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.