Judas, I Love You
By Caridad
HAVANA TIMES – One can be in their kitchen, having their morning coffee, and suddenly see how the apartment fills with chubby, tall men dressed in black with masks covering their faces so we don’t feel the fetid breath of death they carry with them. It’s the SEBIN, the police responsible for persecuting, intimidating, torturing, and imprisoning anyone who raises their voice against the Maduro government.
That’s how things are. It’s no longer about political parties, about a country divided in two by ridiculous ideologies. The Venezuelan Constitution has become the toilet paper that, for several years, was so difficult to obtain. Now it is much harder to find even a minimum space of respect for the Constitution.
A journalist, a human rights activist, oh, what a fascist word, has just been arrested for being an Instigator and Logistical Operator in an attempted assassination, you know against whom.
In Venezuela, if we listen to five people (Maduro, the Attorney General, Diosdado Cabello, and the Rodriguez Siblings), generate more assassination attempts per week than the megawatts generated per month by the country’s main hydroelectric plant. Anyone who disturbs the sensitive ears of these five characters, with their complaints, demands, or even a minimal protest, is accused of “planning” to assassinate Maduro. Of course, the word that attracts them the most is assassination, because these governing people, with their fragile egos, need many grandiose adjectives and daunting speeches.
As you can see in the prosecutor’s post (who thinks himself a poet and social media influencer), he will later offer details about the criminal plans of the accused journalist. I don’t need to wait for these “details” because we all already know the modus operandi of the Attorney General: to seat the “accused” in a chair, in an air-conditioned room (very comfortable, that’s for sure), and make them read or recite from memory a document drafted by the prosecutor (because he cannot miss the opportunity to feel like a writer) in which they declare themselves guilty of even violating every Greek virgin and even some gods on Mount Olympus.
The crime of this journalist was to lead the traditional “burning of Judas” with a figurine dressed as Nicolas Maduro.
The “burning of Judas” is a Holy Week tradition. On Easter Sunday, the people of the town make a rag doll and put a photo, or distinctive features, of the character (generally political) they feel threatened or betrayed by.
In the year 1499, the first Judas burned in Venezuela had the face of Americo Vespucio.
But since the year 1801, when the first burning took place in Caracas, no was accused of incitement to hatred because of a burning of Judas.
Even the Prosecutor has realized that an accusation for the burning of Judas would be too ridiculous, so he thought it more appropriate to add the assassination attempt, which, after all, is what this aggressive journalist has metaphorically done.
It seems that the lack of time (or talent) to create good literary works degenerates the brains of poets and turns them into ridiculous puppets of an unscrupulous government.
And I’d better end here, with so much sensitivity in the air I should revise this diary a bit, because with the fury I carry, they could easily accuse me of inciting hatred, and the truth is I don’t. I don’t hate anyone, in fact, I’m sure this journalist doesn’t hate the wretched government either. What they do is provoke nausea. And so far, they haven’t created any law against the great Nausea.