THE VENEZUELAN MUSICIAN
NN was born in Venezuela in 1945 and studied music from a young age, specializing in guitar and the Venezuelan cuatro. He then went to Miami, where he began his life as a professional musician, playing in the streets, bars, and restaurants. There, he learned not to be an employee, but the master of his own time. He was convinced that the capitalist system and the freedom enjoyed in the postwar United States were the best in the world. He believed that the rich and the poor should coexist, that the wealthy became rich through their abilities, connections, ambition, and initiative, and that the poor had to learn, work, and make wise choices every day to escape poverty. He believed that poverty was not a punishment, nor an inheritance, but a necessary condition that compels human beings to improve themselves.
Back in Venezuela, in 1999, Colonel Hugo Chávez triumphed in the elections after a failed coup attempt against a president who had ruled for many years and transformed the country into a nation of a few wealthy individuals living between Miami and Caracas, at the service of American oil companies or their own businesses, while millions of Venezuelans lived in poverty, especially in the slums of Caracas.
Returning to his hometown, he became a music professor at the conservatory, but when Chávez died and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, took power, the United States' economic sanctions against Venezuela hit him hard, and he migrated, along with millions of other Venezuelans, from his country. He arrived in Ecuador in 2019, and along with other artists from that country, he earned money playing music on Amazonas Avenue. However, Ecuador was already experiencing a crisis created by the government of President Lenin Moreno, who sought to stem the wave of Venezuelan migration to Ecuador. This migration followed the path taken by thousands of Colombians and Cubans who arrived in Ecuador to travel from there to the United States during the government of Rafael Correa, from 2006 to 2016, when Ecuador became the most dynamic economy in South America, boasting the best road, energy, educational, and healthcare infrastructure in the region.
The government of Lenin Moreno, Correa's former vice president, who betrayed him and began a political persecution of those who were part of his own party, Alianza País, allied itself with Donald Trump and was a puppet manipulated by the US ambassador and the IMF, which demanded the reduction of state bureaucracy, Ecuador's return to the war on drugs (Plan Colombia), and privatizations. Today, this president is accused of corruption along with his entire family and friends.
In 2020, the pandemic affected him like many others. He and his wife were saved by the vaccines, but the quarantine that confined people to their homes almost starved him to death. Since then, sitting on Avenida Amazonas and Roca in front of the Hotel Mercure, he has become known for his music and his tenacity, which allows him to collect dollars every day to survive in Quito and send money to his children in Venezuela, where salaries and the currency were devaluing daily, while remittance dollars were the salvation for millions of Venezuelans. In 2024, at age 79, he developed prostate problems and arrived at the Pablo Arturo Suárez Hospital in critical condition with liters of urine backing up in his bladder. There, he underwent surgery that saved his life and receives free follow-up care. His wife left him and returned to Venezuela. At age 80, he found a new partner, also Venezuelan, but younger.
When he learned that the United States had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, he thought his country had been rid of a tyrant and socialism, but that it had entered into a war with the United States, one that could be like the Vietnam War, because Donald Trump and the US government didn't want a better life for Venezuelans, but rather their oil, to drive out China, Russia, and Iran, who had helped the Maduro government resist the United States and who had broken the dollar-denominated oil trade, which was the beginning of the end of the so-called petrodollar. This petrodollar had allowed the United States to control the market and finances worldwide, to accumulate debts of over 36 trillion dollars, and to turn Federal Reserve bonds and dollars into paper money that could be printed left and right to buy everything the world produces or to finance wars.
But Venezuela, in order to resist the US blockade—the true origin of the Venezuelan diaspora and tragedy—like Cuba, had been governed by fear, desperation, and disillusionment, which had become the form of government, with many political prisoners, shortages, speculation, and political indoctrination.
January 3, 2026, was an important day for NN, as was the day he left his country, because at least hope returned, the optimism that great changes bring to a country that has suffered.
