Alejandro Velasco

a Gran Colombia of, you know, Latin American nations that come together as a confederacy of nations.

Obviously, there's tragedy involved in the billions of dollars that were misspent in these kinds of projects.

But there's also kind of, you know, dark humor in the idea of the jokes tell themselves.

Like, the pipe dream literally is a pipe dream.

Of this, you know, pipe that I remember in Alopresiente, it's like Sunday TV talk show that Chavez had, where he would bring up maps and then he would show these maps of the continent and tell you exactly where the pipeline was going to go.

And they'd explain the geography and like, well, we can't go through here because the terrain does not lend itself to, so we have to go through here, but we're going to preserve nature.

Don't worry about that.

And

Nature's going to be fine.

Of course, environmentalists were sounding the alarm all along.

But as you were watching this, on the one hand, you had this idea of, as an historian of Venezuela, this is exactly the...

magical thinking that has for so long put us in really precarious moments when we feel that the future is limitless.

This is it, like we're watching it.

And yet at the same time, you're like, wow, that's pretty fucking awesome.

Like, maybe this time, maybe.

Yeah.

And, you know, as I look back upon that moment, I'm like, wow.

I can read all about the magical state, but here I am feeling the enchantment of it.

Yeah.

Right?