Author: Caridad

Yesterday, I bid farewell to my best costumers: a young couple and their 9-month daughter. I did three photo shoots for them: during her pregnancy, after the baby was born, and later for the child’s baptism.

The president announced that a new coup attempt in the country was in the making. In his two years in office, Nicolas Maduro has warned us about more coup attempts than Fidel Castro has skirted in his lifetime.

What gradually became a daily spectacle as of a year ago has become rather uncomfortable news here in Venezuela and abroad: immense line-ups of people hoping to buy food and hygiene products.

In December, we all like to talk about or at least think about our plans for the coming months, about what we achieved or left behind during the year that comes to an end. This may have something to do with the unconscious need to be re-born: to let what we were die in order to become others, new, better and more evolved.

Six years ago, a friend of mine called me and asked me: “Would you be interested in letting a yuma (gringo) use your photos?” Put that way, it sounded awful. Immediately, however, he gave me a more serious explanation.

I haven’t felt the inclination to write about my experiences among Venezuelans for some time now. When one’s happy, you see, one tends to forget everything else. And I couldn’t be happier, because, in addition to the joy I always feel, I now I have the joy of feeling right at home, feeling as though I were in Cuba, that is.

I have never been interested in seeing the film Saving Private Ryan, but a week ago I must have felt something similar to what was experienced by those who were involved in the rescue of that soldier.