The day the world changed went like this.
Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured on January 2. Venezuelans everywhere watched the hands of the clock go stock-still. In Caracas, they heard explosions. The next morning in Miami people ran to the streets. 25 years of grief poured out in dance. 8 million exiled people (dead and alive) breathed a sigh of relief. Some were in pajamas, some wore the flag, all were in shock.
The morning my world changed, my mom banged on my door, dragging me to the living room to stare at the television. My phone buzzed violently and uselessly in my pocket. Friends, surely, asking how I feel.
I don’t know how I feel, because the people in charge aren’t answering any questions.
My father dances in the living room, more hopeful than I think he’s ever let himself be. He and my mom tell me all the places they want to take my brother and I.
It’s hopeful, beautiful … for all of three seconds.
Because then, they comment over the news footage of people celebrating:
”If ICE shows up, they’re screwed.”
They laugh, I freeze.
We’re citizens, but how many of them aren’t?
The man that calls us animals, that calls us monsters, just handed us this moment. He who takes Temporary Protected Status from millions of us, who tells us to leave before we are forced out.
We know he still wants us out.
Before I’ve had breakfast, my world has changed.
Then, weeks before my 20th birthday, the Earth tears open.
My friend sends me a text: “You don’t still have family in Venezuela, do you?”
(It doesn’t matter either way. Every single person there is my family if the Earth caves in.)
On June 24, twin earthquakes hit Venezuela. I felt it from 1,360 miles away. I felt more helpless than I ever have, watching videos of home, collapsing on itself in a way I’ve only ever seen in movies.
I felt a sick sort of guilt: I’ve never been there. I could have been there. It’s far from Maracaibo, but not far enough.
My parents cried all the time. The Venezuelan government, predictably, is lying. Aid given to them never quite seems to make it into the hands of people that need it.
But somewhere in the wreckage, there’s a unification.
People came together. In La Guaira, people lifted buildings to get each other out. They searched, hoping against hope, for one another. (You should really look up those videos. Those people are real-life superheroes.) In Miami, there’s nowhere to go that doesn’t have donation-collection sites. In Gainesville, VENSA is working with Venezuelan owned businesses.
The world fell apart, but everyone around me is rebuilding it.
I think, after all we’ve been through this year, I’m learning a lot about rebuilding. How silly of me to be jealous of people who had Venezuela longer than I did. How silly of me to tear up when I see videos of our house in Maracaibo, looking unrecognizable in our absence. How silly of me to act like these things are far from me.
I am Venezuelan. That is never going to change. There are people who see that and see someone who doesn’t belong here, but they aren’t important. Venezuela belongs to me as much as the next person, because it’s where my story started. And my people are the strongest, bravest, most resilient people I know. We don’t lose hope; we fight against everything that tells us there is none.
I’m always going to want to help rebuild. That house? I need to look at the videos. How else am I going to picture it restored? Even if it’s just in my memory, even if all I can do is close my eyes and remember being a few feet shorter, face-to-face with counter doors and running up and down the stairs … that is reconstruction.
That includes rebuilding what it means to be Venezuelan-American, too. This is home, too, and it has been for years. I attended a ceremony, my nine-year-old hand pressed to my heart, pledging allegiance to a country that now seems to want my people out.
But I believe we can rebuild. When the Earth tears open, people show up to flood the cracks, gold spilling out of their veins to make the ground walkable for the rest of us.
We will rebuild. Because we have to. Because it is what we do.