Getting Gas in Venezuela: A total body workout

After 72 unsuccessful hours in search of gasoline, I wanted to cry. Adding to no cooking gas, no electricity, no water, no internet, no cash, no way out of the country, this no gas was the last straw. How to get food supplies to our rural home?

But instead, I laughed. I grabbed Venezuela’s powerful secret weapon: our highly refined art of echando broma. Nothing and no one is spared the non-stop, no-holds-barred, good-natured teasing that we heap on everyone and everything that crosses our path. If you ever wonder how Venezuelans are surviving, that’s our secret.

I suddenly realized, that while a three day unsuccessful quest for gasoline is not for the faint of heart, it’s actually fantastic for the heart. Look, in my former life I had to go to the gym to keep my EKG looking dandy. Now, I just need to try go get a tank of gas, and same results! The Gas Line Workout is the ultimate cardio. Check it out.

At midnight before our big day (we get the privilege of trying too get gas once a week, via a complex national schedule corresponding to the last number on one’s license plate), my partner and I push our massive old jeep into line. Needing rest before the marathon, we lay our heads down on tattered plastic upholstery, lulled to sleep by gas fumes siphoned from surrounding cars (to maximizing your jackpot if you get lucky) Visions of a full tank dance in our heads.

At precisely 9:13 am or 11:41 am, or whenever troops arrive, the gas station opens and the race - or crawl – is on! Maybe I’m imagining this, but every road leading to a gas station in Barquisimeto seem to be on an uphill grade. Better for my heart, right?

Since the line barely inches, you get the privilege of using all your muscles to push your car forward, as momentum never happens. Anyway, that would be cheating. Heart, lungs, shoulders, arms, legs, all pumping at once!

Ten hours into pushing, you feel so healthy! But, wait! This workout is also great for your emotional health. You get to make new friends! Pushing each other’s cars, sharing batteries, hudding on tailgates over midnight scary stories of endless gas lines is the total bonding experience.

Making new friends is important since Venezuela’s complex curfew code makes it impossible to visit old friends. You might be stopped by cops and spend 8 hours at the police station, or have to buy them a 2-liter Pepsi (depending on their mood ). Calling friends is an option, but poor cell coverage barely lets you say hello! Anyway, your cell is usually dead from nightly power outages. Thus, you savor every moment with these new found friends.

You also get to make enemies! Not my normal relational mode. But, after not budging for 20 hours, then noticing cars cutting in front by handing a $20 bill to the military officers charged with “guarding” the lines, you understand the concept of enemy. Upon discovery, I marched up to lodge my complaint with a sergeant, certain that he would delight in my suggestions. I was swiftly pulled back by my partner, mid-sentence - reminding me that two protesters downed in one week was enough.

This gas-line workout also does wonders for expanding the mind, into areas such as, say – economics and chemistry. Around Hour 30, you wonder just why you are sitting here anyway. Wait, doesn’t Venezuela have the world’s largest petroleum reserves? Then your hazy brain remembers that transforming petroleum to gasoline requires chemicals that, somehow, Venezuela never learned produce. The next ten hours are spent designing a plan to diversify Venezuela’s economy.

Just so you don't concentrate on losing three days of your life, you can do crafts between pushing. I was able to knit the world's longest baby blanket by day  two! (Good that my grandson-to-be is in the 90th percentile!)

Around Hour 40 you think about geography. Now, how does it make sense to get gasoline that traveled around the world by ship from Iran so that you can go from Point A, to Point B within your small state? Hmm, Greta would not like this.

On the other hand, Trump must be gloating that his sanctions caused these lines, a brilliant maneuver to topple Maduro. Last time I checked, though, Maduro was happy in his palace. I, for one, am too exhausted after 60 hours in line to even hold up a protest sign, much less conjure the energy to dodge bullets at a march. And convincing the military to turn sides on the same person who just increased their salaries about a million percent via this bottomless corruption pit, is a long shot. I fill the next 10 hours devising my escape route so I can vote in November.

When finally within striking distance of the gas station, police swoop in shouting gas ran out! It is then that I have an epiphany. I have devised the ultimate solution to Venezuela’s economic crisis!

Ok, so Venezuela no longer produces oil due to neglect, nor sells it because of sanctions, nor hosts tourists at our pristine beaches since they are now black with oil spills, nor at Angel Falls since all the mercury poured into the rivers to eke out gold to pay for the imported gasoline is drying it up anyway.

But, hey, Venezuela can become the new Global Pandemic Tourism Mecca! Think of all the dollars!

To begin with, tourists don’t even need to risk airplane travel. The only way into the country is on foot, an adventure itself through Colombian drug gang territory. But then, you can personally experience the Gas Line Workout, from the seat of a classic 1960’s socially distanced car. Think of all the benefits for your physical, mental and emotional health!

And when you finally do get home, stuck again inside your four walls, you will say, with a sincere sigh: there’s no place like home.

Meanwhile, I’m ditching my car and hitching a ride.

COVID’s Cover for a Collapsing Venezuela

For Sebastian, 7 and Christian, 15, the sudden decree of Venezuela’s COVID-19 quarantine sucked. It was ordered just as their single mom, who works as a maid in another town, was heading home with food. The order included a halt to all inter-municipal travel. La Gorda was stuck.  

Almost three months into their mother-less lives, the brothers are a well-rehearsed solo team in their tiny, tidy adobe home. Cristian awakes at 1am on Saturdays to get in line at the local coop. Sometimes he is able to buy rice, flour and oil. Sebastian sweeps the dirt floor and makes arepas when there is still corn flour. Otherwise, he awaits his brother with a pot of boiled green mangoes.

Their mutual love and respect both fills and breaks my heart. I watch through the bamboo fence as they race to get one of the rare calls from their mom, when cell lines open momentarily. Often, by the time they get to their aunt’s phone, the call has dropped.

I resonate with the disappointed look in their eyes. I have been unable to talk to my own kids for weeks, and messages come only middle of the night. With cell phone coverage dimmer by the day, and internet only available in the wee morning hours, we rise by 4 am to maintain a sliver of contact with the outside world.

What was bad timing for Christian and Sebastan has been sheer gift for Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. The COVID crisis hit precisely when the nation was grinding to a halt and the population’s patience was at breaking point. Gasoline – the latest in the long line of severe shortages of basic necessities – had all but disappeared.

Since Venezuela sits atop the world’s biggest pot of petroleum, this is quite an achievement. But it has been a team effort. Team 1, the Venezuelan government, has plundered its own oil industry for two decades to fund social programs and appease the military. Team 2 -Donald Trump and company - has pounded brutal sanctiones on Venezuelan, further bringing its oil industry to its knees.

As lack of transportation began to break food supply chains, tempers were heating up. And then, COVID -19 arrived, at a most convenient time for Maduro. Before any cases were detected, the government ordered a rigid quarantine and curfew. Poof, social explosion deterred.

Without doubt, the government’s swift action saved lives. Its early mandate of closures of borders, flights, schools and businesses slowed the virus’s spread. (Although, as Latin America becomes COVID’s new hot spot, let’s hope that holds.) But, the crisis also provided the perfect cover to keep an angering population off the streets.

To add to the government’s good luck, as gasoline was running out, the Rambo Boys arrived. The recent Bay of Piglets, consisted of a tiny group of U.S., Colombian and Venezuelan mercenaries landing on Venezuela’s shores and straight into the arms of Maduro’s military. Funded partially by Juan Guaido’s team, the almost comical “invasion” was orchestrated by a former US Green Beret, who claimed responsibility for the fiasco, while sitting the action out in his Florida living room. Maduro’s mantra that all of Venezuela’s problems are made in the USA gained a lot of ground that day.

One of the unlucky boats of self-appointed liberators ran out of gas close to shore (confirming that God does have a sense of humor) and washed up to the town of Chuao. I happen to have visited this charming coastal town several times and can tell you that it was precisely THE most wrong place to land. The Afro-Venezuelan fishermen and cacao farmers who had been showered with concrete love by Chavez in the form of new homes, school, clinic, and library, had no problem rounding up the Rambo Boys with their boats’ ropes. Formerly invisible to previous governments, Chuao will remain faithful to the Bolivarian project for some time, no matter how completely that project unravels.

Last week President Maduro announced the extension of the quarantine for another month. Christian is too busy to complain. After breakfast he tidies his kitchen - half of his one-room house -stacking recycled mayonnaise jars with corn flour and black beans on shelves he made. His prize quarantine accomplishment is the new chicken coop he built from adobe and bamboo. His brood has gone from 2 to 13 chicks in the time his mom has been gone. That will please her.

In the afternoons Christian sits in the shade of the mango tree to do his homework. He worries how he will keep up his top grades with no computer or smart phone to research distance-mandated projects.

Recently I asked Christian through the fence how he was feeling with his mom gone so long. Bien, he said, looking squarely at me with his calm eyes. And, I don’t doubt it, given his extraordinarily mature character and the fact that he is surrounded by extended family and neighbors who would never let him go hungry. But as evening falls I hear Christian calling his chicks to the the coop, pio pio pio pio, I know that he wishes he had a mom calling him and Sebastian home.

And I know that I wish I could heed my own daughter’s call to come home before she delivers her second baby. By then – September, this quarantine , and border closures, should have lifted. But since it’s the perfect cover for a collapsing nation, I won’t be surprised if it remains indefinitely.

I can tell you one thing. I’m already looking into back routes. If nothing else, 35 years in Venezuela has taught me not to give up easily.

The Little Dead One

The road to the Little Dead One's tomb winds up and down the Fumarola mountain, so I made the ten-mile pilgrimage on my horse. The steep path is treacherous with slippery fine dust in this dry season, but with Bebe riding by my side, I felt no fear. His gentle commands worked magic on the spirited Mistico.  

Last year, his wife Yelimar joined us for this annual trek. But this year she walked, with tiny Tiffany in her arms, to repay the Muertico for curing their baby's whooping cough.  


Bebe is about the age of the Little Dead One when he was forced by soldiers to dig his own grave.  Bebe's handicap in life is being unable to read or write, and the Little's Dead One's handicap was being deaf and thus unable to answer the question of where he was going when asked by the soldiers patrolling the mountain road.

That was 60 years ago. Or 80. Or maybe a hundred. Everyone in my village is hazy on the dates but totally clear about what ensued. The Little Dead One, or El Muertico in Spanish, was shot by the soldiers for not having an answer to their questions, buried in his self-dug grave, to be forgotten. No one even knew his name.

Except that he wasn't forgotten. Farmers began to place a rock on his burial site as they passed, adding a prayer. Through the years the rock pile grew along with the list of miracles performed by the Muertico, until the town decided to build a small chapel on the spot and hold a yearly remembrance in late January. He even got a name: Jose Maria, but everyone still calls him El Muertico out of affection. 

During my first many years in Palo Verde, I paid little attention to the El Muertico. His story seemed grim and his name was magically evoked in almost everything done in town. May the soul of the Muertico help us to..... build a new bathroom  ....pass chemistry......cure my son's asthma......... win the refrigerator raffle.

Actually, it was that last wish that first led me to Muertico several years ago. Bebe's mom, Franzuly, had won a refrigerator, thanks - apparently - to her prayer to the Muertico. She needed to pay return the favor with a candle, and invited me along. I grabbed my cuatro and followed her and her 8 kids and their friends up and over the mountain. At the chapel in a cool bend of the mountain, the kids reverently took off their hats, and lit their candles in prayer. 

Then, we retreated to a clearing in front of the chapel, and spent the day eating rice, playing tag and telling stories.

As the sun dipped, the kids called me to the chapel to sing Christmas aguinaldos and I strummed my cuatro as they sang their hearts out.

As Fabi took my hand to leave she declared: This was the best day the Muertico has had in a long time. And, I'm pretty sure the same was also true for Fabi and her friends. 

And that, I realized, was the magic.  The miracle of the Muertico was that he brought people together, and brought out the best in everyone. I was hooked, and thereafter invoked his name with every fruit tree I planted, with every wattle and daub cabin I built,  with every one of my three children I sent off to build their future. I became a solid attendee of the Muertico's annual celebrations such as that of last Sunday. 

After Bebe and I arrived, we joined a procession to light our candles in the chapel, intoning chants that seemed to hail from the Middle Ages. We watched as young and old danced the ancient tamunangue, with passion and grace, sweeping babies and children into their arms to ask for the Muertico's blessing and cure. And then we sat in the shade and ate from Franzuly's enormous soup pot which fed the 300+ pilgrims lavishly. 

Here, there was no hunger. Here, there was no despair. Here, there was no loneliness. Here, only community, compassion, abundance, music, dance, tradition, pure magic.

A few days after my town invoked the powers of perhaps the world's least known saint - the Muertico - to heal their children and community, Venezuela's self-proclaimed President Juan Guaido invoked the powers of perhaps the world's most powerful person - Donald Trump - to save his nation.  Hmmm, I wonder whose super powers will do the trick.


So far, the Muertico seems to be ahead. Trump's sanctions and threats have only multiplied the economic disaster hurled onto the Venezuelan people by the Venezuelan government itself. Meanwhile, with little fanfare, four million Venezuelans have slipped away to almost everywhere on the globe, working in almost anything, sending home millions. And it is these millions of dollars in the hands of millions of family members here that is slowly restarting Venezuela's economic motor. It is not because of but in spite of Trump's actions that this minor miracle is happening. A miracle not unlike that worked by the Muertico of community, unity, sharing, caring, 

I'm betting that the Little Dead One will be of much more help to Tiffany than Donald Trump, but time will tell.