by all that fabulous oil and gold). To the Trump Administration, Maduro is not fit to wear any crown. They are desperately trying to find someone – anyone – to wear it. 

Yesterday I went to the procession of Barquisimeto's virgin, the Divina Pastora, along with two million others. January is citrus month in Venezuela (yeah lemons!). Each year the city buys truckloads of citrus fruit to throw into the thirsty crowd. Last year it was tangerines. Several hundred of them, however, ended up not in the mouths of devote, but on the pristine uniforms of the Military High Command, as they prepared to take their seats on a viewing platform. The top brass quickly exited, all that delicious tangerine juice flowing down their dress whites.

This year the fruit tossed to the crowd was oranges, and the target of all that citrus was our state governor, who bears the double X of being both a military officer and a politician. The wrath of so citizens coming face-to-face with those they perceive to be responsible for this disaster was a fuse. The power of numbers and safety of anonymity lit the match. The spontaneous unleashing of citrus power was a sight to be seen!

Part of me wanted to collect every lemon remaining on my trees to help fuel this citrus revolution. Lemon juice would definitely be the best collateral damage one could hope for in a political sea change here. But then again, I’m not sure who would would be the kingmaker and who would get the new crown.

So, I think I’ll keep the rest of the lemons on my trees, and dispense them, poco a poco. They might not be needed for lemonade or Cuba libres, but they are a great stand-in for deodorant or toothpaste, both impossible to find. Likewise, as disinfectant or cleanser, or with baking soda, a great criollo alka selzer. And they help keep colds abay and digestion chugging along.

So, I’ll leave my lemons as a my mini contribution to the healing of our nation, in hopes that maybe we’ll gain the strength – someday - to dig ourselves out of this hole. And start to build afresh. I guess I”m more of a bottom-up than top-down person anyway.

But, boy, a spontaneous citrus revolution definitely sounds like more fun.