Economic migrants flee Venezuela
FRICTION IN NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES
‘The situation is hard for the kids,” said Johan Rodriguez. “We have to make it, so that they can eat, so that we can eat.”
Rodriguez, a builder, is one of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to Brazil to escape the unravelling economy in their own country.
He, his young daughter and his pregnant wife have been camping out on the side of the street in Boa Vista, the capital of the border state of Roraima since they fled Venezuela a month ago.
Towns across the border have become effectively mass refugee camps for the desperate Venezuelans, who are now sleeping in tents and hammocks in plazas and parks throughout Roraima.
The migrants spend their days looking for work and food, often with little success. Rodriguez is yet to find any employment.
According to city hall officials in Boa Vista, nearly 25,000 Venezuelans are living in the city of just 300,000.
Brazil is now sending in troops to restore order in Roraima where locals and Venezuelan refugees have clashed violently.
Residents of Roraima have rioted and attacked immigrants in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, President Michel Temer said his decision to deploy the Brazilian armed forces in the region was aimed at keeping order and ensuring the safety of the immigrants.
“The problem of Venezuela is no longer one of internal politics. It is a threat to the harmony of the whole continent,” the president said in a televised address.
Venezuelans have fled en masse from an economic crisis and hyperinflation that has left their currency worthless and caused desperate shortages of vital supplies.
The International Monetary Fund has estimated that inflation will hit one million per cent by later this year.
Gas is still one thing the Venezuelans have in relative abundance.
Filling an entire tank in Venezuela costs the equivalent of fractions of a penny; the smallest of a new currency, a coin worth half-a-bolivar, will pay to fill a sedan’s tank more than 100 times.
One U.S. dollar was equal to about 6,500,000 under the old system (about 65 now after the government ordered five zeros to be knocked off the nation’s notes).
But since cash is a scarce commodity, service-station attendants will often be handed a cookie or a cigarette as thanks. If you’re out of both treats and bolivars, the nice ones will just wave you on your way.
So while gas can cost nothing one egg costs 200,000 bolivars and a kilo of peaches about 1.1 million bolivars.
But food is also in short supply. Babies have died of malnutrition, the average Venezuelan has lost dozens of pounds of body weight as a result of lack of food and those with chronic conditions don’t have access to life-saving medications.
According to the UN, more than 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, in what the organization’s migration agency says is approaching a “crisis situation.”
Most, such as a homeless woman who didn’t want to be identified on the streets of Boa Vista, say they just want work and food.
“(At home) we can work, but a salary of 15 days would pay for one or two days’ food,” said the woman, who used to work as a theatre assistant in Venezuela. “There I’d go to work without having eaten for three days.”
Authorities in border towns like Boa Vista and Cucuta, Colombia, where unemployment is already high among locals, say they can’t handle the influx alone.
The United States has promised US$9 million and a hospital ship to attend to the migrants there.
“We can’t absorb this entire migration wave here in the local economy,” said Vanessa Epifanio, who oversees a shelter in Roraima.
The migrants’ arrival in countries across Latin America has sparked tensions, with some saying they’re bringing crime and disease with them.
In January in Cucuta, local authorities rounded up and deported hundreds of Venezuelans who had set up camp in a local sports field after locals claimed they were selling drugs and limiting access to the area.
Countries such as Peru and Ecuador, where Venezuelans also continue to arrive via Colombia, have already taken measures to limit the influx.
Last week, the governments in Lima and Quito announced that Venezuelans who wish to enter their countries must have a valid passport, even though an Ecuadorean judge later overturned the measure. Previously they could enter with just a card.
Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist president, has insisted Venezuelans should stop leaving and return to their homeland, which he described as the “country of opportunity.”