This story is more a translation than my own narrative. It happened by accident and at the last minute, like most things that are written in the stars. I was halfway done with my fictional story when I needed some source of inspiration and I wanted to find out more about what it’s like to be living in Venezuela right now.
So, I reached out to two Venezuelans I know and asked them if they could, please, tell me their real life story about what it’s like to live in Venezuela, right now, as a senior citizen. I thought about seniors for the following reasons:
1. They have seen Venezuela through the decades, at least 2 generations.
2. It was their time to enjoy life and retire and it has been taken away from them.
3. They are among the most fragile and helpless and they have more medical needs.
4. They have to live off a retirement pension.
5. They have more time to write and lots of wisdom.
Gladly, they both accepted and what happened next was the key factor in causing me to drop my story and deciding to be just the translator. I found out that they are 2 separate individuals with the same real-life story and the same observations.
One person is a man, 62, and the other is a woman, 65. He lives in San Cristobal, Venezuela, and she recently immigrated to Spain. They are two strangers who have gone through different experiences and they are telling me the same story, bringing up the same aspects and even using the same words.
That’s when I felt the moral obligation to just step back and be the translator. I wanted to be the channel and let them be the voice that paints us the picture of what is currently happening in Venezuela. The story of millions of Venezuelans who have fled, even by foot, walking around the border for weeks; hungry, thirsty, under the burning sun, with their worn-out soles and their bruised souls. It is not that they wanted to, it’s that they didn’t have a choice.
The following two real life stories will tell you what it’s like to be in Venezuela right now, a country once rich and now in the midst of misery, chaos and starvation, under an inhumane regime, evil and dictatorial, that is killing its people slowly, but surely. Let me introduce you now to Pedro Saavedra’s and Elizabeth Viva’s stories.
(...to be continued…)
In the Middle – An International Transposition (Fiction)
Introduction to In the Middle – An International Transposition, edited by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey
January: Forgetting – Turkey, by Seyit Ali Dastan
February: The Unreal in Real – Armenia, by Armine Asryan
March: Catching Water – Argentina, by Javier Gómez
April: Unwanted – South Africa, by Toni Wallis
May: House with a Stucco Ship – Ukraine, by Gennady Bondarenko
June: A Girl Pedaling – Cuba, by Marilin Guerrero Casas
July: The Last Day – Poland, by Pawel Awdejuk
August: Through my Hands – Venezuela, by Veronica Cordido
September: Amelia’s Euphemism – Spain, by Jonay Quintero Hernández
October: Until Love Do Us Part – Uruguay, by Alejandra Baccino
November: A Journey to the Edge – Lebanon, by Rayan Harake
December: I Used to Smoke – Russia, by Kate Korneeva
Background – Context
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
More work by Veronica Cordido
The Crib of Uncertainty – Veronica Cordido (transposing emblem)
Instability, A Stable Reality – Veronica Cordido (transposing emblem)
Hanging by Extremes – Veronica Cordido (transposing emblem)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Cover photo: Valencia, Venezuela – The apocalypse – Francisco Dania (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed