To the Dominican Youth Movement of Venezuela

By: Carlos F. Beltrán. IDYM International Coordinator. 

Few things made me as happy as the arrival of the end-of-year holidays, because that meant we could all go on a trip together in the family car to Wonderland. As I saw it, Venezuela was the fine flavoured chocolate on the shelves of the Garzón in San Cristóbal, between the Pirulin and the Nutella, which you couldn’t get in Cúcuta. I would run back to where my mother was, with a childish smile and loaded arms, trying to convince her to buy everything, because ” we didn’t know when we were coming back”. 

Venezuela, my brothers and sisters, smelled like Christmas to me. Those were moments on the road when I could be a happy kid with his brothers and his parents, resting in roadside bakeries just to be jolly. In the Sambil, a large shopping mall near the border, there were McDonalds and a gigantic bookstore, with a vertical waterfall that looked like molten glass, at a time when in my city we had neither. The first book I ever read, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, had to be brought to me from a second-hand bookshop in Caracas.

That was the Venezuela I experienced. An extraordinary town from which we were separated by an innocuous bridge, which meant nothing more than a road that could be crossed at any time. On December 24, we used to make hayacas with firewood that ended up becoming bonfires around which the whole family would gather to make the novena and talk, and on the 31st we would all sing that it was five to midnight. Like many border children, I grew up taking my favourite Yukery juices and arepas, with diablitos or Cheez Whiz, to school. 

I cannot avoid crying with you when I see everything that has happened. I was in my last year of high school in 2015 when Colombian families were expelled from Venezuela with brutal violence. Then, at university, seeing how my friends from Andrés Bello Catholic University and UCV, among other universities, were murdered made a deep impression on me. So much so that I, who am allergic to protests and riots, was reminded of Neomar Lander every time we students marched with our fists raised in Bogotá.

In recent years, it has hurt me to meet so many of you who make the pilgrimage along the roads of Colombia in search of a better future. Elderly people, children, families, who walk for hours and hours in sun and rain, between the inclemency of the highlands and the heat of the Santanderes, migrating towards an uncertain tomorrow. Seeing a country that I love so much fall before my eyes has broken my heart in a way that I still cannot heal. 

Today I see with eyes of love the hope in the faces of a nation that does not give up. One that without means of communication has managed to unite and walk together as I have seen so many times these days in Tik Tok. One that without resources is able to mobilise, to resist. I have seen a lady in white with a rosary around her neck waving a flag, like Liberty leading the people of Delacroix, to whom weeping mothers beg her to bring back their children and young people ask her to allow them to graduate from a dictatorship, or to reunite them with their brothers and sisters, while rivers of people accompany her along Avenida Libertador, which is dwarfed by the human tide.

Such dark nights you have lived through! And yet, I have seen your illusion resurge in you and you keep it like a little light in your candle, which does not go out. Storm-proof. For all the children who died in the streets drowned in the blood of injustice. For those who had to leave everything behind and abandon what they knew to fight for their future. For the grandparents and children who could not get the medicines to treat and cure themselves. For the suffering of those who in foreign countries had to suffer humiliation, xenophobia or violence, carrying on their wrinkled souls those 8 little lights in a starless firmament. For all these reasons, you can never give up. 

And for all of them, Dominican Youth Movement of Venezuela, I hope and wish that your hope will never be extinguished. May those who love each other be able to return, and families be able to embrace again. May you never again be condemned to loneliness or silence. May your smile never end, backed by the one who had so much love that he gave his life for his friends (John 15:13), as many of you have given it. May the harp, the bagpipes and the drums sound in all your corners, while the macaws of Caracas take flight in an explosion of colours that announces the end of this nightmare. 

Be preachers of the truth and, as young Dominicans, bear witness that another Venezuela is possible. To you, my brothers and sisters, who have suffered and struggled so much, this monument made with words, which honours your tenacity and courage. To what you were, but above all to what you are and what you can be. I hope to see you soon, very soon, brave people, free, full and in peace, my little Venice. We never forget you, you are always present in our thoughts and prayers, very close to our hearts. So that there will be many more ” Decembers in Caracas”, as Danny Ocean has sung with so much emotion these days. Free, like the light of dawn, which announces the rising of the righteous (Proverbs 4, 18).