Venezuelan doc leaves home to rebuild from bottom up
LIMA, Peru: “Waiter!” called a Peruvian businessman, fidgeting in his seat. This was Lima’s VIPs- only Jockey Club restaurant, and the staff snapped to it. But Dr. Jose Perdomo just kept walking.
“Waiter!” the businessman called again, now indignant. Perdomo did a double take. Waiter? Wait. That’s me. He circled back, passing a bank of tables – his new station, both at work and in life. In his native Venezuela, the 33year- old medical resident had saved babies and mothers in a maternity ward. He’d also enjoyed the prestige of a doctor’s life, even minor celebrity, as his comedic quips on hospital mishaps earned him 10,000 followers on Twitter.
Now, he was an immigrant working in one.
For host nations from Peru to Chile to Argentina, Venezuela’s exodus amounts to the greatest injection of highly educated human capital since at least the early 20th century. Of the vast number of Venezuelans who have left in recent years, surveys and experts suggest that hundreds of thousands have university degrees or technical training, marking one of the globe’s mostskilled migrant flows.
As the Cubans did in Miami in the 1960s, and as the Syrians are doing today in Berlin, industrious Venezuelans are set to rebuild their ravaged lives in Lima, Bogota, Santiago and Buenos Aires. But these are the early days. And it’s hard to see the end game from the starting line.
Fresh off the bus three weeks ago, the best Perdomo could get was a gig as the new guy at the Jockey Club, perched above the dust and manure at Lima’s largest horse track. He set the tables for lunch, swept the floors and washed dishes. He still didn’t know his taku taku from his sauce, but they’d given him three tables. Besides his US$ 10a- day salary, he could score a couple of bucks more in tips.
On Day 1 - and this was only Day 3 - he’d gone to a park after his 12-hour shift, sat down and cried. He felt humiliated and hated himself for it. He’d been too embarrassed to tell the kitchen staff that he’d been a well-known doctor. And he’d already been scolded for hoarding a diner’s leftovers.
Perdomo came back to the restaurant that day because he had to. He’d vowed to build a life here, to establish himself and send for his boyfriend, his mother. But now that he was here, that seemed a more distant dream. He had rent to pay - US$ 40 a month for a few feet of space on a concrete floor. He had US$ 28 left to his name. “Yes, sir,” he said, turning toward the businessman. “Coming right away, sir.”
Peru is no promised land. Sand- coloured shantytowns mar its cities, and rural life can be backbreaking. A fifth of the population lives in poverty.
Yet more than 517,000 Venezuelans have arrived here so far this year, on top of the 100,000 who came in 2017 - making it the region’s secondlargest host for Venezuelan migrants after Colombia. As many as 2 million Venezuelans will empty out of their country this year, and more than 1,000 cross the Peruvian border each day.
For them, even Peru is a paradise.
In Venezuela, failed socialist policies, mismanagement, corruption and lower prices for oil - the country’s principal source of cash - have toxically combined, producing a near-total societal implosion.
When the Venezuelans came knocking, Peru opened its doors, offering, until recently, fast-track work permits. It wasn’t strictly humanitarian. For Venezuela, the loss of highly skilled people is a crippling brain drain. For Peru, it’s a bonanza.
“This could be good for us,” said Roxana del Ãnguila, Peru’s acting director of migration.
Peruvian authorities are especially thrilled about Venezuelan doctors and are designing a programme to bring them to cities and towns facing chronic staff shortages in clinics and hospitals. But for the doctors, it costs nearly US$ 200 to take the national medical equivalency test -a king’s ransom for Venezuelan physicians who in many cases earned about US$ 12 a month at home.
To scrape together the cash, Omar Ghiglione, a Venezuelan heart surgeon, is selling mailorder books in Lima. Heydi Coronel, a noted fertility expert, is peddling candy from a cart. Manuel Soteldo, an internist, is working as a security guard.
Perdomo, meanwhile, is doing whatever he can to survive.
Perdomo had tended to two children who’d died of malnutrition. “We just never had that before, not in Venezuela, not starvation,” he said.
But the case he could not get out of his head was that of Geliana Obregon. Flies had laid eggs in her head.
“I picked 123 worms out of her,” he said.
On his second day in Lima, Perdomo sold his gold class ring for US$ 70. Most of that went to his first month’s rent.
Now rent was due again, but he had hope: a job interview.
The next morning on a chaotic Lima street strewn with trash, a woman in a tight blue dress creaked open an iron door. “I’m here for the interview,” Perdomo said, smiling and clutching his resume in a yellow folder. The woman indicated with her chin to go to the stairs behind her, where 40 applicants were patiently waiting in line.
Perdomo entered and sized up the competition. He had worn his good blue pullover, the one with the hole that wasn’t noticeable if he held his arm a certain way. But the Peruvians – and lots of Venezuelans – were looking sharp. They had good reason. This was supposed to be a decent office job, not the work of a custodian. The online ad had asked for “only motivated people,” a description he read as someone willing to work long hours for less pay. That was him. Most of the Venezuelans he knew had two or three jobs. He still just had his one weekend job at the Jockey Club. This was his best lead yet. But something seemed off. Instead of one- on- one interviews, a dozen applicants were funnelled into a room. A young man in a grey suit greeted them, introducing himself as Ramon Jimenez.
“Good afternoon!” Jimenez shouted, to a muted response. “I can’t hear you!” he said, rousing slightly louder replies. “Who’s got a positive attitude here? Who wants to be a success!”
Two applicants smelled a scam, stood up and left.
“See those people?” he said. “They don’t have a positive attitude. But I bet you do.”
He launched into an infomercial of a speech offering “free sales training” for a week. Better said: You worked for free. “No,” Perdomo said under his breath, standing up and plunking his application on the chair. “No, no, no. Not this.”
The following morning, his phone dinged just after dawn.
It was a voice mail from Daniel, his boyfriend.
“You’ll get through this. You’ll get through this. There’s no other way,” Daniel said on the choppy recording. “Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget how much you have already done. You can do this.”
“Give me the list,” Perdomo said, taking a patient sign-in sheet from a nurse. It was 26 hours later, and Perdomo was standing in a pristine lab coat in central Lima’s Solidarity Hospital of Mirones. “Hospital” was a big word for this cluster of freight containers turned into makeshift doctor’s offices, but he wasn’t about to quibble.
He got a break the night before. His roommate’s employer, a dermatologic firm, was looking for a clerk at one of their Lima clinics. He’d rushed over for the interview. After 20 minutes, the owner hired him on the spot. The salary: The equivalent of US$ 267 ( RM1,121) a month. Minimum wage in Peru. An incalculable fortune in Venezuela.
A doctor brushed passed him. He motioned to speak, but she ignored him, moving fast down the hallway.
“Doctors,” he said. “They all think they’re God.”
For the first time in a while, he laughed.
“I’m here for the interview,” Perdomo said, smiling and clutching his resume in a yellow folder. The woman indicated with her chin to go to the stairs behind her, where 40 applicants were patiently waiting in line.