Venezuela: A journey on a caravan of misery
CARACAS, (Reuters) - Just after dawn, dozens of Venezuelans gathered at the dark bus station in Caracas. They lugged one big suitcase each, as well as blankets, toilet paper, cheap bread and jugs of water. Weeping wives, confused children and elderly parents hugged them over and over until it was time to check tickets and weigh bags, then hung back, waiting hours for the bus to leave. When it finally pulled out, the passengers looked down at their loved ones, pounding on the windows and blowing kisses as they speeded out of this crumbling capital city.
On board the bus, web developer Tony Alonzo had sold his childhood guitar to help pay for his ticket to Chile. For months he had been going to bed hungry so that his 5-year-old brother could have something for dinner. Natacha Rodriguez, a machine operator, had been robbed at gunpoint three times in the past year. She was headed for Chile, too, hoping to give her baseballloving son a better life. Roger Chirinos was leaving his wife and two young children behind to search for work in Ecuador. His outdoor advertising company had come to a bitter end: Protesters tore down his billboards to use as barricades during violent rallies against authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro.
Their bus tells the story of a once-wealthy nation in stomach-dropping free fall, as hundreds of people flee daily from a land where fear and want are the new normal.
By the time dawn rises over Caracas, hungry people are already picking through garbage while kids beg in front of bakeries. Come dusk, many Venezuelans shut themselves inside their homes to avoid muggings and kidnappings. In a country with the world’s largest proven crude reserves, some families now cook with firewood because they cannot find propane. Hospitals lack supplies as basic as disinfectant. Food is so scarce and pricey that the average Venezuelan lost 24 pounds last year.
“I feel Venezuela has succumbed to an irreversible evil,” Chirinos said.
Many blame the country’s precipitous decline on the government of Maduro, who has tightened his grip on power, holding fast to statist policies that have throttled the economy. His government says it is facing a U.S.-led conspiracy to sabotage leftism in Latin America by hoarding goods and stoking inflation.
Poorer by the day, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have concluded that escape is their only option. With the country’s currency virtually worthless and air travel beyond the reach of all but elites, buses have become Venezuela’s caravans of misery, rolling day and night to its borders and returning largely empty to begin the process all over again.
The 37 Venezuelans leaving on this day had hocked everything – motorbikes, TVs, even wedding rings – to pay for their escape. Most had never been outside the country before.
For nine days, a reporter and a photographer from Reuters accompanied the migrants as they headed for what they hoped were better days in Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina. For nearly 5,000 miles, they rolled through some of South America’s most spectacular landscapes, including the vertiginous Andean mountain range and the world’s driest desert in Chile. But even though the Venezuelans were awed by the views whizzing by their window, their minds were mostly on the land they had left behind – and the uncertainty facing them in the lands ahead.
FROM CARACAS TO CONCON A heavy silence fell over the bus after it pulled out of the Rutas de America terminal. Passengers glumly texted family members or stared out the window as the packed vehicle rolled by mango trees, shuttered factories and crumbling murals of the late President Hugo Chavez.
Natacha Rodriguez, the machine operator, had been running on adrenaline in the mad rush to pack, sell her television and washing machine, and endure long lines to get her documents in order. Now, on this day in November, she was near exhaustion as she tried to get comfortable in her seat.
The 29-year-old single mom was traveling with her 12-year-old son, David, her sister Alejandra and a family friend, Adrian Naveda, to what she dreamed would be a quiet life. The group was bound for Concon, Chile, a beach resort where Venezuelan expat friends assured them there was plenty of work.
Rodriguez said she had hoped Venezuela’s youth could bring about change. Like millions of her countrymen, she took to the streets to protest the unpopular Maduro last year, only to despair when he responded by consolidating his authority.
Fear added to Rodriguez’s hopelessness: Her story of three robberies at gunpoint is a familiar one in a country awash with drugs and gangs. And with inflation fast outrunning her paycheck, the already petite woman had lost 13 pounds as she cut fruit and soft drinks from her diet so that David would not go hungry. She knew she had to act.
“In Venezuela you go to
sleep thinking about what you’re going to eat the next day,” Rodriguez said. “I never wanted to leave, but the situation is forcing me to.”
She had never left the country, and the enormity of what she was attempting was sinking in. In the days ahead she would visit four new countries, cross the equator and see the Pacific Ocean for the first time. But she couldn’t stop thinking of how far she had traveled from the home she still loved.
‘FIGHTING AGAINST THE TIDE’
Venezuelans elected Chavez, the late leftist firebrand, in 1998 with a mandate to fight inequality. A charismatic former lieutenant colonel, Chavez transformed the country during his 14-year rule, pouring oil revenue into wildly popular welfare programs. But he also nationalized large swaths of the economy and implemented strict currency controls, state meddling that economists say is the root of the current crisis.
Once a magnet for European and Middle Eastern immigrants during its 1970s oil boom, Venezuela now exports its people along with petroleum.
Spooked by Chavez, a first wave of engineers, doctors and other professionals began fleeing for the United States, Canada and Europe in the early 2000s. Most arrived to warm welcomes in their adopted homes, many with their savings intact.
Now, financially ravaged Venezuelans with fewer skills are pouring across South America in a frantic search for work in restaurants, stores, call centers and construction sites. Some travel only as far as their savings will stretch: A one-way bus ticket to neighboring Colombia from Caracas costs the U.S. equivalent of around $15; the fare for a trip to Chile or Argentina can run as high as $350, a small fortune for many. The plunging currency and rocketing inflation make financing the voyage more expensive with each passing day.
Sociologist Tomas Paez, an immigration specialist at the Central University of Venezuela, estimates that almost 3 million people have fled Venezuela over the past two decades. He believes nearly half of them have left in the last two years alone, in one of the largest mass migrations the continent has ever seen. The socialist government does not release emigration statistics, but Maduro says his enemies have exaggerated the extent of the exodus.
Neighbouring Colombia has taken in the bulk of migrants in Latin America, although Argentina, Chile and Peru are also seeing a big influx.
In contrast to refugees fleeing Syria, Myanmar and North Africa who have met with violence and resistance, Venezuelans are moving easily across land borders on tourist visas. But tensions are increasing as their numbers strain the resources of South America’s developing countries, which have their own problems with poverty and crime.
Carmen Larrea has a front-row seat to the migration. She is the owner of Rutas de America, a small Caracas-based bus company founded nearly 50 years ago to ferry Peruvians and Ecuadoreans to Venezuela in search of work.
At 75, she has lived long enough to see the world turned upside down. She now survives on Venezuelans heading in the other direction. Her customers included the 37 migrants whom Reuters followed.
Larrea’s terminal sees dozens queue up daily to purchase tickets. Many must return repeatedly to pay in installments. Daily withdrawal limits on debit cards no longer keep up with inflation-fueled prices. Card readers frequently crash.
Requests for tickets abroad had roughly doubled in the last six months, Larrea said. Around 800 Venezuelans leave the country every month on her company’s handful of Caracas-based buses alone.
But skyrocketing prices for spare parts and the plunging bolivar have hammered her profits, Larrea said. And while Rutas de America buses leave Caracas jampacked, they often return empty, further denting business.
“We’re fighting against the tide,” she said.
‘HERE NO ONE SPEAKS ILL OF CHAVEZ’
By daybreak, the bus had arrived in the garbage-strewn Venezuelan town of San Antonio del Tachira, near the Colombian border. The teeming frontier is a lifeline for desperate Venezuelans. They cross daily to sell goods like liquor, copper, even their own hair, often making more money in a day in Colombia than in a month back home.
Maduro has increased security at the border in an attempt to crack down on contraband. The bus riders were forced to disembark and pass through half a dozen checkpoints on foot, struggling to haul their suitcases, backpacks, blankets, food and water jugs under the searing sun. Trudging to the narrow Simon Bolivar International Bridge that links Venezuela to Colombia, they walked under a big government sign that read: “Here no one speaks ill of Chavez.”
The gauntlet took five hours, in part because the Venezuelan migration office’s computers crashed. The travelers’ apprehensions grew as Venezuelan soldiers, known for shaking down border crossers, searched their bags repeatedly.
Passenger Chirinos, the ad man, was carrying $200 in U.S. currency, a precious hedge against inflation. A National Guard soldier demanded half of it to let him through with an old Playstation video game console deemed contraband. Chirinos handed over a $20 bill to end the standoff.
“Our own people rob us,” Chirinos said later, recounting the humiliation.
The Armed Forces did not respond to a request for comment.
Just a few years ago, the 34-year-old Chirinos was solidly middle class. He boxed at a gym and splurged on vacations, including a 2014 trip to Rio de Janeiro with his wife.