When I moved from Venezuela to Austin, in 2006, my childhood was so near my life still smelled of it. Of the plentiful clams my cousin Juan Fri and I would gather in Playa Guacuco while his two Dobermans yipped and hollered around us. Of the baby tapir my family visited at the banks of the Carrao River, in Canaima National Park, surrounded by jungle and overseen by the majestic Auyán Tepui. Of the loaded arepas my friends and I would eat after dancing at Caracas’s Elmo bar—reinas pepiadas, pelúas, catiras. We were drunk and hungry as only teenagers could be. Ravenous. Sweaty. Happy.But not all my Venezuelan memories were as fond. There were years of protests, a coup d’état, the hardening of Hugo Chávez’s…
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