By Regina Garcia Cano —
The Associated Press
There are few Venezuelans whose lives have not been affected by migration in the last decade, when more than 7 million people left the country in the midst of a political, economic and humanitarian crisis that spans the entire government of Nicolás Maduro.
It's been 10 years since March 5, 2013, when Venezuelans learned of the death of President Hugo Chávez and the swearing in of his chosen successor, Maduro.
In that time, falling oil prices combined with misrule have caused the economy to collapse, dragging many people into poverty, hunger, disease, crime and despair.
As people continue to emigrate, mainly to other Latin American countries, the division between “those who stayed” and “those who left” grows.
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The division is reflected in politics.
Opponents of the Maduro government frequently talk about the
diaspora
— the preferred term for migration — and the reasons for their departure, while the president and his allies prefer to highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of those who remain.
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It is also reflected in the social.
People long for those weekend gatherings around a barbecue with loved ones now far away, or they deplore the birthdays, graduations or funerals they haven't been able to attend.
These are some stories of they stayed or they left:
those who stayed
José Francisco Rodríguez has been a shoemaker for 46 years in Caracas, mending workers' boots, adding insoles to sports shoes or covering bridal shoes with delicate fabric.
Unlike other businesses, his has kept his clientele throughout the crisis, when the prices of all kinds of goods went through the roof.
José Francisco Rodríguez, in his shoe store in Caracas, Venezuela, in February 2023. Ariana Cubillos / AP
"Right now with the situation,
it's a little more difficult for people to buy a new shoe
," says Rodríguez, 71.
"Then people prefer to send them to be repaired."
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Rodríguez says that he has "faith in Venezuela" and that he would never leave, although he acknowledges that he can make that decision because he has a well-established business.
He has high hopes for the future of the country, but he acknowledges that they depend on a rebound in oil production and the return of foreign oil companies.
One of his daughters, who doesn't share his optimism, immigrated to Chile with her daughters in 2018. He misses them, but the remittances he sends proved crucial when he fell ill with COVID-19 and racked up medical expenses of at least $3,000: about 50 times the annual minimum wage.
Many of his clients do not believe they have a future in Venezuela either.
In mid-February, he gave away 70 pairs of shoes long abandoned by his clients.
“They leave,”
Rodríguez said,
“and they forgot their shoes
. ”
"We are going through a very difficult situation"
Iraida Piñero has never held up her two-year-old granddaughter.
Iraida Piñero, a cleaning worker at a public hospital, in a square in Caracas, Venezuela, in February 2023. Ariana Cubillos / AP
Their only daughter left Venezuela six years ago and gave birth in Colombia.
Unable to travel, the grandmother has only seen on video how the girl grew from a newborn and that now she is beginning to walk.
The absence of her daughter, her granddaughter and her 11-year-old grandson has caused her a mixture of sadness, gratitude and fear.
She seeks strength in prayer.
Piñero, 53,
earns about $5 a month,
plus a few more for cleaning at a public hospital in Caracas.
He is not nearly enough to feed a family of four for one day.
Remittances from her daughter, who sells Venezuelan empanadas, keep her afloat.
Without that kind of help, people have a hard time buying the basics.
"We are going through a very difficult situation, too difficult,"
he says.
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But before leaving, as her daughter suggests, she prefers to wait for Venezuela to be like 15 or 20 years ago.
"My grandson wants to return...
And I want my daughter here again with me and my grandchildren
," she says.
"
If I was born here, I die here"
The days when oil company executives, middle-class workers and tourists constantly hailed taxis or motorcycle taxis to travel around Caracas are long gone, but César Sandoval, who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood, went into business and hasn't looked back.
César Sandoval, a taxi driver, in his car in Caracas, Venezuela, on Monday, February 27, 2023. Ariana Cubillos / AP
Sandoval, 28, began by offering motorcycle trips and saved until with that and the sale of the motorcycle he was able to buy a used car.
He now he has two cars.
Every day he goes out into the street and works with
his wife and three children in mind.
“They are my engine
,” explains Sandoval, standing next to his red, half-rusty Fiat, from a model around 2000.
Several of his colleagues and friends have left the country because "they want to improve themselves... live better."
Sandoval does not blame them for leaving, but that decision is not for him.
He does not conceive of separating from his family or enduring the hostility that many Venezuelan migrants have suffered abroad.
"I wouldn't want to go to another country where they are humiliating me
," he adds.
"If I was born here, I die here."
"It's hard, but I survive"
Like millions of her compatriots, Luzmilla Arrechedera, 53, spent countless hours in long lines when acute shortages were the norm.
She avoided hunger by eating cassava, banana and mango.
Luzmilla Arrechedera, at the hairdresser where she works in Caracas, Venezuela, on Thursday, February 23, 2023. Ariana Cubillos / AP
He also knows the anguish: his only son was murdered during a robbery seven years ago and two of his three grandchildren went to Spain with their mother.
Still, Arrechedera thanks God every morning when she wakes up and tries not to obsess over the past.
"What am I going to gain by crying because she died?"
The Caracas beauty salon where she earns a living as a stylist has become her refuge and a kind of substitute family.
"Here we joke, here we cry," she says.
“We are all like sisters.
We love eachother so much".
Arrechedera hopes to one day visit her grandchildren, but her salary is barely enough to buy food, pay the bills and an extra treat, like ice cream or a pair of pants.
If he left Venezuela, Arrechedera fears that he would not be able to get a job due to his age.
That's why she stays.
“[It's] hard, but I survive,” he says in the living room.
"And thank God that we still have clients here, not like before, but we do."
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"To spend work elsewhere, I work in my country"
Some of Jorge Montaño's friends ask him why he doesn't go to Colombia, where he could earn more money than in Caracas, but others have said that nobody there will give him a plate of food even if he needs it.
The employee of an optometry preferred to follow this last advice.
"For me to spend work elsewhere, I spend work in my country,"
says Montaño, 51, who lives in an apartment with his mother and three brothers.
Montaño says that he loves Venezuela and that he knows that Venezuelans live better than people in other countries.
Jorge Montaño looks at himself in a mirror in the office where he works repairing glasses and assisting an optometrist in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, February 23, 2023. Ariana Cubillos / AP
However, she now buys less food than before the crisis — usually the basics, sugar and flour, never meat — as prices continue to rise.
It has lost customers and seen many businesses close.
A childhood friend went to Peru.
With tears in his eyes, Montaño says that he died there.
"He never came back
," adds Montaño.
those who left
Lorena García worked for years in an NGO in the city of Valencia that promoted a democratic transition from the Chávez government and then that of Maduro.
The change did not take place and she moved to South Florida in 2015 after winning the visa lottery for the United States.
“I wanted to have opportunities
that I knew I was not going to have” in Venezuela, says the 47-year-old woman.
Garcia, who immigrated alone, says that the United States has become her home and that she no longer misses anyone from her native country.
She has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but now works as a real estate agent.
As a legal resident, she was able to bring her parents to Florida.
Lorena García, from Venezuela, poses for a portrait in the patio of her home in Doral, Florida, Thursday, February 23, 2023. Marta Lavandier / AP
“I am so grateful to this country
,” she says at her home in Doral, a small city near Miami that many call “Doralzuela” because of the large Venezuelan community.
"I always feel included."
Had he remained in Venezuela, García adds, he would have suffered professional regression, frustration and hopelessness.
He says he would only consider returning if there were a "drastic political change."
"I wanted to give well-being to my children"
Galloping inflation and widespread shortages prompted mechanic Christian Salazar to leave the city of Puerto Ordaz, in the east of the country, in 2018 to go to Peru.
He settled in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Lima and got a job with a better salary.
But life has been hard.
The minimum wage is about $269 a month and Salazar, 35, spends much of what he earns fixing cars on rent and utilities.
Christian Salazar, from Venezuela, repairs cars in Callao, Peru, Tuesday, February 21, 2023. Martin Mejia / AP
"The minimum wage here in Peru...
is not for a Venezuelan to live in a dignified manner,
because the costs of rents and the basic basket practically cover almost all of that," he says.
Salazar separated from his wife before emigrating, leaving behind three teenage children.
He now has a new partner and a 3-year-old son with her, and thanks to them life in Peru is "more bearable."
He talks to the teenagers in Venezuela every night after work, but says there is no father-son bond.
"I wanted to give well-being to my children
," she adds, and her voice cracks.
"Tranquility is priceless"
Flor Peña, 39, decided to leave when her father died of a heart attack after being turned away by four crowded public hospitals.
She with her husband and her two children went to Peru in 2017.
Peña, who was an Industrial Security engineer in Venezuela, spent years selling food on the streets of Lima, cleaning houses, taking care of an elderly man and helping compatriots with migration and remittance procedures.
Flor Peña, from Venezuela, in a Venezuelan cuisine restaurant in Mexico City, Tuesday, February 21, 2023. Fernando Llano / AP
The children were bullied at school for being Venezuelans and in 2021 the family moved to Mexico City to start over from scratch.
She now works as a cook and waitress in a Venezuelan food restaurant and has a better and more stable life.
"Tranquility is priceless
," says Peña.
“That your children go to the park and be calm, that they go to school.
Over there (in Venezuela) you are worried that your phone will be stolen.
Here is something else."
Peña misses her mother and younger sisters who still live in Caracas and feels a great nostalgia for the Venezuelan beaches, but she will not return until there is a change of government.
Migration has been hard and her children give her strength.
“I want my children to be where the opportunities are
,” says Peña.
"My God, you closed the door on me"
Ali Mora did not want to leave, not even when his salary as a hospital worker was no longer enough to buy food, when he saw his nephews lose weight, even when he was rummaging through the garbage at grocery and butcher shops looking for something to eat.
“I never felt like leaving my country, even if I was starving,” says Mora, 32.
Ali Mora, from Venezuela, with his son Benjamín in the room he rents for his Ecuadorian wife in Tumbaco, Ecuador, Thursday, February 23, 2023. Dolores Ochoa / AP
But at his mother's insistence, in 2018 he went to live with a sister in Ecuador, where he worked in construction and selling fruit on the streets of Quito.
He is now married and has a son.
Like many Venezuelan families, his is spread throughout the continent.
His mother lives in Ecuador, his father remains in Venezuela, and his other sister is in the United States.
Mora, currently unemployed, tried to go to the United States last year, but only made it as far as the Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama where many migrants die or go missing.
He says that he was going to undertake the crossing when the authorities blocked the access due to the visit of a foreign dignitary and said "that no more Venezuelans were going to pass."
So he returned to Ecuador.
“I said 'God, you closed the door on me, it has to be for something,'” Mora recalls.
"I return with my son who is my happiness."
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"We have not rested from work"
Ángel Bruges and his wife arrived in Bogotá in 2019 and started selling Venezuelan empanadas from a cart.
Since then, their business has grown, they have two bigger cars and a store, and last year they were able to bring their daughter.
“We haven't rested from working,” says Bruges, 50, who ran a general store in Carupano, in eastern Venezuela.
In Venezuela, the family managed with the store and his wife's salary as a teacher, but they could not get chicken, meat or other food.
Ángel Bruges, from Venezuela, poses for a portrait at his empanada stand in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, February 22, 2023. Fernando Vergara / AP
They now have a permit to legally reside in Colombia for 10 years, but the empanada business is in trouble since many Venezuelans have left the country.
Bruges says that she misses her mother, who cannot emigrate due to her age and remains in Venezuela, suffering from the "deficits" of the country.
“That there is no electricity, that there is no internet, that there is no gas,
that there is no gasoline, there is no transportation,” she explains.
"You go to hospitals and there are no medicines."
___
Associated Press writers Astrid Suárez in Bogotá, Franklin Briceño in Lima, Gabriela Molina in Quito, Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City, and Gisela Salomón in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.