My Complicated Relationship With Venezuela as a First Gen

Every year ahead of Latinx Heritage Month, I look forward to celebrating Latin American history and culture and embracing my family’s heritage and roots in Venezuela. I’ve been introduced to so amazing creators, shows, and small businesses to support through the work I do and I value all the informative deep dives on Latin American history and the cultural aspects of the region. However, this Latinx Heritage Month has felt a little different personally, and celebrating my Venezuelan heritage feels just a little more bittersweet this year. Ever since the elections on July 28, many in the Venezuelan diaspora have been left feeling either dejected, angry, or a mix of both. For over 20 years, the country has struggled with repression, hyperinflation, violence, and censorship that becomes more severe with each passing year, and many were hoping that a change of leadership might somehow improve the country’s conditions.

As a first-generation Venezuelan-American my identity has always been complicated for me. Since I was born, I knew where my roots came from and cherished them, and every summer up until 2008, my mom, sister, and I visited my grandma’s house in Margarita in Nueva Esparta, located on the northeast Caribbean coast. My memories visiting my grandma, eating as many tequeños as I could, and watching TV at my aunt’s house in Venezuela are some of my most tender and valuable memories I have. After our last trip, my family grew fearful of the increasing violence, and my elderly grandpa was mugged soon after, so we didn’t return to Venezuela after that. My family raised my sibling and I in a community of other Venezuelan-American families, so our culture remained a part of our lives, but we always longed to be able to visit again despite our parents insisting it was too dangerous for us.

When I was about 13 years old, Hugo Chávez passed away of cancer; my family and every Venezuelan we knew hoped that Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate that year, would win. I remember watching the election results in my grandma’s bedroom, and it was announced that Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s successor, had won, she sobbed harder than I had ever seen before. Spirits were extremely low at our house for the next couple days, and through the next couple years, my parents basically abandoned hopes of being able to return. In 2017, huge protests were held about the growing instability, inflation, and censorship, and when intense repression and violence followed, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela. Many countries broke ties with Venezuela as well, making any kind of workaround extremely difficult both financially and physically, leaving my parents, sibling, and I basically unable to visit our home country at all.

Now with the latest election, Venezuelans across the world were disappointed but not surprised when Maduro was announced victorious in what we consider his third fraudulent win since he came into power in 2013. Opposition candidate Edmundo González and popular leader María Corina Machado attempted to show proof of this fraud through las actas, the official tally sheets collected from electronic machines at polling stations and are easily verifiable, which clearly showed more than 6 million votes for Gonzalez and a little under 3 million for Maduro. Despite this, the National Electoral Council (CNE), packed with Maduro loyalists, maintained that Maduro beat Gonzáles by a 51 percent to 44 percent margin. As a result, Venezuelans took to the streets in cities like Caracas, Coro, Barquisimeto, and Maracay to protest the fraud, toppling over multiple statues of the infamous former president Hugo Chávez, but the rebellious spirit was quickly suppressed when severe repression, violence, and state-sanctioned killings and kidnappings followed.

After protests were quashed, Maduro implemented Operación Tun Tun, which calls for the mass arrests of protesters and opponents after the elections, and advised his followers to report their neighbors if they displayed “fascist tendencies,” which is the regime’s code for any anti-Maduro sentiments or criticism of the government. Soon after, accounts of security forces breaking into people’s houses and forcefully arresting them without explanation started coming out, and many reported being stopped on the street and having their phones checked by security forces for anti-Maduro content. As of now, over 2,000 people have been rounded up, with about 120 of them being minors, and 24 people had been killed. With all of this, Venezuelans have been living under intense censorship while Maduro’s regime attempts to sell a completely different reality to the world.

I’ve always tried to keep a little bit of hope for my parents and grandparents, and with every phone call and less frequent visit, we always try to speak hopefully about the country’s future and the possibility of seeing our extended family again. My roots and heritage have always been near and dear to me, but so many times I wished that Venezuela was in a better situation or that we were from some other country so maybe it would be easier to keep in touch with family and remember the beaches and nostalgia of my childhood. It’s harder to wrap my head around the fact that my family’s experience is a very privileged one; many of the 7 million migrants fleeing to the U.S. and other parts of the world haven’t had the opportunities or resources that we did and are still struggling to make a life while mourning their country.

Ahead of the elections this year, I didn’t really have any expectations, as I’ve felt jaded since the 2013 election. After seeing so many people in the diaspora on social media expressing hope of a better future and conviction that we might finally come out from under our 12 year dictatorship, a small part of me began to feel like maybe this time, it wasn’t too good to be true. Maduro still “won,” and while I still believe that someday the Venezuelan people will come out on top, every year it becomes harder to see how.

Because of the recent elections, I’ve felt disconnected from embracing my heritage this month, as it hasn’t felt right to celebrate our culture while knowing the fear and pain that many Venezuelans live in every day. With every bite of my cultural foods and every listen to the songs I grew up with, it’s impossible to not think of any of the minors that have been kidnapped and held illegally, the families who have been torn apart after hearing a fateful knock on their door, or the people that died in hopes of a revolution. On top of that, anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S. is at an all-time high, with Haitians and Venezuelans being demonized with ridiculous accusations and conspiracies. Since the end of July, everything concerning Venezuela and its culture has been difficult to think about, and it’s upsetting that being part of this culture inherently brings so much weight.

Despite this, I am and will always be proud of my family’s roots; I love learning more about my mom and grandma’s roots in Cumaná and still remember fondly the blue beaches and huge empanadas that Margarita is known for. I try to make an effort to call my grandpa and grandma and catch up whenever I get the chance. My heart hurts for my family, especially my mom and grandma, as I know it’s been hard for them to see what the country they both love and grew up in has turned into, as well as all the Venezuelans across the diaspora who feel they’ve had their lives and futures stolen from them by an oppressive regime. However, I believe in the Venezuelan community’s strength and resilience, and I hope that someday soon, my mom and all the others on the outside like her will have the freedom to return home.