Venezuelan migrant Jose Ochoa, living in Colombia, packs his bags as he prepares to travel to the United States across the dangerous Darién Gap – Copyright AFP Alejandro Martinez
David Salazar, with offices in Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires
When Nicolás Maduro was elected president for a third consecutive term, Jose Ochoa, a Venezuelan migrant living in Colombia, began packing his bags for the long and dangerous journey to the United States.
Like others who have sought relief from Venezuela’s economic collapse in countries around the world, Ochoa’s last hope for change that would allow him to return home was dashed by Maduro’s controversial election victory.
Ochoa, 38, was confident that the opposition would win the July 28 vote as polls had predicted.
And he thought he could finally return home four years after fleeing the economic crash caused by Maduro.
An 80 percent decline in GDP within a decade forced more than seven million Venezuelans to seek a better life elsewhere – most of them, about three million, in neighboring Colombia.
Faced with the prospect of another six years of Maduro – whose supposed electoral victory was rejected by the opposition, the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries – many fear that the situation will never improve.
“I’m heading to the United States,” Ochoa told AFP in Madrid, a small community near Bogotá, where he has rented 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 a few days after the election, he had already sold his bed and a bicycle he used to get to work on a flower plantation.
He had packed a backpack with everything he would need for what was expected to be a 15-day trek through the so-called Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama – a dangerous journey through the jungle that claimed dozens of lives last year alone.
After the interview, AFP lost contact with Ochoa.
– “Beyond our borders” –
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was excluded from the election by institutions loyal to Maduro, had warned that another “three, four, five million” Venezuelans would likely join the exodus if the strongman “seized power.”
“What is at stake here goes beyond our borders, beyond Venezuela,” she said on election day.
Ochoa told AFP that a defeat for Maduro – and the opposition claims that this is what happened – would have prompted him to return to his father in Venezuela.
His mother and a sister died during his absence.
Instead, he wanted to focus on the Darién Gap, where migrants face rugged terrain, wild animals and violent criminal gangs that extort, kidnap and abuse them.
Ronal Rodriguez of the Venezuela Observatory at Colombia’s Rosario University told AFP that “we already have” a new wave of migration from Venezuela.
In 2023, according to Panamanian figures, more than half a million migrants crossed the lawless corridor, most of them Venezuelans.
This year the number so far is 200,000.
In 2022, 62 people died on the trek, and a preliminary count for 2023 is 34.
It is difficult to keep track because many deaths are never reported and jungle animals sometimes eat the bodies of those who perish along the way.
– “God will remove him” –
In Brazil, Yajaira Deyanira Resplandor, another immigrant, said she felt “dejected” when she heard the news of Maduro’s supposed victory.
“I was sad and had no hope left for my country, for the people who had died and been imprisoned,” the 56-year-old told AFP news agency in a slum in Rio de Janeiro.
She came to Brazil seven years ago with her two daughters, but longs to return home, “assuming the president leaves.”
According to official figures, nearly 600,000 Venezuelans entered and stayed in Brazil between 2017 and June 2024.
For William Clavijo, president of the non-governmental organization Venezuela Global, which supports migrants in Brazil, the election result plunged many into “great sadness.”
“There is uncertainty about the possibility of returning … to have a stable life and a decent income again,” he said.
Nevertheless, Resplandor remains convinced that “God will eliminate Maduro one day.”
Further south, in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, 70-year-old migrant Alba Olivero said she longed for a change that would allow her to return home.
“I want to get my life back in Venezuela,” she told AFP.
“As soon as the Maduro government falls, I will return 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 am not going back,” said Navas.
burs-das/jss/mlr/sst
