Ayond Boconó's spells & Orinoco’s sandbeds

Midnight skies illuminate alluringly the twinkling lights on the hilltops of Petare or Catia, Caracas’s slums. Do not be fooled by their romantic pull in the evening cover-up. The illusion crashes once the dawn bursts revealing thousands of ranchos* (*self-made shanty) peppered over perilous hillsides. Its populace had ambitiously moved there with the prospect of jobs, education, progress in the classic socialist dream. For them, it was a temporary abode. Not an awaiting funeral pyre.

Still, children enjoyed carefree childhood days. They dominated leisurely afternoons with an abundance of imagination. On their radar, the fantasy was to win the World Cup. Their size enabled this dream to squeeze in their games round the narrow, winding streets. It made sense to these rag-a-muffin kids flexibly negotiating the terrain like pros. They were headed by Kleiber Morán, a three-year-old toddler: their tiny alpha-male gang leader. Mostly barefooted, they passionately cavorted pelota de goma* (*street football) with a threading ball. Tight, dark curls crowned his jubilant, rounded face as he launched and scored. These pocket-sized players squealed, gathering in a circle, jumping up and down. Mindless of the tropical heat. Heads appeared at tiny pinholes. Kleiber spotted his Mum amongst his extended family and hailed her.

“Oyé Mama, are there any antojitos* (*snacks)? We’re starving!”

“Think you’re missing a word, young Kleiber!” Swiftly slicing up the mango and avocado for the afternoon arepas* (*cornmeal pockets).

“Pleeeease! A big one so we can share,” winking at his pals, they all rubbed their sticky palms on their grubby sides.

In a trice, she had segmented bite-size portions for a whole team.

“That’s my boy!” Those were the last words he heard her ever say.

***

Man versus Earth head-butted. This year, Venezuelans and the world were aghast at how these two goliaths dominated the ring in the day's roasting heat. There were always big players. In history, culture, energy and the environment. From institutions to individuals, scrutinise the extremism of the wasted plenty. A country, Venezuela, brought to its knees despite its paradoxical abundance. There was no hydration break for anyone. Before the light vanished, it left their eyes and souls. Different manoeuverings between these giants, below and above terrene, were about to battle it out viciously. At the other end of the scale, were victims, the dead, the unburied amidst distraught survivors.

***

Although Andrés Bello (1781-1865) stemmed from a long ago era, he was nevertheless a tonic of effervescence in contemporary thinking. His ethos was a fit for present-day reasoning. As a visionary, the Venezuelan-Chilean influencer and humanitarian built bridges to link Anglo-Latino universes. His illumination had glowed over principles and framed social concern. He inspired his patina-laser resolve across his continent and further afield to Britain over a 19-year period. A commitment lost in the last government* (*Cháves and Maduro) with a deliberate sway against its people. The underworld of natural phenomena was to expose the earth-shaping elements’ erosion. A country on the brink mirrored the lurking, tectonic aggravation about to tear its land apart. A critical stage. The accumulated ‘force majeure’ furore burst through the Boconó effect’s strain. It reached breaking point. If the people were unable to rebel against an authoritarian state, the timing was decisive for a drastic, natural cataclysm. The tension ignited between both. A metaphor flashed into a geological masterminding hiccup. The laisser-aller administration’s attitude to an entire demographic, swept away their dignity, livelihood, present and future. The shortcomings underneath Venezuela was a result of nature. Something that was ordained. Those within the (man-made) republic, conversely, were not. There was no microversion to capture sunlight.

In the law of nature, active mechanics are stress related. Out in western Venezuela, the Boconó Fault dominates. The Caribbean and the South American plates were divided by this boundary. For vast periods, excluding 9th July 1997, it remained dormant. Eventually the strain began to stir. Just like its politics. Until now.

It was 2026. The June Solstice, 18:04, local time. One that was so intense, it decided it needed to make a point. Nae two. A calamitous doublet earthquake unearthed. From Caracas to La Guaira across urban and coastal areas, thousands of lives buried under this devastation. They disappeared in seconds in a real, living nightmare. Parting phrases, desires, sorries were unfinished, unspoken, drowned out. In the next crucial 96-hour survival-window, all hands that could, scraped, dug, grabbed basic tools bare-handed to find families, neighbours and strangers.

Suddenly familiar streets turned over homes, hills, tower blocks inside out. Where carefully once pressed linen outfits, trousers, suits lay ready for the office, lost under bodies, steel mounds. A wreckage of obliterated heritages. Buildings, bricks, mortar dried out, devastating whole districts like a greedy monster. Out of the blue, a 7.2 signature magnitude quaked. Not to be outdone, there followed within seconds its fiercer twin at 7.5 only at an interval of 39 seconds.

Graffitied walls left behind traces of partial squared letters like coded messages. What could hold these areas together now? No longer with common ground, Mother Nature targeted with roaming eyes like a wicked Queen. She feasted, wanting to deport the anti-environmental global attitude. The script needed to be rewritten by everyone, everywhere. Acting as director and producer, she was ready for the full series featured on global blue-green TV screens.

Up close and personal, Her delicate, hypnotic translucency sparkled as if dressed up for a date. Living Her every day to the fullest as if it were their last. Outdoors, the shock drilled, battered in an assaulting swing. Absent were contrasting silky, veined, pulsating evergreens and floral displays. Once indoors, the rowdy collapse marked each territory like bitches on heat taking in all and sundry. All victims, no endurors for now.

Entrapped, close human encounters cupped around, within, over and in-between. An avalanche of twisted metal dislodged vulnerable structures. Over hillsides were tiny antennas tickled in time to complex, flying heavy materials from unstable infrastructures. The nail-sized hope pushed limits, on a miniature crazed track and field circuit in a forever time-capsule. Fingers pumped, reaching underground, religiously, babbling insanely their prayers until set loose.

Fluttering adrift in a panic of bad-ass modes, communities slumped under pancakes. Violent, brick-twirling multistory-carcasses tossed, orbited left and right over left-overs. Lost for words, the chaos shook to jaw-drop into the soft soil prone to landslide, leaving their vulnerability exposed. Voices lost to bullish booms on a large scale after the low-tremor like a phantasmagoric out-of-body roar.

Reverting to their primitive grassroots, corners were cut on meagre reinforcements. Devoured and punished the innocent thousands pledged devotion, dedication and despair. The territorial legion gravitated persistently around its decaying, sinister, rotting mounds of incompetencies in public housing. The risks to dwellers proved heavy and far-reaching. With senses peaked, in full enlarged escape mode, they disarmed. Raised weaknesses sank deeper and deeper into the folds of waste, dung, heaps and decay. Without aid, the exposed styrofoam strangled floors and ceilings defacing any semblance of home life.

Gone were the happy places youngsters, adolescents remembered. Unnameable pungency arose. The play between sight, sound and senses followed, wowing them disgustingly. The human margin tests were overextended. An instinct provoked from desperation, fear, anger removed any rules. Opportunists in the wings, stole from their own, rampaging derelict properties. In desperation for rudimentary supplies, supermarkets were shoplifted. Anguished, the accepted expectation in scavenging was understood between the brother/sisterhood. A self-compassionate light-flashing attraction/obsession threaded their closed world. Lifelong open friendships were quietly formed during their imprisonment over their interminable short, deadly trial.

As a roaming, jewel-encrusted swarm shone at twilight, they gravitated restlessly like an avid, x-rated creature. They discarded etiquette for the taste, succour of exposed and redundant residues or poo. Elevated repulsive levels drove these throngs of communities to wild provocations, disputes and battles against injustices. Even Dios*’s (*God) name came up.

Maria, José, Jesus, Miguel, Luisa, Julia, Eduardo, Aura, were some of the beloveds’ names shouted, beseeched, hollered, whistled, lullabied 24/7. Broken people assisted in waiting for the professionals to produce their equipment. In the meantime they supplied their own: hands, nails, sticks, forks on their knees, tummies, sides. Inhabitants congregated fearlessly from far and wide. A dynamic power drew them.

One mother, Andrea Bello, Hector “Kike” Bello, the Venezuelan footballer’s wife, committed the ultimate sacrifice for her one year-old child. She had fortified her daughter with her harboured stature. Her chosen funeral echoed throughout the world with international aggrieved moral fibre. The tragedy symbolised the extent maternal love, altruism and devotion was ground-breaking in today’s psyche. A further extension to her heroic act included the missing 46,000 lives who still yearned their own proper burial rites. A place to rest to help their families transition between their realms. The humanitarian fight for them will continue once the gravel settles.

The colossal crack provoked fighting fire with fire as locals tore at the ground, wing by wing, pin by pin with a bulldog vibe. While the rest of the rescue services flew in, they continued searching, piercing, crying out, tears stuck to swollen skin. Together in their collaborative effort, it was their responsibility as humans to care, challenge the norm they were dealt. They had experienced a life-sentence of poverty, abandonment, despair, isolation, discrimination in their lowest form. Desperate for answers, they joined in, spurred by the absence of the institutional powers to perform their duty in their hour of need, again. The cowboy politics slowly woke up but the world stage was on speed-dial.

The air was thick. In a legion of soldiering-on were volunteers, residents and from abroad, locked in like the length of the Rio* (*river) Orinoco. They descended, outshone through the sombre skyglow. Once revived after a breath, the emotion to save took over.

Cloaked, the suffocating choking, obscured the demolished residential towers. The living targets and crowds of metallic-surfaces competed. In-between android vocals to the highest D pitch, sustainers waited breathlessly in silence for responses. Their quiet parades valiantly hustled, shouldering the villainous pressure. Peering in at the malicious, fatal results, they agonised. In soothing, shmoozing attitudes shared by troopers, they panted on their own turf, in exile. Their whispered invocations to coveted cadavers asserting their place.

Cockily plunging heads, wings at full force, urbanites colossally propelled. Their diminished muscle magnetism quivered devotedly. Sadly radiant in their love, their glazed red eyes glimmered. A jet-set aura boldly smothered themselves, oozing a rebellious spirit. Never cleaning up again their demolished dining-room tables, kitchen surfaces. No table linen in sight, their rhythmic motions attracted the lure to deliverance. Ready for the next relief course. A precursor to a resolution.

To reach the zenith, the striking size overwhelmed their civic army. They hauled over empirical concrete sides llike a spectacle of tidal waves. The commoners’ pilgrimage only just got started. Pumped and fuelled, their energy levels reinvigorated as each asserted their personal stance. Inner pictures stamped on their memories, dominated these followers to progress no matter the outcome. Beyond physical and mental injuries, the trauma was a creature of many disguises. Its chest puffed up repeating the transparent throngs of anguished aftershocks. Those unvarnished agents. On a whim, it circled through, swerved and nudged, to parade its hold. These homeless, fearful beings were forced to sleep outdoors. The ghosts of their own doubled down too.

The hallmark of the disaster exposed the misunderstanding of the call of nature. The law of the wild. The Amazonian atmosphere was on standby thirstily eyeing every twitch. It preened itself ecstatically heralding the useless fraternity of high-rises in wham, amateur constructions. The shame was born in the system. The instigators in town-planning rules and investments for this localised society fell into clandestine honey traps. They needed to confess their failed outcomes. Massive heroes stole the terrestrial show as they clambered into, over, under. The evidence of indefatigable, international and civic factions. In career-switches, tenants supported and turned a blind eye towards the status quo. Against all odds, they resurrected bodies barely living, mostly dead. On tap were the rigorous anti-government outcries in the decades of back-handers, regional, sluggish underinvestment and economic crisis.

Our crusaders were smeared, like buttery, toasty crumpets by base layers of sweaty, scrap, soot, slag during the live deburial excavation. The actions were not trivial. Seconds counted. Time was the determined enemy in the arena of an apocalypse. Testament to a courage absent from governing seats, they made their decisions when their own were entombed. Foul odours loomed, sewage festered beneath cakes of wood, stones, walls. Furniture gathered their deadly momentum. Round-the-clock, the call to arms from any vintage, decrepit, underused equipment was exploited. In the abyss of this plight, they undertook to untrap corpses in various states.

There were no robotic replacements to match the limited human relief corps. Pounding dins circulated sites as the dawn rose over several days. In surrounding spots, the emergency charities set up stations for medical assistance, pop-up shelters for displaced individuals and the basics for sustenance. The towns that were forgotten by the political state highlighted the vast discrimination against the barrios* (*slums). These loosely developed, highly populated sloped ranchos* (*shacks), ‘house’ the greatest number of low-cost habitats. Packed like sardines, the tin roofed, cinder blocks* (*obsolete breeze blocks) were originally stationed on steep mountain slopes. The corrugated constructs were randomly put together under no compliance with building regulations. Every level was slapped onto another. In one fell swoop, like a scene from Macbeth, they crashed. They descended in a domino-effect down hilltops during (un)natural disasters.

There was only one dimension supporting the journey of underdog warriors without their loved ones beside them. Wooden planks, stretchers, no generators. Yet, the person’s voice was heard. Locked in the basement of a shopping centre, he waited, crammed, claustrophobic to board another day. The fighters tied together ready in the depth of darkness. Without any electricity, they attentively tunnelled to not provoke further crumbling. Highly pressured timelines lead them to meditate, worship and impromptu funerals for lost members. In the devastation of ruins, streets bulged. Their insides torn apart. Low tones continued while the man, an employee at the retail park, miraculously was transported out on day nine. Fed water and electrolytes through tubes, he lingered on. One hundred hours later, unharmed but

shocked, this security officer, Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, was extricated after meticulous proppings. The recovery unit were stunned at this unbelievable wonderment. Believers crossed themselves, kissed their thumbs with quiet tears flowing. In a hushed ambiance, he re-entered weathered Terra firma* (*firm land).

No one was sidelined in their shared language of love where the land of the living moved fast and furious. Now at a standstill the turning of a new leaf was on hold. Two worlds collided as tectonic plates snagged and locked them in. A spiritual cosmos delivered an emotional duality. Heartbreaks haunted senses akin to an alternative horror movie.

Soothing, calling out of names, the screaming gesticulations for help from idols continued. In a split second, lives changed forever within families, country and history. The norm confused routines, expectations, status. Eventide and daylight curtains brought out another miracle. From the double quake rubble came joyful, voiceless cries. A minuscule pinky covered in dust caught the acute canine’s nasal senses. A soft, pumping wail, rose guiding Tsunami, the SAR* (*Search and Rescue) dog to bark at their handlers. Calm yet excited, their reward was a moving, breathing, unharmed life. Their purpose was not lost. At the heart of this mission, Tsunami salvaged another 13 victims. A duty and drive to continue to trace, follow scents as far down as 10 metres.

“Over here!” Teams alerted, rushed over as clever lighthouse head beams swung to the spot.

Tensions crept in as professional fire-fighters mustered their limited know-how. The crucial steps were omitted in their manuals. Amidst scattered ruins of families’ lives, slowly a tiny physique responded to rays. Past the critical stage aperture, six days in, Kleiber, was pliantly lifted. Blinking, miming eyes, he moaned, raved, hoarsely muffled. Low cries intermingled with special words. Although physical vitals prevailed, he would suffer lifelong inevitable post-traumatic stress syndrome. Disrupted sleep had lasting consequences in particular if secure relationships suddenly stopped. A child’s emotional regulation is guided by their growing, underdeveloped brain. In his case, how will he reassemble this puzzle? Awhile, he was limply, securely swaddled in large arms. True to their name, the Specialised Teams from Jordan had prepared the area around Los Corales Garden 1 to prize him out.

“Don’t worry little man, I’ve arranged for you to start drilling free-kicks. You’ll be in the football league in no time at all, wearing Arangol’s number 10. Your favourite,“ leaning in, Juan Cordero softly stroked his rough-skinned cheek.

Developing a sanctuary to unlock the adversity, Juan, a brickie and youth coach, offered youngsters an oasis. The intense anxiety they experienced was banished away. Escape for a few hours because their infancy was cancelled. Body-bags accumulated in their mighty ghastliness. Improvisational morgues overtook car parks. Exhausted handlers amassed Venezuela’s legacy of remains.

***

In the geological afterglow, Bello’s visionary ideal combined with the hue of global partnership. To spread the determination to rebuild, a change is to dissolve the multi-dimensional decay and rewrite outcomes. A resilience derived from the nation’s resolve for reconstruction are at the forefront. These unfortunate, unequal peoples will recover but their right for development, opportunities and safety are absolute. A fragile country at a cross-roads navigate beyond their past. Overhung by the ongoing reign of terror, their possibilities for solutions fall into a binary transition in politics: between foreign intervention or reform within their own governance. The pilot light on their heating system flickered to and fro. Alight the ember, they deserve a break both from Natura and political bullying. The prophecy that Maria Esperanza* (*mystic, 1928-2004) foretold in the bygone 1990s, declared this thriving land would undergo numerous episodes. In breaking down their society’s tide, it would spread worldwide. She foresaw social media’s tyrannical, anti-social swelling too. A double-life's dark-.