Perpetuated Maduros

The city has turned into a cemetery of dictatorial rubbish.

I live across the street from Simon Bolivar. During the period of great friendship of two world losers, one of them, a local one, granted the Venezuelan one a small park near my house. Hugo this is yours now, he said. We will install a memorial to Simón Bolívar here now, and later a momument.

I remember well how they opened this stone with the inscription "Bolívar" ten years ago. The whole district was cordoned off, residents of nearabouts were not allowed out of entrances, and people in plain clothes were breaking in because of an open window. Hugo and Aliaksandr, friends forever, scent-marked as mischievous cats: there is no place for strangers here, this square belongs to Chavez. To make yourself at home: you leave, and your belongings remain. And you know you can always come back.

Hugo did not live to see the monument of Bolívar (it was gratefully greeted by almost the same Maduro), but Hugo got posthumously the entire park in the Kamennaya Gorka district. I remember the city executive committee solemnly announced the commemoration of Hugo Chavez, a great friend of the Belarusian people. Then I wondered why I was so irritated by my neighbor Bolívar. At least it's the eighteenth century. But what do people feel while walking in Chavez Park? It's quite humiliating, isn't it?

However, no one asked them whether they wanted to walk with their children in Hugo Chavez Park, and wondered how they would try to answer politely to the children's question about Chavez. However, it's a norm to neglect interests of Belarusians. Could they respect at least themselves? One day the Maduro regime falls. It's about to come to pieces. And the new head of Venezuela thumbs his nose at these parks. He does not need friendship with world losers. He has a chance to make friends with world leaders. It means completely different prospects for Venezuela. He'll never come to Bolívar's Park or Chavez's Park. We lost him. But what will happen to all this Minsk 'treasure'? Will they be re-named Gaddafi Square and Castro Park? That's the limit of imagination, isn't it? And they will waste the budget to renovate memorials and wipe monuments with ethanol. No delegation can be invited there anymore - it's a failing project. However, all this Maduro-Chavez friendship. It's a useless junk.

However, the whole city is flooded with this junk. Do I have a moral right to sympathize residents of the Kamennaya Gorka because of the neighboring Hugo Chavez Park, if I grew up on the street of the failed terrorist Ivan Pulikhov? All we know about Pulikhov is that his party nickname was Vasya. Once he threw a bomb at the governor of Minsk at someone's funeral, but the bomb did not explode and Vasya was hanged. That's all. But he is perpetuated as if he had wun the war of liberation, and was not just loser-terrorist Vasya.

It's not the city but a cemetery of historical rubbish. Every now and then one can see monuments of bloodsuckers and executioners, streets by the name of terrorists and scoundrels, memorial plaques of dead dictators and murderers. One can't walk around without hitting Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin and others. Now, in addition to all the garbage, there's the policeman in the middle of the street - a long-suffering, hobbling, useless, perceived as a target, but installed at our expense.

And just imagine the heritage of the power. In addition to the economic collapse and Tsal Dir Bie, kilometers of decrees subject to abolition, the destroyed education, the ruined social sphere, we will get tons of iron and stone rubbish commemorating all the world's freaks. And we will have to spend much money to destroy this stuff.

Or we may follow Lithuania in this issue: it moved all this rubbish to the forest and organized there the museum of the Soviet period. We've got plenty of woods to store all this historical junk. And to sell tickets to tourists. Let it be useful somehow. But I guess that no one will go there to look at Chávezes and Dzerzhinskies. It's enough.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org