Pirates from Macaracuay

I remember when I was a child. Venezuela wasn’t a paradise for sure, but there were certain aspects that reminded me that things could be different. For instance, when I was a teenager I memorize how every Friday –an in special occasions or holidays even on Thursdays- I went with my family to the Video Store from Altamira (Video Color Yamín) or Los Palos Grandes (Blockbuster Video) to rent a video game or a movie.

Mostly, I enjoyed Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64 games. My devotion to the PSX came later. And I almost spent my adolescence watching martial arts or action movies. They were all original pieces and despite piracy existed it wasn’t the rule of the Venezuelan market.

Today it is almost impossible to find in Venezuela an original movie or video game. Why? It is because of the technological improvement? No. Because from ten years from now Venezuela is under a regime that doesn’t believe in intellectual property and the own right that the creator has to explode and gain benefits of its own creation.

The population doesn’t realize that the cheaper triumph of piracy implies the failure of their dignity, because the market speaks, yes, and it tells you that Venezuelans do not deserve the original, the quality and the best. Your wages and incomes can’t match the real price of the box set from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Like a dog bone you must eat a second class copy of everything.

Fifteen years ago the square of Macaracuay –part of the Caracas Baruta’s county- was filled by mountains and trees. Now it seems like an underground Chinese market. The police don’t do anything. How they could? Who’s going to absorb the poor “employee” that is the innocent front page of a deeper and criminal problem?

Wherever you look piracy is abroad. And my fellow citizens seem to accept it in servitude.