In Venezuela, Hunger is the New Oil

I hadn’t noticed that I lost some fifteen pounds last winter until my pants starting slipping south as I rushed between chores on my little farm in Venezuela. Between planting bananas and yucca and yams, collecting my horse’s manure, grazing sheep and chickens, picking weeds and putting in seeds, I found myself constantly pausing mid-chore to hike up my jeans.

Over the past three years I had morphed from hobby gardener to novice farmer, joining the majority of Venezuelan in dedicating the bulk of my day to sourcing food. The lucky ones with land - like me - pound the ground to produce it, while the majority of this mostly urban nation pound the pavement in search of this ever-disappearing commodity. Meanwhile, all of us have all fine-tuned the art of bartering and scavenger hunting.

I considered myself lucky that I had dropped only fifteen pounds or so. My neighbor Juan Carlos says he is now hast lost some 60 pounds over these three years of crisis, somedays eating what he calls a baby’s portion of food, just to survive, when food is really scarce, passing the rest to his kids.

It’s the lost pounds of the kids that hurts the most. Even those in our little farming collective (who at least bring some healthy extra calories home each week) seem to be shrinking before my eyes, their limbs as thin as twigs. Still, their willowy strength on our Wednesday and Sunday farming days always surprises me.

Sometimes I find myself amazed to remember that it only a few short years ago feeding ourselves meant only a drive to he supermarket, followed by a few minutes at the gas stove to whip it into a meal.

Just driving own’s own car has feels like a thing of the past, something like flip-top cell phones. Batteries, motor oil, and tires just aren’t to be found. My neighbor uses his sedan as a chicken coop, and our lifeless jeep provides shade for our dogs to nap. My son’s abandoned Honda lends support to the recently planted fig tree.

Even if we could get the car to go, the supermarkets in our town have long ago closed shop. At this point, almost all of the nation’s food distribution is in the hands of the military, and our little town appears not to be on their favorite list.

Then there is the problem of cooking the food, once you do actually find it. Cooking gas is needle in the haystack. Sometimes - after days in line starting at 4 am - we get lucky. But we always need other options. Last December we gave our little electric burners away to my partner’s nephew who left the country for Peru, joining a stream of exiting Venezuelans that today has become a rushing river. The stove is not really missed, since these days electricity has become another hit-or-miss affair.

I’m glad that I have planted a lot of trees since their trimings make a decent fire. But, yikes, it takes a long time to cook this way, and makes a sooty mess of pots and pans. My young neighbor Carly taught me to rub blue soap and oil on the outside of the pan before putting it on the fire, but first all soap disappeared from stores shelves, then the oil, then the stores themselves.

Last February I lay aside my sooty pans and adopted country, scrounged up an old belt from the bottom of my drawer, and boarded a flight to Washington, to visit my family.

My favorite hangout soon became the local Trader Joe’s.There is just something so incredibly comforting walking around all these aisles bursting with tasty food and filled with people calmly filling their carts with it. Not a single person seems desperate. I imagine strolling the aisles with Carly. Thanks to this new hobby, I have easily regained the vanished pounds in these three months, and am ready to head home, to Venezuela.

I will be returning just in time for the presidential elections. You might think that with food so scarce, wages averaging less than $5 a month and inflation breaking world records, it would be a slam-dunk for any candidate opposing the current government to win.

But remember what the slam-dunk election mindset brought us recently?

While Venezuela might be short on Russian trolls, Fox News or James Comey, we do have one thing that trumps all. Hunger. Hunger is the Ace of Spades in the hands of all the major players in this poker game for control of Venezuela.

Our hunger just may be what allows the government to stay in power. Their small subsidized bags of food keep us dancing on a string, to say nothing of giving a vote. Our hunger gives the political opposition a pass. They need not even bother to organize an effective political campaign, relying instead on our lost pounds to justify any method for regime change. Our hunger even provides the Trump Adminiation with a faux moral flag, their “concern” for our lost pounds poorly cloaking lust for a strategic political foothold and all that lovely oil.

I used to think that Venezuela’s prize commodity was oil. We do, after all, have the world’s largest supply under our soil. But as I cram my suitcase with oatmeal, honey and peanut butter, all the while wondering in what condition I will find Carly, Mamari, the Morocha, Vivi, Sebastian and all the others, I realize, that has now changed.

In Venezuela, hunger is the new oil.

Andrés for President

My motley crew of running mates assembled at our gate just as the peaks of the Fumarola took on a soft pink glow. That last hour of daylight in these foothills of the Venezuelan Andes is the most magical of all.

As soon as I stepped outside, Andrés took my hand, with purpose. Knowing that I was new to running, he figured I would be safer jogging down the steep mountain road in the sure grip of his five-year-old hand.

I asked him the whereabouts of his older siblings - the twins, and the Pelona. His mom forbid them to run today, he said. Running made them even more hungry, and they were hungry enough. I’m not sure how Andrés was granted an exception, probably via those gentle doe eyes.

The runners, ages 5-13, were all members of our farming kids collective, Club Conuco Colibri. We had set Tuesdays and Fridays as days to run together, just for fun. Soon, we were off….. Whizzing past caraota and potato fields, past skinny cows and grazing horses, past sheep and shephards, past the eucalyptus trees casting shadows onto the irrigation lake.

The cool air mountain filled my lungs, the majestic Fumarola lifted my spirits and the warm hand of Andrés lifted my heart, I was flying, my worries about this imploding country flung aside, my anguish for these beloved little running mates tossed to the wind. As the gentle slope coaxed me easily downhill, I felt déja vu for the easy slide into good living Venezuela had experienced only a few years back. Healthcare, education, housing, food, the good life - it seemed there for everyone.

As we ran on and on Andrés held tight to my hand. I was not used to jogging while hand-holding (or jogging at all for that matter), but it was kind of nice. He had no problem keeping my pace.

Several kilometers later we reached our goal - the cotoperí tree right beside the churning river. We tumbled into a pile and Andrés plopped in my lap. We allowed ourselves to rest and to laugh and just be together. No need to think about the approaching night, or the long uphill walk home, or the hunger stirring in our bellies.

But as the mountain turned from pink to crimson, we rose quietly to begin the long return hike. How different the journey home: Arduous, steep, dark, dangerous, and with hunger in our bellies. Like that journey we are on now as a nation – or at least those of us remaining.

As crimson turned to black I realized that I was following these children, so sure-footed on this mountain. They looped their arms into mine, grounding me, guiding me, protecting me from unknown precipices, lurking snakes, ghosts of which they spoke quietly. As the stars began to fill the night sky, Andrés deposited me at my gate, tired but safe. Hasta mañana Lisa he said with a huge hug, then raced up the hill to his home, and probably an empty table.

Andrés is the youngest of our kids farming collective, which is best described as something of a ragtag 4H group, or perhaps a community CSA where kids are the farmers and the shareholders. It all started a few years ago - rather spontaneously, when my neighbor Fabi – then age 10 - showed up one day to help me plant (yet another) mango tree and asked when I would start planting something that turned into food more quickly. Until then, I had only planted fruit trees – hundreds of them, but admittedly, it took several years from digging a hole to getting something into your mouth.

This was just the beginning of the food crisis (little did we imagine…..) but Fabi already had a vision, as she eyed the only flat spot on my land, recently bulldozed for a future gazebo. She showed up at 6 am the next morning with her cousin Jonjon, a sack of goat manure, some bamboo poles and a plan. They set to work with hoes and shovels and by early afternoon we had some decent raised beds.

By the next weekend Fabi returned with 5 of her siblings, the next Sunday she showed up with 10 of her cousins, and before we knew it, we were gardening every Sunday morning with some 40 young neighbors. Soon, we were swimming in lettuce and chard, tomatoes and green beans, zucchini and kale.

Before long, salad veggies made room for higher calorie-protein crops craved by the hungry kids: yucca and plantains, squash and corn, a rainbow array of soup beans, growing on vines, bushes, covering trees and coffee plants. We even grew our spices, our medicine, our drinks and our bowls (via a totuma or gourd tree). And of course our sweets: mangoes, bananas, mamones, guamas, guabas, guanabanas, and much much more.

Andrés – my running mate - was all of three when he joined his three siblings - Morocho, Morocha and Pelona - those first Sunday mornings. I worried that he would just be in the way at such a young age, but far from it,. Each Sunday Andrés found a task to take on and set forth with unflagging determination and order. Often, his focus was the compost pile. Like a one-man army of ants, he spent hours carting buckets and buckets of materials to help it grow: leaves, sticks, weeds, peels, sheep poop, hay. He seemed to innately understand that this – a pile of discarded rotting objects, would become the key to our food, our lives.

Before long, teachers and community leaders were asking the kids to give workshops to share their pretty successful and unique techniques. Inevitably, Andrés offered to take over when the explanation of our compost system came its turn.

In our farming collective our leaders are quite simply those who work the hardest. The kids themselves decide who should be a “guia” , which basically means you have to do a whole lot more work than everyone else.

In our country of Venezuela, our leaders have been chosen by elections. All of a sudden, eight months ahead of schedule, a snap presidential election has been called, by the president. Causing everyone who is not the president to shuffle a bit. It’s a bit hard to get a presidential campaign together in a few weeks.

(Personally, I would be all for just calling forth those who just work the hardest like our guias of Conuco Colibri, but of course, that never works in politics.)

And so, that leaves one big problem. No one wants to run against the president. Some say because no one can beat him. Others say because the rules of the race are set by him and for him. But, no matter what, it’s become an embarrasing problem to find at least one running mates to make it look like a real election. An obscure evangelical pastor just stepped forward, but he so unknown and so scandal-clad that it´s a stretch to get him on the ballot.

So, here is my solution: Andres for President. Sure, he is only five years old. But he has a better handle on the solutions to Venezuela’s main problem than does the current president and the political opposition combined, hands down. He knows how to grow food. (Seems like no one else does in the country). He know how to work hard. (Granted, that is a bit hard these days since it costs more to go to work in a day than what you actually earn at work in a day.) He can turn a garbage dump into gold. (Handy, since our oil industry is all but kaputs). He gives a helping hand to those in need. (Seems better than giving a hand only to those who gives you the votes first).

And, listen, he has the cutest little doe eyes that would look fabulous on bilboards. He’s got my vote. Andrés for President.

Watching Venezuela's collapse in slow motion

Several weeks ago El Negro sent me a message to say that his house had fallen down. The mud holding the old adobe blocks together gave way after three days of torrential rain, collapsing walls and roof. Thankfully, his three children were sleeping in the one room made of tin, that held firm. As a single dad, his world was these kids, and I could hear his relief in that part of the message.

I read his words while sitting on my porch, contemplating the majestic Fumarola mountain before me, mentally contrasting Venezuela’s natural beauty with the ugly chaos of its society today. El Negro had built that porch a month earlier, along with other projects in preparation for my son's wedding. 

As I received this news, El Negro’s collapsing home suddenly felt like a metaphor for Venezuela’s collapsing society. The image of the tumbling adobe bricks reverberated in my heart. Crash! Food disappearing from the shelves. Boom! Cash disappearing from the banks. Woosh! Young people disappearing from the country. Clang! Democracy disappearing from “elections”, Kaboom! Human rights disappearing from public discourse and action.

Unlike my doubts about the reconstruction of this decaying Venezuela, my hope in El Negro wasunflagging. This was a man who rose each day at 4 am to cook breakfast and lunch for this kids, before setting off for his morning job as a garbage collector. He never missed a day – even though the job paid less than a fifty cents a week, always holding out hope he might find a discarded pair of shoes to fix for the kids, a half-used pencil. After finishing his first job of the day, he set off to his second job of building.

I often wondered how he accomplished so much in one day as I
struggled to do so little: dig one more hole in this hard red dirt for yet another banana tree, plant a few more quinchoncho bushes then spend hours in line to (try to) get gas to cook them. Then more hours searching the almost empty hardware stores for a few nails to fix my chicken’s coop to keep them safe from the marauding opossums. I always fall into bed exhausted, but with so little sense of accomplishment.

On the days that El Negro came to work at my house (always accompanied by one or two of his kids), we would pause in the late afternoon to share a cup of coffee. At that magical hour I felt their incredible bond, and the mystery behind the source of his boundless energy was solved.

Not surprisingly, El Negro built a few small adobe rooms for his children within weeks. While cooking the evening pot of beans over an open fire, his bare feet stomped the red earth to a gluey mix. Adobe brick by adobe brick, he raised the walls in the light of the full moon. Neighbors and friends rallied, and the solidarity he always showed to others was returned.

I can’t help but wonder: who will rebuild this Venezuela that is, literally, collapsing in front of me. Collapsing and crashing down over the heads of friends and neighbors, such as my friend Milagro, a single mom of two. Last month, her daily wage as a laborer in the potato fields was 8,000 bolivares per day, the equivalent of 20 US cents. Last week it was the equivalent of 8 cents. . This week it is worth 4 pennies a day. Next week? Like most of my neighbors, she toils in the sun all day, returning home with enough money to buy one tenth of one kilo of rice. She tells me that nightly her tears mix with the rumbling of her belly.

Collapsing and crashing the dreams of K, a newlywed, and one of my daughter’s best friends. As an obstetrician at the public hospital, she makes less than the bonus provided by the government to the pregnant women whose babies she delivers (about $8 per month) As she leaves work after her 24-hour shifts she tells me that she can barely walk straight , her exhaustion blurring with confusion about how to stay in this country she loves and start the new family she desires. She doesn’t want to follow the mass exodus of her colleagues.

Even for those who manage to make enough money to survive, they can’t access their money. My neighbor Vicente raises pigs, but can’t really use the money his clients pay him by bank transfer. It costs him 30,000 bolivares (about 9 US cents) to take a bus to his local bank, where the maximum daily withdrawal is 30,000, He doesn’t even have enough funds to return home

And for those who actually have some money and can access it, there is often nothing to buy. My compadre Ever joins most of the 1,000 households in my town in getting in line every Friday at 2 pm. at the town square. There, he deposits his ID card in a cardboard box held by a representative of the local coop, and says a prayer. If he is one of the lucky 250 people drawn by lottery, he can buy food at the coop at the weekend. If he is one of the unlucky 750, he will have to perform magic to feed his family. Scrounge some potatoes or black beans from already harvested fields.

As I witness this collapse of Venezuela -my home for three decades, and home to 28 million others, I look with desperation for our El Negro. Where are our architects, the engineers, the builders? Instead of being armed with mortar and bricks, they seem to be bearing sledge hammers, determined to finish off the destruction.

Bang go the sledgehammers of massive corruption and mismanagement by those at the helm.  Crash go the jackhammers of infighting and violence by those who long to be at the helm. Smash go the bulldozers of the giant to the North that threatens oil sanctions, in hopes of dislodging our foundation. Nearby nations stand by in muted shock, trying to absorb the mass of fleeing residents.

In this long dark night, in which master architects and builders have
warped into master destroyers, my faith in them has forever shattered. But as this blue blood moon rises, so does my faith in those who I always have known as builders. In El Negro. In Milagro and Vicente and Ever. Guided by the moonlight, and by the love for their children, and for this beautiful land, they will raise the new Venezuela. It will be a long long arduous labor of love. 

This morning Jenny’s family feasted on opossum for breakfast, thanks to her strong and swift arm.

(She is, after all, our town’s home-run champ.) When she heard that a marauding opossum was stealing the mangoes from our trees before they could ripen, she offered to liberate the trees from the intruder. As a bonus, she could provide some much-needed protein for her family.

So she arrived last night - slingshot, son, and flashlight in hand. Within minutes of scampering up and down the trees, a dead opossum was dangling from her son’s hands.

Two years ago, none of my neighbors would think of feasting on opossum. This morning, any one of them would be glad to trade places with Jenny’s family.

Back then, my problem with mangoes was their abundance. Kids and birds had their fill, but I still couldn’t cart enough rotting ones to the compost pile before the flies descending upon them. Today I almost take inventory before they ripen, assigning them mentally to my priority mango recipients - always the youngest ones: Lucia, Chachi, Yeiverly, Neka… They are the ones whose weight loss worries the most.

Jenny lives on the other side of the pine trees I planted 20 years ago as a border between her family’s land and mine. At the time, my goal was to hide the pigsties that her dad Vicente kept in that corner of his land. But as the trees shot up – triple the size of others I have planted elsewhere - my affection for Vicente’s pigs grew in proportion to their daily contributions to my trees’ gigantic growth.

The pigs are now gone, the final one slaughtered a few months ago. Vicente used to collect the pigs’ food on his way home from work each day, leftovers from the vegetable markets and restaurants in town. Today there are no leftovers. And besides, Vicente’s car has joined the fleet of the towns’ aging relics, unable to move without functioning tires or battery.

When we first arrived Palo Verde, some 22 years ago, Jenny hopped over the young pine trees the minute we drove up our dirt road on Saturday mornings. While David and I cleared the massive weed sprawl of our newly acquired land and planted trees, Jenny led games of stick ball or tag with my three kids, always bounding with friendly energy.

Today those pine trees provide shade for daily conversations where Jenny and I hold court, each onone side of the rickety chicken wire fence. The sound of the wind stirring the pine needles, the cool air under their canopy, and the perfume of pine resin feels like a reprieve from the heat of this nation, ablaze in conflict, hunger, anger, frustration. Jenny and I never hurry in our conversations.

Inevitably, it is one of her three kids who call me to the fence each day. Elisa!!!!! Ven a la cerca!

How many treasures pass over that fence daily. From Jenny’s side, black beans or potatoes scrounged from nearby fields, hot soup made of pumpkin and oregano, green banana arepas. From my side guamas and guavas, mangoes and mamones, limes and lemongrass.

From both sides so much love and nourishment of the body soul. The absolute affirmation that we are in this together and will not let each other fall.

This morning the international news is filled with scenes from yesterday’s national strike in Venezuela. Battles with Molotov cocktails and tear gas canisters.

The real Venezuela is the fence that connects, not divides, Jenny and me. For all my 34 years in Venezuela, I have survived and thrived because of the solidarity of those next door, across the street, down the road. It took a village to raise my children, and I see in them the community spirit that enveloped them with love and radiates forward with generosity. Venezuelans are, by their nature, a people of deep solidarity, affection, connection.

I call out in my dreams for all Venezuelans to put down their sticks and stones, guns and gas, and come to this fence. Gather beneath the cool of pine trees. Feel the breeze and smell the sweet resin. Stand in awe of this gorgeous land so that – together – we may heal it.

Yesterday, half of the participants of our youth exchange weekend didn’t show up, because they were looting.

They were the half who live in the city of Barquisimeto. The other half were kids from my little town of Palo Verde. It was meant to be Part Two of a rural-urban youth exchange that began last month.

I have known the looters since they were 8 years old, when I lived and worked in their barrio as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner. They are now in their last year of high school, just weeks from graduation.

I taught them as kids to play the cuatro and my partner taught them to play the drums. We formed a musical group called Los Zagalines de San Juan.

One summer when my artist-daughter Maia was home visiting from college, she helped the kids paint a colorful mural. It sprawled across the outside wall of the cultural center – the kids’ second home. The title of the mural was: Este es el barrio que sonamos. This is the barrio we dream of. Kites, trees, mangoes, kids, and pink and turquoise houses lit up the wall.

As I look back, I wonder how we didn’t realize then that the barrio we dreamed of was already a reality. Every single kid I knew was in school, universities were free and abundant and nearby, and any profession seemed within reach of anyone. Food was so subsidized, it was practically free. A former Maryknoll colleague joked in her visit that it seemed that for every year of Chavez’s presidency, people had gained a kilo. Medical care was free and around the corner. Community councils distributed everything from light bulbs to internet satellite dishes, for nothing. Even houses were free for those who needed one.

Venezuela was about seven years into the revolution at that point in time. We never ever dreamed of the backwards slide that awaited.

My young future looting friends remained on the straight-and-narrow throughout the decade that followed. They steered away from drugs and gangs , became wicked good drummers. They rose through the ranks of the cultural center’s vacation program, first as participants, then as facilitators, then full fledged counselors. Younger kids dreamed of being just like them. Parents thanked them for their dedication.

Thursday evening the bedlam began. Ledys and I had come to the barrio to visit his dad. We got out just as the National Guard post was going up in smoke. We skirted past road blocks of burning tires, trash and glass, and dodged a shooting spree between the Guard and protesters.

No one can explain just how the situation dissolved into looting. We started receiving calls from friends in the barrio around 8 pm, then at 10, at midnight and into the wee hours. Dozens of food stores in the commercial strip of the barrio had their windows and walls smashed. Word spread and what seemed like the whole barrio descended upon the goods, clearing the shelves with amazing proficiency.

When the smoke cleared – literally - some 24 hours later, we received a call from the coordinator of the cultural center. Four people from the community were dead and one of the kids from center was caught red-handed and jailed. After hearing our shock, he informed us that at about a dozen of the youth leaders were involved in looting.

For every year that has past since Chavez’ death, those extra gained kilos have been shed. And maybe two or three or four times more times as many more. These kids - my Zagalines, my muralists, my drummers, my camp counselors, my dreamers. They have become walking skeletons. Their crime this past weekend was that of hunger.

When it was clear that road blocks made it impossible for the looting contingent to join the gathering, we decided to go continue, with half the participants. We played games in the grass, we went on a walk to the nearby farm to collect dried bean pods, we held a scavenger hunt as the shadows of the mountains closed in on us. We ate arepas made of green bananas and sang around an improvised campfire. Everyone stayed up well past the midnight curfew.

But the core of the gathering – the exchange part -the part where the rural kids were to share with their urban cohorts about their food gardens, well , that part was put on standby. Just as the soul of this nation remains on standby.

And as we went to bed with half of our participants missing, so Venezuela goes to bed with half of its participants missing, missing the food their bodies need.

When and how will this end. That is the question on my lips as I arise with the sun each day , to plant yet another banana plant. It is the question on my heart as I fold my arms around these young and skinny bodies who come to help, startled by their strength and resilience. It is the question in my soul as I lay my own weary body down each night, after calling out to the stars and to the heavens for guidance.

One of my life’s big dreams was just fulfilled, albeit fifty years late.

Five decades after being sure that I couldn’t possibly live one SECOND longer without a horse, I finally own one.

I should have named my new horse Manguera, which means hose in Spanish, since I got him by trading irrigation hoses for horse with my neighbor Lelo who needed to water his new corn field. But since “Manguera” doesn’t quite have a ring to it, I decided to call him Mistico.

Mistico was delivered to me by Yeiverly – age 7 months – riding regally atop this lovely black horse, led by her parents – Bebe and Yelimar, ages 17 and 18. Good choices for delivering dreams. These are two of the most dignified people I know.

Today’s internet buzzes with stories of young Venezuelans – actually two sets of them - each proclaiming to be nation’s Dream Deliverers.One set carried guns, tear gas and dresses in olive green. The other carries gas masks, Molotov cocktails and sometimes dresses in nothing. According to your politics, one set is defending or delivering dreams, while the other destroys them. Or vice versa.

But my dream has been delivered by Bebe and Yeli, bearing horse and baby, dressed in rubber boots and tattered jeans. 

My vote goes to them as Venezuela’s Dream Deliverers.

I first got to know this unique couple as they slung mud a few years ago. Not at each other, but at my bahareque (mud) home. Skilled in the ancient art of “mud-stucco” - they gave my home its final smooth layer of mud, adding a grace, a softness, and a harmony it had previously lacked.

I loved watching them work as a team. From dawn to dusk, they hauled and sifted tons (literally) of dirt, mixed it with dried horse manure, stomped it to a smooth sticky paste with their bare feet, then slung it forcefully against the walls. Finally, they smoothed the mud with knowing hands.

At 15 and 16,these young teens were amazingly strong, skilled, hardworking and shockingly free of sexual stereotypes. They were breath of fresh air, an innocent page of Little House on the Prairie coming to life, amidst a backdrop of a nation turning to ashes.

Both seemed to have been born on a horse, so we never had to search for our supply of horse manure! I loved watching them race one another bare-backed down to the river after a long day’s work, ready to jump into the cool waters flowing down from the mountains.

In Mistico’s first few weeks under my care, either Bebe or Yeli or both came daily. They taught me to rope and tie him, to lead him to the kind of grass he likes, add salt to his potato peels. They bathed and groomed him, they shod him and cured him of fleas and parasites. They built his little stable and taught me to call and hug and love him. In the early evenings we rode together down to the river, and we shared with an easiness that somehow comes with the slow gait of horses.

We talked about the rains awaited, the corn ripening, the challenges of surviving off Bebe’s salary in the potato fields – 50 cents a day. About their unsuccessful search for cream of rice for Yeverly, about skipping meals each day, about pulling together with their family of ten to make a soup of zucchini or squash to try to calm the hunger of the day. About wanting to wait for another child and about the total lack of birth control at public health centers. About scrounging harvested fields for left-over black beans or tiny potatoes. But especially, about their love of horses.

Each day as Bebe and Yeli came there was always something in their hands. Some of those scrounged potatoes. Some pepper seeds from their field. A plantain plant. A baby onoto tree. Their generosity , like that of many of my neighbors in my village, in the midst of raw hunger, is truly stunning.

Venezuela’s dreams will not be delivered by tear gas, guns, or Molotov cocktails. This nation, led down the destructive path of group addiction to oil and food imports by governments on the left and right, will not reclaim its dreams on these battlefields.

My vote for Venezuela’s Dream Deliverers is Yeli and Bebe. They know how to grow food. To build homes. To care for children and animals and the earth. To share with their neighbors. To support one another. To live free of stereotypes. To give their strength and passion and hard work and know-how to create a softer, gentler, and more harmonious Venezuela.

Thanks for delivering my dream deferred, muchachos bellos. How I hope that you can deliver it to this nation that I love.

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.