Venezuelans in shelters with expectations of change

At the Salvation Army migrant shelter in Costa Rica, the topic of conversation for the more than fifty Venezuelan families there is the elections on Sunday, July 28 in their country. Hope for change is the last thing they say they have left after leaving everything behind to migrate.

David Rodríguez and his family arrived in Costa Rica just a week ago, where they plan to take a break before continuing their journey to the United States. Rodríguez is one of the more than 30,000 Venezuelans who are in Costa Rica, either passing through or residing there due to the political situation in their country.

“If the opposition wins, the hope is that we will all return to our country,” says Rodríguez, from the migrant shelter where he is staying. “It is what we most desire. The Venezuelan family is divided, it is a reality that we live,” he laments.

Rodríguez says he left his country due to political persecution after working as an official in the Ministry of Environment in Venezuela years ago. His first destination country was Colombia, but he says that the situation became “quite complicated” for him, so he crossed the El Darién jungle to reach Costa Rica where he took a break.

“We are waiting to see what happens. This is the last hope we have,” said the Venezuelan man.

In Costa Rica, it is estimated that there are at least 30,000 people of Venezuelan nationality, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but only about 1,200 people will be able to vote, who are those who appear eligible to vote in San José, Costa Rica.

Rodríguez is one of those who will not be able to vote, but he mentions that this does not stop him from looking forward to the presidential elections on Sunday where ten people will compete for power, including Nicolas Maduro and the candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutiabacked by opposition leader María Corina Machado, winner of the opposition presidential primary but disqualified from holding public office.

The elections have not discouraged Lisette Pirela Sánchez, a Venezuelan mother of three, even though she will not be able to vote.

“I hope that María Corina Machado’s candidate wins, but it will be difficult because Nicolás Maduro controls all the powers of the State. That is why we are spread out all over the world. We want a change in everything, the economy, health,” says Sánchez.

And Yaixon Leal Portillo, another Venezuelan who left his country more than four years ago, agrees with them. “Like all patriotic Venezuelans, we want the government of (Nicolás) Maduro to go. There is nothing in Venezuela, food is expensive and the outlook is difficult,” says Portillo.

Few Venezuelans abroad will be able to vote

Gabriela Onetto, representative of the Comando ConVzla in Costa Rica and member of the Vente Venezuela Party, of opposition leader María Corina Machado, regrets that not all migrants will be able to vote for various reasons.

He alleges that the National Electoral Council, which is the governing body that exercises electoral power in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, “acts as the executive arm of the regime” and therefore, in his opinion, “prevented Venezuelans residing in Costa Rica from being able to make the change to vote here.”

“Between March and April of this year, the National Electoral Council opened the electoral registry so that people who were abroad and new voters could register, but this was irregular in the case of those abroad,” says Oneto. “In Costa Rica, they gave only four days and there were irregularities in that registry update, this is important because many Venezuelans were not allowed to register,” lamented Onetto.

“They asked us for permanent residency, a valid passport and requirements that were impossible to meet. This filter created a huge bottleneck and the large number of people who wanted to register were unable to do so,” he said.

Neither the Venezuelan government nor the National Electoral Council have addressed the alleged irregularities in voter registration.

In an interview with the Voice of America, Last April, Jesús Castellanos Vázquez, a Venezuelan political scientist and electoral consultant, stated that the electoral registry in Venezuela is continuous, meaning it should not be interrupted. However, he pointed out that the Venezuelan government has kept it closed and the last time it was opened was in 2018. At that time, he said, the requirements were clearer and the deadlines were relatively met.

Informthe Venezuelan government’s electoral gazette, has reported that some 107,000 Venezuelans are already registered in the Electoral Registry. Vázquez said that this is “a tiny number” that does not correspond at all “with the enormous mass of Venezuelans abroad.”

What most of those interviewed do agree on is that real change is urgently needed in their country and that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in their opinion, cannot bring it about.

“Maduro is the opposite of change, he is the continuity of everything we have experienced,” concludes Rodríguez as he tunes into his television station to the news of the Venezuelan elections, which he lives more than a thousand kilometers from his country.

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