The Mcarthyist list of Chavismo: Case 2 Fonacit
By Teodoro Petkoff* | Tal Cual
08.04.05 | Lisbeth Calzadilla, a young reporter, was contacted by Fonacit (Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, which depends on the Ministry of Technology) to occupy a position as reporter in that institution. She had done a traineeship at IVIC and that reference surely was what moved Fonacit to search for her.
Lisbeth brought them her CV, was interviewed by officials from the Human Resources Department and was considered to have an adequate profile for the job. All of that took place between September and October of last year.
Almost hired for all practical purposes, she was called to what she presumed would be the last interview. She was right; it was certainly the last interview to inform her that “we are sorry” they could not hire her because she had committed the horrendous crime of signing the petition for the recall referendum. She was in the list of infamy, in the list of Adolfo (!) Tascón.
Lisbeth Calzadilla believed that article 72 of the Bicha was for real and that she would be one of the “participants” of this democracy with “protagonists”.
She discovered in her own flesh what this song and dance of “participation” really meant: They participated her that in the civil service of a Chavista Venezuela, there is no job for her. She did not count on the Bicha being simply a fairy tale.
By the way, we can now call it that because the connotation that the term has today is not what Chavez wanted to initially denominate with affection of “bicha” to his Constitution, but to the other one, that one that we all know and that it is now clear, is the one Chavez really had in mind when he made up the nickname.
The horrible figure of apartheid, created by the white South Africans to exclude blacks, which were the largest majority of the population of that country, has gone on to become one of the more sinister symbols of human evil. Apartheid is to deny your own nationals the rights that correspond to them as human beings and citizens. Apartheid is to discriminate, segregate, in the South African case for racial reasons, in the Venezuelan case for political reasons. If you signed or if you are merely known as not being pro Chavez, you have no right to work in Venezuela’s civil service or are exposed to all forms of humiliations to obtain your ID card or a passport, as we will relate in future editorials.
Yesterday we remembered Conrad; we will appeal today to another great writer, Dostoyevsky:
“Those that have exercised the experience of power, the unrestrictive capacity to humiliate another human being (…) automatically lose the power over their own sensations. Tyranny is a custom, it has its own organic life and turns easily into a sickness (…) Blood and power intoxicate (…) Man and citizen definitely perish in the tyrant”
Do the Chavistas ever think about these terrible words of warning?
* Translated by Miguel Octavio
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