Alejandro Puyana: ‘We are already seeing the catastrophe that the Trump administration represents for Venezuelans’

The idea started growing between Texas and Venezuela until it snowballed into a novel. In Austin, Alejandro Puyana, 43, started writing about a kidnapper, inspired by one of the people who had kidnapped his younger brother in 2012. His aim was to understand his country’s reality and come to terms with his feelings of guilt for living in peace in the United States while his family suffered from the insecurity plaguing Venezuela. But the project quickly grew, evolving into Freedom is a Feast, a multivocal novel published last August that spans several decades of history. “I realized that the book was going to explore the situation of the left in Venezuela,” says Puyana via video call from his studio, as if it were a small achievement.

Through the voices of various characters and their intertwined relationships, the novel traces the evolution of the Venezuelan left — from the guerrillas of the late 1960s to the Chavista governments of the 21st century. The result is both a personal catharsis and an attempt to present Venezuela to an audience that only knows it through stereotypes. At a time when Venezuelans are often cast as villains in the land of Donald Trump, Puyana’s novel invites readers to confront the complexity of a country that is as rich in history as it is unequal, as idealistic as it is violent, and as hopeful as it is heartbreaking.

The author’s relationship with his country serves as the foundation of his novel, and is woven throughout its pages. Born in New York while his father was working in a bank there, Puyana always felt different from the children he grew up with in Caracas — he held a U.S. passport, a privilege of birthright citizenship now under scrutiny by the Trump administration. This status would later open doors for him, but it also, along with the political climate of his upbringing — his father founded the progressive newspaper TalCual in 2000 — made him aware of his advantages compared to millions of his compatriots.

“In my home, there was always talk of social justice. My father supported MAS [the political party Movement Towards Socialism]. We were not a right-wing family, but in my home there was always a lot of fear of what a government led by someone very close to the military could mean. Over the years, we realized that it ended up happening. But I always felt, as was not common in my well-off middle-class environment, that [Hugo] Chávez had come to power for a very obvious reason: that governments for decades had forgotten the poor and working classes,” he explains.

Although Puyana identifies with the opposition to the Venezuelan regime, both ideologically and personally — his father was sued by Diosdado Cabello in 2014 as part of TalCual’s board and was unable to leave the country for years — he says: “I knew that I had to represent that optimism, that world of possibilities that opened up with Chávez.”

Teodoro Petkoff — a close family friend, a constant presence in Puyana’s childhood and youth, who was also the co-founder of the newspaper TalCual and original member of MAS — embodies to a degree one of the key evolutionary paths of Venezuela’s left. A guerrilla fighter in the 1960s, a two-time presidential candidate, and a minister in the National Convergence government of the 1990s, Petkoff’s journey — fictionalized through the character of Stanislavo Atanas — forms the most explicitly political thread of Puyana’s novel. “I grew up surrounded by stories of the left and of Teodoro,” Puyana explains. “So, when I realized the book would focus on those historical moments, it was easy to see him as inspiration for this character.”

What began as a personal exploration of migration trauma — Puyana left Venezuela for a master’s in advertising in 2006, worked in the Democratic Party’s political communications, and ultimately stayed until his family was able to join him years later — expanded into a broader examination of Venezuela’s recent history. In that process, something else became clear to him.

“What I wanted to do was tell a story about my country for a market that perhaps didn’t know about it,” explains Puyana. “I realized that I was going to write a novel in English and that the novel was going to be an explanation of how Venezuela got to this historical moment. That the book would be a door to have a more emotional connection with what Venezuelans have suffered.”

With that goal in mind, Puyana crafted a fast-paced, immersive narrative—translating in real time from the Spanish in his mind to the English flowing from his fingertips. “These are the books I like to read,” he says. “Where things happen, where there are moments of tension, where you don’t know what’s going to happen, where there are encounters that change lives. I wanted it to be a book that would captivate even a person who isn’t very interested in hearing about Venezuela or knowing what happened there.”

The book’s release coincides with a moment when Venezuela — its leaders and the waves of migrants leaving the country — are dominating international headlines and political speech. It’s a coincidence Puyana didn’t anticipate. “The topic of migration did not influence the book a lot, but recently it consumes my thoughts. We’re already seeing the catastrophe that the Trump government represents for Venezuelans, even those who arrived legally. What the hell are they going to do?”

The book’s role as a bridge is more crucial than ever. Puyana hopes it will reach readers in the United States, offering a deeper understanding of a country that for many U.S. citizens has become synonymous with tyranny, poverty, and gangs. At the same time, he hopes the novel will garner enough interest to be translated into Spanish, allowing it to resonate with readers across Latin America — many of whom may see their own histories reflected in its pages.

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