Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores greeting the audience during the opening ceremony of the Viva Venezuela World Festival at the Simón Bolivar Stadium in Caracas, May 10, 2024. Photo: Presidential Press.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, said that Venezuela is building a solid foundation of national identity, based on culture, because “the vaccine to destroy Western capitalism is our culture, our music, our values.”
President Maduro made these comments on Friday, May 10, while inaugurating the Viva Venezuela World Festival at the Simón Bolívar Monumental Stadium, in Caracas. He called the opening concert by Venezuelan artists “a beauty.”
He highlighted the role of Venezuela’s legendary artists and the generations that today constitute the Great Mission Viva Venezuela, My Beloved Homeland. “This is the largest concert that has ever been held showcasing national culture,” he exclaimed.
The head of state welcomed the cultural organizations from all over the country, as well as the school students who promote and preserve the Venezuelan national identity amid the deculturalization and transculturation processes of capitalism.
Hermosísimo así fue el espectáculo de drones en el Monumental Simón Bolívar para dar inicio al primer Festival Mundial Viva Venezuela.
El cielo brilló con las diferentes manifestaciones culturales.
Rindieron homenaje a Alí Primera y Reveron.
Hermoso. pic.twitter.com/xpBxvqGsVh
— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) May 10, 2024
He stated that the Viva Venezuela World Festival represents Venezuela’s values, identity, and diversity.
From May 10 to May 19, as part of the festival there will be cultural performances in all the squares and theaters of all the parishes of Caracas, and La Guaira and Miranda states, and after that the festival will tour the rest of the country.
“Culture shining in all the towns, in all the neighborhoods, in all the squares of Venezuela,” the present said in this speech. “Long live the creative powers of the people. Long live our homeland. Long live Venezuela. Long live the culture, and those who promote it.”
“Today we will make the Simón Bolívar Monumental Stadium vibrate with the beating of thousands of drums in the great people’s festival that is the Viva Venezuela World Festival, which starts with force, paying tribute to the Afro-Venezuelan identity,” President Maduro wrote earlier on social media.
The 40,000-seat stadium is the first stop of the festival that will last until May 19. In addition to Caracas, the states of Miranda and La Guaira will have 368 presentations that will pay tribute to Venezuelan musicians and authors.
In the 22 parishes of Caracas, as well as in 11 parishes of La Guaira and 21 parishes of Miranda state, a special program will be carried out to bring cultural expressions of traditional roots closer to the communities. Moreover, in a commitment of cultural exchange with sister countries, Viva Venezuela has opened its doors to artists from 20 more countries, representing four continents.
One of the highlights of the show was when the sky was lit up with a drone show carried out with Chinese technology. Venezuela’s Minister for Culture Ernesto Villegas reported that the drones used in the presentation will be used by the Great Mission Viva Venezuela for the development of culture, explaining that is the first time a drone show of this nature is presented in Latin America.
Around 7:00 p.m. most of the public was still in the stands of the stadium, and Minister Villegas appeared on stage to announce the beginning of the drone show in the Caracas sky where the drones stamped the name of Venezuela. “Long live Venezuela, Essequibo is ours,” said a voice-over.
President Maduro observed the drone show portraying several iconic figures of Venezuelan traditional music, with allusions to instruments, places and rhythms of each region such as the joropo llanero with its harp, cuatro and maracas, or the Zulia state’s gaita that was drawn with a drum and the furruco.
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Two artists in particular were selected to be featured in the drone show. The pioneer of Venezuelan modern art Armando Reverón, who with his dolls and paintings of La Guaira became one of the first internationally recognized Venezuelan painters. While the voice-over was reading out his biography, a massive bearded face of Reverón, the one from Juana La Gorda, as Alí Primera sang it, was stamped out in the sky by the drones.
The other artist honored was the People’s Singer Alí Primera, whose figure playing the cuatro guitar was painted in the sky by the drones while his song Canción Mansa para un Pueblo Bravo played.
(Alba Ciudad) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
