My journey to the consulate

Hello, Steemit community, I am here to tell you my (unpleasant) experience at the Venezuelan Consulate in Peru, that for other Venezuelans will not be a surprise, but for the rest of the world might cause certain indignation, frustration or some surprise.

For a common Venezuelan (with no attachments to the government) is really hard to do any procedure on the government institutes, it doesn’t matter if you are in or out of the country, because in this institutions they do whatever it takes to force you to lose you will, your patience and end up giving them money (bribe) to make the process go smoothly.

Yesterday I had to go to get my passport extension (because the regime says that they do not have the materials they need to make more passports), a document that I have been waiting since December 2017, but that it seemed to have finally arrived. To be attended you have to be there very early because even though the doors open (or should open) at 9 am, if you are not there early the line will be long and since they only work until 12 noon, they do not have time to attend to all those who are waiting. Upon arriving and not having any information as a guide, we started (my brother and I) to do 1 of the lines that had already been formed, but as nobody knows anything we had to wait for the consulate to open to find out which of the lines each procedure was carried out

After having to struggle to find the consulate porter, this one with the typical "decency" that stands out for any official of the Venezuelan regime, told me that I had to wait in another line, for which we had to move and therefore we already had been left behind, but it served us to meet other people who were in the same situation as us and at least that helped the time run faster. When they began to attend our line, they told us that in order to be attended, we had to give them photocopies of our identity card, passport, mail sent by SAIME notifying the arrival of the extension and the list published by the consulate in which it appears reflected that said document certainly arrived; which is quite absurd, because just by giving them the ID number they can do the process.

The news came to everyone by surprise, so we had to organize ourselves in those who kept the line in order and who were going to take the photocopies between turns. During this time I saw how the porter mistreated a pregnant lady who even had a child of no more than 2 years in her arms, because he saw her waiting out there for a long time and she was alone, and he thought that "it seemed strange" that out of nowhere she got pregnant and also had a kid in her arms, but like every halfwit and coward, he only dares to say this when he is on the other side of the fence and so as not to hear any reply or any other comment, he took refuge inside the consulate. It is outrageous the mistreatment that we Venezuelans are subjected to by our own "government", it doesn’t matter what they have made us pass through in our country, but they intend to continue abusing us by overseas.

Once inside they make us wait for about 30 more minutes to deliver supposedly the deposit that must be done so that they can stamp us the extension; but I must clarify that to apply for this document you must first pay 100 USD (in my case it was 100 USD because I requested it in December, now the amount has gone up to 200 USD) and at the time of printing you have to pay another 80 USD. The supposed deposit is just a piece of paper with a stamp on it with an account number and your name, which caused us to laugh, since that could be put in the consulate portal and would save us waiting for the “paper”, but that's the way things are with government entities.

This diligence was the least tortuous, the bank is not more than 10 steps and was empty, so we returned to the consulate in less than 5 minutes with the bank's receipt, just to be told that we had to keep waiting, because even with this ready you are served quickly, the next step was to wait until they gave us the passport with the printed extension (or so we thought). About 20 minutes later we were called through the box office to receive another piece of paper with the date on which we would have to go to receive the stamped extension on our passport. The portal of the SAIME says that under no circumstances should the passport, the only identity document outside the country of origin, be left in any institution.

All the diligence or, better said, this part, took us about 5 hours and we still have to go back and wait for a similar period so that we finally receive our passport with the printed extension. For us, Venezuelan, any procedure, no matter how simple, is a Greek tragedy, one has to witness abuse, receive offenses and humiliation, but if they think that they are going to minimize us, they are wrong, because every day we go out into the streets of Venezuela and the world, to work and do everything possible to improve our situation. Certainly, this generation of Venezuelans, who have had to "experience" so much, is going to be a fundamental part of the restructuring, the rebirth of Venezuela.

If something similar happened to you at the consulate or embassy of Venezuela in the country where you are or if you want to tell a similar experience leave your comment.

Sincerely,
Luis Colmenares