What happens when the supposedly all-powerful state takes it upon itself to nationalize everything, including Christmas? And turn it into another government-run enterprise? Nothing good. Compare the ghosts of bright Christmases past in Venezuela with today's dismal Christmas present there. The heavy hand of the state, which promised to deliver a Santa bag chock-full of goodies to Venezuelans, has instead given them nothing but a stocking full of soot and ashes.
Once upon a better time in Caracas, someone like Marilyn Pitre could go for a lovely walk through Altamira Plaza in Venezuela's capital city with her family, admiring the bright lights and the great tree made of light bulbs. It was a Christmas spectacular that used to be compared to the Christmas scene in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.
But that was before the bad new days came for her much beset country. She says she wouldn't dare enter the plaza these days for fear of being robbed or worse. At this season of light for much of the rest of the world, there are no lights to shine the way for Caracas' beleaguered population. And the same goes for the rest of now poor Venezuela. Families that once celebrated Christmas with gifts and traditional dinners now have cut back and can scarcely afford basic ingredients for a meal.
But it's the poorest Venezuelans that, as usual, have been hit hardest by these hardest of times. Some of them have been reduced to going through piles of garbage that grow ever higher in the streets. Venezuela has become a nation of scavengers. As for Marilyn Pitre, remembering better days hurts in the midst of the country's current problems. "As Catholics," she told a reporter, "we celebrate the birth of Jesus. But it's not the same as before."
That is, before that country's rulers decided they would usher in a period of peace and plenty that turned into one of want and misery. Thank Hugo Chavez, who launched the socialist revolution down there. Like other workers' paradises, it didn't work out that way after all.
You name it and Venezuelans are short of it these dismal days. Cash, medicine, and hope have all lost much of their value in that textbook example of what happens when the state, promising to act as a benevolent Santa Claus, turns out to be the Grinch who stole Christmas, along with much of the country's other assets material, cultural, and spiritual.
When the light of freedom goes out in a country, so do many other lights. "This is the darkest Christmas we've ever had," notes 23-year-old Guianfranco Perozo, who needs two jobs just to get by. Interviewed in a market where he was trying to find cooking oil, he could only shrug off the question when asked if he had bought any Christmas gifts yet. Any money left after he bought the most basic of necessities will have to be spent on diapers for his 8-month-old daughter. "There's nothing to celebrate," he said. "Too many people are hungry. Too many people are eating garbage."
In the last days leading up to Christmas this year, there were long lines at gas stations in this supposedly petro-rich country. Which sits atop the world's largest oil reserves. (Irony doesn't take holidays.) Protesters on the outskirts of the capital found themselves in long lines, so they set piles of garbage on fire to protest this unmerry Christmas. Municipalities had to ration water! And an electrical black-out in the middle of the day hit Caracas and adjoining cities the week before Christmas.
When a country has to ration water, not even the all-powerful government can call it a paradise. And must look elsewhere to cast blame. The United States has been a large target in the last few decades of misrule down Venezuela way.
Millions of desperate Venezuelans have left the country in search of work. All too typical is Antonieta Lopez, whose husband fled to Chile almost a year ago when he could not find a job at home. Senora Lopez says she was lucky just to find a couple of things on her son Matias' wish list.
Senora Lopez's mother, 70-year-old Evelyn Avellaneda, told a reporter for the Associated Press that she couldn't even afford a bottle of red wine for the Christmas table this year. Sure, there are people still walking past the shops, but even when they find something they can afford, there are long waits to buy them. "There are lines at the banks," she says. "There are lines in the stores. There are lines everywhere."
And where can one go to complain about this government-created catastrophe? You guessed it, Gentle Reader. There's surely a line for that, too.
Editorial on 12/27/2017