María Amaré: Entrepreneurship is a Winning Message in Venezuela
When we spoke with Maria, she had just come for a protest to support Ukraine. “We found liberty at the same time,” she explained. “So Venezuela always supports Ukraine, and Ukraine marches for Venezuela.”
People who knew María as a child might be surprised she is now marching for global liberty.
“I have pictures of me from three years old wearing shirts with Che Guevara – my family is completely communist except for my mom. I never felt comfortable with those ideas, so I started to investigate. I started to see organizations around the world but didn’t feel that I identified with any of them. Then, one day, a friend messaged me about Students For Liberty. I looked at their website and saw life, liberty, and property. I thought, ‘okay, this is what I believe.’ I applied for the local coordinator’s program, and here I am.”
“I love Venezuela, but I know that I don’t have any opportunity here. We have persecution by the government, then the intelligence service. I’m finishing my law degree and want to do everything I have to do in like two years. And then I want to worry about my career always with the ideas of liberty wherever I am.”
“I like to do proactive work. I’m a researcher in business intelligence – actually, I found the job through SFL – and I speak to kids about entrepreneurship, economic freedom, liberty, and objectivism.”
“At the beginning, audiences were less receptive than they are now, but I understood that if we want to promote the ideas, we need to talk in their own language. We need to see a common point. Talking about entrepreneurship is good because the minimum wage in Venezuela is $2 per month, and you can’t live on $2 or $3 per month. For example, you go to McDonald’s, and the price of a McFlurry is $6. It’s just ice cream; there’s no Oreo or anything. So, you need to be entrepreneurial to survive. People are libertarian without knowing about libertarianism – it was the same case with me.”
“When I heard about libertarianism, it was like a revelation. Because before joining SFL, I was a human rights activist supporting public education for everyone and things like that. But, I was really critiquing – how is public education going to be possible if people don’t have money to pay taxes? It’s unsustainable. Then, when I read about Mises and Hayek, I understood why it’s unsustainable.”
