Auckland-based writer Luis G. Portillo traces the dramatic ups and downs of Venezuela and his own experience as an emigrant, through five New Year's Eves.
Black Gold: December 31, 1975, Venezuela
Today is as exciting as Christmas Day. We’re getting a new sound system just in time for the big party mum and dad are throwing to bid farewell to 1975.
When the equipment arrives in the early afternoon, the delivery men install the system in the main living room, next to the sliding doors opening to the big terrace, where we’ll have the party later that day. In minutes, the shiny sound system is ready to let its first notes travel into the year’s last hours. We turn it on and play records continuously for the rest of the day.
It’s going to be a great party. 1975 has not only been successful for my family but for the country as a whole. Dad has made enough money in the last few years for us to move into a brand-new house in the city outskirts that still smells like fresh cement. A thriving economy maintained by high oil prices has afforded Venezuelans a lifestyle that’s the envy of the region and beyond.
At school, they tell us we’re a developing country, our economy is diversifying, but we still need to improve in other areas, like infrastructure, if we want to be a developed nation. In a few years, we should be able to achieve it.
Tomorrow will be a historic day; the oil industry will be nationalised. Out will go the foreign companies that have benefited from mining our petroleum for over 50 years; all the riches from our black gold will be just for us venezolanos.
Who would have thought that when the conquistadores drew the borders of the new territory in the 1500s, they’d be doing so on top of a massive source of hydrocarbons that would fuel progress 400 years later? The country is essentially floating on petroleum; we have it on the four cardinal points of our vast nation.
The indigenous people called the black, viscous liquid emanating from the earth mene, and used the natural leaks in their daily lives. It was part of the medicinal potions, the caulk in their canoes, and the light in their huts at night. Spaniards also saw its practical use and took back a few barrels to the motherland while they governed the rich colony.
It wasn’t until 1914 that the first oil well was drilled in Mene Grande, a field in my home state, Zulia. Eight years later, a huge gusher erupted near Lake Maracaibo, and by the end of the 1920s, the oil industry was in full swing. Venezuela quickly became one of the top five oil producers in the world; the money started pouring in.
In 1960 we founded OPEC alongside Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to gain more influence in the international market and increase our profits.
In 1973, the country elected a new president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, a visionary who wanted to expand the economy and invest in the country’s future.
By that propsperous eve of 1975, plenty of money has come into the country’s coffers because of the 1973 Oil Crisis, when the Arab countries in OPEC imposed an oil embargo on countries supporting Israel.
Pérez has big plans for the country, and putting the money where it’s needed should be an easy task, but it is easier said than done. After all, this is Venezuela, and since we gained independence from Spain in 1821, we’ve been plagued by self-serving governments, or so Dad thinks.
As friends and family come and go through the main door of our home, 1975 briskly becomes the past. Midnight is almost here, Dad uncorks champagne while Granddad fills the glasses. We move outside to the terrace to welcome the new year under a starry night sky. We turn on the radio on our new sound system to follow the countdown. At exactly 12:00 AM, the radio announcer welcomes "el Año Nuevo!"
As fireworks explode above and firecrackers blast outside, we hug one another and the grown-ups toast the new year with their champagne glasses. We follow a few rituals immediately after midnight, like eating twelve grapes to have luck every month of the year and throwing twelve coins in the air for good fortune. We also carry a suitcase outside to attract travel in the months ahead and have a spoonful of lentils for good luck, too.
After a traditional dinner – roast pork, Russian salad, ham bread and hallacas – a cornmeal dough wrapped in a plantain leaf, filled with meat, I go to bed. I’m only ten, and I don’t have the endurance of my siblings and cousins to party. I fall asleep to the distant notes of the new sound system.
The lost decade: December 31, 1989, Maracaibo, Venezuela
I’m 24 and I've been driving to the supermarket and picking up things around town to ensure my parents' annual party is another success. Once again, they're opening our home to anyone who wishes to bid farewell to the old year, and greet a new decade, with plenty of food, drinks, music, and lively conversation.
I keep wondering if this will be the last New Year’s Eve I spend at home. In a few months, I'm moving to the US to continue my studies. There’s nothing for me here anymore. The opportunities afforded to new graduates in the past are dwindling. It’s been more than a year and a half since I got my sheepskin, and I’m yet to find a steady job. It reflects the state of the country; we haven’t been doing well.
When the 1980s arrived, the country was still riding the wave of the 1970s bonanza, fuelled by the international oil prices. When a country produces about 2.4 million barrels of oil per day and sells them at about $37 per barrel, money doesn’t just pour in, it overflows the nation’s reserves with enough to spoil every single citizen.
By the late 1970s, we were known as Venezuela Saudita; our prosperity comparable to that of oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia. The country enjoyed a high standard of living, with many in the upper classes jetting to places like Paris on the Concorde every week. Those with private planes would fly to any Caribbean Island on short notice. For the middle classes, a shopping spree to Miami, where the rule was to buy two of each item because everything was so cheap, became a yearly ritual.
There was so much money coming into the nation’s coffers, with no signs of stopping, and with little oversight, that many thought no one would miss a few million or a billion if they went missing.
When the world faced an oil surplus, global prices fell, and the country’s revenues decreased. Thinking it was only a slump, the government decided to borrow from international banks rather than impose austerity measures to save money.
Sooner or later, every economy gets its Black Friday, and for Venezuela, that day came on February 18, 1983. The collapse of the oil prices and a soaring external debt hit the economy hard, effectively ending the Venezuela Saudita era and signalling the start of the lost decade.
We had become so dependent on oil revenue that other industries were neglected; the country produced nothing else worth exporting. The produce, meat, and dairy industries had only the capacity to grow food for the nation. Furthermore, imported products we took for granted, like apples and pears, disappeared from our shelves.
By 1986, the foreign debt was 54% of the nation’s GDP, and we stopped paying it, triggering nationwide austerity measures.
Carlos Andrés Pérez, the idealistic man who'd led the country from 1974 to 1979, through unprecedented prosperity, was elected President again in 1988, but he’s finding it hard to recapture his magic touch.
Earlier in the year, Pérez implemented unpopular reforms including gasoline price hikes and subsidy cuts. Naturally, the people had a strong reaction, and there were violent riots prompting curfews across the country. Inflation this year, 1989, has been through the roof, poverty levels have gone up, and the unemployment rate is 9.7%.
But the country’s woes will not tarnish tonight’s festive spirit. Everyone at my parents' party is wearing their best clothes and enjoying the last hours of 1989 with good food, drink and music, the kids running around with sparklers and setting off firecrackers in the street.
I try to answer all the questions about my move to the US as best as I can. I was awarded a scholarship/loan and I don’t yet know which university I’ll be attending. I assure them I’ll be back in two years, but deep down I wish I could stay away longer.
The reality is that an exodus of sorts has started. A few friends have already left for the US, and others are plotting how to move away in search of better opportunities.
As the radio announcer welcomes 1990, we all proceed with the usual rituals. I do them all, except running outside with a suitcase. I already know my journey starts this year.
A new constitution: December 31, 1999, Washington DC
I’ve been waiting for this day since I was a kid. In a few minutes, the year 2000 will finally arrive. True, it won’t be like The Jetsons painted the future, but there are still some cool advancements, like email and the Internet; no one saw those coming just ten years ago.
I wish I could be home enjoying another of my parents' parties. Tonight, I’m at The National Mall in Washington, DC, along with thousands of people. This town has been home since 1990, when I moved here to study for a master’s degree at American University. The plan was to return to Venezuela after finishing, but I managed to get a job at the Inter-American Development Bank. Besides, things back home have been shaky and volatile over the last ten years.
The neoliberal reforms that President Pérez enacted in 1989 didn’t amount to much. The economic crisis deepened, bringing hyperinflation, low wages, high rates of unemployment, and an increased number of people living below the poverty line.
In February 1992, Hugo Chávez led a coup attempt to unseat the unpopular President. Chávez, a Lieutenant Colonel in the army, claimed he represented the sentiment of all those who had been struggling since the enactment of harsh neoliberal policies and were fed up with the rampant corruption that had overpowered the executive branches of government. When captured, Chávez had no problem accepting responsibility for the violent unrest and made clear that the movement had only failed for now.
Pérez was impeached for corruption in 1993, and in 1994, Rafael Caldera, another former president, came to power. Although his first administration, from 1969 to 1974, was successful and fondly remembered, the conservative leader failed to guide the country out of the chaos.
Under Caldera’s interventionist and authoritarian watch, the banking and financial sectors collapsed, sending some institutions that had been around for over 100 years into the ether. Inflation rose, wages fell, the exchange rates took a deep dive, poverty deepened, public services deteriorated, and crime flourished.
At the end of 1994, in an effort to bring reconciliation to the nation, Caldera pardoned Hugo Chávez, who, since 1992, had captured the imagination of a nation longing for a warrior to fight the corrupt system that had governed Venezuela for decades.
Four years later, Chávez, campaigning on a populist anticorruption platform, promising social justice and constitutional reform, and drawing on Simón Bolívar’s ideology as his main drive, was elected President to bring Venezuela into the 21st century.
I can understand why the people voted for him. The man oozes charisma. I'd just met him that September when he visited the Inter-American Development Bank. He was gracious with all his compatriots working at the IDB, and effortlessly connected with all of us. In an interview later that day, he claimed that his actions in 1992 were not a coup attempt but an act of rebellion; I wonder what the difference is.
In 1999, in the few months that he’s been in power, Chávez has shaken up the system. By April, a new Constitutional Assembly had been established to draft a new Constitution in which the Senate has been eliminated, presidential powers have been expanded, their term in office has been extended from five to six years, and presidents can now be re-elected while still in office.
As I wait for the new millennium, I look to my left towards the Lincoln Memorial, where US. President Clinton and his family have also gathered to celebrate, and wonder how this great nation has managed to make it work since its independence in 1776. They’ve had the same Constitution for over 200 years, and they still conduct everyday government affairs in accordance with those almost sacred principles. In 1811, Venezuela’s first constitution was inspired by our neighbour to the north’s constitution; however, unlike the US one, this is Venezuela’s 27th constitution in only 190 years.
I haven’t known any other constitution but the one from 1961, written after toppling yet another dictator in 1958. Since I was a child, I’d been taught to love, honour, respect and defend it because many had fought and died to gain the solid democracy the country enjoyed. My generation was born in a democratic era and has enjoyed it for more than 40 years. Still, now with this new constitution, it seems we’re regressing to times when caudillos, strongmen, and right-wing military dictators used the constitution to validate, abuse and perpetuate their power.
With the new millennium here and fireworks exploding behind the Washington Monument, I doubt what lies ahead for my home country. Is Hugo Chávez the solution to a country plagued by mismanagement and corruption, or will he turn out to be a charismatic charlatan autocrat who will take the country deeper into the abyss?
The big exodus: December 31, 2015, Pompano Beach, Florida, US
Once again, I’m spending New Year’s Eve with my parents; we’ve rented an apartment for the break in Pompano Beach, a city north of Fort Lauderdale. We’ve spent many holidays together since I left Venezuela, but only overseas. I’ve been away for 25 years, and the route back home is longer now. I moved to New Zealand 12 years ago for reasons I always start wondering about whenever I visit the U.S.
There’s no big party this year; it’ll be just us, my sister, a cousin with her young family, and an aunt. My cousin moved to the US two years ago and asked for political asylum. While she waits for her day in court, she’s been granted a work permit. She’s one of the hundreds of thousands who have left Venezuela in the last two years in search of better opportunities.
Venezuelans have grown up with strong attachments to the homeland. We were never known to emigrate. On the contrary, our borders were wide open to everyone else. We owe our development to the many cultures and ethnic groups that chose the vast Caribbean coast at the top of South America as home. Corsicans and Germans came in the 1800s. The oil boom brought foreign labour to boost the new industry. In the 1940s, Southern Europeans flooded our borders, escaping the misery that descended over their continent at the end of World War II. During the 1970s and 80s, the country received many economic refugees from its own region, mainly from Colombia, as well as political exiles from Argentina and Chile. Chinese, Japanese and Middle Easterners also made our land their home. Venezuela was always the end of a journey, never a starting point.
I was among the first to leave due to the crisis, as a small exodus began in the late 1980s and early 90s, mostly because of the lack of opportunities for young professionals, economic downturns, and frequent signs of political instability. Since then, the number of Venezuelans emigrating has steadily increased.
The Bolivarian Revolution that had brought Chávez to power at the start of the 21st century failed, not because of its left-leaning policies or the implementation of the so-called Socialism of the 21st Century principles. It failed because it was implemented by Venezuelans. Corruption showed its ugly face again. Chávez, who ran on an anticorruption campaign, looked the other way while his comrades pillaged through the nation’s coffers with a depraved gluttony not seen in the region since colonial times, when the conquistadores stole all the gold they could.
The oil boom at the turn of this century brought the country hundreds of billions of dollars, which were spent on a few social programmes. Still, it’s believed much of it was spent without accountability.
On the other hand, Chávez started nationalising and seizing private-sector industries. He tightened his grip on freedom of speech, not renewing the licence of the country’s oldest TV station, and seizing their assets for criticising his administration. Along the way, he amended the constitution to remove presidential term limits. Finally, the rebel had become a Dictator, not by a coup as he had intended in 1992, but by a constitutional decree.
As the 2010s started, the country’s infrastructure began to show signs of deterioration due to a lack of maintenance. Power grid failures led to nationwide electricity rationing. The once world-leading oil company PDVSA lost its prestige amid mismanagement and corruption, with reports that around $300 billion was misappropriated.
Before dying of cancer in early 2013, Hugo Chávez handpicked his successor, Nicolás Maduro, a high school dropout, former bus driver and trade union leader, who narrowly won the general election that year.
Maduro inherited a deeply divided country and an economy in shambles.
With the “Chávez Lives!” slogan, Maduro tried to recreate the same magic and pull that his predecessor had, but the inexperienced, uneducated and uncharismatic leader faced a disastrous reality that even Chávez could not have solved. The inflation soared, food shortages were a daily problem, the currency black market surged, and crime rates skyrocketed.
As we’re about to greet 2016, I can’t help but wonder about the number of Venezuelans whose New Year’s resolution involves packing up and moving on to turn their lives around and give their children better opportunities, just like my cousin did two years ago. I can only hope that the rest of the world opens its arms and welcomes them with the same warmth we dispensed to those nomads who sought refuge on Venezuela’s shores for so many years.
Mi Quernica: December 31, 2025, Auckland, New Zealand
I wish I could be home tonight to greet the new year. The last time I enjoyed one of Mum’s and Dad’s New Year’s Eve soirees was in 1997. That year, the house was packed to the brim, and we had a lot of fun as usual. My parents continued to open their home to anyone during the holidays. But year after year, fewer and fewer people would come. As the country’s situation worsened, many friends and relatives left, and a few neighbours on the street also closed their houses and fled. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have left in the last 10 years, which is almost one quarter of the population.
Those with US visas and money left on aeroplanes bound for Miami, Houston, and other cities in the States. Others flew to Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. Many began their journey on foot or by bus towards neighbouring destinations such as Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. The most daring and courageous migrants chose to cross the Darién Gap on their way north, one of the most inhospitable places in the world, a dense, crime-ridden rainforest between Colombia and Panama where many have died.
Under Maduro’s regime, the country continued its economic decline. Oil prices plunged, the GDP shrank, and hyperinflation ensued. For a while, there were food and medicine shortages until Maduro relaxed his grip on the private sector.
During the same period, the ever-present opposition gained momentum at times. For a moment, we all thought Maduro would give in and step down. When the opposition won the National Assembly in 2015, the government created an alternate Constituent Assembly and filled it with its own people to bypass the democratically elected representatives. Upon re-election in 2018, there were accusations of electoral fraud, and neither the US nor the EU recognised Maduro’s victory.
Venezuela and the world saw how, one by one, Maduro’s opponents were thrown in prison or forced to leave the country. But one of them, María Corina Machado, stood firm in her resolve to fight the regime with the same brio and courage she had shown since being elected to the National Assembly in 2010.
Shortly after winning the 2023 presidential primary, Machado was barred from running in the general election of 2024 or any other election for 15 years. Machado endorsed Edmundo González Urrutia, a former diplomat, who, despite securing most of the votes according to independent reports, lost to Maduro, who was declared the victor by the National Electoral Council.
Machado led demonstrations demanding respect for the will and mandate of the Venezuelans, but the regime ignored the people’s demand and labelled Machado a terrorist, as she went into hiding.
Earlier this month, Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
During the ceremony, which Machado missed, a Venezuelan pianist played Mi Querencia, one of those songs that all Venezuelans carry in their hearts wherever we go. Querencia means the longing that, as humans, we have to return to familiar places where we feel safe and at ease, the places we grew up. Querencia is a haunt, a hang-out, it is home.
In the song, the singer asks the morning star to throw its light on the path to guide their loved one as they leave home. And to the one leaving, the singer reminds them to ask the same morning star to bring them back home when they’re ready to return.
I doubt I will party tonight as I did in my younger years, when the mission was to stay up until sunrise. But I may wake up before dawn tomorrow, look southeast and tell the morning star I’m ready to go back.
I hope the other eight million Venezuelan souls spread around the world do the same.
Luis G Portillo is the lead video content producers at TVNZ. You can read more of his essays here.
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