A young opposition activist planning to trek through seven countries and a perilous jungle to reach the United States. A journalist ready to abandon everything to build a new life abroad. A lawyer in her 60s, fearful that her last daughter is about to leave.
For thousands of Venezuelans, the decision to remain or flee their homeland depends on a single date: July 28th. On that day the country will vote in a high-stakes presidential election.
If the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, declares victory, they say they will go. If the opposition candidate wins, they will stay.
“Everyone says the same thing,” says Leonela Colmenares (28), the opposition activist. “If Maduro wins, they are leaving.”
Roughly a quarter of Venezuela’s population has already left, with almost eight million people living in other countries, according to the United Nations, forming one of the largest migration crises in the world.
The exodus has torn apart families and stripped the country of its talent – and created an enormous challenge for US president Joe Biden, who has had to contend with record levels of migration from Venezuela and other countries during his administration.
Overall, US crossings are down in recent months over last year, amid efforts by the Biden administration to discourage people from seeking asylum at the southern border.
But August, September and October have traditionally been the most heavily travelled months through the Darién Gap, the dangerous jungle straddling Colombia and Panama that has become one of the world’s busiest routes for migrants moving north.
Not all Venezuelans will head to the US, and not all who come to the US will seek entry at the southern border. But any spike in migration would present another significant test for Biden just before the US election.
Venezuelans arriving in the US in recent years have filled shelters in New York and stretched budgets in cities such as Denver. But the exodus has been felt just as deeply, if not more so, inside Venezuela, which has lost its teachers, doctors and engineers – and seen families scattered across the globe.
Some Venezuelans who have stayed behind did so because they thought they could promote change or serve their country from within. Now, after years of protests, an unyielding autocratic government and rounds of opposition leaders who have promised to push out Maduro – only to fail – many say they see this election as their last hope.
It’s not just a grinding economic crisis – spurred by government mismanagement and exacerbated by US sanctions – that has lasted nearly a decade. In recent months the government has also increased detentions of people it perceives as dissidents, leading to fears of further persecution if Maduro stays in power.
Nearly 300 political prisoners are in government custody, according to a watchdog group, Criminal Forum.
“I did everything I could for my country,” says Jesús Zambrano (32), a journalist who is considering leaving for Germany. “But I’m not ready to go to prison for doing my job.”
One private poll by the company ORC Consultants, conducted in June, suggests that as many as a third of Venezuelans are considering the possibility of migrating if the current government remains in power. Half of those said they would leave in the six-month period after the July 28th vote.
Some analysts are sceptical that the exodus would be that large or that sudden.
Nevertheless, migration is one issue that cuts across Venezuela’s socioeconomic and political lines, uniting a people severed by distance in a collective longing for reunification.
And it has become a key issue in this month’s election.
The country’s main opposition leader is María Corina Machado, an energetic former legislator whose central message is a promise to bring Venezuelans home by restoring democracy and getting the economy back on track.
“This fight is so that you return!” Machado shouted at a rally in the eastern city of Maturín, where a woman in the crowd had held up a cell phone connected to her daughter in a far-off country.
Banned by Maduro’s government from running in the election, Machado is not actually on the ballot. Instead, her coalition has put a surrogate on the ticket, a former diplomat named Edmundo González.
Machado has gone on the campaign trail for González and has sought to cultivate a nearly religious presence. She often appears dressed in white, a cross swinging from her neck, embracing supporters who shout “María! María!” everywhere she goes.
The González-Machado campaign has promoted videos of Venezuelans overcome with emotion, desperate for them to win and bring their families back.
“They’ve all gone! All of my relatives!” one young woman shouted at a camera at a recent opposition event, her voice cracking in pain.
“Where is your family?” the camera operator asked.
“In the United States,” she gulped. “Peru. Ecuador. Colombia. I’m so tired of it.”
In recent years, photos of weary Venezuelans hiking through the treacherous Darién jungle and up to the US border have made the troubles inside the country all the more real for the rest of the world.
Maduro has long blamed the country’s mass migration on US sanctions, the most severe of which were placed on the oil industry in 2019.
Facing a serious electoral challenge, he has started mentioning the diaspora more often – and not simply accusing the United States of causing the mass flight. He is also appealing to citizens to come home.
On his television show last month, he claimed that a new programme, called the Grand Mission Return to the Homeland, would offer returnees “comprehensive socioeconomic protection that only the humanist, Christian Bolivarian revolution of Venezuela can give”. (The “Bolivarian revolution” is his socialist movement.) But he did not offer concrete details.
“Venezuela is back in style!” he asserted.
Colmenares, the opposition activist, has been advocating for a change of government since she was 15. She helped to found a political party called Popular Will and spent years protesting against everything from failing public services to the jailing of her activist colleagues.
She has been in and out of university, often unable to afford tuition, and tried migrating to neighbouring Colombia, where she worked as a server and said she made only enough to eat.
Now Colmenares is the primary breadwinner for her mother and father, who have health problems. She works as a university administrator and also sells pastries and drives her friends around in her car-turned-taxi.
Still, she cannot afford her mother’s medication.
Like many young people, Colmenares is pouring all her energy into supporting the González-Machado campaign. But if Maduro wins another six-year term, she plans to travel to Colombia, then through the Darién, Central America and Mexico to the US border, where she will seek asylum.
Colmenares has considered applying for a legal entry programme known as parole but would need someone in the United States to sponsor her. She knows no one who could do that, she says. And even if she did, acceptance could take months or years, or never arrive.
Zuleika Meneses (33), a friend of Colmenares, is also planning to leave Venezuela if the Maduro government keeps its hold on power. Meneses, who is also a founding member of Popular Will, says she has been an activist since she was 14.
“I don’t want to leave my country,” she says. “I dream of being a legislator, of being a governor, of being the president of Venezuela.”
It’s not just the economic situation pushing her out. She is also fearful of a wider crackdown in the coming months. She rattles off the names of jailed activists. “I don’t want to be another name on the list,” she says.
Marisol Ríos (62), is a lawyer with three daughters. Two have already left the country: one is in the US, and another in Colombia. At her home in the state of Táchira, on the country’s western edge, she says her youngest and only remaining daughter, María Paulina (24), is now considering her own exit.
María Paulina’s boyfriend, a violin teacher, plays softly in the background as Ríos cries, pondering the idea of spending the rest of her life without her children.
“It would be very painful if Paulina left, because she is my right hand,” says Ríos. “But I am not in a position to clip her wings – because she has a right to live.”
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times
