Blue Morpho

Abstract

In what why can fiction help us craft and share ethnographic work when life is in flux and the people with whom we live with also have a hard time making “rational” sense of what is happening to them? This ethnographic fiction about love, quandary, and rebirth is set against the deep crisis in Venezuela—money has become worthless, families are shattered, mutual trust has evaporated, jobs and food are scarce, and everyone is trying to make a living. The creative endeavour arose during online exchanges with research participants and friends, the re‐reading of fieldnotes, and the surfacing of poignant memories while growing up with a Venezuelan family twenty years ago. The plot around the butterfly coalesced with these personal memories and an emerging understanding of natural abundance, human, fragility, and metamorphosis in how Venezuelans make sense of loss and inequality. The storyline follows the life of Marianela, an upper middle‐class woman born and bred in Caracas, who ends up in a goldmine in the south of Venezuela with her three‐year daughter Alba. One day, at the Brazilian border, a blue butterfly warns her that her beloved caretaker passed away. To overcome this loss, Marianela intents to finally break away from subjugation.