Читать книгу Berserk. The Shocking Life and Death of Edwin Valero онлайн

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He had secrets. We learned enough of them to think we knew him. We'll never know him.

The Venezuelan media treated the Valero case as a tragedy. The American coverage made it a horror story. It's possible that it was both. You take what you need and project it to your audience. Americans like to judge; Venezuelans wanted a hero.

He's dead now. Mental illness and drug addiction took him down. He was found in a jail cell, a picture of his family stuffed into his mouth.

He's dead now.

He doesn't care how the story is told.

• • •

Edwin Antonio Valero Vivas was born in Bolero Alto, a tiny village in Merida, Venezuela, on December 3, 1981. Wedged between three national parks, Bolero Alto, is part of a parish named after Gabriel Picón González, a war hero who helped win the Battle of Los Horcones in 1813. It was a place where superstition still lived, where the elders might tell stories of babies being snatched by river witches. Less than 100 miles away is Lake Maracaibo, where on most nights of the year you can see terrifying lightning storms at the mouth of the Catatumbo River. The indigenous storytellers claimed this odd atmospheric phenomenon, which could produce up to 240 lightning strikes in an hour, was actually millions of fireflies trying to communicate with the earth. The image of these ruthless electrical storms suited Edwin, a restless boy embarking on his own stormy future, a boy born with lightning in his fists.