March was a total apocalypse in Venezuela. We had many power cuts that lasted between 3 and 6 days. Food was scarce, hospitals were flooded with people. Renal patients who could not be dialyzed died and fuel was too hard to find for many hospitals’ power plants. Sum that with the fact that many of the cities that have suffered the worst parts of the crisis, like Maracaibo, generally have temperatures over 90°.
Ravaging was widespread. The owner of a bakery killed himself after he saw what angry mobs did to his business. At night, you could hear gunshots popping like fireworks on New Year. Some businesses were not looted only because owners and security personnel slept on the roof and were armed with pistols and shotguns.
It was like Mad Max, The Purge and a Western got mixed up in one terrible nightmare.
One of those days, I was in a long line outside a market trying to buy some food –whatever I found, for my family. In the line, there were a couple of people talking about the looting of a business the previous day.
“They were selling everything too expensive, they deserved it.” “You know, I even helped one guy move a juice cart he took. But he was too stupid to grab some fruit. How is he going to make juice now?” And then some people laughed.
Let’s move further to the month of June. In Maracaibo, where I live, the electrical situation was not solved: we still had (and have) daily power cuts of somewhere around 6 and 14 hours. In a good day, you may only have a 3-hour cut, in a bad one you may spend the whole day without power.
Also, the gasoline situation is hideous. 2-day lines to fill 20 or 30 liters of gasoline are the norm. If you want a full tank you have to give alguito to the tanker: a pack of rice, a coffee, a $1 bill or so.
If you’re having a good day, you may fill your tank in 10 hours. Obviously, there are ways to fill your tank in an hour. You pay $20 to the tank guy or the National Guard (yes, the stations are militarized) and you’ll fill your tank quickly. In a country where the minimum wage does not reach $10, that is not an option for many.
One of those days I was around 36 hours in a line. It was hell. People were selling their spots; others were trying to wriggle around the line. Dozens of people paying the guards to pass first, some paying to fill 20-liter containers to then re-sell them (20 liters of gasoline cost somewhere around $15 and $20 on the black market).
And it’s the same everywhere: if you want to renew your passport, you have to pay a hefty sum if you want it to receive it faster. If you need some dollars for traveling or saving, you’ve got to go to the black market. Maybe you need to register your college degree and do not want to lose a whole week coming and going to the registry? Then pay. And it’s all perfectly fine.
You see all this and you may reach the same conclusion of many Venezuelans: The crisis of Venezuela has a cultural root.
After all, we are the culture of Tío Tigre y Tío Conejo (Uncle Tiger and Uncle Rabbit), a group of Venezuelan folk tales where Tío Conejo always won using his wit and tricking Tío Tigre. We are a culture that applauds viveza criolla. That expression is a bit hard to translate directly, but it basically means being like Tío Conejo: not playing by the rules, being “street smart” to achieve your goals.
Is there a cultural and civic education problem in Venezuela? Definitely. Is that the root of our problems? Definitely… not.
After all, we are also a culture of hard-working people. Millions of Venezuelans have fled the country and there are many complaints about us in the host countries: that we are loud, that we take people’s jobs, that we complain too much about communism, and that our women rob husbands (In Peru they even made a song about that!), but they never complain about Venezuelans being lazy. Also, take a look at the people that are still here: Many of them earn a wage between $8 and $15 a month and still decide to wake up every morning at 5 a.m., walk for half an hour or more to the bus stop to reach their jobs where they probably won’t have electricity for around 6 hours, get back home around 6 p.m. and have a power cut at 8 p.m. And they still decide to go to work every day.
Also, if you read a bit about countries during great disasters like war, a natural disaster or a hardline socialist rule you’ll see the same stories: black markets, general loss of civility, and rampant corruption. When external conditions force it, the law of the strongest imposes: many people only care about surviving and many others see an opportunity in people’s pain. That’s not culture, it is biology.
Culture is dynamic. What builds civic culture is institutions and education. If institutions play by the rules and work correctly, if people earn livable wages and have access to decent services, the incentives for corruption are greatly reduced. If the government leaves their hands out of production and promotes a strong private sector, then a black market makes no sense. If people knew about the importance of being a citizen and cultivating civic virtues, maybe things would be different.
Venezuela has a cultural problem, but that’s not a root of the issue. It’s a systemic crisis: we have a social and political system that rewards being a Tío Conejo, not being a good citizen.
Edgar Beltrán is a 22-year-old political scientist and philosophy student from Maracaibo, Venezuela. He is passionate about discussing how politics affects the daily lives of people and about untangling the hidden structures of reality through philosophy. Follow Edgar on Twitter here.