Sifrinas doing what they do best ... partying.

The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo in the wake of the Six Day War virtually quadrupled the oil income of Venezuela overnight as the country did not participate in the OPEC-Arab led cut-off of oil supplies to the western economies. The result was a boom in construction, government borrowing and consumer demand by the middle classes and upward as the privileged few benefited from this incredible geopolitical windfall.

The inflow of money brought with it massive imports of consumer goods and hence a new minority class of consumers in the then small 11–12 million population of the country. It also brought with it accelerated implantation of US consumer values into a population susceptible to the Hollywood-type propaganda disseminated about the LBJ “Great Society” slogan of the 1960s. It was unquestioningly accepted by the powers-that-were that the US model was far superior to the traditional life and values of the Venezuelan population whose grandparents had been subject to the brutal, almost three decade long Gomez dictatorship that ended in 1935.

Both pre- and post-WWII there was huge European immigration into Venezuela from the misery being endured by the tail whip of the Great Depression and post war impoverishment. Many fled the fascist dictatorships of Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal to work and become wealthy in Venezuela, constituting the new bourgeoisie. Their children and grandchildren, however, are the neo-fascists opposed to the revolution in social justice being practiced in Venezuela this century. Their forefathers fled fascism and ironically they adopted it as a creed and attitude against the democratically elected Chávez government. These are the real enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Subsequently in 1973, Venezuela was launched into a consumer feeding frenzy complemented by the bourgeoisie being able to fly to and buy properties in their spiritual home of Miami. It also brought with it a new class of yuppie types called “sifrinos”.

The exact translation of “sifrino” is difficult, but in a sense it is being “stuck-up” or “full of airs and graces” accompanied by superficial chatter about brands (you don’t wear shoes – you wear Timberlands) to impress your equally fatuous friends looking for their next trip to the beach, a trendy East Caracas night club or, even better, to Ocean Drive. Image is everything and you can depend on Mommy and Daddy to fund your “sifrino” lifestyle albeit empty and meaningless in a profound Venezuelan context.

The phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s “sifrinos” was an important step to creating an alienated, dissatisfied middle class youth whose offspring are now the main enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution that benefits the masses rather than the privileged few of the “Saudi Venezuela” of the 1970’s.

More about the “sifrinos”

There is no doubt that the advent of the “sifrino” is a result of massive oil income, there to be spent on imported goods and trinkets rather than on real social development programs. Many are characterized by a strong conviction of superiority towards their poorer Venezuelan counterparts often bordering on disdain and social racism.

Thus, if the poor in their “rags” and street children make the city look ugly and unclean, the “sifrino” answer is to ignore them and make them invisible. The private media did a great job of doing this as the owners were from the privileged classes and did not want to upset their socially compatible counterparts with “ugliness” alongside the soap opera fantasies and variety shows they presented. No, that would never do!

The “sifrino” is a sub-product spawned from the oil culture of “Saudi Venezuela”. The “sifrinos” are puppets manipulated by the strings of the most pathetic desire for consumerism, imitating “admired stereotypes”, and at the same time alienated from the country where they were born and proud of an non-existent, unashamed sense of the ridiculous.

It is true to say that they will know more about fictional gringo heroes such as Batman, Superman and Mickey Mouse rather than Venezuela’s independence heroes such as Bolívar, Miranda and Sucre – i.e. historical figures that really existed in books the “sifrinos” find too boring and are intellectually too lazy to read.

“Sifrinos” see the world as a box; a space where there is no future and no past; a place where historical events do not exist but is filled by whims and fashions that are somehow dictated by an unidentifiable metaphysical entity. This societal view is lifted to the level of a quasi-religious belief and anything of value must appear to be similar to the fashions prevalent in Miami or even Madrid.

“Sifrinos” are prone to imitate everything that is sent down from centers of power and influence and they do this with gusto, unashamedly and with a misplaced sense of superiority. If they happen to spot a new trend in one of the glossy society magazines, they leap to keep ahead of their snobby neighbors.

The result of lauding all that is superior and foreign means that the “sifrinos” as a group have lost their sense of creativity and, even worse, any vestige of originality. They live in an almost imaginary world of the security of the shopping mall, of consumer publicity for the latest iPhone or Tablet. This is all backed up by Visa and MasterCard plastic that symbolizes the plastic world in which they live – with real female plastic surgery often on the menu to attain that extra touch of external soulless beauty dictated by Vogue or Cosmopolitan.

However, what is interesting is that being a “sifrino” is not limited by class – that is, middle class – as it is a classless phenomenon with misplaced victims with little or no memory, living in an undefined time and space where they have somehow been deposited by the dominating powers. The world is like a store front window where hedonism rules without battles, conflicts, sacrifices and lo and behold class struggles.

This was the beginning of the Alienation Generation in Venezuela that has led to the establishment of many homeland-less aliens living in Venezuelan society yearning for an escape to more civilized and prosperous climes such as south Florida. There, in the land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, they end up working in McDonalds or cleaning bathrooms for below the minimum wage yet feel superior for doing these menial tasks. They are discriminated against by the WASPS but find strength in the constant carping and criticizing of Venezuela – especially after the election of “that castro-communist Hugo Chávez” in December 1998!

“Mequieroir.com” – Iwanttoleave.com

Chávez came to power on the back of total disillusionment with the failed two party political system that had ruled Venezuela since the coup d’état of 23 January 1958. The final decade of the 1990’s was a complete economic and social disaster with inflation running at over 100% with wages frozen. The upper and middle classes were reduced by creeping poverty to around 1.5 million out of a population of 22 million. The country was on its knees and Chávez emerged as a product of this debacle.

However, even before the 1998 elections, there was a media campaign running discrediting Chávez and accusing him of wanting to “cubanize” Venezuela, confiscate houses, cars and apartments in order to scare the voters against voting for him.

As it turned out masses of middle class voters cast their ballots for Chávez as a sign of desperation and hope more than anything else. Nevertheless, the media campaign continued and gradually reawakened the now small number of “sifrinos” and transformed them into homeland-less persons wanting to leave the country to go virtually anywhere to escape from the media inspired threat of Castro-Communism led by Hugo Chávez.

A web page called Iwanttoleave.com was set up to encourage disillusioned ex-sifrinos and ex-yuppies to leave Venezuela and this, combined with the search for an easy way out of a political scenario they could not win, encouraged many middle class kids to become “apatridas” – those without a Homeland to form part of the Alienation Generation which is a spinoff of “sifrinismo” of the 1980s.

Mentally, these émigrés were stateless like multinational corporations of the Global Corporate Empire that can surface like a whale in any ocean of the world and siphon off their profits. The “sifrinos” looked to these corporations as examples of professionalism rather than as their real role of exploitation, domination and tools of capitalist imperialist expansionism. To think this way would automatically make you a Communist.

The experience of émigrés who sold up and left for Spain or Florida is well summed up in the recent article published on Axis of Logic José Vicente Rangel's Message to Venezuelans in which he describes the embitterment of so many who failed abroad when trying to escape from an imaginary threat that turned them into aliens in their own country.

Those who wanted to flee were not the poor subjugated under the boot of 40 years of false democracy from 1958-1998; but the relatively well-off, educated people sucked into the media farrago of lies and paranoia only to suffer in the economic catastrophe of capitalism in Spain and the US from 2008 onwards.

They were not the Venezuelans pulled out of poverty and extreme poverty by the social justice policies of Chávez or who received universally available free higher education for the first time since the founding of the Venezuelan Republic. For them, nothing was positive and it was unfounded fear itself that drove them away from Venezuela or “from the frying pan into the fire”.

You can talk to middle class kids here in Venezuela and they will say “everyone wants to leave”. What they really mean is that they and their friends want to leave as they have no homeland, no will to get on and want an easy life that the “sifrinos” had for nigh on 20 years during the IV Republic.

Chávez sought to instill a sense of national pride into all Venezuelans to pull together to make the country better for everyone. This was rejected by the “sifrimo” mentality as Chávez was a Castro-Communist and Venezuela was surreptitiously run by Fidel from Havana! Even if Chávez had spoken in English and used the famous words of John F. Kennedy, “Don’t think what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, these narrow minded “sifrinos” would still have rejected this phrase as somehow being a “trick” in their unbridled paranoia provoked by media fear mongering.

For the vast mass of the Venezuelan population, despite a 4^th Generation Asymmetric War being waged since November 2012 to the present day against the country and the State, life is much better in terms of education, wages, health service and the basic human rights guaranteed in the 1999 Constitution.

The irony is that the 1999 Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which the middle classes opposed on every front, guarantees them the right to return to the Venezuelan Homeland whenever they wish, no questions asked.

For the Alienation Generation of “apatridas” they will continue to be embittered and look for a way out to greener pastures – that is, if they can find them these days as many are returning to the Bolivarian Republic with their tail between their legs after freezing in Canada or almost starving in Spain.

Welcome Home! This is your country as well!

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