Eldric Sella, the first Latin American in the Olympic refugee team

Venezuelan boxer Eldric Sella during a training session.UNHCR

When Eldric Sella, a young Caracas boxer with Olympic aspirations, made the decision to permanently leave Venezuela in 2018 together with his girlfriend, the country had been in an economic disaster for four years. He had witnessed the grueling shortages of food and medicine, a year of hyperinflation that still continues, and the more than 200 deaths in the intense days of anti-government protests of 2014 and 2017. Sella, 24, left to Trinidad and Tobago when the overflow of Venezuelans through the region fleeing the economic and social crisis of the Nicolás Maduro regime was already evident. Today more than 5.6 million have left Venezuela.

After Syria, which has been at war for a decade, the crisis in the South American country is the one that produces the most displacements in the world.

The dimensions of this flow now have a new symbol: the inclusion, for the first time, of a Latin American in the refugee team that this summer competes for the second time in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Among the 29 athletes are athletes from Syria, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, and now Venezuela.

More information

• Interview: "The Venezuelan exodus is the largest that Latin America has seen in modern times"

Sella requested refuge in Trinidad and Tobago in 2019 and obtained the status a year later in a country that has been hostile to Venezuelan migrants - there are already more than 40,000, according to the Organization of American States - and that has turned its eyes to the shipwrecks. that have occurred between Güiria, to the east of Venezuela, and the coasts of Trinidad and Tobago, which have left dozens of deaths and disappearances. The boxer, however, was able to find a way in his new country of residence. Last December he was awarded a scholarship for refugee athletes from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This put him in the lane of Tokyo in the category of 75 kilograms where he will represent, along with the other 28 athletes, 80 million displaced people in the world. “I will have the opportunity to participate in the Olympic Games and represent not only me,but to millions of people around the world who, like me, were forced to leave their homes and dreams behind ”, he said in interviews that the IOC has broadcast, which now manages its agenda with the media.

The official delegation of Venezuela, which so far has achieved the classification of 38 athletes, will take four boxers, but none in the same category as Sella, so it will not have to face their compatriots. Although there are still places to be decided, the Venezuelan delegation could be the smallest group when compared to the 86 athletes who went to Rio 2016 or the 108 who competed in 2008 in Beijing. The drop in the number of athletes who make it to the Olympics may also be an indicator of the debacle that the oil country has experienced in less than a decade.

Sella tells on her personal blog that she grew up in the neighborhood of January 23, in the west of Caracas, a fervent bastion of Chavismo and its shock groups. At age 9 he was already in the ring. In his Instagram account he appears in photos at the

Alfonso Blanco

boxing school in

the La Cañada sector where he gave his first blows. There he was trained by Andrés Montañés, with a line of boxers that includes not only Sella and the one who gives the school its name, but also his three children. Montañés is also a migrant, he says by phone from Rio de Janeiro, where he arrived more than a year ago.

The news of Sella's classification in the refugee team is another source of pride for the 68-year-old experienced coach.

“For me, all my students are like my children.

Eldric is a young man who captured everything I tried to teach him in amateur boxing technique, ”he says.

At the age of 15 Sella became a junior national champion and at 18 he entered the national team where he spent a very short time, because there were no resources for athletes.

Montañés says that although it motivated him to enter professional boxing, Sella wanted to be in an Olympiad.

That 2018 when Sella went to Trinidad and Tobago, the Venezuelan boxing team - the discipline that gave Venezuela the first gold medal in 1968 - lost by forfeit at the Central American and Caribbean Games due to lack of government support.

More displacements

The 24-year-old boxer now trains at the New Wave Health Club, a gym in Couva, a small town about 35 kilometers from Port of Spain.

When he stayed permanently in that country, he had to work as a laborer and in other trades to survive and in his spare time he continued training, he says in some of his posts on social networks.

His father, Edward Sella, also left Venezuela.

He is now their

sparring partner

and their head trainer, which in 2019 led him to win a silver medal in a Trinidad and Tobago Boxing Association championship.

Venezuelan boxer Eldric Sella trains in Trinidad and Tobago UNHCR

"We are delighted to see Eldric's passion, determination and hard work rewarded so wonderfully," said Miriam Aertker, head of the UNHCR office in Trinidad and Tobago, when Sella's participation in the refugee team was announced. "His perseverance and optimism in the face of all his obstacles are inspiring and we believe that he will be a symbol of hope for all those who are in a situation of forced displacement, especially the more than five million Venezuelans who have left their country," he added.

The Venezuelan migration crisis has impacted almost every country in the region. Colombia has the greatest pressure, with almost two million migrants, but the deepening crisis in the country continues to expel Venezuelans who go on foot to Chile or cross the Rio Grande to enter the United States. This week, Canada sponsored the second donor conference in solidarity with Venezuelan refugees and migrants, an initiative that has also been promoted by opposition leader Juan Guaidó. The meeting was strongly criticized by Jorge Arreaza, Maduro's foreign minister, who assured in a statement that it is an "anti-Venezuelan propaganda" and questioned the destination of the funds that the countries with the most Venezuelan migrants receive. The official directly accused Spain, Canada,the European Union and the UN agencies, to act "under the strict script of Washington" to exhibit "a cynical reading of the situation of migrants of Venezuelan origin."

Two ideas constantly repeated at the donor conference were that the Venezuelan migration crisis is the one that receives the least attention and funds, and that the definitive solution for Venezuela involves a political agreement that allows free elections to be held.

From the meeting came the commitment to donate 1,500 million dollars for the displaced and initiatives such as that of Ecuador to regularize more than 400,000 Venezuelans.

The event brought together many more countries than a year ago but raised much less money, while displacement has increased and living conditions have worsened with the pandemic.

Sella will be in Tokyo to remember him.

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