Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber (SS and JRW): Can you tell us about your political history?
Susan Spronk and Roland Denis. |
Roland Denis (RD): My story starts in the mid-1970s. By chance I happened to be in Nicaragua at the end of the 1970s during the Sandinista Revolution. I learned a lot of different things there. From there I began to identify with the cause of the poor. When I returned to Venezuela at the beginning of the 1980s, I started to become active on the left; the situation was radicalizing quickly and there was a lot of violence [due to political persecution of the left]. I was a survivor, but many compañeros lost their lives in the struggle. That guy over there [pointing to one of his friends of about the same age], for example, is also a survivor; he was a leader in the student movement in Mérida.