Venezuela and When People Are Forced to Eat Shit!
Venezuela and When People Are Forced to Eat Shit!
July 8, 2016
by Andre Vltchek
In a powerful short novel by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, “No One Writes to the Colonel” (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba) set during the period of “La Violencia”, an old retired colonel struggles to survive, forgotten by the government which promised him a substantial pension some fifteen years earlier. The state is corrupt and brutal, and it had abandoned almost all of those who had fought for the country during the fierce “Thousand Days’ War”.
And so, no one writes to the colonel. No letters, no envelopes with his pension are arriving. The old man and his wife are living alone. Their son had died a few years earlier. Their savings are gone. There seems to be no hope.
The colonel has a rooster. It is a mighty fighting cock. He trains it; the bird is his only chance of survival, it is all that he has left, as well as his pride. At the end of the story, he is approached and offered money for the rooster. He turns the offer down. He would rather go hungry, but he will not be humiliated!
His wife approaches him, asking whether he sold the rooster. He tells her that he did not.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/08/venezuela-and-when-people-are-forced-to-eat-shit/
Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016163081
