He Managed to Ignite the Spark He Had Long Searched For

Miguel Feijoo began teaching at the College of Architecture of the Central University of Venezuela in 2019. That same year, he had an experience that would significantly change the way he viewed his profession and one that would teach him that the ultimate goal of a university should be to educate and prepare students to become, more than anything, critical citizens. That is why he did not rest until he made sure his students were registered to vote. He himself went with them.

PHOTOS: FAMILY ALBUM

“What’s the point in voting when I know that, no matter what I do, nothing is going to change anyway?”

It was May of 2023. That answer from one of his students took Miguel Feijoo aback. Miguel was a professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV)’s College of Architecture and was very determined to have his students involved in the elections for the university’s governing board, whose members had remained unchanged for fifteen years because a ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice prevented new elections from being held.

In an effort to persuade them, he would tell them that they should consider themselves citizens before anything else.

Every time he brought up the issue of electoral participation, he would run into a wall of disinterest and apathy. As far as they were concerned, he was just rambling about something that would have zero influence on their professional future.

Miguel felt powerless, but it didn’t come as a complete shock. He was already used to the fact that politics was not a popular subject among his students. He was aware that the spark, that driving force that made him fight for his rights when he was a student leader back in 2014 had been dying out in the new generations.

“If this is their reaction to the renewal of the university authorities, what will it be like when presidential elections are called in the country?” he wondered.

And the answer was that, well, he would have to see to it that the spark was reignited.

There are places that can make you change the way you see the world; places whose doors open to dimensions you didn’t know existed, like in a revelation.

For Miguel, that place was Catuche, a slum in the heart of old Caracas that was built on the banks of a river that shares the same name. A “self-built” community, which is the term that architects like Miguel use to refer to places that are shaped by their own inhabitants.

The walls of the houses in Catuche were put up by the residents without other regard to urban regulations or planning than the need to have a roof over their heads where they could live with dignity.

It is a community that is exactly that: a community.

Up until that day in 2019 when he went to Catuche, Miguel saw architecture differently. The important role that the inhabitants of a community can play as a body of citizens was something they barely addressed when he was a student at the UCV, and he didn’t come precisely from a place known for its community life, but rather from a Caracas residential area ran by a cooperative of neighbors who do not cooperate with each other.

Like many of his peers, he thought urban spaces were conceived and built primarily or exclusively from the comfort of an office. But that was before he saw firsthand that which made the heart of that old Caracas spot beat: it was not the theory of architecture, but the people in the community doing everything possible to reclaim and defend the place where they lived; the people invested in creating and maintaining public spaces; the people who cared about how the front of their houses looked like; the people whose families engaged with other families; the people who didn’t wait for the government to miraculously show up and did things on their own. It was the very involvement of the people as citizens what brought life to the place.

He did not romanticize that realization, but he knew that he could not shut his eyes to it.

The experience made him understand that, in order to build a city, one must first understand the role of its inhabitants in it.

And, therefore, that there can be no city, no state, no country without citizens.

So, he made it his mission to ‘build’ citizens in addition to designing and building spaces, or at least he would try.

Miguel is one of those people who believe in luck.

The fact that he had that experience in Catuche just as he was starting as a professor at the UCV seemed to him a stroke of luck, because, in his book, universities are places that not only produce career professionals but also, and fundamentally, citizens. Thus, he decided to apply what he had learned in Catuche to his classes, ignoring the voices, including his own, that warned him against it, given the poor working conditions of teachers and professors in Venezuela at the time.

Teaching was something he had always dreamed of doing and a way to give back to the university the education and the identity as a UCV alumnus that made him so proud, but maybe when he turned sixty and had enough experience under his belt.

However, the calling came much earlier, in 2019, when he was twenty-five.

During his first year as a professor, he taught the Analysis and Strategies for Urban Projects 8^th semester elective course. Since many of his former classmates were now his students, he tapped into the voice of experience by asking his colleague Florinda Maya, who had also been to Catuche, to join him.

They worked as a team to fulfill what Miguel considered the duty of every university professor, with Florinda covering the theoretical aspect of it, while he got the class curious about today’s world, unveiling the thread existing between the past, the present, and the future.

And he made sure to keep that approach when, a year later, he began to teach Urban Studies I, a required 5^th semester course, now all by himself.

The subject could not have been a better fit, for it introduces students to the dynamics of urban spaces and to how cities are to be understood based on their form, their function, and the way people live in it. He would talk about whatever relevant event was going on in the country and ask his students what they thought and how they felt about it. He let them be. He never tried to impose his opinion on them, particularly when it came to politics. Their answers were rarely elaborate or enthusiastic. No one was interested in talking about politics.

He worried that, in their four semesters so far at the UCV, no other professor had bothered to instill in them the desire to learn about things other than architecture. He worried that the university was training professionals that would work from an office and failing to form critical citizens.

That’s why he wouldn’t stop repeating his mantra to them: to build a city you must first understand the role that people play in it as citizens.

Ever so gently, he tried to fuel that interest.  The students would occasionally talk about how certain issues affected them and those around them. They would talk about the university or about the country. It was not much, but it meant the world to Miguel.

Because, sometimes, a little spark is all it takes to bring a driving force into action.

The first day of class is always the day where students introduce themselves. Miguel would ask them what semester they were in and why they had taken his course. But, on October of 2023, when the National Electoral Council announced it would be open for a few days in order for voters to update their data in the Electoral Registry, he asked them a different question:

“Are you registered to vote?”

He told them it was a personal question and that they were free not to answer. He asked them the same question the following semester, which kicked off in March of 2024. Miguel knew that many young people in Venezuela saw no point in voting. “Why vote if, no matter what I do, nothing is going to change anyway?” they would say.

According to figures from the civil association Súmate, by the end of 2023 about 3 million Venezuelans of voting age had not registered in the National Electoral Council, and at least 2 million needed to update their information in order to be able to exercise their right to vote. Most of them were young adults.

To Miguel, that question served to put a face to those figures.

In Urban Studies I, a course of 21 students who were on average 22 years old, 16 had not registered. In the 17-student elective course, maybe because they were a bit older, 14 had already registered, and only half of them needed to update their information in the Electoral Registry.

He thought that if the government’s intention had been to isolate and discourage the population from taking action, it had succeeded. The spark had extinguished in the face of repeated disappointment: protests ended in repression and arbitrary detentions; in those cases where there had been no call for abstention, the electoral victories of the opposition had just vanished. And there was always the shadow of fraud.

It was always a dead-end road.

To add insult to injury, time was not in their favor either: on March 5, the National Electoral Council called the presidential elections for July 28, setting a tight electoral schedule that would substantially reduce the chances for Venezuelans to have the minimum guarantees for fair participation.

For instance, people would have from March 18 to April 16, i.e. twenty-nine days, to update their information in the Electoral Registry, the same number of days that 3 million Venezuelan citizens would have to register therein for the first time.

He had twenty-nine days to persuade his sixteen students.

He had twenty-nine days to rekindle the spark.

Miguel found an ally in Professor Ricardo Hernández. Perhaps it was because they were both 29, or because Ricardo also believes that the university should prepare students to become citizens in addition to professionals. In any case, their hallway conversations began to revolve around the same idea: encouraging their students to register in the Electoral Registry.

They thought of sending a letter to the College of Architecture’s council in order for the dean to ask the governing board to call on students to register or to agree on flexible hours for them to do so, but they decided otherwise because it would have meant navigating a maze of red tape for weeks, and time was of the essence.

So, as the people in Catuche, they took matters into their own hands and agreed that they would individually suggest their students to go to the National Electoral Council in Plaza Venezuela, which is within walking distance from the university, to register in the Electoral Registry.

Ricardo was the first to take his students to the CNE. In his class of 25 students, 16 had never registered to vote, but as he told Miguel, overjoyed because what they had planned for weeks had come to fruition, now they were ALL registered.

Inspired by Ricardo’s experience, Miguel followed suit and proposed his 18 Urban Studies I to go to the CNE. To make it more appealing, he offered them to post that day’s class on the college’s on-line platform and go with them. That way, no one would miss class or work.

Of course, he told them they were free to refuse should they choose to.

But there was no much discussion around the idea. They didn’t object to it. They didn’t ask what the use of it all was. Miguel felt that, if they actually went, it would be more to please him than out of enthusiasm.

In any case, they arranged to meet on Wednesday, April 3, in the lobby of the College of Architecture, from where they would go to the CNE.

Miguel feared that none would show up.

But that morning not only did the 18 students arrive, but some even went with relatives who didn’t belong to the UCV but who had not yet registered to vote.

Was something changing?

Miguel made good on his promise to go with them. Only one hurdle remained: the National Electoral Council itself. They were made to go all over the place. One group was directed to enter the building through a different entrance. Another group was told to enter through the parking lot. There were no chairs available to sit on while they waited. Miguel silently prayed that none of his students leave, tired from standing for so long.

 “Now that we are finally here, we are going to register. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the parking lot, or if it’s inside the building, or if it’s under the scorching sun… we will register!” some wrote on the class’s WhatsApp group.

The same young students who couldn’t care less about it before were suddenly interested, brave, persevering. They were determined to leave the CNE’s premises only if they had their proof of registration in the Electoral Registry with them.

The long wait was finally over. They did it!

The country had sixteen new voters.

Miguel celebrated by uploading a photo to X.

That day, several students called their family members in excitement, telling them that they could now vote. In the following weeks, some approached Miguel in the hallways to tell him that they were encouraging others to go to the CNE to register. And the news of the professor who took his students to register spread all around the college.

Some professors told him that they would urge their students to register. The dean got involved and helped him and Ricardo to upload a video on the college’s network encouraging students to register. As a result of that effort, he returned with Ricardo and other activists to the National Electoral Council with another group of students from various semesters who wanted to register to vote.

He is no longer swimming against the current. When he addresses the issues facing the country, his students ask questions and express their opinion. They discuss things. Miguel feels that he has finally managed to ignite the spark he had long searched for.

However, as a member of a generation used to having its hopes dashed time and again, he knows he must temper the expectations of his younger students.

Voting may not be enough sometimes, but it can certainly be the beginning.

6383 readings