Migrant Venezuelans leave Chile and face new complications

First modification: 05/19/2023 – 11:52

By RFI correspondent in Caracas

An image is repeated on Venezuelan state television: the return of migrants stranded between Chile and Peru on flights organized by the government of Nicolás Maduro.

At that point are those who walk to try to enter Chile and those who leave that country looking for another destination, but cannot cross into Peru either. Without papers all the doors are closed. Most walk like Carolina Jiménez, who emigrated in 2017 in the midst of hyperinflation, and returned to Venezuela in April 2023.

“Because they don’t want to give us papers. I lasted two and a half years in Chile, we entered by trail. And I lasted three years in Peru,” sums up Jiménez, one of the more than 2,000 foreigners who have left Santiago de Chile this year. Her husband stayed in Colombia to walk to the United States.

“I came paying the ticket, from Santiago to Arica, we crossed the trail. We were lucky enough to cross the trail with the girls, at dawn. The UN helped me in Colombia to get to Cúcuta,” he points out.

Helena Riera entered Chile in 2015, with papers. She was able to work there but she returned in April for emotional reasons, and especially because of how she has changed her perception of Venezuelans.

“It is very unpleasant to live in a country where you are not well received. There is enormous xenophobia due to an increase in insecurity and also due to the irregular entry of so many Venezuelans,” he explained to R.F.I..

It coincides with Doris Colmenares, who went to Chile fleeing food shortages and crime, and is now back in Caracas.

“The reasons why we had gone to Chile no longer existed in Venezuela, for example, the queues for basic products or the daily robberies, that no longer existed. When I arrived in Chile in 2017, people loved us, while now they don’t love us very much anymore,” he says.

Venezuela was not fixed. Carolina lives again many of the problems she had before emigrating: lack of services, high cost of living and economic problems. But she feels that she is better.

“I know that there is still no quality of life here, but since I was there with stress, now I feel calmer,” she says.

Different and at the same time, the same

Helena Riera found a different country and, at the same time, the same.

“Everything dollarized, everything very expensive, and all an important detachment in the citizen of the Government and the State. In my house, for example, there has been no water for four years,” he says.

The return of migrant Venezuelans is by trickle. At the Andrés Bello Catholic University, in Caracas, they estimate that those who have returned represent only between 3% and 6% of the nearly seven million who have left and continue to leave the country, according to UNHCR data.

Many others leave Chile, Peru or Ecuador for Colombia to look for papers or work, or head for the United States, starring in a second, third or fourth migration in less than a decade.