For 39 years, I have remained a typical person living in a typical under-developed country, raised in a middle-class catholic family with traditional values: sons and daughters must go to college to become professionals working in 9-5 jobs, trying to improve their positions and wages as high as they can and then retire with dignity to watch their grand-sons and grand-daughters grow with joy.

Social awareness was only a privilege allowed to people in need (the poor ones, of course) when they had to go to the media to demand for street repairs, drinking water supply, housing, schools, public transport fares and such like.
Middle-class people only had to demand good jobs, good cars and cheap US dollars to travel abroad ... but, somehow, some of us became aware of inequalities and tried to understand why it happens and to try to do something to stop it.
In my own case, I entered college to study political science even when I liked to draw and wanted to become an architect. Once there, in the 1980s, I took part in demonstrations against the so-called democratic governments of the epoch: Lusinchi, Carlos Andres Perez (Accion Democratica/socialdemocrat), blocking streets, throwing stones, burning cars, carrying protest signs against injustice, high prices and student murders. I saw many friends falling before my feet with glass marbles or metal nuts and bolts in their heads ... it was very common at that time. Forensic examinations couldn't relate those projectiles with riot police guns ... I could had been one of those dead corpses at any time.
Though grave doubts continued to lead my thoughts about politics and social reality, I managed to refine my political approach by instructing myself (since most university teachers sucked as part of a system oriented toward mediocrity) and found the help and theorical guidance of some good persons who led us to study Venezuelan and world reality in private discussions and public forums ... all of which took me later into the political arena.
It led me to participate in local and regional elections in 1992, to supporting Andres Velasquez and La Causa R in national elections in 1993 ... the former labor movement leader showed us the most fresh and "revolutionary" option versus the traditional and decadent option of Rafael Caldera, who led Venezuela to her worst financial crisis in many years ... some of which effects the middle-class is still suffering.
Andres Velasquez and La Causa R are on the opposition side now, marching together with AD and Fedecamaras (the employers union) ... their former arch-rivals ... and I thought Venezuela was doomed.

Before Chavez came to power in 1998, PDVSA was ready to go into private international hands, public education from kindergarten to university was torn to pieces (I quit studying political science in 1993), inflation was at 40%, wages low, public services were only a reality for the upper classes and just an illusion for the majority poor.
I campaigned for Chavez with skepticism because I was a member of a splinter group from La Causa R (PPT) and a close friend there asked me to help them. I toured almost all my State (Merida), pasting up Chavez posters, organizing community meetings, writing opinion articles, flyers, going to radio shows and so on ... but I wasn't convinced of Chavez because of his military origins and my personal state of mind, thinking progressive ideas would never rise and materialize, though inside I was wishing some day that the poor would be vindicated.
When Chavez took power and I saw with my own eyes what was going on, my skepticism started to disappear. Oil prices recovered, inflation decreased, the minimum wage was raised, those who could neither read or write (young and old) learned how to read and write, student riots disappeared (no more dead students in the streets, no more cars burned, no more traffic jams because of that), people were able to buy basic food cheaply in small neighborhood stores, the poor were getting access to doctors and medicine ... and that was just the beginning.
Social justice was becoming possible ... was becoming real, IS becoming real.
Though I'm retired from active politics now, I'm a fervent supporter of Chavez and his ideas ... because, after so much destruction and death I've seen and lived, I realize that now it is real solidarity and concrete action based on social justice and moral principles that make the difference ... not the ideological jabbering.
At last, my old theoretical discussions and political activism allowed me to comprehend what is going on ... it wasn't a waste of time after all.
Even so, many tasks are still to be done ... and Chavez alone can't do it all.
There are many vices that we need to be removed in order to improve and sustain our new reality ... and to support that, we need more new theoretical grounds and, if necessary ... let nobody doubt it ...
I would be out there kicking the streets again not with stones but with a gun in my hands to keep Chavez, to defend my country and to keep the spirit of social justice alive, now and forever...