Annotations for Speakers: Zachary Suri

Hungry in Caracas

We'll see, we'll see

Outside the voting booth in Caracas, they lined up at 6am counting the years of tyranny in stacks of bills and ribs exposed outside the voting booth in Caracas were guards armed with guns, frowning at the people and thinking also of their next meal. It is a truth seldom acknowledged that people don't just vote when they hate or when they love, that sometimes people vote because they are angry, that sometimes people vote because they are hungry. Outside the voting booth in Caracas, each of them recognized this fundamental truth, the voters lining up one by one, the guards holding their guns, and the mustachioed man staring down at them from the wall, who knew and still does, that his people are hungry for change.

My poem is about you. I think it's really about what motivates people to vote even when they know that the outcome of the election is not going to be respected. It's a sort of anger and hunger for something different that brings people to the polls. And there's something deeply inspiring in that, but there's also something very sad, I think, in the sort of desperation of people turning to the ballot box even though they know it's not going to be respected,

Why is the military support so critical. Why does that make or break Maduro's regime?

And one thing I've noticed, which I find fascinating but also deeply strange, is the way in which some on the far left in the United States idolize Venezuela and the Chávez tradition that Maduro carries on. And you also mentioned that there is still some popular support in Venezuela for Maduro and for Chávezism. Um, where does that come from? You think, and, and what role will that play in the potential resolution of of this fiasco.

I think it's a very sad story, certainly. I think, at the very least, this discussion should be a reminder not to look at the politics of our neighbors in Latin America as some sort of caricature, but to really engage with the conditions on the ground and to listen to what people are saying. I think it's very easy for Venezuela to become either a sort of punching bag of the right in the United States, a sort of like, this is what socialism looks like sort of lie, or a caricature on the left that it is obviously also opposed to the truth. I think it's a reminder of how important it is to engage with and reckon with the real conditions on the ground at the very least.