Cover design by Ricardo Morín 00032 Oil On Linen 18 by 24 by 3/4 inches 2009
Author’s Note
This essay considers how cultures have spoken about desire through the language of sin, pathology, and identity. The aim is not to defend or condemn, but to observe how words have carried judgments across time and how those judgments still shape our understanding. The reflections that follow are an attempt to restore clarity, to see desire as part of life’s vitality rather than as a distortion imposed by inherited vocabularies.
Abstract
Historically, desire has been articulated through terms such as sexuality, fetishism, morality, and religion. Over time, these words shifted from description to judgment, producing a confusion between nature and culture. Evidence from animal behavior, biology, and public health demonstrates that variation in desire is neither anomaly nor pathology. By grounding ethics in dignity and consent rather than shame, desire can be recognized as a natural expression of vitality rather than a source of suspicion.
The Burden of Words
Our most familiar words already betray the history of our confusion. Sexuality, from the Latin sexus, once indicated simple biological differentiation; only in the nineteenth century did it expand into a comprehensive category, enveloping desire, identity, and conduct (Laqueur 1990). Fetishism, from the Portuguese feitiço (“charm” or “sorcery”), was first applied to African religious objects before being imported into European science, where it came to signify irrational sexual attachment (Foucault 1978). Morality, from mores (“customs”), originally described communal practices but hardened into prescriptions against desire, particularly under Christian influence. Religion, from religare (“to bind”), once meant binding communities into shared ritual but eventually came to bind individuals to guilt and suspicion about their own bodies. Here the meaning of Bound and Unbound comes into view: words that once bound desire to order and judgment now carry within them the possibility of unbinding, of returning desire to the realm of vitality rather than suspicion. Each of these terms began in description and shifted into judgment. When we use them today, we inherit their distortions.
The Articulation of Desire and Sin
Culture has long gazed upon desire not as part of life’s ordinary richness but as a threat to be monitored. Theologies cast it as sin; medical texts classified it as pathology; social codes framed it as danger (Foucault 1978). This does not clarify, it distorts. Sexuality becomes at once overexposed and diminished: in public, it is the subject of rules and prohibitions; in private, it collapses into unrealistic expectations that either inhibit expression or exaggerate it into fetish. What should be natural is turned into a negotiation with shame.
Nature provides a more honest account. Same-sex interactions have been documented in over four hundred species (Bagemihl 1999). Rams form lasting male–male bonds, often rejecting female partners. Dolphins employ genital contact across sexes to cement alliances (de Waal 2005). Swans, gulls, and penguins engage in same-sex pairings that rear offspring as successfully as heterosexual pairs (Roughgarden 2013). Among bonobos, sexual contact occurs across nearly every configuration and functions as a mechanism of peacekeeping and social cohesion (de Waal 2005). Even in insects, behaviors that humans describe as “homosexual” occur routinely as part of dominance rituals or sheer abundance of sexual drive. None of this destabilizes the species; rather, it integrates sexuality into the fabric of survival and affiliation.
Humans display similar variation. Chromosomal conditions such as Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) or Turner syndrome (XO) illustrate that biological sex is not a rigid binary but a spectrum (LeVay 2016). Hormonal influences during gestation shape attraction and behavior before culture applies its labels (Hrdy 1981). Neuroscientific studies suggest correlations between hypothalamic structures and orientation, though no single cause accounts for desire (LeVay 2016). What emerges is not a fixed order but a continuum. The insistence on strict categories—heterosexual or homosexual, normal or deviant—is not nature’s doing but culture’s imposition.
Yet culture continues to conflate desire with identity and narrows it into fixed roles. These categories can be politically useful, but they risk obscuring the fluidity of experience that biology reveals. When identity becomes prescriptive, individuals live their own vitality under suspicion, measuring themselves against cultural ideals that deny variation. The result is estrangement: desire filtered through shame.
An alternative frame already exists. The World Health Organization defines sexual health as “a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being” that includes the possibility of safe and pleasurable experiences (WHO 2006). The World Association for Sexual Health has gone further, affirming sexual pleasure as a fundamental human right (WAS 2019). Such frameworks do not police desire; they protect individuals against coercion and exploitation. They suggest that the role of culture is not to dictate what desires are permissible but to ensure dignity and consent. Once these conditions are secured, desire resumes its natural role: a source of intimacy, bonding, creativity, and balance (Gruskin et al. 2019).
To confront nature’s complexity is to resist its reduction into morality plays of vice and virtue. Desire does not require validation from cultural obsession, nor does it deserve condemnation from inherited vocabularies of sin. It is an aspect of life, as ordinary and vital as hunger or sleep. To acknowledge it without fear is to reclaim joy. By lifting the burden of shame, we return desire to its proper place in the living order: not an aberration requiring defense, but a manifestation of vitality—one that connects us to each other and to the exuberance of nature itself.
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Annotated Bibliography
Bagemihl, Bruce: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. (A landmark survey documenting same-sex behaviors in more than 450 species. Bagemihl’s research undermines claims that homosexuality is “unnatural” and illustrates the diversity of sexual expression across the animal kingdom. It is essential for grounding sexuality in biological rather than cultural terms.)
de Waal, Frans: Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. (Drawing on primate studies, de Waal emphasizes sex as a social tool among bonobos and chimpanzees, used for alliance-building and conflict resolution. His work demonstrates that sexual behavior is not confined to reproduction but serves broader social and evolutionary functions.)
Foucault, Michel: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978. (In this foundational text on the cultural construction of sexuality, Foucault argues that sexuality is not a timeless natural category but a discourse shaped by power and institutions. Provides the conceptual framework for understanding how morality and pathology have distorted natural instincts.)
Gruskin, Sofia, et al. “Sexual Health, Sexual Rights and Sexual Pleasure.” Global Public Health, 2019, 14(10): 1361–1372. (This article situates sexual pleasure within global public health frameworks. It underscores that fulfillment and pleasure are inseparable from health and rights, reinforcing the need for ethics based on dignity rather than prohibition.)
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer: The Woman That Never Evolved. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. (Hrdy reinterprets female primate behavior and shows active strategies in mating and alliance formation. Her work dismantles the myth of female passivity and demonstrates that sexual agency is integral to evolutionary success.)
Laqueur, Thomas: Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. (Laqueur traces the cultural and historical shift from the “one-sex” model of antiquity to the modern “two-sex” binary. His work shows how scientific language helped construct cultural categories of sexuality and gender, making him central to the etymological and historical analysis of desire.
LeVay, Simon: Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. (LeVay synthesizes research on brain structures, genetics, and prenatal influences and argues that sexual orientation emerges from a complex interaction of biological factors. Useful for contextualizing the continuum of human desire.)
Roughgarden, Joan: Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. (Roughgarden challenges traditional Darwinian views of sexual selection, highlighting diversity in gender and sexuality across species. She bridges nonhuman variation and human experience and offers a scientific argument against binary understandings of sexuality.)
World Health Organization (WHO): “Defining Sexual Health.” Geneva: WHO, 2006. (This report defines sexual health as a state of well-being that includes the possibility of safe and pleasurable sexual experiences, free of coercion or violence. It offers authoritative language to argue that sexual fulfillment is a health matter, not a moral one.)
World Association for Sexual Health (WAS): “Declaration on Sexual Pleasure.” Mexico City: WAS, 2019.(This report affirms sexual pleasure as a fundamental human right. This declaration situates pleasure within global health and rights discourse, supporting the essay’s call for ethics rooted in dignity rather than shame.)
Cover design for the essay “The Politics of Erasure: Authoritarianism and Spectacle.” The composite image juxtaposes surveillance, militarization, propaganda, and mass spectacle to underscore how authoritarian regimes render lives expendable while legitimizing control through display.
By Ricardo Morín, In Transit to and from NJ, August 22, 2025
Authoritarianism in the present era does not present itself with uniform symbols. It emerges within democracies and one-party states alike, in countries with declining economies and in those boasting rapid growth. What unites these varied contexts is not the formal shape of government but the way power acts upon individuals: autonomy is curtailed, dignity denied, and dissent reclassified as threat. Control is maintained not only through coercion but also through the appropriation of universal values—peace, tolerance, harmony, security—emptied of their content and redeployed as instruments of supression. The result is a politics in which human beings are treated as expendable and spectacle serves as both distraction and justification.
In the United States, the Bill of Rights secures liberties, yet their practical force is weakened by structural inequality and concentrated control over communication. After the attacks of September 11, the USA PATRIOT Act authorized sweeping surveillance in the name of defending freedom, normalizing the monitoring of private communications (ACLU 2021). Protest movements such as the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020 filled the streets, but their urgency was absorbed into the circuits of media coverage, partisan argument, and corporate monetization (New York Times 2020). What begins as protest often concludes as spectacle: filmed, replayed, and reframed until the original message is displaced by distractions. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic, mass homelessness, and medical bankruptcy reveal how millions of lives are tolerated as expendable (CDC 2022). Their suffering is acknowledged in statistics but rarely addressed in policy, treated as collateral to an order that prizes visibility over remedy.
Venezuela offers a more direct case. The Ley contra el Odio (“Law against Hatred”), passed in 2017 by a constituent assembly lacking democratic legitimacy, was presented as a measure to protect tolerance and peace. In practice, it has been used to prosecute journalists, students, and citizens for expressions that in a democratic society would fall squarely within the realm of debate (Amnesty International 2019). More recently, the creation of the Consejo Nacional de Ciberseguridad has extended this logic to place fear and self-censorship among neighbors and colleagues (Transparencia Venezuela 2023). At the same time, deprivation functions as a tool of discipline: access to food and medicine is selectively distributed to turn scarcity into a means of control (Human Rights Watch 2021). The state’s televised rallies and plebiscites portray unity and loyalty, but the reality is a society fractured by exile, with over seven million citizens abroad and those who remain bound by necessity rather than consent (UNHCR 2023).
Russia combines repression with patriotic theater. The 2002 Law on Combating Extremist Activity and the 2012 “foreign agents” statute have systematically dismantled independent journalism and civil society (Human Rights Watch 2017), while the 2022 law against “discrediting the armed forces” criminalized even the description of war as war (BBC 2022). Citizens have been detained for carrying blank signs, which demonstrates how any act, however symbolic, can be punished if interpreted as dissent (Amnesty International 2022). The war in Ukraine has revealed the human cost of this system: conscripts drawn disproportionately from poorer regions and minority populations are sent to the frontlines, their lives consumed for national projection. At home, state television ridicules dissent as treason or foreign manipulation, while parades, commemorations, and managed elections transform coercion into duty. The official promise of security and unity is sustained not by coexistence but by the systematic silencing of plural voices, enforced equally through law, propaganda, and ritual display.
China illustrates the most technologically integrated model. The 2017 Cybersecurity Law and the 2021 Data Security Law require companies and individuals to submit to state control over digital information and extend surveillance across every layer of society (Creemers 2017; Kuo 2021). Social media platforms compel group administrators to monitor content and disperses the responsibility of conformity to citizens themselves (Freedom House 2022). At the same time, spectacle saturates the landscape: the Singles’ Day shopping festival in November generates billions in sales, broadcast as proof of prosperity and cohesion, while state media showcases technological triumphs as national achievements (Economist 2021). Entire communities, particularly in Xinjiang, are declared targets of re-education and surveillance. Mosques are closed, languages restricted, and traditions suppressed—all in the name of harmony (Amnesty International 2021). Stability is invoked, but the reality is the systematic denial of dignity: identity reduced to an administrative category, cultural life dismantled at will, and existence itself rendered conditional upon conformity to the designs of state power.
Taken together, these cases reveal a common logic. The United States commodifies dissent and normalizes abandonment as a permanent condition of public life. Venezuela uses deprivation to enforce discipline and the resulting compliance is publicly presented as loyalty to the state. Russia demands sacrifice and transforms coercion into patriotic duty. China fuses surveillance and prosperity and engineers conformity. Entire communities are suppressed in the name of harmony. The registers differ—commercial, ritualistic, militarized, digital—but the pattern is shared: dissent is stripped of legitimacy, lives are treated as expendable, and universal values are inverted to justify coercion.
References
ACLU: “Surveillance under the USA PATRIOT Act”. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2021. (This article documents how post-9/11 legislation expanded state surveillance in the United States and framed “security” as a justification for reducing privacy rights.)
Amnesty International: “Venezuela: Hunger for Justice. London: Amnesty International”, 2019. (Amnesty International reports on how Venezuela’s Ley contra el Odio has been used to prosecute citizens and silence dissent under the rhetoric of tolerance.)
Amnesty International: “Like We Were Enemies in a War: China’s Mass Internment, Torture and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang”. London: Amnesty International. 2021. (Amnesty International provides evidence of mass detention, surveillance, and cultural repression in Xinjiang carried out in the name of “harmony” and stability.)
Amnesty International: “Russia: Arrests for Anti-War Protests”. London: Amnesty International, 2022. (Amnesty International details the systematic arrest of Russian citizens, including those holding blank signs, under laws claiming to protect peace and order.)
BBC: “Russia Passes Law to Jail People Who Spread ‘Fake’ Information about Ukraine War.” March 4, 2022. (News coverage of Russia’s 2022 law criminalizing criticism of the war shows how “discrediting the armed forces” became a punishable offense.)
CDC.: “Opioid Overdose Deaths in the United States. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”. 2022. (The CDC provides statistical evidence of widespread loss of life in the U.S. and underscores how entire populations are treated as expendable in public health.)
Creemers, Rogier: “Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China”: Translation with Annotations. Leiden University, 2017. (An authoritative translation and analysis of China’s 2017 Cybersecurity Law illustrate how digital oversight is institutionalized.)
UNHCR: “Refugee and Migrant Crisis in Venezuela: Regional Overview”. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2023. (This report offers figures on the Venezuelan exodus and highlights the mass displacement caused by deprivation and repression.)
To my brother Alberto, whose persistence sustained this reflection and made these pages possible.
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By Ricardo Morin
July 29, 2025
Abstract
This essay examines the fragmentation of Venezuelan national identity amid a prolonged crisis of State failure. It argues that the collapse of institutional sovereignty, the entrenchment of foreign authoritarian influence, and the marginalization of native citizens from civic and economic life have not only hollowed out the republic but have also fractured the symbolic cohesion necessary for shared civic identity. Through a reasoned analysis of foreign entanglement, cultural displacement, and the moral cost of dispossession, the essay contends that Venezuelan identity has become a contested act of memory and resistance. The argument proceeds not from political activism but from a civic and ethical perspective on national dissolution.
Section I: Losing the Nation: Identity in a Failed State
National identity is not an abstraction. It is a lived sense of coherence that binds individuals to a shared history, a common language, and a civic project. In functional States, this identity is sustained by stable institutions of governance, the continuity of law, and the everyday experience of participation in a protected civic order. When a State collapses—through authoritarian control, institutional decay, and the disfigurement of sovereignty—its people do not merely lose services or rights. They begin to lose their place in the world.
As Michel Agier observes, “when institutions that once guaranteed rights, protection, and civic recognition collapse—such as courts, elections, or access to public services—citizens can become internally exiled: physically present, but stripped of belonging”—of any sense of inclusion.
This disintegration is not caused solely by economic collapse or political repression. It has been compounded by the regime’s calculated alignment with foreign authoritarian powers, which have embedded external interests deep within the nation’s economy and territorial administration. Through negotiated dependencies—whether in extractive industries, infrastructure, surveillance, or military cooperation—the Venezuelan State has relinquished control over strategic industries and assets. In doing so, it has not only compromised national sovereignty; it has reordered the social and cultural hierarchy of belonging.
As Louisa Loveluck has documented, these foreign enclaves operate as “parallel structures of control and privilege,” where loyalty to external powers displaces the traditional role of State industries such as in oil and mining resources (Loveluck, “Foreign Control and Local Collapse in Venezuela’s Border Zones,” The Washington Post, 2019).
According to David Smilde, this delegation of sovereign functions to authoritarian allies has transformed the State apparatus into an instrument of regime survival rather than a vehicle of national representation (Smilde, “The Military and Authoritarian Resilience in Venezuela,” Latin American Politics and Society, 2020).
The result is a deep psychological rupture. Arjun Appadurai describes this condition as a form of “identity disanchoring,” in which cultural detachment renders citizens unable to recognize themselves in their historical present (Modernity at Large, 1996).
When a nation’s institutions no longer reflect its people, and when its future is shaped by foreign imperatives, Venezuelanness becomes less a civic reality and more a memory under siege. What is lost is not only territorial—it is existential. Hannah Arendt warned of this condition with stark clarity: the loss of the right to have rights begins when one no longer belongs to a political community capable of guaranteeing them security (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951).
Section II: Authoritarian Alliances and Economic Infiltration
Venezuela’s transformation into a failed State has not occurred in isolation. Its authoritarian trajectory has been reinforced by a calculated strategy of international alignment with other regimes operating outside the norms of democratic accountability. These alliances—chiefly with Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey—have provided the Maduro regime not only with political legitimacy and technical support, but have also enabled the gradual outsourcing of national functions and resources to foreign control (cf. Ellis 2018, 49–56).
These alliances are transactional: the Venezuelan State forfeits sovereignty in exchange for survival. Chinese loans secured by oil reserves, Russian stakes in energy infrastructure, Cuban intelligence operations embedded in the military and civil apparatus, and Iranian ventures in mining and logistics have together displaced native Venezuelans from critical sectors of the economy (cf. Trinkunas 2015, 3–6; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 197–198).
In parallel, private and informal business networks—often tied to these foreign interests—have taken root in local markets, at times displacing or outperforming historical domestic producers. This economic infiltration has a dual effect. It distorts the allocation of national resources, diverting wealth and opportunity away from the general population toward a narrow class of regime beneficiaries and their foreign patrons (cf. Corrales 2020, 212–215). And it reconfigures the geography of power: entire regions, especially those rich in oil, minerals, or strategic positions, have come under the functional control of external actors or militias under foreign protection (cf. Romero 2021, 88–91).
In such contexts, Venezuelans do not merely feel excluded from their economy; they experience it as something alien—managed, exploited, and secured by those whose loyalties lie elsewhere. The result is a corrosive alienation. A population that once saw itself as a beneficiary of a national project now confronts the reality of an extractive system in which their labor, land, and culture are no longer valued on their own terms. The economy ceases to be a platform for collective progress and becomes a zone of foreign extraction, protected by repression and organized through impunity (cf. Loveluck and Dehghan 2020; López Maya 2022).
In this environment, the question of identity becomes inseparable from the loss of agency. To be Venezuelan under such conditions is to be subordinated within one’s own country.
Section III: Cultural and Social Displacement
The dissolution of identity in a failed State extends beyond political and economic structures; it reaches into the cultural and social fabric of everyday life. In Venezuela, the displacement of native citizens is not always physical—though mass emigration has marked the national experience. The institutions, customs, and even public spaces that once embodied a shared civic identity are being emptied out, repurposed, or replaced by structures that no longer reflect Venezuelan values or priorities [cf. Salas 2019, 45–47].
Public education, for instance—once a source of national pride and social mobility—has been systematically dismantled. In its place, ideological indoctrination and partisan loyalty have become criteria for access and advancement [cf. Human Rights Watch 2021]. The result is not only the degradation of knowledge and opportunity but even the politicization of childhood itself. Similarly, cultural production—formerly diverse, expressive, and regionally vibrant—has withered under censorship, economic collapse, and the withdrawal of public support for the arts [cf. Ávila 2020, 119–124].
What remains is either trivialized as propaganda or silenced altogether. The result is a cultural silence, where shared narratives are undermined and the cultural life of the nation is reduced to slogans and spectacle. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign interests and their social infrastructure—contract workers, commercial complexes, private security, parallel institutions—has introduced new cultural norms and loyalties into local environments, particularly in border areas and resource-rich zones [cf. Rodríguez and Ortega 2023].
These changes are often subtle: signage in unfamiliar languages, imported goods replacing local ones, new patterns of exclusion in access to services or employment. But over time, they alter the character of a place, displacing not only people but the meanings those places once held. This form of displacement is disorienting because it operates within everyday life. It renders Venezuelans strangers in their own markets, their own schools, their own land. It unravels the mutual recognition that makes coexistence possible.
When communities no longer share a common point of reference—whether legal, linguistic, or moral—they lose the cohesion needed to sustain identity as something lived and affirmed. The rupture is not dramatic; it is slow, cumulative, and deeply damaging [cf. Arendt 1951, 302–306]. In such a context, cultural resilience becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Identity, once reinforced by public participation and pride in collective achievement, begins to retreat into nostalgia or fracture along lines of class, exile, or ideological survival. It becomes reactive rather than generative—something to defend rather than to build.
Section IV: Dignity and the Struggle to Belong
“Venezuela: Freedom in the World 2024” by Freedom House offers updated empirical data and analytical context regarding the decline of political rights and civil liberties in Venezuela, with particular attention to authoritarian consolidation and State control.
At the heart of national identity lies the human need for dignity: the certainty that one’s life is acknowledged, one’s labor valued, and one’s voice able to contribute to a shared future. In today’s Venezuela, that dignity has been systematically undermined. The collapse of institutions, the degradation of public life, and the influence of foreign entanglements distorting the national economy have created a climate in which the average citizen no longer feels seen or protected by their country. This is not merely a political failure, but a fracture in the ethical foundation of the nation. As Emmanuel Levinas warned, “dignity is not a legal category but the response of the face of the other, who calls and obliges us” (Levinas 1982).
When a government no longer rules on behalf of its people, but rather to ensure its own permanence and serve external patrons, civic inclusion becomes conditional. Loyalty is demanded, not earned. Dissent is criminalized, not heard. Citizenship, far from offering protection, becomes a liability. In such a system, dignity is not merely denied—it is redefined through fear, dependency, and silence. Here, Hannah Arendt’s warning comes to pass: “the loss of human rights begins when the right to have rights is lost” (Arendt 1951).
This leaves Venezuelans—both within and beyond the country—suspended between dispossession and resistance. Many continue to fight for what remains: organizing locally, teaching despite educational collapse, feeding neighbors in the absence of public services, safeguarding memory in the face of propaganda. These acts are heroic, but they also respond to abandonment. They attest to the resilience of the people, but also to the void where the State should be.
For those in exile, the loss is often twofold: the loss of a physical home and the loss of a living context. Cultural reference points no longer match daily experience. One’s accent becomes a marker of displacement. The passport becomes a barrier more than a right. And yet, exile can also sharpen awareness of what has been lost—and what must be preserved. Thus, identity persists not through affirmation of a functioning nation, but through refusal to forget one. In the words of Edward Said, “exile is not simply a condition of loss, but a critical way of being in the world” (Said 2000).
Even so, dignity requires more than memory. It requires restoration: of institutions, of justice, of a civic space where Venezuelans may once again participate as equals. Until such restoration is possible, the struggle to belong will continue to define Venezuelan identity—not as a static inheritance, but as a sustained refusal to surrender what remains of the nation’s moral core.
Section V: A Word for the Dispossessed
To speak of dispossession is to name not only what has been taken but also what continues to be denied: the right to shape one’s future within a framework of justice, belonging, and shared meaning. In Venezuela, dispossession has unfolded through a deliberate dismantling of sovereignty—first by internal corruption, then by foreign entanglement. What remains is a scattered people, a fragmented territory, and an identity under immense pressure. As Achille Mbembe has noted, “dispossession acts not only upon bodies but also upon the collective imaginaries that sustain life in common” (Mbembe 2016).
And yet, dispossession is not the end of identity. The absence of a functional State does not erase a nation’s moral memory. The language, traditions, civic values, and aspirations that once shaped Venezuelan life have not vanished: they have been driven underground, carried into exile, or preserved in the hearts of those who remember. “Language is the house of being,” said Heidegger, and where it is kept alive, a form of belonging endures (Heidegger 1959).
The task now is not only to resist, but to rebuild: to articulate a vision of Venezuelanness that rejects both cynicism and forgetfulness.
This cannot be done through nostalgia alone. Nor can it be deferred to future generations without commitment. It begins with the refusal to normalize what is not normal: the foreign occupation of national resources, the criminalization of dissent, the denial of opportunity, the devaluation of citizenship. It continues in the quiet labor of preserving language, history, and dignity wherever that remains possible—whether in classrooms, in exile, or through the written word. And it gains strength through solidarity: among those who stayed, those who left, and those who bear both destinies.
Under these conditions, Venezuelan identity is not a fixed inheritance but an act of resistance. It is the assertion that dignity is not negotiable, and that a people cannot be permanently replaced by alliances of convenience and control. The recovery of the nation will take time and may require forms not yet imagined. But it will depend, above all, on the preservation of civic spirit—one that knows what has been lost and refuses to let it be forgotten.
Epilogue *
As Venezuela’s history unfolds in waves, the struggle between unity and fragmentation, idealism and authority, repeats itself—not only in the corridors of power but also in the private lives of those who live with its consequences. Power, in its many forms, tests the very fabric of the nation, yet the quest for balance remains elusive. Venezuela remains gripped by a profound humanitarian crisis, with millions deprived of basic healthcare and nutrition, according to the “World Report 2024” by Human Rights Watch. [1] The country now has the highest rate of undernourishment in South America, with 66% of its population in need of humanitarian aid and 65% having irreversibly lost their means of livelihood. Despite repeated promises of reform and amnesty, entrenched power structures have prevented meaningful change and perpetuated what is widely regarded as an authoritarian and corrupt regime. External interventions, primarily diplomatic and economic sanctions, have been frequent, yet they have failed to compel any substantive transformation.
Political theory once held that the spread of democracy would secure peace among nations. [2] The ordeal for Venezuelans suggests the converse: peace recedes where democracy is hollowed into the temporality of chaos. Although such theories do not directly address the persistence of autocracies, the Venezuelan case highlights how regimes strengthened by internal control and by strategic autocratic alliances with external powers can withstand both internal unrest and external pressure.
In Venezuela, theoretical insights find concrete expression in how democratic institutions—elections, legislatures, and courts—are repurposed to entrench authoritarian control. Through staged electoral processes, constrained legislatures, and politicized judiciaries, these regimes suppress dissent, manage perception, and deflect external accountability. Legitimacy transforms from a mandate of the people into a mechanism for the endurance of autocratic power.
While the path forward remains uncertain, the crisis is no longer merely political—it is systemic, embedded in the very fabric of Venezuela’s history. The resolution of this crisis requires more than political turnover or external intervention; it requires an acknowledgment of the historical inheritance that has shaped the nation’s mistrust and dysfunction. The foundations of governance have long been built on conflicting forces, and any potential for change begins with an awareness of this legacy. A coordinated strategy that integrates economic support, diplomatic engagement, and grassroots democratic movements may provide short-term relief, but it cannot resolve what is ingrained. True transformation requires a cultural reckoning—an internal shift in consciousness that confronts the very forces that have enabled autocratic rule. Yet without a profound internal unity—a cultural awakening capable of overcoming centuries of inherent contradictions—the possibility of such transformation may remain distant, though not extinguished.
[2] Azar Gat, “The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed,” World Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 58, No. 1, October 2005, 73-100.https://www.jstor.org/stable/40060125
Améry, Jean: At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. (A philosophical and existential reflection on suffering, exile, and the loss of belonging. The essay draws on his idea that there is no greater violence than being stripped of a place in the world to return to, which becomes a moral axis in the Venezuela of the exodus.)
Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. (Appadurai introduces the concept of “identity disanchoring” to describe the cultural unmooring brought about by globalization, which disrupts symbolic continuity between past and present. He is cited to explain the subjective rupture in contexts of cultural loss and displacement.)
Arendt, Hannah: The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951. (Foundational study on rootlessness, denationalization, and the right to have rights. Her conceptualization of stateless refugees directly informs the argument about the loss of belonging as a form of ontological expulsion.)
Ávila, Rafael: La cultura sitiada: Arte, política y silencio en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2020. (Ávila examines how censorship, economic precariousness, and institutional control have drastically reduced independent artistic production in Venezuela. He is cited to support the claim that cultural diversity has been replaced by an expression conditioned by power and subsistence.)
Corrales, Javier: Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela’s Authoritarian Leaders Consolidated Power. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2020. (Corrales explains how regime elites have concentrated economic control through informal networks, enabling foreign-backed oligarchies to displace domestic economic actors. Used to support the claim that foreign patrons and loyalists now dominate Venezuelan resource flows.)
Ellis, R. Evan: Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. (Ellisprovides a comprehensive mapping of how foreign actors—especially from Cuba, Russia, and China—embed themselves in the Venezuelan state. Cited to explain the strategic outsourcing of sovereignty to non-democratic allies.)
Gessen, Masha: Surviving Autocracy. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. (Though centered on the United States, this book articulates general patterns of autocratic behavior—such as the distortion of language, the hollowing of institutions, and the disorientation of those governed—which also apply to the Venezuelan case.)
Heidegger, Martin: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959. (Includes the well-known phrase “Language is the house of being,” which is cited to emphasize the relationship between linguistic continuity and existential belonging.)
Human Rights Watch: “Venezuela’s Humanitarian Emergency: Large-Scale UN Response Needed to Address Health and Food Crisis.” New York: Human Rights Watch, 2019. (H.R.W. detailed report linking the collapse of public services with violations of basic rights and national dignity, highlighting how the humanitarian crisis contributes to the dissolution of identity.)
Levinas, Emmanuel: Totalité et infini: Essai sur l’extériorité. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961. (Levinas’s ethics of alterity, centered on responsibility toward the irreducible other, underlies the essay’s argument for a politics founded on dignity, not on state identity or calculated reciprocity.)
Levitsky, Steven, and Ziblatt, Daniel: How Democracies Die. Nueva York: Crown Publishing Group, 2018. (Levitsky and Ziblatt offer a framework for understanding democratic degradation via institutional capture and foreign alignment. It is referenced to underline the transactional nature of Venezuela’s external alliances.)
López Maya, Margarita: “Economía extractiva y soberanía en disputa: el Arco Minero del Orinoco.” Revista Venezolana de Ciencia Política 45 (2022): 34–49. (López Maya analyzes how mining zones have become semi-autonomous territories controlled by militias and foreign interests, supporting the essay’s argument on geographic alienation and economic fragmentation.)
Loveluck, Louisa: “The Collapse of a Nation: Venezuela’s Descent into Authoritarianism.” The Washington Post, July 2020. (Journalistic synthesis of Venezuela’s structural collapse, including firsthand accounts of economic alienation and the psychological cost of state abandonment.)
Loveluck, Louisa, and Dehghan, Saeed Kamali: “Venezuela Hands Over Control of Key Assets to Foreign Backers.” The Washington Post, 2020. (Loveluck’s and Dehghan’s investigative report documents the privatization and foreign management of strategic Venezuelan sectors. Their report is cited to demonstrate how national industries have been subordinated to external control.)
Mbembe, Achille. Politiques de l’inimitié. Paris: La Découverte, 2016. (Mbembe explores the politics of enmity and the mechanisms of dispossession in late modernity. Quoted to highlight how structural violence targets both material life and the collective imagination.)
Rodríguez, Luis, y Ortega, Daniela: Colonización contemporánea: transformaciones culturales en las zonas extractivas de Venezuela. Mérida: Editorial de la Universidad de los Andes, 2023. (An ethnographic study on the sociocultural effects of foreign investment in mining and border regions, including the introduction of new hierarchies, codes of coexistence, and parallel organizational forms. It is cited to support the argument about the transformation of cultural norms and community loyalties.)
Romero, Carlos A.: “Geopolítica, militarización y relaciones internacionales del chavismo.” Nueva Sociedad 293 (2021): 82–94. (Romero traces how foreign alliances have militarized border zones and reinforced internal authoritarianism. Used to support the claim that power has shifted toward actors whose loyalties lie beyond Venezuela.)
Roth, Kenneth: The Fight for Rights: Human Dignity and the Struggle Against Authoritarianism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022. (Roth examines the moral and civic foundations of dignity, providing context for the argument that Venezuelan identity must now be preserved through resistance rather than state recognition.)
Said, Edward W.: Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. (Said explores the experience of exile as an existential and critical condition, beyond mere uprootedness. Cited to support the idea that Venezuelan identity in the diaspora endures not through the affirmation of a functioning nation, but through the refusal to forget.)
Salas, Miguel: Arquitectura y desposesión: Espacios públicos y crisis urbana en Venezuela. Caracas: Editorial Punto Cero, 2019. (Salas examines the transformation of public architecture and space in the context of political and social collapse in Venezuela. Cited to support the idea that shared civic structures are being stripped of their symbolic and communal function.)
Schmitt, Carl: The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Theoretical reference on sovereignty, useful for understanding how the Venezuelan regime defines enemies and allies not through legality but through loyalty, thereby reshaping the very meaning of citizenship.)
Shklar, Judith: American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. (Shklar examines how political and social exclusion has shaped the meaning of citizenship in the United States. The essay takes up her premise that to be a citizen implies not only legal rights, but effective belonging and recognized dignity.)
Smilde, David: “Participation, Politics, and Culture in Twenty-First Century Venezuela.” Latin American Research Review 52, no. 1 (2017): 157–65. (Analyzes the cultural impact of political polarization and exclusion in Venezuela, and how identity is formed in contested civic spaces.)
Trinkunas, Harold A.: “Venezuela’s Defense Sector and Civil-Military Relations.” Washington: Brookings Institution Working Paper, 2015. (Trinkunas examines the entrenchment of Cuban and Russian influence in the Venezuelan military. Cited to explain the redefinition of sovereignty under foreign advisory presence.)
On Trump, Putin, and the Veiled Axis from Kyiv to Caracas“
In recent weeks, I’ve watched with growing unease as foreign policy decisions under Donald Trump unfold with a peculiar symmetry—one that echoes, benefits, or subtly enables the strategic priorities of Vladimir Putin. While these choices are framed by officials as matters of diplomacy, security, or immigration control, the pattern that emerges—when traced across geography and timing—is harder to dismiss. It suggests not only a convergence of interests but also a convergence of silence, of things not said, not questioned, not confronted.
A sharply argued opinion piece in The Washington Post by Marian Da Silva Parra, a scholar at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, called out the administration’s expanded travel bans for what they are: policies that punish Venezuelan dissidents and effectively strengthen Nicolás Maduro’s grip by allowing him to portray his opponents as foreign threats. But what is more telling than the piece itself is the fact that it appeared only as an op-ed, not as a subject of sustained front-page reporting. For all its substance, the critique is offered through a medium that functions more like commentary than alert.
At the same time, U.S. support for Ukraine is being retracted and reissued with increasing hesitation. Aid deliveries were quietly paused and only resumed after public pressure following the July 4 missile strike on Kyiv. Multilateral sanctions coordination has reportedly faltered, and new diplomatic pressure is being placed on Ukraine to accept a ceasefire—one the Kremlin has shown no real interest in reciprocating.
These are not isolated gestures. They land, again and again, in Moscow’s favor.
This invites a broader question: Are we witnessing the quiet shaping of a two-front geopolitical shift—from Eastern Europe to the Western Hemisphere—where American policy, whether by intention or inertia, now facilitates Russia’s global posture? Or is this merely the result of domestic calculations with unintended consequences abroad?
There is, to be clear, no proof of deliberate collusion. But outcomes matter. A weakened Ukraine. An emboldened Maduro. A distracted and demoralized press. A public fed more performance than substance. The effect is less of a conspiracy than of a stage being set—unexamined, unchallenged, and disturbingly aligned with a worldview in which democratic resistance is treated as destabilizing and authoritarian consolidation as order restored.
In such a climate, perception is not a matter of optics. It becomes the only terrain left to navigate what official language refuses to name.
The war in Ukraine is often presented as a geopolitical confrontation between the West and Russia, but this interpretation can obscure a deeper reality: the rise of authoritarianism as a global force. Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential voices in the critique of U.S. foreign policy, has argued that U.S. hegemony is the primary factor driving the conflict. His approach, rooted in Cold War logic, has been essential for understanding global power dynamics. However, one must question whether this framework remains sufficient to analyze the coordinated expansion of authoritarian regimes in the world today.
The issue is no longer simply whether U.S. policy contributed to Russia’s aggression, but whether democracies can withstand the deliberate advance of governments seeking to consolidate power at any cost. What is at stake transcends Ukraine’s sovereignty: it is the survival of democracy in the world.
Chomsky argues that NATO’s expansion and U.S. financial dominance exacerbated tensions with Russia and limited diplomatic options. His vision proposes a world in which power is distributed between the United States, Europe, China, and Russia, which he believes would create a more stable and just balance. This perspective has been crucial in questioning the excesses of U.S. interventionism. In the present world, however, where authoritarianism is not only reacting to the West but also actively seeking to reshape the global order, is a framework based solely on containing U.S. hegemony sufficient?
The rise of authoritarian regimes is not merely a response to Western influence; it is a deliberate strategy to consolidate power. While Chomsky has emphasized the importance of distributing global power, it is crucial to analyze the nature of those who would fill this void. Russia and China are not simply seeking a multipolar stability; their actions reflect an attempt to exert absolute control, without democratic constraints. Chomsky’s critique helps us understand the roots of international conflicts, but it may need to be expanded to account for how these regimes are transforming the very structure of global politics.
One challenge in applying Chomsky’s traditional analysis to the present is that contemporary authoritarianism no longer aligns solely with past ideological divisions. It is no longer a struggle between socialism and capitalism, or left and right. Rather, these regimes share a common objective: dismantling democratic institutions to ensure their permanence in power.
Putin, for instance, invokes Soviet nostalgia while prohibiting any critical reassessment of Stalinism. China blends State capitalism with absolute political control. Hungary and India, once considered democracies aligned with the West, have adopted authoritarian models. Meanwhile, the U.S. far-right, which historically opposed communism, has begun to adopt the Kremlin’s narrative, portraying it as a defender against “globalist elites.”
This ideological alignment makes modern authoritarianism more dangerous than ever. It not only transcends traditional power blocs but is also reinforced through strategic alliances, mutual support, and the erosion of democracies from within. This is perhaps most evident in the United States. The presidency of Trump revealed an unexpected vulnerability: the possibility that authoritarianism could thrive within the world’s most influential democracy. Here, the debate is no longer reduced to a question of isolationism or interventionism, but to the real risk of autocratic tactics being normalized in domestic politics.
The Trump administration sent contradictory signals regarding the Kremlin, weakening the principle of deterrence. Rather than establishing a clear stance against authoritarian expansion, its ambiguity allowed regimes like Putin’s to interpret the lack of firmness as an opportunity to act with impunity. Figures such as Marco Rubio have advocated for an unequivocal stance that would reinforce U.S. strategic credibility, while the inconsistency in the Trump administration’s foreign policy contributed to the perception that the West was divided and hesitant.
This weakening of democratic leadership has not occurred in a vacuum. The globalization of authoritarianism is a phenomenon in which autocratic regimes not only directly challenge democracies but also back one another to evade sanctions, subvert international pressure, and consolidate their internal rule. The invasion of Ukraine must be understood within this framework: it is not just a regional conflict or a reaction to NATO, but a calculated move within a broader strategy to weaken global democracy.
For decades, critics like Chomsky have been instrumental in highlighting the effects of U.S. dominance on global politics. His analysis has allowed us to understand how U.S. hegemony has influenced numerous conflicts. However, the evolution of authoritarianism raises questions that require expanding this perspective. The greatest threat to democracy is no longer exclusively U.S. power, but the consolidation of a global autocratic model advancing through coordinated strategies.
Blaming the U.S. for every geopolitical crisis may overlook a crucial shift: authoritarian regimes have moved from being a reaction to Washington’s influence to becoming an active strategy to replace the Western democratic model. Recognizing this shift does not absolve the U.S. of its failures in foreign policy, but it does demand an understanding that countering authoritarianism requires more than constant criticism of its hegemony. It requires recognizing that democracy faces a coordinated and unprecedented threat.
Chomsky’s vision of a multipolar world is, in theory, appealing. However, what would this imply in practice if the actors filling the void left by the U.S. are not interested in preserving democracy? The real challenge is not merely containing Putin’s territorial ambitions but preventing his model of governance—based on dismantling democratic institutions—from gaining traction in the West.
Chomsky remains one of the most incisive critics of U.S. foreign policy, and his work has been fundamental in understanding the effects of power on international relations. His analysis has shed light on the flaws of interventionism and the dynamics of global hegemony. The world, however, has changed, and so have the challenges facing democracies. Today, the crisis in Ukraine is no longer limited to a debate over NATO, U.S. intervention, or Western hypocrisy. It is part of a broader struggle between democracy and autocracy, a struggle that does not end at Ukraine’s borders but extends to the very political institutions of the West.
If we fail to recognize this shift, we risk not only losing Ukraine but also underestimating the scope of the threats facing democracies worldwide. Neutrality is no longer an option when the challenge is the survival of free societies. Beyond the mistakes of the West, the rise of authoritarianism demands a response that goes beyond constant criticism of U.S. hegemony and instead embraces the active defense of democratic values wherever they are under threat.
Observations On Perception 