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The 2007 Venezuelan film “Postales de Leningrado”—postcards from Leningrad—mingles history and politics to pose a question about identity—the identity of the children of those men and women who opted to join the guerrilla struggle in Venezuela in the mid-20th century, just when the nation was trying to reestablish democracy after the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship (1952-1958). Venezuelan …
As a Venezuelan, I can’t pretend that the nation has experienced idyllic moments at some point in our history. We Venezuelans also can’t deny that, in spite of many dark clouds, an accumulation of exasperation and disillusionment, a rash of tragedies and bitter pain suffered by our civic body—the incessant failure of the Venezuelan civilist impulse in the face of a country that is infrareal—we managed to arrive at a moment of …
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Densely populated shantytowns grow organically in the hills around Caracas. But I don’t practice sociological tourism. This text is more about the self-explanations of a Caracas-born son of immigrants. Immigration in this sense can be seen as a slower and more pragmatic form of tourism. My parents’ families arrived to Caracas between the 30s and the 50s, when global populations were reacting to the convulsion generated by …
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In 2002, I visited Venezuela with a friend from Mexico City. Among the tourist attractions in Caracas that I took him to see was the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber (known since 2006 as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas or MACC). I had often sang the praises of this venerable institution, one of the first museums in Latin America to focus on postwar art and which included in its collection works by Picasso …
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English + Español
ust as I was returning to Caribbean studies, Mayra Santos-Febres suggested that I write the introduction for Las espinas del erizo: antología de escritoras boricuas del siglo XXI…