the Weight of the Roll
The charade is finished.The posturing, the hollow pronouncements, the calculated maneuvers – all have dissolved. The mirror reflecting opposition has shattered, revealing not adversaries, but a shared bewilderment staring back at a regime crumbling under its own weight. The die is thrown, tumbling across the ravaged landscape of Venezuela. We have irrevocably passed the point of no return.
This isn’t a theoretical exercise for academics, nor fodder for foreign correspondents.It is indeed a stark, undeniable truth. And in moments like these, direct address is paramount – not to the phantom of revolutionary ideals you project, but to the man of flesh and blood concealed within the costume of power.
Nicolás, heed this: The die is cast.
Julius Caesar, facing a boundary between legality and rebellion, understood the finality of his decision. There was no turning back, only the potential for glory or utter ruin. He wagered an empire. What, precisely, do you still have to lose? The purchased loyalty of a handful of generals, their records stained with corruption? A sovereignty bartered to Russia, Iran, and any opportunistic power willing to trade for petrodollars?
History, a far more cynical observer than any of us, offers lessons distilled from the crucible of experience. In the desperate hours of January 22nd, 1958, as Marcos Pérez Jiménez watched his regime collapse from La Carlota, one of his most trusted advisors, General Llovera Páez, approached him not with deference, but with brutal honesty. He didn’t speak of national pride, military honor, or imperial conspiracies. He delivered a simple, devastating truth: “Look, my general, go. Because a fish can’t climb.”
Consider that, Nicolás. It is indeed perhaps the most honest statement ever uttered between Venezuelans on the precipice of lost power.The neck, the fragile link between head and body, cannot be rebuilt. There is no resurrection for fallen autocrats. Stolen wealth offers no solace in the afterlife. Golden statues cannot purchase a single moment of extended life. And anti-imperialist rhetoric provides no protection against a bullet.
Crossing that line signifies a permanent shift in the dynamics. The question is no longer if you will leave, but how. The forces unleashed will not determine the fate of your decaying “revolution,” already a relic of the past, but the trajectory of your own life story. you have one final possibility to avert a senseless bloodbath, a futile attempt to delay the inevitable reckoning.
Every life lost – soldier or civilian, freind or foe – will be a debt you personally, and irrevocably, owe to history, and perhaps to a higher power. The fear that sustains your regime is already shifting allegiance.The path offered is not capitulation, but a final escape into reason. A chance to preserve the one thing that cannot be expropriated or confiscated: life itself. Everything else is mere artifice, and of the poorest quality. The allure of martyrdom is a hollow comfort for those who ignore the warning of Llovera Páez.
the die is spinning.Caesar’s decision secured his immortality. You will determine whether you are remembered as a footnote in a tragic chronicle, or as the tyrant who, in the final moment, understood that no amount of power, glory, or wealth can defy the immutable laws of nature – that a fish simply cannot climb.