Once upon a time, not so long ago, the possibility of migrating from Venezuela did not even appear beyond the horizon. While people from the neighboring countries of that nation, located to the north of South America, marinated in their endemic problems –violence, economic crises with dollarization and hyperinflation included, dictatorships, inequality, poverty, political instability – and, therefore, a considerable portion of their inhabitants left their homes to cross the border in search of better conditions, Venezuelans elongated their illusion of prosperity in the oil bonanza bubble: the cyclical crises, and the violence, inequalities and poverty of their own were concealed in the collective idea that resources would never be exhausted or that no difficulty, however big, would dismember the country.
Venezuela was the rich sister in the region, a land that became more and more mestizo as it hosted – since the 1940s – immigrants from southern post-war Europe and from several countries in Latin America and the Hispanic Caribbean, as well as Arabs, Jews and other people coming from farther east on the globe. The newcomers already possessed an ancient nomad inheritance.
Then 1999, Hugo Chavez and the new reality came. In the outbreaks of the new century, especially in 2002 and 2003 when conflict was rushing, Venezuelans began to leave their land, mainly those who could pay for their studies abroad and then try to stay in the countries they were going to. Many descendants of Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese also began to leave –their parents and grandparents had arrived in Venezuela during the 40’s and the 50’s. And several immigrants who had found roots in Venezuela started to make their way back to their countries of origin.
As the conflict inflamed along with the advance of the first decade of the century, the amount of Venezuelans who left the country increased. The numbers were still low during the first years, but steady. The migration wave grew bigger towards the end of the decade, when more political exiles joined the list. Then Nicolás Maduro arrived in 2012 –the worst was yet to come. Deterioration increased its speed. Migrations and asylum requests skyrocketed.
Even so, until three or four years ago, migrants could afford plane tickets (which became more expensive as a long list of airlines stopped operating in the country). This could help them choose a farther destination and, if more fortunate, they could even take some savings with them.
In the last three years, the deterioration became a humanitarian tragedy, although Venezuela is not at war. The evils that, separately in each nation, caused neighbors to emigrate in the past came all together, at once, to Venezuela. In 2018, the Venezuelan exodus was one of the five biggest exoduses in the planet, along with the ones from Central American caravan, Syria, South Sudan and Congo. According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, the displacement of Venezuelans is the largest in the modern history of Latin America.
Venezuelan migrants today take overland journeys to neighboring countries in South America, with nothing but their clothes in their backs, catching buses if they can. If not, they walk during days. Their families are dismembered; the one who leaves makes huge efforts to make a living at the new country to provide for their families at home. Remittances are among the new concepts the country is adding to its culture.
Venezuela has, then, all the ingredients now to qualify as a migrant country, the latest one in the Americas. Our fellow and grantee Tomás Páez, coordinator of the project The Voice of Venezuelan Diaspora, estimates that up to 4 million Venezuelans live abroad, in 300 cities from 90 countries. The records of UNHCR show that between 2014 and 2018, 375,174 Venezuelans applied for asylum in 18 countries, with Peru, the United States, Brazil, Spain and Ecuador being the top five of the list.
If the diaspora is reconfiguring Venezuelan society –those who leave are learning the codes and uses of exile and those who remain are rearming themselves in the face of the new voids migrants left–, the host countries are also assimilating a different role as recipients of the fleeing children of another land, arriving in disarray.
Is in these nodes that fear of what is perceived as different comes. Xenophobia then appears. (Of course there was xenophobia in Venezuela, disguised as humor, tacit in the joking features of its idiosyncrasy. It was made more in stereotypes and mockeries than in explicit displays of hatred, as it is familiar in countries like the United States and others in Europe, with the comeback of anti-immigrant far right parties).
Venezuelans have suffered xenophobia in their flesh, in Panama, when their presence became massive, and, more recently, in Brazil and Peru, after a brief honeymoon. There have also been xenophobic expressions in Colombia, the very neighboring nation Venezuela shares a porous border with. Colombia turned its role and it now receives hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans – descendants of Colombians, Colombians who had lived in Venezuela, Venezuelans without any kinship with Colombians — while, at the same time, the country recomposes itself from its own tragedy.
According to Migración Colombia, as quoted by El Tiempo’s Ginna Morelo, between May 2017 and September 2018, Venezuelans crossing the border grew from 171.783 to 1.032.061. “These are only data from those who pass the border, because there are no censuses or records on the population that stays”.
Organizations dealing with migration in Colombia, supported by individual initiatives, have responded to xenophobia with campaigns that confront and resist hatred, such as #SomosPanasColombia, from UNHCR, and #UnChallengeporVenezuela, driven by journalist Daniel Samper Ospina.
Samper Ospina, a long-haul Colombian journalist and editor, columnists at Semana, and a former director of SoHo magazine, took advantage of his status as new youtuber (#YoSoyDani) to join the campaign. He started the challenge last November, when he was in Cúcuta, in the border of Colombia with Venezuela. Using the codes of youtubers challenge, he showed the testimonies of Venezuelan families walking on the road trying to get to other cities in Colombia or to Perú.
“Everyone can help a Venezuelan fell better, with small or big things. Make an action in which you help a Venezuelan and post it on social media with that hashtag [#UnChallengeporVenezuela]. Lets make helping Venezuelan fashionable, ” the journalist said.
At the beginning of December, he went to Peru to find Reymar Perdomo, the Venezuelan emigrant who composed the viral song “Me fui” (I left). Samper Ospina accompanied her on the busetas where she sings and to Kennedy Park, where she sang that song for the first time. Then he took her to Bogotá and gave her a surprise with Carlos Vives, Andrés Cepeda and Santiago Cruz:
“We Colombians are all Venezuelans (…) Don’t call them venecos,” Vives said.
“Compassion knows no nationality,” Cepeda added.
Yesterday, Samper Ospina added a new hashtag to the conversation on Twitter: #PaisesHermanosPorque (#BrotherCountriesBecause).
A YouTube user commented on the video: “They make me wonder if I would have the guts to throw myself into the unknown if I were in situation. This is Maduro and the deterioration that brought us here.”
IQ Latino wants to be part of this campaign that reminds us that compassion, empathy and solidarity is what truly makes us human. Differentiation exists only in the programming of the human mind –fear is its main device. In reality, and especially in Latin America, we are, in fact, panas, the children of the same motherland.