An old friend, a very high ex-subaltern of the person who today usurps the presidency of Venezuela, assures me that his former boss is semi-illiterate. He says that he can barely read a simple piece of paper, but that he is absolutely incapable of writing on his own. Or at least, do it without making glaring spelling mistakes.
The revelation that they entrusted to me was with the condition of reserving the name of the informant, a commitment that I fulfill to the letter, although it was not necessary to be a very divining person to sense it. What is visible does not need glasses, the saying goes.
It is very difficult or impossible, according to my confidant, for, apart from the document referred to at the end of this chronicle, another in his handwriting to be located.
Ángel Biaggini’s presidential candidacy foundered due to a grammatical mistake that slipped into one of his manuscripts. And from there, straight to the coup d’état of October 18, 1945. The experience of the famous television debate between the then presidential candidates, Rafael Caldera and Jaime Lusinchi, is also indelible. It was assumed that the first of those named was more academic, more enlightened and that, therefore, he would overwhelm the second. But the diatribe arose around an alleged error in the proper use of a certain word in the content of a letter – “The letter, the letter, the letter” later the teasers who are never absent would mock – which was decisive in the triumph of the then candidate of the Democratic Action party.
Such historical background will be unknown to a certain Cucuteño. But, imperishable for the least informed of the Castro-Cuban G2 toads that swarm around the Miraflores Palace. Or for the infiltrators of Putin, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the FARC, the ELN, the predators of our Mining Arc, who also co-govern in such properties. They will have ordered him to destroy every vestige of his spelling errors and horrors and he, sepoy, servile, malinche, will have pulled out his mustache before obeying without question. They went through the relentless paper destruction machines, from the “chops” that allowed him to cheat on the exams from kindergarten to the second year of high school – to advance further was to demand too much of him – to his spite obituaries, the lyrics of medicine cabinet songs, as well as certain agreements, not at all saints from his time as a bus driver, scab and union member.
His collaborators, apparently loyal, pens and notebooks in hand, pretend in the Councils of Ministers, who treasure with their notes, those strings of nonsense. But, without being very enlightened either, as soon as the man turns his back, they burst into laughter. Absolute waste of time, taking notes from someone who doesn’t even know how to copy them in French Roman, if anything, in calé, slang or slum jargon.
Neither illiteracy nor semi-illiteracy are synonyms of idiocy. Even less immorality, but if the three ingredients are mixed with political power, the result is scorched earth.
Calligraphy, zero; spelling, minus zero; morphology of triple zero words. Drawer with “G”; laughter, also with “G”; “they were leaving us”, “they were coming to us”. Not even the “Word” autocorrect is capable of metabolizing the errors of such a fool. Let’s see:
According to his aforementioned former subordinate, the only graphic testimony that has managed to survive from the aforementioned raid is an image capture and this, because they have not been able to remove it from the internet. In the aforementioned document, next to the presidential signature, there is a phrase that, copied verbatim, is an entire poem: “Oue Long Live People Power!” (sic).
My aforementioned friend and senior former collaborator of the language killer, without pretending to be a writer, has counted seven spelling errors in just five words. A true world record. Namely:
The exclamatory adverb “What!”, without the corresponding accent on the “e”. The intended capital “Q” would be just an “O” because its “calligrapher” mutilated the lower line that represents its inevitable union with the “U” that always succeeds it. The “ViVa”, “El”, “Poder”, “Popular” with capital letters, obviously out of place.
He does not agree to debate with Edmundo González and María Corina, much less so. Now we understand the reason.
And if an epistolary debate were to be agreed upon, without the right to ghostwriters, it would be “grammatical assassination” itself.
@omarestacio
