No. 12: Design for change

When the future feels impossible, we figure out a way to make it real.

I grew up in the Caribbean. I’m from Caracas. My mom spoke to me in Spanish. She grew up there too. She still dreams of going back.

How desperate and collectively traumatized does a country have to be to rejoice when Americans bomb their territory?

When I woke up a few days ago and saw the news, I yelled. Like a lunatic. A high-voltage release that lasted a few seconds. Then shock.

It’s a strange space to move through. Time compresses. For a few seconds I forget that twenty years have passed since I last called Venezuela home.

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The adrenaline fades

The electric, hot joy I felt when I realized Maduro was out is something some people won’t understand. That’s okay. I don’t know how to explain it either.

The adrenaline wore off. And now what? What do we do?

Twenty-five years have passed.

I’d like to imagine there’s a way I can apply design to help somehow. To help repair. To design new systems where people feel safe.

Design that restores hope in society, systems and government.

A new Venezuela is an exciting proposition. For those of us who left, a way to return and contribute.

Maybe that’s why so many of us who grew up inside broken systems became designers in the first place. We reach for structure. And when the future feels impossible, we prototype and figure out a way to make it real.

As Venezuelans, we now have a chance to repair. That’s really something.

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Home

The house I grew up in is about five or six miles from Fuerte Tiuna, where Maduro was nabbed. What a strange hellscape to imagine hearing those explosions from my childhood bedroom.

And yet I know if I lived there, people remain calm and life carries on.

This home exists now mostly as artifacts. It’s a faded memory until a friend reaches out with a story or a photo of us growing up. My Venezuelan passport is a relic at this point. A document I never use.

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Safety

The last time missiles were dropped in Caracas I was about my daughter’s age now. Ten. I was in dance class. A friend’s uncle scooped us up and drove us to his parents’ house nearby. Or maybe I was younger. It all blurs.

In a way, I don’t remember a time before Chavez. He became president when I was sixteen. I met him when I was nineteen. He died when I was thirty-one. It’s a mindfuck, especially when you realize you’ve lived through five American presidents in the same span of time. And most of them went through two terms.

I live a very good life here. The U.S. gave me safety. It gave me my child. My entire adulthood is American.

My life here has momentum. It’s coherent. I know how systems work. I can plan. I’m safe. To me, that matters more than ideology or dogma.

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A global problem

In 2017 everything broke. My marriage ended. My dad died in September. Life felt unreal for a long time after that. Any remaining hope of returning to Venezuela died that year too.

My parents sold our house when I was twenty-four. My dad arrived in the U.S. two years later. He struggled the most, leaving everything behind at sixty-one, not even ready to retire. He obsessed over the news. Venezuela lived in him, as if he never left.

Over eight million Venezuelans have left since 2014. We’re a global problem at this point.

No one chooses that.

As Venezuelans, we now have a chance to repair. We can start breaking down the problem into parts and then iterate publicly until we can find a way that works for everyone.

New is nice, always.