Deseos indeseables / Francisco Vera Izquierdo

Undesirable Desires

The judgment that we might make in favor of or against certain political opinions does not depend on the actual characteristics of those ideas. Rather, our judgment depends on how much we might concur with those ideas. Personally, I have been writing for the press since 1936 and I have never found myself so congratulated as I do now. And I imagine that, at my age, if there has been a change it has probably been for the worse, because of the intellectual disintegration common to old age.

Throughout these many years I have published against the communists, the Adecos, and the Copeyanos, with whom I nevertheless vehemently sympathized, until they transferred power over to the government of Betancourt.

I imagine that I have also published against others. But now I come to the overall question of the positive feedback I have noticed regarding my work. It is clear that I listen only to people who read and, more specifically, to people that I know. But, when I used to write against the Adecos, for example, there were people I respected who disagreed with me. The same thing happened with my other targets. Today, however, I don't know anyone who can read and who doesn't coincide with my opposition to the current regime. Thus, I only encounter agreement with my articles.

I believe that spiritual well-being, as a result of the respect for the freedom to think and speak, is preferable to the material gains of an economically reasonable regime. This is why I have stated so often that I prefer this disaster to the prosperity of the Pérez Jiménez era. However, the supersticious cult of lies that characterizes this current government is notable. The task assigned to Vice President Rangel is picturesque because it is so completely removed from the political sphere, and because it could be performed by any one of the illiterates in the regime. Among other things, the truth is not in question because truth is not only relative but also personal.

We can see how an event need not actually have taken place in order for it to be real, as is the case, for example, with parabolas. But the lies that are assigned to the Vice President are not made up of only words, but of numbers as well. If the government brings 20,000 people to one of their meetings, the Vice President will speak of 200,000 people, without of course mentioning the hired buses and the per diem used as incitements. If the opposition gathers 100,000 people, the Vice President will speak of 10,000. The truth is, one does not need a university education in order to come up with such a scheme.

Returning to the theme of reality being a personal affair, we could add here that, for a person, what exists is only what he knows. For those that don't know the plains, a dust cloud does not exist. And, applying this principle, we could say that for a Chavista culture does not exist. And with this phenomenon, the association ends up drowning the individual. My education at San Ignacio taught me that not every Jesuit is intelligent; but that the Jesuit Order itself is intelligent. The same thing happens with the Chavistas, among whom there are educated individuals. However, their association with Chavismo mercilessly eradicates that education.

I repeat that I prefer this disaster to the prosperity of the Pérez Jiménez era. But everything seems to indicate that our chubby President's goal is to lead our country into another dictatorship, which would bring all of it's own problems, alongside the ignorance that is central to Chavismo. We should not forget that a militaristic civilian is a common occurrence. A civilized military official, however, is not.

{ Francisco Vera Izquierdo, El Nacional, 23 February 2004 }