After a 16-hour trip that lasted until 5:30am, partially due to having been stopped five times by police checkpoints in search of a bribe, La Panamericana made yet another feat by arriving to Caracas. With this trip we have completed a total of 16,000 miles from our departure in Anchorage. We arrived to the house of Sagrario Perez Soto, a generous and invaluable support for this phase of the project.
Jesús Fuenmayor, the star curator who went through the greatest sacrifices and pains to get the SPU to his country, never lost faith in the project throughout the many months of unbearable paperwork and bureaucracy. Once we got here, he and his staff immediately started the preparations for the debate, workshop and ceremony. That very night of our arrival we had the debate at Periférico Caracas on the subject itself of Panamericanism, with a panel composed by the artist Juan José Olabarría, writer Alejandro Rebolledo, the journalist and writer Boris Muñoz y Gerardo Zabarca, with Fuenmayor as moderator.
Whatever someone’s opinion may be about what happened at the debate that night, it is undeniable that no one in Venezuela is indifferent to the term ¨Panamericanism¨.
Venezuela is currently at an electoral period—one that has been marked by a series of amendments that Chávez has done to the constitution, including one that has paved the legal way for his reelection. While the opposition has gotten together in order to defeat him, he has incremented public spending from 87 to 110 billion bolívares in matter of months, and has implemented a fierce propaganda campaign that convincingly depicts a bleak picture on the very remote case of a victory from the opposition.
From the moment Chávez took power, he has changed the Venezuelan flag (adding a star and flipping its running horse, so that now it runs toward the left and not toward the right). He has changed national holidays (including the day of the coup he lead, now considered the ¨birth of the revolution¨) and he has gotten close to officially changing the name of the country to The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chavez´ embracing of bolivarianism and the constant reference of nationalist tenets in state television has caused (at least amongst the middle class in Venezuela that we have interacted with here) a sort of fatigue and irritation toward anything that may sound or look like Bolivarianism —such as, for instance, Panamericanism.
It was in this very context where the debate took place in Caracas. From the onset, both Juan José Olabarría and Alejandro Rebolledo viciously attacked the notion of the SPU, saying that its rhetoric was really similar to Chavez´ own. Rebolledo, who more than once contradicted himself first saying that the SPU was a therapeutic and indoctrinary project ( “you have the face of an evangelist”), and then complaining that the project had no message, rejected the possibility that the project could be an artwork that tried to formulate questions. “We are sick and tired of speaking about identity”, both argued. Boris Muñoz, in a much more reflexive and serene contribution, asked on whether Chavez´ Bolivarianism is nothing but a civic-military aesthetic, and asked on whether the emphasis on building a new Latin American identity is not grounded on archaic nonsense. Gerardo Zabarca proposed that the SPU project should be titled The School of the Free Trade Agreement given that, to his view, economic directives are then ones that ultimately define American countries. I disagreed with him in that point, arguing that it is precisely due to the fact that all is analyzed through economic vantage points that one rarely can obtain more comprehensive understandings of socio-cultural problems in Latin America.
The speaker’s comments drew strong objections from the public. One woman from Trinidad argued that the issue of identity is indeed urgent and necessary. Another said that Venezuelan identity is a reality, but that it does not obey the rules or definitions that have been established by Chavez´ regime.
The night ended without any useful conclusions, and we were all left with the impression that we were going to bed angry.
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Después de un viaje de 16 horas que duró hast alas 5:30am, parcialmente debido a haber sido detenidos cinco veces por policías en busca de mordidas, La camioneta panamericana logró una hazaña más al llegar a Caracas, completando así 16,000 millas desde la partida de Anchorage.
Venezuela se encuentra en un periodo electoral, marcado por una serie de enmiendas a la constitución propuestas por Chávez para facilitar su propia reelección. El clima pro- y anti-Chávez marcó el contexto de los debates de le EPD. Algunos tacharon el proyecto de terapéutico e indoctrinario mientras que otros lo acusaron de carecer de mensaje, rechazando la idea que el proyecto buscara tan solo formular preguntas. Los comentarios de los presentadores generaron fuertes protestas del público. Si acaso, lo innegable fue que los venezolanos no son indiferentes a la idea del panamericanismo. Pero la noche terminó sin conclusiones útiles, y nos despedimos con la impresión de que nos habíamos retirado a dormir peleados.