Sometimes when I’m traveling around on behalf of National Review Institute, I get a lot of comments and questions about NR articles people are reading, NR podcasts people are listening to, or an NRI Fellow who just appeared on a Sunday news program. While I’m out doing my job to grow support for NRI, I’m also trying to keep up with all that our NRI Fellows are producing, mostly so I can relay some of that information to our supporters. I’ve realized I can’t possibly consume all of it and still get enough sleep!
But one issue that has been all the buzz lately is the tragic situation taking place in Venezuela. While socialist ideas are on the rise here in the United States, especially among “millennials,” we know these ideas have wreaked complete havoc on the once prosperous nation of Venezuela.
Over the years, here in my home state of Florida, I have made plenty of friends from Venezuela. My first “memory” of the influx of Venezuelans was when I worked at the Sawgrass Mills Mall in Broward County (yes, that Broward County) as a college student in 1999-2000. There were so many of our customers who were from Venezuela and were escaping the burdens that their new President, Hugo Chavez, were beginning to place on them. That was nearly 20 years ago.
Today, as I travel around for my work with NRI, I am consistently meeting Uber/Lyft drivers who are from Venezuela. I always ask them their story about when they came here and why. The personal stories represent different situations, but the theme is the same.
Recently, one Lyft driver in Atlanta named Neir, who was in his mid-30s, told me that about 10 years ago, he was taking a cruise with some friends from Venezuela. On a stop in Aruba, they met a Cuban doctor who told them that Venezuela (then under Hugo Chavez) should be careful embracing so much socialism or they may end up like Cuba. He said he and his friends laughed at the guy at the time. “I told him a rich and prosperous country like Venezuela could never end up like Cuba.”
Only five years later, Neir was one of millions of Venezuelans to leave his country, moving to the United States, first to Florida, and now in Atlanta, where he is a teacher and a part-time Lyft driver. He becomes emotional talking about his country. His sister and her children are here in the United States and he is now working on getting his parents here. He can’t understand how young people here embrace socialism without thinking about the implications. Then again, he remembers how ignorant people like him were of what was happening in Venezuela only ten years ago.
Over the past month, our NRI Fellows have been shining a spotlight on Venezuela to help Americans understand what’s going on there and what happens when a country embraces socialism.
In January, Matthew Continetti praised President Trump’s action to advance freedom in Venezuela by replacing their President Nicolas Maduro with the opposition leader, Juan Guaido. Two weeks later, Matthew wrote an equally strong piece about The Growing Anti-Maduro Alliance among many countries in Europe and the Americas, following the U.S. lead after President Trump’s pronouncement.
Meanwhile, NRI Fellow Jay Nordlinger has added to the conversation in his article, “A Voice from Venezuela,” which profiles Robert and Ruth Battone, two Venezuelans who make their home in Florida but continue to fight for freedom in their homeland. Jay also interviewed Cuban-American Otto Reich about the Venezuelan situation on his Q&A podcast.
Speaking of podcasts, as I drove around the state of Florida last week for a series of events and meetings, I found myself with some time to listen to Episode 86 of NRI Fellow Jonah Goldberg’s The Remnant podcast. On this episode, Jonah interviewed AEI scholar Roger Noriega, who is an expert on Venezuela. While I have been personally following the Venezuelan situation for many years, there was so much I learned from this interview that I had no idea about.
In fact, half way through the podcast, I paused the program to call my friend Jorge Jraissati. I met Jorge last year at the FEECon conference in Atlanta, which NRI was proud to sponsor. Jorge recently graduated with a degree in Economics and Business Management in the Honors College at my alma mater, Florida Atlantic University. We have become great friends since meeting last year – brothers united through a common cause. Jorge has also relayed to me how much he has enjoyed seeing NRI Fellows highlight the heroes who are fighting the good fight in his home country.
Jorge has been a student activist in Venezuela for a number of years. A few years ago, his family asked him to move to Florida because they feared for his safety. From here in the United States he writes articles and gives many talks to his peers, and others, on the situation in Venezuela. He has spoken at places like Harvard, Stanford, and NYU. Without telling him specifically what Roger Noriega of AEI was relaying to Jonah on his podcast, I asked him some of the same questions and got many of the same astounding answers.
The more I learn about what’s happened to and continuing to happen in Venezuela, it all just seems so much sadder, more complex, and bigger of a problem to solve than we might first think.
But I should know. My father came to this country from Cuba back in 1960, when he was seven years old. It’s hard to believe that was now almost 60 years ago. He’s never been back, and neither have his parents. His father, my grandfather, passed away in 2009 not ever seeing his homeland again. I hope that’s not the case for people like Jorge or Neir, the Lyft driver I had in Atlanta. I hope that Venezuela will open up to more market-based economic policies and more individual liberty for its citizens.
But the common theme I heard from my dad, my grandfather, and from people like Jorge and Neir is this: they are lucky they had the United States to go to. When freedom was lost in their homeland, the United States was there for them to seek political asylum. That’s why they are all so intent on spreading the message of what can happen to a rich and prosperous country if socialism takes hold.
It is for that reason that Bill Buckley started National Review magazine in 1955. He was facing a world where communism was on the rise globally and big government socialism was on the rise domestically. It’s also for that reason he created National Review Institute in 1991 and it’s why today we put so much emphasis on supporting the work of our NRI Fellows like Matthew Continetti, Jonah Goldberg, and Jay Nordlinger, to help bring life to these often-distant issues while carrying on Buckley’s legacy.
I hope you know when you read their work or listen to their podcasts that it is only made possible because of the philanthropic generosity of our supporters – people who make it possible for them and for us all to bring these messages to millions of people here and around the world. For that, we are grateful. And for that, people like Jorge and Neir are grateful as well. Trust me: they’ve told me how thankful they are that entities like NRI and National Review exist here. There’s nothing like it in Venezuela. Or anywhere else.