the other 25th of April

There was certain bitterness in the mouth. Much of our generation had been torn in a distant war that had brought us nothing more than poverty. We live in a time when everything was scarce, shoes, clothes, food, medicines and happiness fled from us like the plague. We were cursed at that time, a country with people bent, forced to constantly look at the floor for fear that someone saw something more than a distress look and all ended in an anonymous complaint to the political police. We had the right of the first letters, learned how to write, memorize the multiplication table and the name of all cities, rivers and tributaries that belonged to the Portuguese empire in return we took paddled if we didn't brought the tip of the tongue at the end to sing the anthem national and luckily they gave us a loaf of bread for the journey. Studying in universities was only for the rich. If poor wanted education had to go to seminary. But that was not for me. I, like thousands of young lads of my age, we fled the war and hunger through a letter of invitation and false identities. Embarked on authentic floating deaths wells, crammed into crowded cabins foul of people like cattle, eating undercooked pasta the whole journey in search of a better life. Across the world, in South America, the land of sun, smiling people who did not much like to work and a land of salsa, I began the day when the sun stubbornly refused to wake up. Days of 12 hours of work to load and unload goods in several points of Caracas. Life was hard, but worth. El President Bettencourt liked the foreign to build capital that would perpetuate his name. Like Salazar, he also had to leave work done. Yet it was different. The feeling of repression was not as intense. As visceral. I walked the clean and quiet streets of the city without fear, there was no robbery. After 38 years what has changed? It's an irony of fate, a country of abundance as Venezuela, now has shortage of everything, insecurity and we have a dictator in power. In Portugal, ahh Portugal, you need a new revolution!