In an essay in Adi Magazine, Ruxandra Guidi explores the complicated relationship between her, her late father, and Venezuela, the country she left as a teenager. Ruxandra’s parents divorced and her mother fled to the United States after the leftist military officer Hugo Chávez launched a series of coup attempts against the sitting government. Her father remained loyal to Chávez as he took power and, later, as his government became more and more authoritarian. It would be many years before Ruxandra and her father would reconnect. But they never really settled their personal and political differences.
“I can’t blame the revolution for pushing us apart,” Ruxandra writes. “But I can blame it for making it impossible for me to return to my own country to be with my father and hold his hand as he died, even if it meant doing so in silence.”