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The moment I arrived in Venezuela, I already felt as though the air carried the same burdensome scent Brazil has been shouldering since the time I was born. All at once I figured Latin America is a nation in itself. A shattered, exhausted, crippled realm. As I got to the hostel in a central neighbourhood in Caracas, I met Josias, a native I have been keeping contact with during my research on political crisis. For a man his age, he walked up the cranky ladders with amazing stamina. As soon as we got to my room, he opened up a kind and lively smile while helping me with the luggage. "I am happy you are here with us", he said in a fast paced puzzling Spanish. By the time, we had been friends for almost two years, still it was the first time we were meeting in person. Josias was the hostel's owner, and his family lived there with him. I got to meet all his three kids and wife when having dinner with them in the community center they organize inside the same building. I could see as far as my eye sighted, a room full of people who had not seen edible food in a long time as they dwelled on the streets adrift and invisible to the eyes of governmental politics. Contradicting what you would expect from an event like this one, it was a happy and heartwarming night of loud talking and messy fun. It was as if I knew them, and as they were also my people, even if I had to think twice to speak to them in their language. Some of them had lost everything, others were born in the slums, and the majority were used to having their lives neglected, but were not at once hopeless. In the middle of all this, a woman comes to me and asks if it's fine to dine on the table I was seated, and I soon find out her name was Maria. Her tired eyes didn't take my attention from the joyful laughter and conversation we were having. At some point, she tells me how she lost her son during one of the popular protests that had been happening there for some years by now. My instant reaction was to feel sorry for her loss, but at that moment she said "I am rather glad my son was fighting for the right thing". This comment got stuck with me for the whole night. How many sons have died for my right to be where I am today? How many mothers have felt the harrowing pain of losing a child for the freedom I have as a woman nowadays? How many more have to die for everyone to have the same rights I experience as a privileged Brazilian? How many indigenous, women and black people will I be killing if I don't fight for the right thing? When this reunion was getting close to an end, the crowd calmly started arranging their improvised night beds around the center's stiff parquet floor. Many of them would go to work the next day, and fortunately they wouldn't start their days hungry, thirsty or feeling cold. I accompanied Josias and his kids to their room, a tiny packed suite where they slept all together. The kids hugged me, and said they would cook me some empanadas in the morning. While trying to sleep that night, I remember feeling the warmth of hope I had lost such a long time ago, the same one I always feel whenever I read a happy-ending story. The only difference is that these people's stories are not at all romantic, but arduous and ruthless, still and all hopeful.