How large is the city where you live? Is there a big city in Venezuela that might be more accepting of a "different" man like you? You don't have to move to America to enjoy a "big city" culture that's more likely to be tolerant of queerness.
It's hard to tell due to uneven statistics, but my city is about the size of Seattle and the population of Baltimore with a density alike Milwaukee. Does this makes sense? I'm not sure. Here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maracay
It's pretty much a small industrial city where everyone sorta knows everyone, everyone went to the very same five or six high schools and go to the same two or three shopping malls and "exotic" is crossing the state border to the larger, older and wealthier Valencia to see their parks where they sell you carrot bags to feed the squirrels and outlet malls with bookstores that cover two floors and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Yes, KFC is exotic!
Caracas would be the first choice, but with such high crime and the whole stress of it makes more bad than good. Maracaibo is out of the question for reasons too long to list but in short, Zulia, the state which Maracaibo is capital, is Venezuela's Texas. Valencia would be the logical choice: It's closer to my hometown (only 40 minutes on bus) and it's not as large and mean as Caracas as is not so... painfully idiosincrastic... as Maracaibo but people of Valencia tend to look down the people of my hometown and the whole region who is not from Valencia, forging the same circle of friends since school to old age.
This may be my individualist American upbringing talking but I think guilt is a poor reason to stay in a place where you feel you don't belong. When you "feel you have the duty", where does that message come from? Your parents? Your culture? Yourself?
It's cultural. According to Max Webber, English (and by extent, American) individualism came up thanks to the Puritan Work Ethic whereas "salvation" is something individually achieved though hard work for society as a whole rather than familiar and communal through rituals, shared experience, etc.
The US has a very strong ideal of the power of individualism: Jefferson's Yeoman Farmer, the Pioneers during Manifest Destiny, etc. A person controls the environment for his or her choice to manage with responsibility. Those who can't, those who are not succesful are therefore "losers" who cannot keep up with society.
While Latino culture is a culture of "Together we survive, apart we starve" God and nature is not something you understand nor manage, it's something that manages you, controls you and you learn to live with it. You try to live with the bare minimum and aspire less what you want on a long-run, since you are never sure what comes on a long-run, and try to be happy on the short-run.
This blog written in English by a Venezuelan in Montréal sums it all pretty well:
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Precarious.
Today you’re alive, but tomorrow you might not be.
Today you’re free, but tomorrow, who knows.
Today you were on time for work. Tomorrow, who knows? You might be stuck in traffic for three hours.
Today you found cooking oil on the shelves. Tomorrow …
Today you own your house, your savings, your car. Tomorrow, you may wake up with nothing.
Today you are healthy. Tomorrow you may have dengue, or mal de Chagas.
Today you can travel overseas. It may be the last trip you’re allowed to make.
Right now, you’re reading this blog. In half an hour, the lights might go out.
I guess it helps explain why, in the midst of a precarious reality, one clings to family. Friends. Booze. Religion. Santería. Government handouts.
It helps to deal with the precariousness.
I guess you may see it as
The Tall Poppy Syndrome"] but I feel there's no resentment to being succesful
itself, but rather being proud about it and not give something back. While you eat, sleep and live happily someone who also had the same chances than you and endured the same pains than you and didn't get to be so lucky is suffering. He could be your brother, your classmate, your neighbor or your colleague even, and you do nothing to help back even when people helped you. Your success is not yours, it's your community's, and you just happened to get lucky. You don't control your luck, luck controls you. Even if you managed alone, what about your parents, your ancestors? They helped them then, you help them now.
Did you know Spanish has no word for "Earn"? We use the same verb that we use for "Win".
I guess, in short, it's
Law of Jante in a
Guilt Society roughly analogue to the Anglo-American's
Keeping with the Joneses ideal within a
Shame Society context.
How do you feel when a peer moves away to another country? Do you resent the person for it? Do you fear that others will resent you if you move?
I have mixed feelings about them. For one, I understand the majority's motives: Quality of life has been on decay and jobs, especially highly-especialized jobs, are getting harder and harder to find and life's getting more and more expensive here with inflation.
But then you have people like
this
To the non-Spanish speakers, what we have is a bunch of aggressively spoiled rich white kids sitting around feeling sorry for themselves that Venezuelans are so beastly that they can’t even exercise their core human right to party until 4 in the morning in relative safety. Their incessant whining about the fact that all their friends are leaving town are sprinkled with a failure of understand the world around them that just boggles the mind. This film is only superficially about emigration: really, it’s about a class that’s utterly failed to understand its own privilege.
For an entire week, the entire nation was united by their hatred of four preppy kids.
To put things in better perspective, I have a gay cousin. His name is Juan Carlos and I didn't even know he was gay until mom told me. We don't ask about, he doesn't tell about it. He came here due to his grandma dying in a public hospital. Can you imagine him being a doctor in the US coming to a state capital's general hospital, in a city of over 100,000 people and discovering that the hospital has no syringes? It has to ask the patients to bring their own medical supplies! Thinking how much easier is getting something so basic like an oxygen tank or Vitamin C in the US and having who you share a bond, like it or not, dying for less than nothing? Yet, this people would no doubt judge him, humiliate him for his sexual orientation, for what he is.
After his grandma died, he told his niece, who also lives with him, after talking the prospect to return here to be with his mom and his grandfather. "Why do you want to be here? It's a dead-end! Think of your career."
And the question remains: Your people or yourself?
I think devoting one's life to improving the lives of others is a noble calling. (As a Christian, I see it as my primary purpose in life.) But there are people in need everywhere, Max, not just in Venezuela. You can serve the poor and marginalized in New York, Caracas, or anywhere in the world. You don't have to stay to make a positive impact in the world.
In fact, it's possible you'll have a greater impact for good somewhere else. If you stay put and you always feel shy or afraid of your peers, how far can you go? But if you live in an environment where you feel safe and you can really flourish, I think you'll have more to give to others.
But it's not something that I want to, it's something I feel I
must. It's something I own. It's the dream, you know? To make Venezuela to flourish to others like me, to be there and assure that one can flourish here and that this, Venezuela, Latin America, etc. it's not a lost cause.
But then I hear mom making plans for me: to buy a house there, to get a job in the local newspaper since the editor owns her a favor, to marry a nice girl and get nice children. It scares me, I want to find my place in life on my own: what I like, who I am... but it scares to get lost in the trip, if that makes sense. And then I remember that old Spaniard adage: Small town, big hell.
Kat, you're one of my best and closest online friends. What do you see me doing with my life?
Imagine yourself on your deathbed. Looking back on your life, would you feel deep regret if you moved to another country? Would you feel deep regret if you never left?
This is my biggest fear, to die full of regrets. What is worst? To live a great life and die alone and not having someone to care about you or to die unsatisfied but surounded by people who loved you?
When I'm scared and trying something new, I set a goal that I can accomplish. For instance, if I'm scared to go to a gay bar, but I know I want to, I will set a goal that I will go inside, order a drink, and stay there for 45 minutes.
That way, I know it's only 45 minutes. Even if I'm really scared or stressed out, it's an achievable goal. I don't expect myself to stay there all night. If I'm having a great time, I can stay longer. If it's a miserable time, I still have the pride sense of, "I did it!" if I stay for the full 45 minutes.
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I like it.
I think I shall put it to practice. After all, a dozen small goals can make a big one, right?