Generation of children know only struggles
VENEZUELA>> Valerie Torres’ mother has tried to shield her from the worst of Venezuela’s protracted crisis — the deadly protests, the sick people begging for help, the malnourished children with protruding ribs. At school, her teachers don’t even broach the subject.
But just shy of her 10th birthday this month, the girl is perceptive beyond her years. She knows her fourthgrade classmate lied to their teacher saying he forgot a book at home when in fact he was still saving up to buy it; that neighbors, friends and even her grandmother have all fled the country in search of a better life; that her mother is bringing home fewer groceries.
“Inf lation is horrible. A candy is 3 bolivars. A candy!” Valerie said in disbelief, recalling when it used to cost half a bolivar, Venezuela’s official yet worthless currency, which has effectively been replaced by the U.S. dollar. “And before, a dollar cost about 5 or 7 bolivars. Now it is 23. I can’t buy anything anymore.”
Valerie is part of a generation of Venezuelan children who know only a country in crisis, whose lives so far have been spent amid hardship and under the government of a single president, Nicolás Maduro, who took the reins a decade ago Sunday when his mentor, Hugo Chávez, died of cancer.
The succession coincided with a steep drop in the price of oil, the resource that fueled the country’s economy and funded social programs under Chávez. That, coupled with government mismanagement under both presidents, plunged the South American nation into the ongoing crisis.
Many children have grown up being forced to eat nutrient- deficient food or skip meals, wave goodbye to migrating parents and sit in crumbling classrooms for classes that barely prepare them to add and subtract. The consequences could be long-lasting.
About three- quarters of Venezuelans live on less than $1.90 a day — the international benchmark of extreme poverty. The minimum wage paid in bolivars is the equivalent of $5 per month, down from $30 in April.
Neither of those wages is enough to feed one person, let alone a family. An independent group of economists that tracks price increases and other metrics estimated that a basic basket of goods for a family of four cost $372 in December.
That harsh reality has spilled over into the classroom, with teachers walking out to protest their paltry salaries, which some complement by moonlighting as tutors, selling baked goods or stripping at clubs. Thousands have quit entirely, and many of those who still teach do so in facilities plagued by pests, mold, filth and standing water that attracts mosquitoes.
Kevin Paredes, a 12-yearold fifth-grader, attends one such public school across the street from the home he shares with his parents and six siblings in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Last year, the school was painted orange and bright green, but work to fix caving walls and other structural issues remains unfinished.
Kevin began memorizing multiplication tables in third grade. Teachers should have introduced him to division that same year, but they have not taught it yet
He recently stayed home for several weeks because his family could not afford notebooks and only just returned to class. Sitting on the sidewalk outside the school, he described with enthusiasm a recent school project he has enjoyed: “I’m planting a bell pepper.”
Kevin’s parents, both of whom sew for a living, are earning only enough to buy three or four food items at a time, instead of in bulk as they used to a few years ago. Less money is coming in because clients are focused on buying necessities, not new clothes.
His father, 41-year- old Henry Paredes, migrated to Ecuador in 2018 to work harvesting bananas and made enough to help support the family back home. But he returned to Venezuela after only eight months upon noticing Kevin’s growing anger and sadness over their separation. His toddler daughters did not recognize him when he came home.
“One endures, but the little children do not,” he said of the hunger he feels when he skips meals to feed his children. “They ask for bread, bananas.”
The number of children born into the crisis is unknown since the government stopped publishing birth figures after 2012, a year that saw about 620,000 newborns.
The crisis has driven more than 7 million Venezuelans to leave their home country.