This was the kind of country with which he had dreamed so much, finally, he had done it. This was his story:
I stayed almost two years the first time, most of the time living in a remote hamlet in the deep [then] unexplored forests of Barlovento.
There was no road to get to that hamlet, where all the inhabitants (about 450 people) were Black (except a family of Indians), where still in the 1970s they lived hidden from the whites --- a custom of the colonial times of the slavery --- only going out to the nearby town from time to time to sell their cocoa and buy things like clothes, liquor, and medicines.
There were chigüires (capibara), monkeys, many very dangerous snakes (mapanare for example), gigantic boas, giant sloths, barnacles (cape), tapir (like a mountain pig), kinkajú (like a monkey-cat), and hundreds of different types of spiders and insects of all kinds, it was amazing.
It was my childhood dream.
Came true.
We also ate the fish that lived in the mud, or in the swamp, and in the streams.
In that hamlet so far away ...
.. away from everything
... he lived in a mud house
... and slept inside a cocoa bag so that the rats and snakes would not bite me at night.
The People of the Village --- so nice, so beautiful --- held parties and drums almost every weekend, sometimes with more than 100 drums, and sometimes for several days in a row, especially during the festivities of San Juan in the month of June.
Good …
As you can see, I fell in love with Venezuela.
Little by little, year after year, I was getting to know other mystical places in this country of magic, mysterious places like the moor between Jají and La Azulita, La Azulita and Las Fresitas, and Caño Zancudo, the Peoples of the South, the South of the Lake, Santa Cruz de Zulia, the Goat, the Labyrinth, the lightning bolts of Catatumbo, San Pedro del Rio, Lobatera, Las Minas ... and Güiria in the Far East ... among so many other places so authentic and rich in their local culture and their particular beauty.
But …
Unfortunately ...
That love …
That romance that I had for 40 years with Venezuela ...
It was spoiled.
It vanished.
Everything started to go wrong when Chavez began to get seriously ill in 2012, when the vampires, zamuros, bloodsuckers, parasites and scorpions that surrounded him began to bleed the country and make fun of the noble, magical, mysterious, and mystical people.
2014: I was robbed of the little house I had (which I was finally robbed).
2015: I was violently kidnapped, and almost killed.
2017: They killed 3 of my neighbors in less than 6 months, and they threatened to kill me.
2018: I am forced to carry a knife with me at all times.
As you can see, that magical, mystical, and mysterious romance that I had with Venezuela for 40 years began to spoil in 2012-2013.
Today it does not exist.
It has vanished, magic, mysticism, and mystery.
Where has my Venezuela gone?
Every time I go out on the street or ride a bus I hear people talking about their bad and sometimes devastating experiences, being robbed, armed, where they have stolen their phones, their money, their shoes, or listen to the laments for a family member who was killed to steal her car ... or who died for lack of medicines ...
I feel the fear that thickens the air.
Nobody walks quietly.
We are all hungry.
We would like to eat a hamburger, a hot dog, or have a beer quiet, calm, quiet, we would like to buy food and medicine without being more and more scamming each time.
Without being robbed.
We are living a constant, unnecessary, unhealthy stress.
Sickly.
Tragic.
The fear.
Uncertainty.
Money does not reach us at all.
Soon we will die.
We can not even pay for the most basic.
Where did my Venezuela go?