Today I was censored in my homeland Venezuela

Since January 2000 I had been a pro-bono columnist at El Universal. It was recently sold to a group supposedly very friendly and cozy with the Nicolás Maduro government.

Today, July 29, 2014, two days before the centennial of the discovery of oil in Venezuela, something which has enriched governments so much so as to make a true democracy impossible, I was informed there was no room for me in the paper anymore.

Am I sad? Of course! It is truly hard to be censored in one´s own country, especially when one has so much one wants to say, especially when so much needs to be said.

Thank God there are now such things a blogs otherwise I might have had to start putting up a print-shop in the basement or practicing graffiti.

The title of the article I was to publish July 31? “100 years of submission”... in it I was as always wanting for the oil revenues to be shared out directly to the citizens... so that we do not have to live any longer in somebody else's business.

Think of how you would feel if your government was receiving and disposing of over 97% of all the exports of your country. That is my Venezuela. That is the country where the price of milk, if you can find it, is 278 times the price of gas (petrol) and that is not viewed as something immoral.

That is an oil curse as big as oil curses can come!

PS. But, on the other hand can you think of "Daddy why are you not censored?" Indeed it is not easy to live in a low profile dictatorship!