Life on Wheels

I had arrived in the Port of Caen in the middle of the night, exhausted from a long drive and having already missed a ferry back to the UK from Bilbao. After a few hours sleep, I woke up just as the time for the morning Fajr prayer was entering.

Driving past the Port terminal to a nearby hotel, I parked my car and walked into reception, intending to ask if I could use their toilet facilities before continuing on my journey. However, before I managed to utter a word, a middle aged French receptionist had risen from her seat and started walking towards me. The look on her face told me – we may have a problem.

Luckily for me, verbal expressions quickly replaced the need for deciphering facial expressions.

‘Non! Non!’ she began, ‘Get out!’ The fact she was now standing next to me and pointing at the door suggested I was the intended recipient of this verbal assault, but it certainly wasn’t the ‘Good morning, ça va?’ I had been expecting.

Verbal soon became physical as the woman began to literally push me towards the entrance, all without me having had said a syllable. The shock of the situation stinted my French linguistic abilities, basic at the best of times, so I chose ‘Tu parles anglais?’ as my opening gambit. ‘Non!’ the woman replied, quite forcefully, and continued to push me outside. In terms of upper-body strength, I’m not the weakest person on the Brittany coast, but it didn’t seem socially acceptable to get in a physical fight with a woman in her fifties. Anyway, by the time I had realised what had happened, I was outside and she was sitting back at her desk.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the outcome of the encounter, but time was of the essence. I needed to pray Fajr before the sun approached the horizon, so I went to the Port terminal to confirm my ferry ticket and to use their bathroom instead. Finding the staff far friendlier and aggression levels much lower on this side of the car park, it wasn’t long before I was ready for breakfast.

But I couldn’t let Hotel-gate pass without some kind of response. At the front of the Hotel was a café, and through the window I could see that it was being run by the same woman who had been staffing reception just half an hour earlier. Moving with ninja-style speed to take a table before she had detected my presence, I quite deliberately arranged my car key, British passport and a twenty Euro note on the table in front of me.

The receptionist-manager-waitress spotted me from a distance, and smoke gently began streaming from her ears (or was it the coffee machine behind her) as she stormed over to my table with the same mixture of fury and determination that had marked our earlier rendezvous.

As she got closer and noticed my table arrangement, she slowed her pace. ‘You’re… you’re British?’ she asked. And guess what? She had mastered the English language in my half an hour absence.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘And, you’re just waiting to get the ferry to the UK?’

‘Right again. So, it’s a buffet breakfast right? Could I have a bowl of corn flakes, some toast with chocolate spread, a couple of those mini croissants and a some fruit please. Thanks so much.’

Being a person with what some comedians like to call a ‘disability’, I’m quite used to having such enthralling encounters, but apparently I’m not the only one to enjoy the joy of French hospitality recently. Uthman, aged thirty-one and born in Paris, tells me of taking his pregnant wife and younger brother to a luxury ski-resort near Chambéry in the Alps.

‘We arrived in the evening, just as dinner was going to be served, and I had paid for the evening meal as part of the package, he begins. We were all really tired from the journey, so decided that we would go straight through to eat. Then, the manager of the hotel came through to reception and said that it would not be possible.

The question of why hadn’t entered my mind yet, so I just asked what exactly wouldn’t be possible. I didn’t even understand what he was referring to. He said it would be better if we ate in our room instead. I was beginning to get the gist. We’re French, we’re white, I was wearing European clothes, I didn’t have a big beard, but my wife was wearing hijab.

‘We don’t allow hats in the dining area,’ the manager continued, pointing directly at my wife.

‘But that’s not a hat,’ I replied, ‘it’s a hijab. Is it our religion you have a problem with?’
‘Yes,’ the manager replied, raising his voice. ‘It’s your religion! It’s your religion that’s the problem!’

When Muslim women walk on the street in France, people spit on the pavement in front of them. When they go to the supermarket, people barge into them with their trollies. So yes, it’s getting quite hard.’

It’s strange that for a hundred years of occupation, France saw Algeria, and other Muslim-populated colonial possessions, as part of France, but today, Muslims born in Paris are not.

For Correo del Orinoco:

The corridors are always packed in the Metropolitan Council of Popular Power for People with Disabilities, situated in a building just down the street from Plaza Diego Ibarra in Caracas. Wheelchairs come and go, sometimes squeezing to the side in order to let another person pass first. In a small area just behind the front door, which is frequently opened and closed as new visitors come inside, Jose Suarez is leaning back in his chair, relaxed, chatting with a friend. It seemed to contrast with the tension I had witnessed on the streets outside, in the days following Nicolas Maduro’s Presidential election victory on April 14th.

“Firstly, yes I voted”, says Jose, turning his attention in my direction. “I voted this time and on October 7th as well. Really, it is right that we all have, and especially people with disabilities. But more than a right, it’s a commitment that we have to the nation.

As disabled people, we are proud of this process. The Bolivarian process has put us into the public light, recognized us as human beings and included us in the political base”.

Since my arrival in Venezuela just over seven months ago, I have often been struck by the visibility of disabled people, particularly in Caracas. I am walking towards Plaza Bolivar on a warm afternoon when I notice Ramon, a blind man, being helped along the path by a member of staff from the Metro. Perhaps helping travellers with disabilities is a matter of due course inside stations for Metro workers in many countries, but here they had already walked some distance from the nearest Capitolio stop.

When the Metro worker leaves, I speak with Ramon. He too, is eager to affirm that he is “with the process”, but suggests that the recognition Jose had mentioned still has a long way to go.

“The problem is that the law still doesn’t have its enforcement. There a group of articles [from the 2006 Law for People with Disabilities] concerning our rights, but those carrying the most weight are 28 and 38. These are what we are discussing now, but we need unity on the matter. Nevertheless, the government has a huge capacity for construction. They have achieved what no government has achieved. They have given what no government has given. Maduro should take charge of this affair. But, we are asking for political participation. We want to have disabled people at the front of the Municipal Councils, but also in the [National] Assembly! I would like to see representatives for disabled people in the PSUV. That level of political participation still hasn’t arrived for us. Participation and protagonism!”

The question of political representation is an important one, and a concern shared not only by Ramon. Back at the Metropolitan Council, Luis Roja, a leading figure of the organization, says that he is proud of their independence from the government, but that something more is needed.

“It seems that first our rights were originally passed onto the Ministry of Health, as if we have illnesses, but we are not sick. It’s an important distinction we should make. We’re not just a small group, we are hundreds of thousands, and we are asking Maduro to create a specific government ministry for people with disabilities. That is something which needs to happen! The first thing we have in mind is the law. Article 28 stipulates that public institutions must employ disabled people as at least 5% of their workforce. This means that disabled people are leaving their houses; we are going out to sustain our families”.

Former opposition candidate Henrique Capriles spent much of his pre-election campaign promising that he would keep benefits and missions for disabled people in place, although his subsequent refusal to accept the results of the elections, even after they were audited, has thrown into doubt his ability to co-operate with democratic institutions. Capriles promised that he would deliver the “change” that Venezuela needed, but many disabled citizens, to the contrary, see Capriles as a symbol of the old political forces which ignored them for so long.

I ask Jose Suarez for his opinion on the violent events which followed the opposition’s refusal to accept the results. Capriles made a speech just one hour after they were announced, calling for his supporters to “show the world [their] rage”.

“It will always be like this”, says Jose. They are never going to feel satisfied because they lost. It doesn’t matter if they are presidential, municipal or parish elections. They are always going to be screaming and crying, specifically because of Henrique Capriles Radonski. Capriles is not going to accept the results, because he comes from a part of society that had become accustomed to using such tactics and getting their own way. They don’t understand that in the last fourteen years, things have changed. If the majority of people say Nicolas Maduro is the president now, then Nicolas Maduro is the president.A few of the leaders of the opposition want to deceive their followers because they can’t believe they have suffered yet another loss to the revolution, but, thanks to God, they are a minority, even amongst their supporters. But also we should say that we have a conscious, revolutionary people who are mentally and ideologically prepared”.

“Why are we revolutionaries?” asks Luis, rhetorically. “Because we were excluded from society in the years before. The por ahora was an awakening for people with disabilities. The governments of the Fourth Republic had a badly-named law for people with “incapacities”. Just with the name of that law, they assassinated our rights as human beings. So the por ahora served as something of an internal revolution amongst people with disabilities”.

“Before Hugo Chavez, I never voted. They had a political system like sharing out a cake”, affirms Jose. “What the revolution has provided is a space for disabled people, a space for us to project our voices. The process hasn’t given me a house, or a car. I work, but the process didn’t give me a job. But I know people, friends and family, humble people in need of those things, who have benefited greatly”.

I meet Alexander as he is travelling from one line of the Metro to another in his electric wheelchair, holding on to the sides of the escalators for stability.

“Before, we never had any support”, he tells me. “We didn’t have a base. I voted because we want a free country. The opposition don’t have a choice, because our rights are in law now. The law applies to everyone. But Capriles wouldn’t even remember us”.

Recent weeks have been a time of reflection for disabled people here, as they have for many Venezuelans. The struggle remains for disabled people not only to be visible in society, but to lead the narrative on the fulfilment of their rights as citizens. But even more than laws or articles, it is a self-respect that disabled people stride with today. The road is a long one, but the wheelchair tracks are being marked into the earth.

“We don’t shut the doors to anyone here”, says Luis. I ask him what his position is at the council. As we talk, people come and go, discussing and joking with each other, often contributing to Luis’ responses to my questions with their own thoughts and suggestions.

Luis smiles. “I’m just another one.”

Yesterday, in the National Assembly and in front of continental and world leaders, Nicolas Maduro Moros was officially sworn in as the President of Venezuela. The centre of Caracas was filled with supporters, yet again; how many times have I said that now? It feels as if I have lost count since arriving here exactly seven months ago. You cannot describe these as marches, because there is barely space to move. Demonstrations of solidarity, of love, and now, of defiance in the face of attack.

Maduro’s swearing-in also marked the anniversary of Venezuela independence. During his acceptance speech, he referred to the people of the country as “an army of liberators”, and says that the United States’ recognition of his electoral victory, which has still not been announced, “does not interest him”.

The banging of pots begins at 8pm every night here. The cacerolazos, called for by Henrique Capriles after he refused to accept his narrow defeat in the Presidential elections. On Thursday evening we took a walk through the La Candelaria neighbourhood, where I first lived upon arrival in the city. Here, the noise is almost deafening. Occasionally, you catch a glimpse of someone leaning out of an apartment window in one of the high-storey buildings, but mostly the people behind the sounds remain out of sight. Nevertheless, the stunning nature of the result is something that is impossible to ignore.

“The worst thing is,” Norma, a government-supporter responsible for organising people in her local area tells me, “there were Chavistas who went out to vote for Capriles. We were missing his character… we were lacking our maximum leader. There is no-one who can replace him.”

“The opposition want to commit a coup d’etat, there is no doubt about it,” Norma continues, “they are deliberately deceiving their own followers by demanding something they know will not happen and would not make a difference to the result. Eight people have been killed already, so why have the police not put those responsible in prison?”

At the Friday demonstration, I find long queues lining up in Plaza Bolivar to sign a petition calling for Henrique Capriles to face the law. José Rivero, standing nearby, is keen to explain to me:

“Capriles made the call, and he is responsible for the deaths that have happened. He has to be held to account. The opposition think we can return to some kind of monarchy, but the people here are strugglers, we are fighters. The importance of today is to show that, to show that we are a sovereign, independent and free nation. When Maduro said that, from the Tuesday coming, we will have ‘governments of the streets’, it says that sovereignty lies with the people.”

Maduro is speaking in a defiant tone. But there is an underlying tension that remains. “How can they have lost over half a million votes in a few months?” says Jamal. “It really makes me sad, there are people that had no homes before, nowhere to live, and now they have homes, but are fighting each other, brother against brother! How can you forget so quickly and go out to vote for Capriles?”

There are problems that have been exasperated by dramatic events; two Presidential election campaigns, regional elections across the country and, of course, the passing away of Hugo Chavez have left financial speculation increasing, and food prices rising.

“But how would Capriles resolve these problems?” asks Jamal. “He won’t. The truth about the opposition is that they do not care about anyone when they’re trying to get into power. This is a country where the last two Presidents have been poor people. Hugo Chavez was selling sweets in the streets for his grandmother… they called him the arañero. Nicolas Maduro was a bus driver! I have a daughter in this country, and it makes me believe that she could be President one day. Not because she was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, but even with a wooden spoon.”

“It’s like the American dream,” Jamal laughs, “but it’s different.”