A mournful tribute to Venezuelan survival
Responding to Aunque Me Vaya Lejos (Even If I Go Far) by Margot Conde Arenas
“Sabana, Sabana... aquí me quedo contigo, Aunque me vaya lejos” [Savanna, Savanna, here I stay with you, even if I go far] sings Simón Díaz in the opening of Margot Conde Arenas’, Aunque Me Vaya Lejos (Even If I Go Far). It sounds like a lullaby, as though he is casting a protective spell over his beloved Venezuelan Savanna, which lies motionless save for a few shimmering palms and shepherds turning in for the night. Famed for his revival of musica llanera [music of the plains], Simón Díaz was an iconic folk musician and voice for the Venezuelan people.
But in Arenas' film, Díaz’s nostalgic ballad sounds mournful, set against the tale of a Venezuela marred by poverty, famine, and unending violence. Venezuelan-born narrator, Elizabeth Arenas explains, “It was one of the happiest countries in the world,” but “It has gone from being the diamond of Latin America to being a country that is completely disenfranchised.”
There is no easy explanation for why, but Venezuela is home to the largest oil reserves in the world. For years, ‘the diamond’ has fallen to greedy hands and shortsighted leaders, responsible for mismanaging Venezuela’s energy riches and triggering severe shortages of food and medicine. The nation has not only lost political and economic stability, in a way, it has been stripped of its lifeblood as millions of Venezuelans flee their home each year in search of refuge elsewhere. More than one-sixth of the population (5.6 million) has left Venezuela since 2015, and many are forced to travel on foot. Millions more who couldn’t afford the journey are still in the country and in need of humanitarian aid. Only a minority of Venezuelans have enough to eat one meal a day. The pandemic has worsened their plight, with already scarce jobs vanishing overnight.
Arenas’ stories, intimately told in Spanish and English by Venezuelan immigrants and refugees, take us beyond the statistics. One of the storytellers, Gabriela Reyes, recalls a moment of sheer desperation when a couple on a motorbike mugged her on the street. The man was waving his gun as she fumbled to hand over her phone, the accomplice shouting, “kill her, kill her, kill her.” In that moment she knew that “life is not worth anything.” Terror transforms people, taking away any hope of common decency. But there is also light through the impenetrable darkness: another storyteller recalls offering Vaseline to a group of caminantes [walkers] who had been tormented by fleas. The crisis spurred Elizabeth to organise a global fundraising walk in solidarity with the caminantes.
Projections of images and videos of Venezuela and Colombia – from newsreels and collaborators – are interwoven with the director’s footage of Glasgow, layered and combined with choreographed movement in silhouette. “Each time we think it has got rock bottom, it gets worse,” the narrator sighs. The brutal pain of being severed from your home country – or denaturalised, to use the technical term – ruptures the delicacy of the actor’s soft silhouettes, or flick of the wrist. The stilted movements of a dancer walking in the foreground are also powerful reminders of respite as well as trauma. Even when our wealth has shriveled to nothing, our own two feet will be able to take us to the other side of the fence. At the heart of the journey is survival.
The film’s stories resonated with me. As the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, my entire being is imbued with the sacrifices my family made to shield us from harm. “If we’re all going to die, it’s better we all go down together,” said my grandfather, as my mum’s family clambered aboard an overcrowded fishing boat with only the clothes on their back. No one knew if they would even survive the treacherous journey: but the journey was better than staying. Though I was born in the UK, the memory of that visceral love – expressed in acts of sacrifice – has settled deep in my bones. I belong to the same line as the people who arrived here with nothing but their stories.
While the circumstances of the Venezuelans and Vietnamese are different – the Vietnamese refugee crisis, following the fall of Saigon, lasted until the early 1990s, and the Venezuelan crisis is ongoing – they share a similar legacy of exile. Aunque Me Vaya Lejos explores what it means to have ‘gone far’ from Venezuela and to reflect on that legacy, hyper aware of a nation suffering from catastrophe.
Portraying the migrant crisis through the eyes of those who have lived through it, Arenas’ film is a work of witness. It guards the world from forgetting. To bear witness to Venezuela’s fraught history is to inform the world of what is happening there now. Venezuelan people are both observers and participants in the drama, paying the price for the political division that is consuming their country and their lives.
