We die as everyone, fatally, but also inexplicably: a woman in the Maternity Concepción Palacios dies because the c-section executor forgot his tweezers between her viscera. You die because you liked the Nikes better than the Reeboks and they were on sale. You die because of twenty thousand bolívares. You die of hunger or crushed by the quagmire or the landslip of the hill, in the middle of the capitol city where some modernity flashes penetrated. You die because the police wanted to save you from a robber. You die because of the inefficiency, because of the mistake, of the paradox. You don't die fatally, as elsewhere. You die of underdevelopment.
STEFANIA MOSCA, El circo de Ferdinand, Monte Ávila Editores, 2005.

I've been away from the competition for some weeks now, because of a lot of reasons that I'm not going to bore you with. Anyway, I've just moved to Caracas, which, apparently, is one of the most expensive and dangerous cities in Latin America, and, some say, in the world.

I personally don't feel it that way, maybe because –having a roof, a bed and three meals a day- I'm a very privileged person. However, it only takes a little of attention to notice the people sleeping on the streets, the slums surrounding the city. There are four million people living in Caracas, and most of them live with less than five dollars a day, even if they're working full time. Although they live in the biggest city of the country, they have to walk up and down hundreds of stairs only to pick up some water, and they all have at least a relative who was shot to death a few steps away from their own houses. Every time it rains, they know there's a good chance that their houses will come down with the water.

Still, they wake up and go out and make their livings every day, most of them even with a smile in their faces, even when they don't know if that same day they will find the bullet that'll suddenly finish their lives. And meanwhile, and at walking distance from those slums, there lives some people who can afford penthouses with an inner pool, chauffeurs, bodyguards and cleaning personnel.

The obscenity of the inequality generates everyday violence. That some people can afford a nose job and fake boobs, while some people will die giving birth on the streets. That some people pays the worth of a minimum wage by eating sushi in a fancy restaurant, and some other don't know if they will be able to feed their children that night. That some people's children can choose to be chefs, or moviemakers, but other's can only settle for factory workers and hairdressers, in the best case scenario.

I do believe that to ensure human rights is to provide everyone with opportunities to choose. But I also believe that there is no freedom with hunger, and that there's no possibility of guaranteeing human rights while people continue dying of underdevelopment.

The picture from the slums in Caracas belongs to Franklin Reyes/J.Rebelde and it's under a Creative Commons License in Flickr.