Reviewing the “Analysis of the Letter from Jamaica: 1815-2015. Two hundred years of thought and Bolivarian legacy” from Francis Sánchez, we have found that Caracas and Bogota among other were capitals that formed part of the Spanish American revolution where insurrectional movements born in America were developed with similar claims: to end with Spanish colonialism and propended independence by creating nations.
In this axis, the political thought of Bolivar arises under an ideal of freedom and democracy with a system of government unified and integral to the mainland. So, Carabobo and Maracaibo forged Republic of Venezuela, the Pantano de Vargas and Boyacá emerged Republic of Colombia, with Pichincha Republic of Ecuador was formed in Junin the Republic of Bolivia was born, Ayacucho led to the creation of the republic Peru. Each battle is the top and the laurels of freedom.
While forging our freedom
Each victory, a new and free country in America, created and forged in their actions and intellect fight under one geographical area to unify legal, economic, social and military policies in one country: the longing for the Continental South America homeland. That is the basis of the ideas of Bolivar which includes the Charter of Jamaica.
Now we have arrived to the moment were Chávez has appropriated the Bolivarian concept, it was born in Venezuela and he started to extend it through the continent. After his death the theme of Venezuela has been a repetitive monologue of regional and international agenda, which eventually wither the hopes of Bolivarian socialism.
Why? The social and political crisis facing Venezuela is the result of weakening of a ruling class that has failed to respond to the accumulation of requirements that demands an increasingly dissatisfied of the population.
Of a State which failed to achieve the effectiveness of its economic model and keeps the population in a continuous and marked shortage of first-rate products, unprecedented inflation, acts of sabotage to some of popular discontent for others, violation of human rights, persecution of the opposition, polarisation of the political criteria generalised fear of chaos and lawlessness, all of which presents some stakeholders that are discussed in a media war without truce.
Depending on oil
Venezuela depends on the sale of its oil. However the political succession of Maduro, has left it in fragile conditions with internal differences that every time there is mayor repercussion in the international context and Venezuela presented crestfallen, distant from that of the Bolivarian Revolution, which saw their natural leader in the messianic figure he had expected. So now there is talk of Venezuela who embodied Chávez, and the one that Chávez left.
It is true that the Venezuela from Chavez reduced poverty, social inequality, but the Venezuela from today there is evidence of a great breach between these two antagonistic projects. Venezuela is divided and polarized between chavistas and non-chavistas and both the former ad they represent a Venezuela that hasn’t found its path.
Recently the murder of one of the opposition candidates, a few days before the holding of elections left a bad omen for the foreseeable future. However, the triumph of the Venezuelan opposition in legislative elections on December 6, 2015, showed that the most important tool that the people have is the manifestation of their unwavering expression through voting, which when exercised and manages to break massively absenteeism, there is nothing to stop the people and take the path that claims democracy, with a new political, social and economic air of a society suffocated by the wrong direction of his government.
In Venezuela the democratic space that was consolidated in the polls, thanks to the active public participation was higher than the same guarantees as did the opposition. The people came to doubt and not believing what finally proved against the same abuses that they have seen. And so the dream of the country languishes Chavez, not the external enemy which he denounced so many times, but by the absence of leadership in Maduro’s Chavismo without Chavez.
Repercussions in Colombia
This outcome in Venezuela has ample repercussions in Colombia, having familiar ties that sustain the sister nations. It true that they have a border of 2219 kilometers. A trade balance accounting for economic lines for Colombia. People united in the border were commerce is the imperative for survival. A border of brotherhood, affection, but also problems of a different order, with Colombian- Venezuelan plains where people have always shared ties of friendship, folklore and livestock vocation of its regions.
Such is the dependence on each other, that political decisions affecting their similar, especially when the differences of countries, becomes at times in explosive statements of some of their leaders.
There is a mental border who want to impose at all costs those seeking to dissociate the feelings between brother countries.
It is the story of two brothers who have differences but that basically maintain close ties grounded in the fervor of ideals and achievements. Colombia and Venezuela, a physical border and materials that cannot stand the real ties that bind people.
Arguably one of them, was honored for creating an oil wealth that has allowed it to boast to economic greatness and military power; resource management at its will, even supporting other friendly countries and intervening in their economies. The other, has had to calm things down to prevent definitively those ties resulting fragmented; the country has managed to make reason prevail over discord, good manners of the grotesque expressions, diplomacy over the uncomfortable word, especially finding solutions grounded in dialogue to overcome the rough actions collected from the expression of the threat to force suffered by so many of our sister nations.
History united by ideals
People on both sides have suffered the brunt of domestic violence in their territories, political protagonists with the edge of his words disrupt the mood of nationalism and sometimes make people shake integration needed and feed of their own wails and needs.
In August 2015 the Venezuelan government declared a state of exception in several states bordering Colombia, and to mature these measures are necessary until it succeeds in building a “frontier of peace” to combat “terrorism” in the bordering area. However, what was deplorable was the degree of violence.
Looting and plundering exercised against 25,000 deported Colombians and others that returned, due to the fear of being deported. It is that these acts were the stamp of implicit aggression left in many medical actions need to manage anxiety; in others, clinical attention for psychological damages; and in some, the order of therapeutic treatments as patients with psychiatric referral.
While acknowledging that the border has also exacerbated a problem of the Colombian armed conflict and that some victims fled the country to seek refuge in Venezuela, where they settled without being recognized as refugees and have become an invisible population of economic migrants but who are victims of violence.
The history of Colombia and Venezuela is linked by common ideals of the liberator.
The truth is that it is a mass population with government measures of Maduro has suffered amid difficulties mark the spoil with clear violation of their human rights.
It is at that moment when the nourishment of xenophobia against the Colombians with the Venezuelan military overreaches, abuse maintaining the foreign bond and Venezuelan roots planted; the excess evictions, with use of force deprived of what little was able to build in years.
A scenario where the dignity and patriotic sentiment is trampled. Many people dispossessed rather than material attachments of bonds created in the fraternity and love in their families. A seed of hate that the people do not want to collect.
The sad truth
Xenophobia that is encouraged and the example that was experienced a few months ago, it overflows with disrespect of the Colombians human dignity, amongst the media and populist discourse exasperates the break between Uribe and Chavez lines and on the other hand, in a confrontation, it strengthens to the extent as it attacks.
Meanwhile private people are transiting the border, full of barricades, which suffers the consequences of a different order, because as Stefan Zweig says (when Austrian soldiers guarding Russian prisoners and behaved as comrades in 1915) “those men knew that the war was a disgrace that had rushed against them and against which they could do nothing and that all who had fallen into this misfortune were like brothers”.
During the first days of January 2016, the government of Maduro order to open a humanitarian corridor in the Colombian-Venezuelan frontier, that hopefully it will be opened completely, as hope of reunion without barriers of these brother countries. Definitely not only the ignorance in perpetuated between the laws, but also in the convictions of ideologies dissected as much in dry and shameless fanaticism. This task corresponds to new elected national assembly to vindicate that great Venezuela.
