How does Venezuela, a country with vast amounts of wealth, end up in ruin? What does it feel like to watch it decay from the inside? Could you even do anything to stop it?
Daya is a Venezuelan girl from an upper-middle-class family who yearns to impact her society for the better, as she’s seen the worst effects of income inequality on her childhood best friend, Cristobal. While they both experienced ways in which they could enact change in their surroundings through their art, Daya stopped believing her drawings would change people’s minds. As Daya commits to enacting change in the field of economics, Cristobal challenges her to be true to herself by inspiring people with his political cartoons. They try to prove each other wrong in the face of an increasingly hostile political climate, and Daya is forced to see the errors in Cristobal’s way of thinking, as well as her own.
Through Daya’s journal, “Failed State” displays Venezuela’s crisis, observed from the personal perspective news media always lacks. It also hopes to show the ways in which people’s skills, as underappreciated as they may be, have tremendous value.
Ana Lozada is a Venezuelan illustrator currently based in New York. Her work—driven by political issues in her country as well as the world—can be seen in independent games, magazines and lms. Ana’s political illustrations have been featured in Latin American Illustración 7’s online collection.