Samuel Andres Mendoza carefully chooses from dozens of colored pencils spread out on his kitchen table, humming a reggaeton song as he deftly applies contrast to the Dragon Ball anime character taking shape on his sketch pad.
It is not just a pastime anymore for the 14-year-old. Without his mother’s knowledge, he began selling his drawings on his Twitter page to help the family get by and to pay for a special diet doctors say he needs in Venezuela’s troubled economy.
“Hi. I’m Samuel, I’m selling my drawings for US$1 to help my mom with my diet, buy her a house and a shop, so she won’t work on the street and get sick with COVID-19, and buy peanut butter for me. Thank you, sir and madam,” he wrote on Twitter, along with photographs of four drawings.
Photo: AP
It caught the eye of many and he now has more than 15,000 followers, selling dozens of drawings he has worked up at a table between a worn-out couch and a rusting refrigerator in the small family home in Barquisimeto, about five hours west of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.
“The truth is I did not know that I was going to draw like that, but time has passed, and I have managed to paint for real,” Samuel said this month, showing his finished drawing of Dragon Ball’s Goku. “And here it is.”
In a crisis-wracked country where workers earn an average of US$2 per month, his sales can make a big difference for a family budget strained by his need for high-protein foods to deal with a form of malnutrition.
Like millions of other Venezuelans, Samuel and his mother, Magdalena Rodriguez, emigrated in search of better conditions. They went to Colombia in 2019, when widespread power outages hit her homeland just as she learned of her son’s diagnosis.
However, they came home in December last year after she lost her job and found increasing prejudice against the growing number of Venezuelan migrants.
The mother of three now sells snacks from a table in Barquisimeto’s main plaza. She also found work as a cleaner. Still, it has been difficult to afford the relatively expensive high-protein foods needed by her son, who has also been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a broad branch of the autism spectrum.
“It’s not easy,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez, 38, discovered Samuel’s effort when he asked for her bank account information so that people could pay for his work.
Samuel, who said he began drawing at age five, has an inclination for anime characters, but has also portrayed soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and the animated SpongeBob SquarePants.
Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares, who runs an art academy, saw Samuel’s Twitter messages and gave him a scholarship to study drawing.
Social media followers have also gifted him a laptop, a set of artists’ pencils — and peanut butter, a good source of protein.
Samuel, who said he may raise his prices as his skills advance, would like to make YouTube-style videos about videogames when he grows up.
“I’m proud of him, really. I don’t have words,” Rodriguez said. “But I do feel angry sometimes, I feel helpless, because I think that at his age, he should be studying, learning and not wanting to work to help me, when I’m the one who has to do everything possible to give them comfort and nourishment.”
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
RSS