Photos of Catalina del Carmen Ramos Suarez

30 June

Once upon a time I wake up in the beach Aguas Blancas, in the Venezuelan Mochima bay. In my early twenties I was used to sleep anywhere for as long as others would let me. The sun wasn’t that high, nor the sand too hot, so I wonder why was I awake. Eventually I smelled a fire, so I jumped out of the sleeping bag and tried at the same time to clear my eyes and search for what could be in flames.

Cathy laughed at me with that laugh that I can’t nor I want to forget. “Awake?” she asked me between laughs. The fire, of course, was her cooking. Most of us were still sleeping the drinking and singing of the previous night, but she was wide awake, had gathered what drift wood was around, and arepas were being roasted for us all. A pot of coffee was ready, and another humongous cooking pot was about to receive the ingredients of the cruzado that we were going to have for dinner. I laughed back at her, I guess I helped even if it was not needed, and eventually we all had the breakfast that she cooked.

Once upon a time I worked in the University of Basel, doing research in evolutionary genetics. I did travel back to Venezuela once or twice, and the first time I wanted to meet Cathy again. She did make time for me, for some coffee together. I picked her up in the back then called ministery of technology and innovation. It was the first government of Chavez, the parachute commander-turned putchist, turned president. Cathy was a high level bureaucrat in his administration and I could not understand why. According to me Chavez being a military and having tried a coup and even failed could not mean anything good for our country. I knew Cathy when both of us were member of a student left wing party, but even if leftish a military is a military, I thought. So she picked me up at the door of the ministry and we went for a coffee and we talked some. It might be that I do not remember the details of our conversation, but I remember very clearly her stance. Inti, she told me, there is work to do in our country. And here there is people that want to get work done, and so here I am. When she walked back to her office, we parted at the door, and she had words with the porter. I remember him as a thin and rather old man. They greeted each other, and exchanged smiles and questions about their families and their health. I wonder what was he doing there. "He wanted to help, inti”, she told me. “And that is the work that we could find that he can do, so he does it”.

It might have been my third or fourth university year. I had worked in La Proveeduria Estudiantil for a coupe of years already. This was a group of students that decided that having a left wing ideology was not enough. What was the use of our left wing ideas if we would not put them to work? So we did. Along the years (when I joined the Proveeduria existed already 16 years) they expanded from a bookshop to a sport, music and food shops. We students run the business ourselves, and took all decisions and profits horizontally. It was a mess, but a beautiful mess where many of us learned the difference between ideology and practice. At the time I’m talking about, we started a salad bar, one of the many ideas of Cathy. Officially I got to run it. She taught me what to slice kilograms of vegetables mean, how to buy them fresh and ripe in the market, how to put them together and serve them to a bunch of hungry students, that had no patience for excuses of any kind. In the end we went broke and we closed the salad bar. I have ever since wondered if I disappointed Cathy then, and I have not gathered yet the courage to ask her. Could I have worked a bit more, a bit better or a bit sharper? Maybe. What I know for sure is that Cathy is one of the two or three persons that makes me question myself. If she would have a motto, I believe it would be “whatever you do, do it well”.

It has been a month since Cathy has been put away by the Venezuelan regime. She has not had contact with lawyers, friends or family. We know that her kidnap is responsibility of the government, since the minister of interior appeared in TV boasting of having captured a cell of terrorist, who worked in close collaboration with a human rights defence organisation. Cathy’s name was in the list. And that is all what we know from her since. As absurd as the accusation is, it is also cruel and wrong. Cathy is indeed one of the organisers of Vente Venezuela, the main opposition party of the Venezuelan regime.

But never a terrorist.