Venezuelan ARMY find strength to go on with BTS
Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) is a Korean idol group known for their quality music, excellent performances, and passionate fanbase (ARMY), but there’s much more to it than that for their fans. ARMY refers to BTS as a source of happiness and comfort, and for Venezuelan ARMY (VE-ARMY), it’s a “safe place” that helps them go on while living in a country where dreaming seems like an act of rebellion.
Venezuela: a South American country known to some for its breathtaking landscapes and its golden years as a main source of oil for the continent; known to others because it is going through one of the most difficult times of its history which Humans Right Watch and other non-governmental organizations call a “Complex Humanitarian Emergency.”
“Complex humanitarian emergency (CHE), a type of disaster event that is caused by and results in a complicated set of social, medical, and often political circumstances, usually leading to great human suffering and death and requiring external assistance and aid.”
- Britannica
I’d fall short at summarizing Venezuela’s social, political, and economical situation. However for contextual reference: this is a country in which the minimum wage is around $0.88 per month, but you need $228 to afford basic food; where hospitals — both public and private — lack supplies to take care of patients even in the middle of a pandemic; and where pursuing higher education seems almost impossible when your bank account can’t afford private institutions and public ones are dying.
Venezuelan late millennials and Gen-Z don’t know any other reality; they live on stories about a fantastic past where people had democracy, full freedom of speech, and enough money to live a “normal” life with some luxuries. This is a generation that has been growing between precarities, violence, and loss in their everyday lives. A generation that found their dreams and goals limited by things they can’t control.
Here is where most VE-ARMY are.
When you mention the name BTS to a VE-ARMY, their mood just lights up; BTS is a safe place for when things get overwhelming and everything gets out of hand.
“Even though they’re not close, they’re always there for you, and there will be a song that feels like a hug in the right moment.” Fra is a 19-year-old young woman living in west Venezuela, where 8 hours of electricity shutdowns have been an everyday occurrence since 2018. “I’ve been feeling useless. The possibilities of exploring my potential in this country are too low.” She often feels frustrated for not following her dreams and passions because the country’s situation limited her: “Like my family says: ‘If there’s no money for food, there’s no money for anything else’.”
Steph, a 22-year-old ARMY, describes living in Venezuela “like being in a cage.” It’s hard for her to describe her life in this country. She knows there are people in worse conditions, but that won’t stop the struggle. “Family and friends are scattered around the world, traumatic episodes like the riots, 2019’s national electricity shutdown. I feel like I’m losing opportunities… I’m desperate to stop feeling like this.”
Living in Venezuela sometimes feels like the situation is swallowing you up and you’re stuck here alone while everyone leaves to other latitudes and longitudes in hopes of finding, perhaps, a better life full of opportunities. It’s in those overwhelming moments when VE-ARMY say that BTS helps them the most.
Oriana lost her mom in August of 2020, and she says it was the toughest moment of her life. “Also the pandemic and everything else in this country. I felt like all the bad things were happening at the same time.” But, she found a safe place to deal with the struggle. “When I feel overwhelmed, I listen to them (BTS). In them I found a break from this situation.”
And that’s a feeling that most ARMY from all around the world can relate to, not just in BTS’ music but through all of BTS’ content. From Run! BTS to their speeches, fans find reassurance, knowing that “there is a person in Korea, in the city of Seoul, who understands you”.
“They are communicating on a personal level. (…) The confession creates a bond. The listeners can feel the grandiose performer, who is a celebrity, is a human being just like themselves. The listener gains in self esteem by this identification. It can pull a listener out of a depression or an inferiority complex. Music can heal a person in this way. They don’t feel so alone, so different from others, so isolated.”
- Dr. Murray Stain, interview for The R3 Journal
“When these guys come and tell me ‘you’re valid, I understand what you are going through. I lost myself in the process of finding me too but that’s okay. There will be a moment when the universe will say stop and everything will be worth it’, that has been keeping me sane.”
Andrea felt like “she wasn’t normal.” Most of her friends enjoyed their free time and university while she needed to work, in a hostile environment, in order to pay for part of her studies. In the process, she found herself exhausted and lost. “And I was excited, you know? This was my last semester and I was finally free from that job. I was gonna be able to enjoy life like a normal student, but then the pandemic happened and I was locked at home.”
VE-ARMY have learned, through all these years, that life does go on, and they find by themselves a new source of comfort and hope. In the words of Steph: “BTS has helped me to feel understood, less lonely, and has encouraged me. They help me to endure the reality of living here.”
Living in Venezuela sometimes feels like a succession of punches in the stomach. There is no rest or relief, and nothing is in your hands. It’s an everyday fight where the other side has the upper hand.
But BTS has given us healing music, a fandom where we can find new friends with similar likes and passions, content that makes us laugh and cry; they keep giving us words of encouragement and moments full of light, and the meaning of all of this feels brighter when your life seems constantly surrounded by darkness and hopelessness.
After a year that worsened Venezuela’s situation and, like the rest of the world, in a time where quarantine and isolation took away the little stability we had, ending it by singing “another day will come, as if nothing happened. Yeah, life goes on” is a breath of fresh air to let go of that burden that we carried around through the whole of 2020.
And yeah, listening to Mikrokosmos or Life Goes On won’t bring your friends in other countries back to you; watching an episode of Run! BTS won’t change the fact that you can’t pursue your dreams in the way you wanted; but it does give you a moment to stop, just enjoy yourself, and find that boost of energy you needed to keep fighting another day.
Listen to VE-ARMY comfort BTS songs recommendations on this playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/44AmehwGUPTdG1YaGZFjIp?si=tAw6FiZoSeiVxXkCYIyXdg&utm_source=copy-link
Song lyrics translation from @doolsetbangtan
https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/life-goes-on/
