Their hopes dashed, Venezuelan migrants abandon return plans

Like others seeking relief from Venezuela’s economic collapse in countries around the world, Ochoa’s last hope for a turnaround that would allow him to return home was dashed by Maduro’s controversial victory at the ballot box. Ochoa, 38, had been confident that the opposition would win, as polls had predicted, in the July 28 election. And he thought he would finally be able to return home, four years after fleeing the economic crash caused by Maduro. An 80 percent drop in GDP over a decade has forced more than seven million Venezuelans to seek better lives elsewhere — most of them, some three million, in neighboring Colombia. Now, facing the prospect of another six years under Maduro — whose perceived election victory has been rejected by the opposition, the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries — many fear that things will never improve. “I’m going to the United States,” Ochoa told AFP in Madrid, a small town near Bogota where he was renting a small room. “It makes me angry because we all hoped things would change,” he said of the “difficult decision” to move on. When AFP visited Ochoa just days after the election, he had already sold his bed and a bicycle he used to commute to work on a flower plantation. He had packed a backpack with what he thought he would need for the estimated 15-day hike across the so-called Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama – a perilous trek through the jungle that claimed dozens of lives last year alone. AFP lost contact with Ochoa after the interview. ‘Outside our borders’ Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running for office by institutions loyal to Maduro, had warned that if the strongman “seizes power” another “three, four, five million” Venezuelans would likely join the exodus. “What is at stake here goes beyond our borders, beyond Venezuela,” she said on election day. Ochoa told AFP that a defeat for Maduro — which the opposition says has in fact happened — would have prompted him to join his father in Venezuela. His mother and a sister died in his absence. Instead, he would head for the Darien Gap, where migrants face treacherous terrain, wild animals and violent criminal gangs who extort, kidnap and abuse them. Ronald Rodriguez of the Venezuela Observatory at Colombia’s Rosario University told AFP that “we already have” a new wave of migration from Venezuela. More than half a million migrants, most of them Venezuelans, crossed the lawless corridor in 2023, according to Panamanian figures. The number so far this year stands at 200,000. In 2022, 62 people died on the march, and a preliminary count for 2023 is 34. Keeping track is difficult because many deaths are never reported and jungle animals sometimes devour the bodies of those who die along the way. ‘God will remove him’ In Brazil, fellow migrant Yajaira Deyanira Resplandor said she felt “defeated” when she heard the news of Maduro’s claimed victory. “I was sad, hopeless for my country, for the people who died, for those who are in prison,” the 56-year-old told AFP in a Rio de Janeiro shantytown. She arrived in Brazil seven years ago with her two daughters but longs to go home “if the president leaves.” Nearly 600,000 Venezuelans have entered and stayed in Brazil between 2017 and June 2024, according to official figures. For William Clavijo, president of the NGO Venezuela Global, which supports migrants in Brazil, the election result left many in “great sadness.” “There is uncertainty about the possibility of returning… to have a stable life again, decent wages,” he said. Yet Resplandor remains convinced that one day “God will remove Maduro.” Further south, in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, 70-year-old migrant Alba Olivero said she was looking forward to a change that would allow her to return home. “I want to get my life back in Venezuela,” she told AFP. “Once the Maduro government falls, I will go back to help rebuild the country,” she added. In Argentina, 29-year-old Mariangel Navas said she was “almost certain” that this would be the year she would return home after six years in Buenos Aires. “But in this context, I’m not going back,” Navas said. burs-das/jss/mlr/sst