39th OPEN LETTER TO US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP YOU ARE FACE TO FACE WITH SIMON BOLIVAR OVER VENEZUELA
midst of the Ancient world. The fragments that were left then formed independent nations in conformity with their situations or interests; but with the difference that each one re-established its original system. We do not even retain the vestiges of what went before a species mid-way between the original inhabitants and the Spaniards. Americans by birth and Europeans in our rights, we find ourselves in the predicaments of fighting with the Indians for the ownership of the land and contending with the opposition of invaders for the privilege of remaining in the country of our birth, thus our case can be seen to be fraught with difficulties.
Bound as we were by the triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny and corruption, we were unable to acquire learning power or virtue. And since we were schooled by such evil tutors, the lessons we received and the examples we studied were of a most ruinous nature.
We were enthralled by deception even more than by force and corruption degraded us even more than superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness, an ignorant person is the blind instrument of its own destruction, and ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil understanding, they take to be realities what are in fact only illusions, they confuse licence for liberty, treason with patriotism, vengeance with justice such a people resemble an able bodied blind man who, encouraged by his feeling of strength, studies forward with the assurance of the most clear sighted and, stumbling into every pitfall, is no longer able to find his way.
If such a degraded people should ever attain their freedom, they will not delay in losing it, for there will be no way of persuading them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue, that lawful government is more powerful than the rule of tyrants because it is more inflexible and requires that all obey its beneficent discipline, that morality and not force is the basis of the law, and that the exercise of justice is the exercise of freedom.
Thus legislators, your task is all the more difficult because the men you must inform have been perverted by misleading illusions and destructive motives.
Freedom, says Rousseau, is a most succulent dish, but one that is difficult to digest. Our frail fellow citizens will have to build up their strength long before they are able to digest the life giving nutrient of freedom.
Will they, with their limbs stiffened from such long enchainment their sight enfeebled by the darkness of their dungeons, and their spirit crushed by pernicious servitude, be able to stride firmly toward the august temple of freedom?
Will they be able to gaze unblinkingly into its splendid rays, and inhale the pure air which surrounds it?
Consider your choice carefully, legislators. Do not forget that you are about to lay the foundations of a new people, and that they will rise to the greatness for which nature has equipped them if you so shape this foundation to match the eminent status that awaits them.
If your choice is not governed by the guiding spirit of Venezuela, which should inspire you in choosing the right form and nature of the government you are to adopt for the happiness of the people, if I repeat you should fail to choose rightly, all our new beginning will end in slavery”
Mr President, I say, you are on a face to face battle with the spirit of Simon Bolivar. Let the people of Venezuela choose under freedom, what type of government they want.
Donald Chanda, Lecture- UNZA (Rtd)
Tel: 0979771803
Email; chakolongana@gmail. com