There is an inherent power in each word, and Socialism is one loaded with entropy, decay, and misery. That much I’ve come to learn over the past twenty six years of my life.

Record of a Venezuelan Pariah tells the story of how the Bolivarian Revolution affected every moment of my life, down to the most minute pieces of sensory recollection. The personal words contained in these entries are yet another piece of evidence that can demonstrate how the ideology of socialism warps everyday life at every turn.

These personal entries chronicle the death spiral of a once beautiful but flawed nation from the first time Hugo Chávez burst onto the public stage after his failed coup attempt in February 1992. I had the unfortunate displeasure of experiencing the slogans, the morphed lexicon, the cultural and lifestyle changes, and the outrageous deprivations and tragedies dictated by his failed socialist vision — the consequences of which continue to yield abject misery more than ten years after his death under the leadership of his appointed successor, dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Through the lens of this, very much personal chronicle, I tell the tale of the mistakes, blunders, and atrocities committed by a failed ideology as I lived through them — in the hopes that other nations will not choose the same miserable path that led to the ruination of my birthplace.

This is but one tale, out of some 30 million others.

PROLOGUE: THE IDEA THAT REFUSED TO DIE

On every continent, in every epoch of the modern era, socialism has ruined lives and hamstrung the destiny of nations. In the United States, which never had to suffer a fully socialist government, its popularity among young people is rising, but talk to Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Cambodians, or the people who fled North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, and you will hear the same story of stagnation, poverty, and oppression.

This is one of those stories — another plea, from another victim of socialism, for other people in other countries not to make the Great Red Mistake.

I: THE DARKEST EASTER

An account of the last hours of my mother’s life, culminating in an ill-fated visit to the Miguel Perez Carreño Hospital in Caracas — the same crumbling hospital she gave sixteen years of her professional career. From the lack of sanitation, water, supplies, the despair, both personal and witnessed, up to her death on the eve of Easter Sunday, 2018.

The ultimate, final consequence of socialist decadence.

II: THE FADING MEMORY OF THE FOURTH REPUBLIC

A glimpse at what little I remember of Venezuelan life before Hugo Chávez won the 1998 Presidential Elections. How the Venezuela of the past, despite its flaws, was preferable to the Venezuela of today. The rise of Chávez, his Fifth Republic Movement party, and the Bolivarian Revolution which sought to reshape Venezuela — weighted against the backdrop of what memories I have of those days.

III: THE RISE OF THE FIFTH REPUBLIC

Hugo Chavez’s presidency began with a honeymoon period between Chávez, the media, and opposing forces that was not meant to last — and thus began the start of Venezuela’s still ongoing political crisis. New forms of protesting, disruptions in school, work, and everyday life, and the growing partisan gulf between two halves of the country became foundational pillars for this new Venezuela.

Venezuela’s fifth republic started with a new constitution, resetting all branches of government. These events coincided with a turning point in my family’s life, as we moved to the Capital city of Caracas in pursuit of better opportunities as the nation inevitably changed for the worse.

IV: VENEZUELA, THE SOCIALIST DARLING

This chapter covers the period of time where the regime tightened its ever so tight grip on power as it finally unveiled its ultimate goal: Socialism of the 21st century.

A failed Constitutional reform that was then forcefully implemented through legislative chicanery, nationalization of key industries, and a socialist crusade that sought to regulate every aspect of our lives, culminating with Chávez entrenching himself in power through a constitutional amendment.

Those were the years when Venezuela was beloved and praised by the international left as the example that Socialism “worked.” Countries, politicians, to even Hollywood actors, everyone wanted to cozy up to the Socialist darling.

V: THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

A series of circumstances and bad choices led to me ending up working as a local personnel member of one of Venezuela’s embassies in South America. This chapter focuses on my firsthand experience with the world of Socialist Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Diplomacy of Peace” and how the Revolution used its greatest asset, oil, to purchase and spread influence throughout the region and beyond. It also covers Hugo Chavez’s cancer, his death, and the start of Venezuelan Socialism’s inexorable collapse.

VI: A DANCE WITH COLLAPSE

By 2013, Venezuelan life and society had deteriorated so much that its citizens slowly began to turn into survivalists, kickstarting the worst migrant crisis in the region, one second only to Syria’s during its civil war and Ukraine’s after 2022. The pace of everyone’s livelihood was determined those days by food shortages, fingerprint scanners, ID-based weekly restrictions on purchases, hyperinflation, and everything else that unfolded during those years.

My return to Venezuela coincided with this tumultuous period — my family and I began to learn how to navigate the new Venezuela of bread lines, black markets, and smuggling as we began exploring what choices we had to escape from it all.

VII: HYPERINFLATION, SHORTAGES, AND A LEIOMYOSARCOMA

2015-2017 was, by far, the worst period of Venezuela’s socialist collapse, and my life for that matter. Our decision to escape was thwarted by one hard-to-spell word — my mother’s Leiomyosarcoma, a word that dictated the following two and a half years of our lives.

This is an account of those difficult years, the new wave of protests that took place, the medicine shortages, the calamity of Venezuela’s public and private health care systems, and the implementation of Venezuela’s Fatherland System, a Chinese-built platform for tracking the populace inspired by China’s Social Credit System.

VIII: THE POST-COLLAPSE

This chapter focuses on the aftermath of my mother’s death, Venezuela’s worsening collapse, and a new phase of the Socialist regime that started in mid-2018. This chapter covers Venezuela’s political crisis of 2019, yet another failed attempt at freedom, and the people’s collective resignation and exhaustion from it all.

IX: AND THEN, A PANDEMIC

The socialist regime found a timely ally in the form COVID-19 Pandemic, which gave them an excuse to tighten controls. A severe gasoline shortage, the new systems placed in control, and an intensified pseudo-dollarization of the economy that deepened the severe poverty of the country are all part of that convoluted chapter of Venezuela’s history.

X: THE ESCAPE

These past years I had but one final goal, to fulfill a promise and take my brother out of Venezuela, away from all the pain, misery — especially after all political escape routes, protests, elections, even coup attempts, failed at bringing change and freedom to Venezuela. This is a chapter recollecting all my failed attempts at legal migration, a highly difficult task for me given my circumstances, and made even more uphill after the physical escape routes were shut down during COVID-19. I had much cause for despair, and kept failing over and over again — until I didn’t.

EPILOGUE: 26 YEARS OF REVOLUTION (AND COUNTING)

26 years of this tragedy, of broken families, of hunger, poverty, death, and yet the regime insists that it is still “building Socialism.”

A disaster I never voted for in the first place, but which I must live with the consequences of, even if I’m now thousands of kilometers away.

EXTRA RECORD A: DIGITAL SURVIVAL

I lived most of my life sitting in front of a computer screen. For myself and others, social media and video games became avenues of escape in a decaying society. Worlds saner than the chaos and destruction of the physical, and whose digital currencies, in addition to others such as cryptocurrencies. became a means of survival in a real world consumed by hyperinflation.

Survival also meant dealing with the growing digital presence of the socialist regime, bypassing its censorship and dancing around its hate speech laws.

EXTRA RECORD B: CRISIS AS A SERVICE

Crisis begets business opportunities, and the collapse of Venezuela from 2010 onwards sure wrought upon a lot of businesses, some more shrewd that amoral others.

If you partake in such ventures, which rely on the continued existence of the Venezuelan tragedy, would you want the crisis to end?