Accomplishment in Venezuela has always been a relative term: often making it on time to a meeting, or even making it home in one piece after an evening’s entertainment, are considered major achievements. Hence, the launch of a new, international and sizeable literary prize – the first of its kind in Venezuela, since President Raúl Leoni announced the establishment of the renowned Premio Rómulo Gallegos in 1964 – entailed a spirit of rejuvenation that was only reinforced by the jury’s decision to award the prize to a new, unknown writer.
These days, everything in Venezuela is charged with political resonance, with a basic ideological position (as basic as for or against). Ironically, all that for which President Chávez once stood – change, a new, different Venezuela – has become precisely that which most threatens his tenure. More than ten years after coming to power, the rhetoric of change postulated by Hugo Chávez has become the old change, a very different change to that advocated by the new, younger, generations. In light of this circumstance, Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles’ decision to do away with the subtlety of the occasion and to “use literature as mere context… [because] today, I must speak about Venezuela” can more accurately be seen, not as a strategy of provocation but as the only honest option available.
Sánchez Rugeles’ speech has caught the attention of the literary establishment as much as his 173-page-long novel about adolescent love in the inclement environment of modern-day Venezuela. Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul is the tale of a double journey: 
Socially inept, Luis is crafty in many other aspects, and his enterprising nature hits the right note with Eugenia. Except, she already has a boyfriend, a best friend, a group of mates, all of whom fail to meet Luis’ criterion for desirability. Intrigued by her new acquaintance, Eugenia boldly explores a whole new world of freaks and goons that lead her to question the parameters by which she had previously ruled friendship, love and other such transcendental concepts in the life of a teenager. Which all comes as preamble to the second journey, the physical one, where Eugenia and Luis Tevez make the 700-kilometre trip from Caracas to Mérida, following the trail of Eugenia’s elusive grandfather, a French citizen whose blessing she needs, legally, to be allowed to opt for French citizenship.
Taken for what it is, Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul provides an extensive catalogue of local idiosyncrasies, from the colloquial speech of adolescents in Caracas (which has been much lauded) to the everyday details that formed an entire generation (ice cream companies, soap operas, actors, singers, television shows, etc). Simultaneously, the short novel provides an accurate and poignant analysis of contemporary Venezuelan society, sometimes through the musings of one of the protagonists (as is the case when Vadier, one of Luis Tevez’s odd friends, embarks on a monologue describing the nature of the word güevo (cock) in the unique context of Venezuelan dialect) but most often, and most successfully, through the creation of a long and colourful list of secondary characters who provide a complete picture of the different elements at play in Venezuelan society, from the most disdainful to the most pusillanimous.
Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul is not perfect (then again, which first novel is?). Crucially, the plot shows some weak points that, even in a book as thin as this, diminish the reader’s interest in the story. The degree of suffering experienced by Eugenia at age 17 is almost unthinkable, even for someone three times her age. In this context, she makes trivial comments and remembers inconsequential details that turn her into the fantasy that she is. And yet, discussing precisely this issue with Sánchez Rugeles just a few days ago, he presented me with an argument I simply could not refute: “This might not be Dostoievski”, he said, “but I was trying to build a product that was 100% Venezuelan, and Dostoievski isn’t that”. Point taken and, in fact, expanded with this final consideration: There is nothing in the Venezuelan literary panorama that resembles Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul. In this sense, the jurors of the I Premio Iberoamericano de Literatura Arturo Uslar Pietri found in Sánchez Rugeles’ piece precisely what they were looking for – much like the jurors of the Premio Rómulo Gallegos did in La casa verde (The Green House) on the first edition of the prize, back in 1967. We can only hope that Sánchez Rugeles will become the next Vargas Llosa.
Sánchez Rugeles’ full acceptance speech is available in Spanish from http://www.casauslarpietri.com
