It was May 27th of the year 2007. On that Sunday, I remember being sat on my parents’ bed with my mom watching TV. We were watching a local channel called ‘RCTV’ and something important was happening, as I could tell by my mother’s actions. She seemed tense, at times emotional, but I didn’t know what was going on. In all innocence and while seeing thousands of people gathered in the channel’s headquarters in Caracas through my screen, I asked her what the matter was and the reason behind her being so “strange”, as I perceived it. Without taking her eyes from the screen and with an apparent unconscious answer that seemed to have just fallen from her lips she said “they’re shutting them down”.
By “they”, I knew exactly who she meant. Even though I wasn’t even stepping into adolescence at this point, I had grown up in a politically unstable country and this had affected me enough to the point where it directly guided me to infer that by “they”, she meant the government. I continued watching the screen, without even bothering to ask why this was happening, because even at my young age, I knew that sometimes there wasn’t really an answer as to why our government did certain things. I was only ten years old, but I was about to witness something that would forever shape my character.
Behind chants that claimed “freedom”, were the faces of countless actors and actresses, videographers, news anchors, producers, writers and other members of the channel’s staff that stood there, as living evidence of the suffocating oppression my country was undergoing. Some were crying with eyes filled with sorrow and hopelessness, while others gamely held their heads high. Nevertheless, they were all there for the same reason: to show that, even though they were being unjustly shut down, Venezuela had a task to fulfill; and that was to fight for a freedom of speech that was being snatched from us at that moment in front of our very own eyes.
As I dedicated all my attention to the screen, I carefully and purposely tried to stamp this moment in my memory. I saw how they directed the camera to a familiar face and one that I knew too well. It was Eladio Lárez, the host of the Venezuelan “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, a man who I remembered had seemingly been on TV for as long as I had lived until that moment, even though the show had first aired in the 2000’s. I had grown up watching him and specifically remember evenings at my grandma’s house with the show on and my family playing along. He had always brought much joy to my home, but the usual cheery and positive attitude he conveyed during his show simply wasn’t there that day. He seemed down. Filled with impotence, heartache and plain anger, as I’m sure many were feeling as well. As he was giving his statement, I couldn’t help but notice a song that was playing in the background.
“Because there is a heart that screams, because there is a lovely emotion, filled with love and will to stay with you. There is a Venezuela that won’t be silenced. There’s a country that is reflected in the screen. Defend your right to watch what you want to watch.”
That song, which needless to say makes more sense in Spanish, will forever stay in my mind as it perfectly describes the moment of exasperation that many Venezuelans were going through at the time. As the channel had its last minutes on air, which finished with the Venezuelan national anthem, I could hear my mother’s sobs next to me. My heart instantly sank to my feet and I couldn’t help myself but start to cry as well as the screen turned black and a new government-ran TV channel, “TVes”, invaded what once was the 53-year-old RCTV.
The shadow of censorship has been falling over the Venezuelan media outlets for many years. By the time Hugo Chavez passed away in 2013, the media atmosphere had been greatly shifted and morphed. The majority of media organizations were either silenced and taken from the air, or made to support the government only expanding the media of the ‘state’. Not only this, but after the new president of the country, Nicolas Maduro, was appointed in February 2014, and protests against him peaked, it was declared that the freedom of the press had been violated at least 500% more times when compared to February 2013. This includes 37 arrests, 67 aggressions and one bullet injury to media figures who were covering said protests and related events.
It’s 2016 and nothing has changed, in fact, it has worsened. David Natera Febres, the director of the regional daily newspaper “Correo del Caroní”, was found guilty of defamation and was sentenced to four years of imprisonment this past March by the Venezuelan Justice System, which is highly corrupted and favors the government. Febres published a report in 2013 exposing an extortion scheme involving “CVG Ferrominera Orinoco”, a mining company, which is run by the state, to no one’s surprise. This shows an unjust penalization of free and independent investigative journalism in efforts to brazenly muzzle and silence the Venezuelan people. This is why, according to Freedom House, Venezuela no longer has a free press and hasn’t had one since 2003. And this is just one instance that exemplifies the many barriers that journalism has on the Venezuelan soil.
This ideological steamroller that Venezuelan journalists has been subjected to has intensified so much, that there’s much less space for diversity of information to get to the people through the main mediums, which is the sole purpose of informative and investigative journalism. As an alternative, many Venezuelans turn to Twitter and other social media platforms to communicate their ideas and become informed of what’s going on around them, ranking fourth globally in Twitter usage.
It is not only shameful enough to have to practice journalism under an oppressive government, but many of the journalists are objects of aggression and maltreatment, evidencing that journalism in Venezuela is a job that risks the lives of those who practice it.
For those who stay in Venezuela defending their job, I’m forever grateful and I value your work every day as I myself had to choose to study abroad to avoid the impediments imposed by the government. You’re all brave and incredibly selfless to risk your life for the valuing of the Venezuelan people’s lives. And to the Venezuelan government I say, only the truth will set us free.
