Valeria Provenzano

Flash horror stories to describe a city By Valeria Provenzano Preface In the northeastern part of Venezuela there is an anvil-shaped state: a sand, salt, cocoa, palm trees, cacti and gulfs chunk. A piece of gravel molten on the continent and resting in the Caribbean. That state’s capital is Cumaná, a town that has historically fought between disrespect and excessive joy. It was the first city founded in America, and although its habitants boast of it as a trophy, its baptism was nothing more than a heat and hammer blow. A few kilometers from Cumaná’s coast there is an island, Cubagua, where the conquerors found pearls. The closest fresh water source to that potential exploitation place was an indigenous town into which a river called Cumaná - native voice that means foundry of sea and river – flowed. On that muddy soil, with the typical disdain of what is needed but not wanted, the colonizers founded Cumaná, in 1515. Despite the scorn, among the natives and the foreigners who made that land their own, a charismatic and witty race grew up; one that seems to have been raised breathing jokes instead of iodine. Those who arrived to that city characterized by fishing, abandonment and delight got infected by the mechanism that embraces the entire Caribbean: that of mocking funerals and dancing even when crying, making them grow on the duality that doesn’t allow us to understand when someone is laughing at an invented misfortune and when at a real one. I was born and raised in Cumaná. At 16 I moved to Caracas to study University. Until I was 22 I went back home very frequently: at least once a month, for Christmas, vacations, Easter, carnivals and to any party I was invited to. The last two years I lived in Venezuela I was already an adult with responsibilities and the wallet of a worker struggling with a hyperinflationary country, so I visited Cumaná much less. During those 24 years sometimes I felt like I knew my city, and other times I totally ignored its idiosyncrasy. Deep down, though, there was always a little voice that reminded me of the nonexistent limits of Cumaná and its constant jumps between mischief and misery. Four years ago I left Venezuela and I haven’t gone back, since then, to Cumaná or to its Flash horror stories to describe a city_Valeria Provenzano grace. Its sorrow, however, has reached me at unrecognizable levels. Those who are still there: my family, my neighbors and my friends’ relatives haven’t told me jokes for a long time. They won't tell me about dances or parties anymore. My city’s laughter doesn’t follow me any longer. Horror, however, does reaches my back, making me feel the hammer hit and its heat. The world has Covid-19, recessions, crisis, and each nation, town and person has a special situation. Cumaná doesn’t know how the virus is behaving on its air because in dictatorships information is a luxury that no one can afford. The city knows a lot about recession because its people breathe more misery and hunger than I could ever explain. Its homes are experts in crises because they don’t have electricity, gas or water supplies. Because the trash trucks doesn’t massage its asphalt. Because its hospital is rich in holes, empty jars and damaged ambulances. Because its people earn in bolivars although the country is dollarized, which is like earning in sandbags living in Antarctica. As happened more than 500 years ago, a Major General recently arrived in Cumaná to follow the legacy of the mallet. He didn’t reach his position because he is an outstanding figure in such function, but because he has the firm and horrifying commitment of not being surpassed by others. Because, as in any military government, the highest of the ranks is held by those who wear camouflage suits even if they are in the middle of the concrete, surrounded by civilians, buildings and the sea. The Major General arrived to be the new face of the most tyrannical gang of the revolution, and God it’s difficult to choose only one. Venezuela is a country dominated by gangs that keep their power as all of them do: with violence. Some gangs traffic food surrounded by starving people, some others with drugs in a country that is already a mule. There are gangs that traffic weapons in a country submerged in a war, medicines in sick railways and bodies in cities without souls. There are gangs that use expensive perfumes and wear exclusive shirts, and from their comfortable hills they watch how people sink. There are gangs that support the government with bureaucracy. There are gangs that shut up their neighbors with bullets so that they don’t complain, gangs that wipe their asses with the law and gangs that tread the hoses of anyone who can put out a fire. Venezuela is also the group of kids that goes to school, the couple that comes out of the cinema, and the old man who buys Flash horror stories to describe a city_Valeria Provenzano some bread, and cross the alley just when the gangs decide to shoot each other down from their ends. This mafias have more or less power depending on what they dominate. Right now the hierarchy is on the side of gasoline: who runs it is the king. Since we are a country of extremes, once the price of a liter of water was higher than that of a liter of fuel. Now -at least in Cumaná- the price to pay for a liter of gasoline are $ 4 and a very close relationship with the central government and the military. In that, a city of 300,000 people, only one service station supplies fuel, and who decides who can or cannot buy the fuel is the new heir of the hammer: the Major General. 1- Even when they leave us: Earlier in the week I saw a video in which the drivers of a car, a bus and a hearse asked to fill their tanks to take the coffins they were carrying to the cemetery. The requests were denied and the families had to carry the dead on their shoulders and walk 16 kilometers, under the 32-degree sun that constantly hits that anvil, with the eternal rest promise dissolved. 2- Father and son: A few days ago a lieutenant let his father, a taxi driver, load fuel. The man drives a 60’s car, one so old that you fell you’ll either suffocate thanks to its terrible carburation, or get tetanus by osmosis. The major general got enraged when he realized that someone not authorized by him was filling the tank of his car and ordered the taxi driver to be arrested. The lieutenant then told the general that the driver was his father, who had no money or food and needed to work. The major general slapped the lieutenant and jailed him too. 3- A septic tank in the heart: A lady approached the gas station and gave a paper to the military. It said that she should receive her chemotherapy the next day in Puerto La Cruz, a city an hour and a half from Cumaná. She needed to fill the tank. They denied her the fuel. 4- Gangs confrontation: Flash horror stories to describe a city_Valeria Provenzano A person who works distributing food for the region’s government -a gang that has lost strength in this new war of powers- arrived at the gas station with a paper signed by the state's highest authority, the governor, authorizing the filling of the tank. The Major General broke the pass in the person's face. 5- Gangs confrontation 2: Officers from the CICPC – the organization of civil and criminal investigations - arrived at the gas station to fill their institutional cars. The guards refused to do so. The officers another gang that has no strength this time- refused to leave until their tanks where filled and the atmosphere got hot. I don't know who unsheathed first, but both groups ended up pointing at each other. A CICPC commissioner took a pump, bathed in gasoline and said something like “shoot me and we all catch on fire”. Cumaná is part of a rusty anvil in which some people still hit with violence. The place that had, for a long time, the movement as an ally to avoid the blows is now stagnated, after much deterioration, in the impossibility of stirring, walking or dodging. The city parked, and with it, its laugh. Flash horror stories to describe a city_Valeria Provenzano