The post-electoral crisis in Venezuela has been a déjà vu for many Venezuelans who decided to return to the country after emigrating to other nations in the region years ago.
Andreína González is one of those cases. The Venezuelan arrived in Chile in 2017, fleeing the political and economic crisis and food shortages. However, she returned to Venezuela on vacation in 2022, and after realizing that some things had improved, she decided to return with her partner “to try her luck.”
“My experience has not been bad but it has not been the best either. Having my family close again fills my heart a lot, but on the other hand it is difficult to adapt to situations that I was no longer used to living with, the lack of light, water, deteriorated roads, telephone signals failing in many places, a country where regression is evident in everything,” the 31-year-old explained in an interview for the newspaper Voice of America.
“It is hard to adapt to that again, when you come from a country where everything works, or at least most services and things,” he adds.
González says that he decided to vote in the elections on July 28. He says that he expected a different result, and that facing a political crisis again is not easy for him, since he already emigrated once for that reason.
“It is not easy to live through a political crisis when everything that has happened is so obvious, but I continue to trust in the process and have great faith that at some point there will be a change for our country,” he says.
The election results that declared Nicolás Maduro the winner have been questioned by a large part of the international community due to the lack of disclosure of electoral records that confirm the victory. In addition, for the Venezuelan opposition, its candidate Edmundo González Urrutia has been the winner.
The situation sparked a series of protests one day after the elections, which left more than 2,000 people arrested and 25 dead, according to data released by the Attorney General’s Office.
Given this situation, the young Venezuelan woman confesses that if there is no change soon, she would emigrate again in search of better opportunities, even though for her, separating from her family and her country is a very complicated process.
“I think there will be a new wave of migrants looking for better opportunities. In fact, I think that this has never ceased to exist as long as the crisis in the country exists. In addition, it will take years to see a 100% change in our country, years that many do not want to continue losing without opportunities here,” he adds.
“We are waiting”
Vanessa Andrade (fictitious name) lives with expectation and uncertainty the political crisis that broke out in Venezuela after the elections of July 28, a scenario that she has already experienced in her country years ago.
“There are many things paralyzed, a lot of tension, a lot of uncertainty in the environment, because everything at the level of the economy is super slow and nothing, we are all waiting to see what is going to happen,” says the young woman to the VOA.
She is another of the Venezuelans who emigrated years ago. In her case, Andrade settled in Peru in 2018, after graduating with a degree in Law and in search of better opportunities, given that the political and economic crisis did not allow her to grow professionally, she says.
She decided to return to Venezuela in 2020 because of the attachment she feels to her family and also to her country. “There is nothing that compares to Venezuela in terms of human warmth, the way we treat people, our culture, our landscapes, our climate and mainly what led me to make the decision to come here was my family,” she explains.
Although she reiterates that the current situation keeps her on edge, she confesses that she does not regret having returned to her country, so emigrating again is currently her last option.
“Emigrating is my last option. I still hope to be able to stay here, but if it turns out to be the last resort, then I will. In this case, I think that I would not do it alone, but rather, having previous experience, I would do it with my whole family. So, from there, well, I still have faith and hope that there will be a change here and that I can contribute to rebuilding a better country,” she concludes.
González and Andrade’s position has been echoed by major national pollsters who predict that if there are no changes in the country, there could be a new wave of migration.
Venezuelan pollster Meganalisis revealed a few days ago that, according to a survey conducted between August 8 and 11, 43.2% of Venezuelans surveyed are thinking of emigrating from the country following the election results.
This same concern has already been expressed by representatives of regional governments that have decided to tighten their immigration controls in the face of this possible situation, as in the case of Chile and Peru, two of the countries that in previous years received Venezuelan migrants in the region.
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