In the fourth chapter of El desengaño de la modernidad: Cultura y literatura venezolana en los albores del siglo XXI, Miguel Gomes studies twenty-first century Venezuelan prose under the label of the “Chavism cycle.” According to Gomes, this corpus of short stories, novellas, and novels deals directly or indirectly with the period in which Hugo Chávez was in power. This cycle has conceptual similarities to the Arthurian cycle or that of the Mexican Revolution. Among the authors Gomes studies is Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, whose novel Los maletines, analyzed by Gomes, was originally published by Siruela in Madrid in 2014. Significantly, this is the best known of Méndez Guédez’s works. There have been four editions: first, the Spanish; second, a French translation published in Paris in 2018; the third, in Caracas in 2023; and, most recently, the English translation published in New York in 2024 with the title of Briefcases from Caracas.
From the start of his career, almost all of Méndez Guédez’s books have made reference to Venezuela; however, it is only since Una tarde con campanas that Chavism began to make an appearance. Published in 2004 by Alianza Editorial, also in Madrid, the novel narrates a Venezuelan family’s process of adaptation after they are obliged to move to Spain because of the parents’ political position. For its part, Tal vez la lluvia, winner of the XL Premio de Novela Corta Ciudad de Barbastro and published in Barcelona in 2009, follows the journey of a Venezuelan man living in Spain who returns to Venezuela after nearly two decades of absence. Notably, travel is a constant in all these narratives. Una tarde con campanas, Tal vez la lluvia, and Los maletines form a trilogy, not only because they were written consecutively and broach the Bolivarian Revolution and its consequences, but also because of the varied and complementary processes through which they approach it. Of these books, Los maletines is undoubtedly the most important, both for its extent (the original 2014 edition has 386 pages, the English translation 472) and for its numerous artistic achievements.
To better appreciate the role of Los maletines within the Chavism cycle, it is necessary to briefly summarize the first two works of the trilogy. Una tarde con campanas presents Venezuelans fleeing the Chavista government and seeking refuge in Spain. According to María Teresa Vera Rojas, “In this novel, the family stops being a metaphor for national unity, giving way to disagreement and rupture.” The narration focuses on José Luis, a child who, because of his young age, cannot fully explain the reasons for the move; however, taking into account the revealing anecdotes that make up his account, readers can conclude that his working-class parents are opposed to the regime. This is an early narrative of the Venezuelan diaspora; in fact, it is the first significant story of migration to Spain by Venezuelans opposed to Chávez. As for Tal vez la lluvia, it contained the most direct account until the publication of Los maletines of the changes that befell Venezuela once Hugo Chávez became president. Like Una tarde con campanas, the author also uses the technique of defamiliarization in this short novel. The protagonist, Adolfo, is a Venezuelan who moved to Spain for postgraduate study of film and lived in Spain for over fifteen years before returning to Venezuela to receive an inheritance. It is thanks to his stay in Caracas, and especially to the terrible experiences that his friend Federico—a member of the opposition corralled by governmental repression—reveals to him, that the protagonist perceives the disturbing changes in the daily life and politics of the nation. In the end, Adolfo agrees to help his friend, who leaves the country with his wife and children.
Los maletines was written in the final few years of Chávez’s presidency. As he often does in his books, Méndez Guédez provides the exact dates of writing; in this case, from September 2009 to September 2013. These years were key in the history of the Bolivarian Revolution: following Chávez’s re-election in 2006, the failed referendum of 2007, and Chávez’s illness and death in 2013. The author creates a character, Donizetti García, an employee of the Venezuelan government’s press agency, who participates in a program of illegal donations to foreign entities and individuals who support Chavism and its ideological allies. Gradually, readers realize that the operation is part of an extensive network of interconnected criminal cases, in some of which high level employees of the government are involved (for example, the director of the agency is a military general). In fact, the novel seems to be a partial reconstruction of the criminal history of the Venezuelan state under Chávez’s governments. To be precise, paying attention to the sensationalist press of the period in which the narration takes place reveals that Méndez Guédez recreates multiple police cases that occurred before and during the time of writing. Los maletines thus functions as an alternative account of Chavism.
It is possible that foreign readers—as most of the readers of this novel have been—may not completely grasp the echoes produced by including so many references to crimes in the story. (the Venezuelan edition is from 2023; the book did not circulate much within the country due to the high cost of imported books and, maybe, also because of the risky plot). But those who are aware of the cases that received the most attention in the crime pages of the period, back when there were still media not controlled by the state, will observe that Los maletines contains a meticulous and extensive inventory of Chavista criminal activity. Both the title of the novel and its main plot are references to one of the most emblematic cases: the briefcase containing 800,000 US dollars carried by Venezuelan-American citizen Guido Antonini Wilson. This money was confiscated from him at the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, in 2007, when he tried to enter the country without declaring it. Wilson arrived in Buenos Aires from Venezuela on a private flight that the Argentine government had chartered, on which several employees of PDVSA, the state oil company, were also travelling. According to US police sources, the cash that Wilson was carrying was a contribution from the Venezuelan government to the election campaign of then-presidential candidate Cristina Fernández, wife of Néstor Kirchner, a close ally of President Hugo Chávez. As one of his superiors explains to the protagonist: “The briefcases in our mission carry cash for journalists, resistance groups, businesses, leaders or political parties that support our government abroad.”
The process is as follows: significant and even minor plot points recreate or contain references, sometimes over various chapters, to police cases from the period approximately between 2004 and 2013, which makes Los maletines read almost like a historical crime novel of Chavism. Notably, a similar trait can be observed in many works of Venezuelan literature from the period when Méndez Guédez was writing the novel. Think, for example, of two such important works as Patria o muerte (2015) by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, published in English as The Last Days of El Comandante, or The Night (2016) by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, which employ the same process, though not to the same extent or with as much variety as Los maletines. Two examples will help to shed light on how the process works. The first is the assassination of district attorney Danilo Anderson in Caracas on November 18, 2024. Anderson, known for leading the investigation into the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, was killed by an explosive planted in his car. According to El País, in Madrid, “The body was carbonized, and a forensic investigation was necessary to prove it was indeed Anderson using his fingerprints and dental records” (Nov. 19, 2024). In Los maletines, Donizetti accompanies his line manager, Gonzalo Torres, to the apartment of Judge Garrido, who is involved in the extortion of wealthy opponents of Chávez. In the story, President Chávez gives a press conference following the assassination: “The Comandante himself offered some heartfelt words vindicating the work of this stellar judge who a few months ago had sentenced dangerous coup-mongers, shady oligarchs who made him pay for his bravery through this cowardly act.” Judge Garrido is mentioned in several chapters of the novel, and according to one of the characters involved in transporting the briefcases, the people behind the attack were commissioned by the government, offering a version of events that questions the official story.
The second example is the PDVAL case, which involved the discovery of between 130,000 and 170,000 metric tonnes of out-of-date food in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela’s principal port, in May 2010. The food products had been imported by PDVAL, Productora y Distribuidora Venezolana de Alimentos [Venezuelan Food Producer and Distributor], a state-run company. Three people were arrested: the former president of the company, Luis Enrique Pulido, and two directors of operations, Vilyeska Betancourt and Ronald Flores. After an investigation and a period of preventative detention, both Betancourt and Flores returned to their jobs, and Pulido went on to work for Chávez’s 2012 election campaign. In the novel, one of the factions vying to control the briefcases operation, led by a Cuban military official, is accused of being involved in importing food not fit for human consumption. As in the first example, the references are spread over several chapters, play a significant role in the characterization of the person involved, and emphasize governmental corruption. In this respect, it is important to bear in mind that, before the novel begins, Méndez Guédez warns readers that “the fictional events recounted here are real and the real events are fictional.” A longer and more detailed study of this process, which is central to the plot, especially the chapters dedicated to Donizetti García, would reveal the varied ways in which it is employed. Here, I wanted only to draw future readers’ attention to its use.
Los maletines is an enormously important work within Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez’s career. On the one hand, it concludes the trilogy dedicated to Chavism; on the other, it begins a phase in his writing where long-form narratives are more common. The favorable international welcome the novel received is also worth mentioning. Its publication in four countries and three languages over a decade is convincing proof of the interest in his work, interest which is growing internationally (the number of theses and academic articles dedicated to his books is increasing in both Europe and America); he is therefore becoming a central figure in Venezuelan literature. In fact, in all the studies on the topic, whether academic or journalistic, Méndez Guédez always appears among the principal authors. I do not have the space here to comment on other significant aspects of the book, like how Méndez Guédez crafts Miguel, the childhood friend of the protagonist, who allows the author to explore novel themes in contemporary Venezuelan culture, like boxing, non-normative sexual identities, or the cult of María Lionza, which is central to La ola detenida (2016), another essential book of his. In summary, Los maletines contains a meticulous, erudite, alternative representation of Venezuelan culture under Chavism. Now it is the Anglophone audience’s turn to open the briefcases and discover the treasures they hold.
Translated by Katie Brown
