I probably already wrote this article back in 2014. I could almost copy and paste any of my articles from that time, change Nicolás’s name to Delcy’s, and that would say it all.

It’s like we’re back in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016… Back to that tiresome time when the ever-ineffective, self-righteous left, watching from afar with disgust, believes it has the right to judge us. Back to the legacy experts, those who then claimed, with a mixture of indignation and remorse, that Maduro betrayed Chávez’s legacy, and who today, without mincing words, assert that Delcy betrayed Maduro’s legacy. The same ones are back with their sad, tiresome, yet always ego-reeking laments about our path. They’re back to measuring us, expressing their disappointment in us, and trying to convince us that we have strayed from the path because their little book says things aren’t done the way we do them. They’re a bore.

Commentators are distancing themselves from us in the name of their principles. But the distance was always there. The air of superiority, too. If anyone betrayed the Venezuelan Revolution, it was that left wing—those stupid progressives who never accepted Chávez until Fidel blessed him. Those who, in each of our difficult moments—and there have been many—instead of finding ways to support us, dedicate themselves to searching for a speck of dust, a gesture, or a trivial detail that will serve as a pretext to throw us into the enemy’s lair.

Those who reduce revolutionary virtue to a president governing in flip-flops, legalizing marijuana, or declaring himself vegan because “poor cows.” We have already seen it.

The pettiness directed at the Chavista Revolution didn’t begin in Nicolás’s time. Chávez himself seemed just as flawed to them: brilliant, yes, but a “military man (milico),” Black, rebellious, and a prankster—what a lack of seriousness! But the worst part was that he wouldn’t let himself be overthrown. Chávez, according to the narrative of that left wing—which is more lament than narrative—had an unforgivable defect: a thirst for power, instead of the much more desirable and profitable (for their narrative) thirst for martyrdom. And like Chávez, Nicolás.

Nicolás was attacked from the very day Chávez told us he was the one. If they went after Chávez from the ankles, they went after Nicolás from the chest. They didn’t give him a second of the benefit of the doubt. Nor did they sit down, as they never do, to understand the historical moment he had to face. The regional left—blind, deaf, and never mute—turned its back on a man who was fighting. It turned its back on the people who were fighting with him, and with its disgust and its “purity,” it helped to construct the narrative against Venezuela, against our democracy, and against our struggle.

“Sycophants, serial apologists, traitors to the legacy,” they called us, among other things. They singled us out and pointed fingers to make us feel ashamed of doing what Chávez told us to do. “That’s not how it’s done.” But for them, it never was.

Venezuela suffers from the “good daughter” syndrome, always taking the blame. We are world champions in solidarity, yet we receive little in return. Every time we’ve been attacked, instead of receiving support through denunciations and mobilizations against the aggressor, this left wing, clinging to a prestige it doesn’t possess, lashes out at the victim with cowardly accusations and blame. It’s the fault of the girl who was raped for wearing a miniskirt, of course.

From afar, remotely controlled, without taking responsibility for the often-present problems, these pundits not only lecture us on lessons they do not apply in their own spaces, but since we pay them no mind, they choose—in the name of their principles, their prestige, and their ego—to distance themselves from our struggle. It is as if they had spent their lives under the limelight, making it clear that they are not like that, that they demand their “second Vietnam,” but want others to fight it, of course.

Aspiring Ho Chi Minhs—but cardboard cutouts—want us to believe that the only form of dignity and courage lies in tragedy; that those kids who are in their universities today, the many that this revolution created, those kids who arrived at their schools today peacefully, without having to dodge snipers and bombs, those little boys and girls with bright eyes full of dreams, must fill their lives with blood, fire, hatred, and fear, to please the narrative of egomaniacs who believe that there is only one way to walk these paths and that the dignified way to do it is by dying along the way.

Courage is, besides looking the beast in the eye and bringing it to its knees, doing what needs to be done without falling into the foolish trap of believing you have to prove to the whole world how incredibly brave you are, how heroic you are, or how you’re wiping away your crocodile tears with my wounds and my blood. Courage is knowing you are on the right path and not caring what a bunch of complete nobodies—literally—say about you, people who have only ever known how to call you brutes, traitors, and wrong.

Those who forget that Chávez always prioritized life, the preservation of life, as the means to move forward are mistaken. Dead, we serve only as images for T-shirts and posters that line someone else’s pockets. Nicolás, like Chávez, chose peace and life for all. And Delcy now bears the immense responsibility of fulfilling the Chavista mission: preserving our people by staring the monster in the eye during these perilous times of chaos and impunity. Is there any other Cinderella willing to step into her shoes?

It’s the same old story, only more dangerous. Again, the same old faces, arrogantly picking their noses at each other. We all know how this tale, lived and overcome, goes. Years will pass, they will find unacceptable flaws in us at every turn, they will keep playing into the hands of the enemy, and they will remain in their cobwebbed, sad corner, stroking their egos and feeling superior to us.

If that’s what it means to be better, then I will stick with my own kind: the worst, the irreverent trailblazers that we are, those who don’t fall into the inflexible trap of the straight line, those who know how to take detours to get where we want to go. Those who, with cool heads and nerves of steel, without fanfare or chest-thumping, even with everything stacked against us, have always known how to win.