Wilfredo Riera (1982-2019)

Photographer
    
Venezuela's No Bread and Circus
Location: Caracas
Nationality: Venezuelan
Biography:       Wilfredo Riera is a freelance photographer from Venezuela. He joined the documentary and photojournalism one year program at The International Center of Photography in New York in 2013.  His work has been published... MORE
Private Story
Venezuela's No Bread and Circus
Copyright Wilfredo Riera 2024
Date of Work Jul 2014 - Ongoing
Updated Mar 2018
Location Caracas
Topics Community, Confrontation, Corruption, Dictatorship, Editorial, Elections, Emotion, Faith, Fear, Hope, Human Rights, Hunger, Latin America, Military, Militias, Oppression, Photography, Photojournalism, Politics, Poverty, Protests, Revolution

With 34 years old, I've lived half of my life under the same government. One early morning in 1992, my mother didn't wake me up for elementary school. I arose hours later to empty streets, confused people and my parents didn't have any answers. That day I heard Chavez's name for the first time; I was ten years old. He was in TV, with his signature red hat, as the military leader of a failed coup against the former president Carlos Andres Perez. Seven years later, in 1999, he became President by an overwhelming majority of votes and the country began its transition into "XXI Century Socialism."  

These images are part of my long-term project "Venezuela's No Bread and Circus" which started at the very end of 2014, when I decided to become a photojournalist. I started to document the Venezuelan spirit struggle by the frustrations and rage that come with living in a country where food, medicines and basic services (water, gas and electricity) are not affordable for a big part of the population while the circus recreated by the government and opposition forces in the streets with continuous political rallies, free concerts and propaganda as a common practice to keep people away of their common problems. This time that  I've been  developing my project has made me experience in first hand the human part of the crisis with each subject and situation I've been photographing. We are looking for a change, no matter the political ideology,  this crisis is affecting our present and our future. And the hope for a better life and country is alive.  

"Everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: Bread and circuses. " " Juvenal, in The Satires, 1st Century AD, describing the last days of the Roman Empire
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