Literature versus populism: three writers from the Venezuelan diaspora share their experiences at the ICS

Forced to leave Venezuela due to the country's status and social status , writers Karina Sainz Borgo, Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, and Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez have found a new home in Spain, including a literary one. They explained this in the first lecture by the Chair CisnerosChair at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra, entitled The Venezuelan Diaspora: Populism and Culture, moderated by Full Professor Hispanic American Literature Javier de Navascués. At the meeting, which was attended by numerous students, they explained how the experience of migration has influenced their literature, as well as the ability of narrative to recount and denounce what is happening.

"Although I am not directly talking about Venezuela, I am doing so because it marked my sensibility. Writing involves unearthing things. It is an extractive act, and you have to remove a lot of skin to get to the bone," said Sainz Borgo, who has just published her fourth novel, Nazarena. Based in Madrid for 21 years, the writer, who is also a journalist and columnist for the ABC newspaper, emphasizes the need she felt to distance herself from the horror she experienced in Chavista Venezuela in order to address it in her literature: "Living in Spain as a Venezuelan traumatized by a failed revolutionary experience cannot lead you to try to translate everything onto the same board. You have to exercise restraint in the literary episode. And language is what allows you to place and measure the world." In any case, she admitted that during the time she lived in Venezuela, "there was latent violence" and, as a result, even her "conception of beauty is influenced by violence."

Writing and migration

Blanco Calderón, author of novels such as Simpatía and The Night, and collections of short stories such as Una larga fila de hombres, arrived in Spain 10 years ago from Paris and found in Malaga " the good place, the place where I want to be" and "where I can live in my language." For the writer, who is also publisher columnist for ABC, there is "a very strong divorce" between his everyday experience and the reality he conveys in his books, which tend toward tragedy.

"Emigrating has brought about significant changes in my writing. For example, the lack of immediacy with what is happening in Venezuela forces me to set my stories, increasingly, in the years when I lived there. It's a defense mechanism," he explains. In this sense, he points out that "the Venezuelan character is the device that allows me to speak and makes me feel authentic. Although my language will probably continue to mutate into a hybrid where my origins are still present and the adaptations are reflected."

For his part, Méndez Guédez, author of novels such as Cuando vuelva diciembre (When December Returns) and La ola detenida(The Stopped Wave), arrived in Salamanca in 1996, before the advent of Chavismo: "I came to Spain because I wanted to write, and to write I needed time, which life there did not allow me." The writer explains that his own experiences are very present in his narrative: "In order to imagine, I have to feel that the character speaks, feels, thinks, and imagines in a way that I can control."

In addition to developing his degree program a novelist and short story writer, one of his goals upon arriving in Spain was also to contribute to the dissemination of Venezuelan literature, work continues to do as a cultural manager. "Mentally, I still live in both places. And my relationship with literary language is completely natural. There are records of both places," he acknowledges.

The meeting reflect on language the transformative power of literature, a powerful catalyst for complex realities at the social, political, and emotional levels.