Reacting to Chavez’s Death

      I met with Milla again last week, and finally got to pick her brain about the now former Venezuelan president’s death. It’s been a little while since Hugo Chavez’s death, but I hadn’t gotten to meet with Milla since then, so I was excited to talk to her about it. Milla’s response actually surprised me. She has never been a great fan of Chavez, and has made that clear in the past conversations I’ve had with her. That’s why I almost fell on the floor when she told me that she actually missed him.

     Nicolas Maduro is currently Venezuela’s acting president. According to Milla, he is actually worse for the country than Chavez was. She told me that Maduro is even more right-wing socialist than Chavez ever attempted to be. Maduro also is greedy and doesn’t care about the well-being of the country, Milla said. Chavez at least truly cared about the Venezuelan people and was a charismatic leader, Milla said. Maduro, however, has neither of those characteristics.

     To start with, Chavez knew how to give a speech and keep people energized and motivated, Milla said. He was an inspirational leader, and as much as Milla didn’t like him, she did have to admit that he had good leadership skills. He was competent and understood what he had to do and how he had to communicate to be an effective leader. Maduro, however, has had no leadership training and possesses no natural talent for the position, Milla said. She has listened to every speech he has given and said that he doesn’t know how to articulate his ideas properly. Additionally, he has to lean on Chavez even after Chavez’s death. All his speeches heavily reference what Chavez said in the past or what Chavez wanted the Venezuelan people to do. Maduro has no leg to stand on and no way to inspire people without Chavez’s memory, according to Milla.

     Maduro is also greedy and disconnected from the Venezuelan people, Milla said. The main point of his speeches (when he was able to communicate the point in any way) had to do with poverty and pulling Venezuelan citizens out of that situation. Maduro claimed to know the hardships of poverty and that he is or was poor himself. Milla suspects he’s been robbing Venezuela of money and putting it into his own bank account. “If he and his family are so poor,” she said, “then why was Maduro’s wife wearing Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses when Maduro gave his speech?”

     If Maduro is such a bad choice for president, I asked, then why is he the one taking the position? Milla’s only answer was that Maduro is receiving the position because it was one of Chavez’s final wishes. Maduro was not next in line to take the presidency, she said, but he got it anyway because Chavez said it should be that way. Chavez tried to form a coup in the early 1990s, and when it failed, Milla said, Maduro’s wife was the lawyer that defended Chavez in the trials that ensued. It seemed to me that she was trying to say that Chavez has always felt a debt to Maduro and his wife for helping him through that situation, which is why Chavez brought Maduro into governmental positions in the first place.

     Since time was drawing to a close, I asked Milla about the future of Venezuela. Where does she see the country going? Is it a hopeful future? Her answer was no, there is no hope.

     With Maduro in office, she said, Venezuela will only go downhill faster than it already was. The education system is already on the downslope, as large parts of history textbooks were reformed during Chavez’s era to exclude important parts of Venezuelan history and focus on Chavez’s message and success as a leader. Children were already being brainwashed similar to kids in Hitler’s Germany, Milla said, and it’s only going to get worse.

     “All these kids know is Chavez and the socialist system,” she said. “There’s no way for them to fight back and make the country succeed because they don’t know how. They haven’t received the same quality education I did.”

     What’s worse, Milla said, is that all of Venezuela’s intelligent and valuable citizens are leaving the country because of the government. Milla’s parents were teachers. She was a lawyer. Her husband and brother were engineers. All of them have left Venezuela, like many of their colleagues, to try to gain a better life. There’s almost nobody left in the country to fix it, Milla said.

     The failure of Venezuela brings Milla deep sadness. When she was growing up, attending college, and getting a job, she never expected to leave her country. She loves the beauty of her homeland and will tell anyone that you cannot find a prettier place than Venezuela to live. This is precisely why it breaks her heart to have to leave to give her children, her husband, and herself a better life.