Después del ayuno: After the Fast

Abstract

This digital illustration explores the Venezuelan diaspora’s identity-making practices and politics following the 2014 crisis. By drawing from symbols encountered in childhood memories and visits to other Venezuelan diasporic homes, as well as analyzing symbol activation and identity negotiation through an academic research perspective, the warm kitchen scene becomes a powerful site to understand Venezuelan diasporic resilience through a focus on nationalism, food, music, and digital politics. Visual elements such as a seven-starred flag, plants, and magnets imbue the scene with references to a mythologized ‘lost’ homeland, grounded in a rejection of Chavismo. The setting of breakfast carries memory and belonging through food substitutions, preparation, and communal consumption, and musical elements evoke an idealized return to rurality and independence-era heroes. Digital politics lie always present in the every-day. Visual symbols as such become a way to articulate the Venezuelan diasporic experience, express political myths, and idealize anti-Chavismo.