tHuman mobility is a prerogative enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations Organization (UN) and that is the right that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have exercised for different reasons in recent years.
Political speeches, allocation of multimillion dollar resources and the affirmation that everyone escapes from hunger and violence from a socialist government proposal in search of a well being in countries with openly neoliberal systems, allow us to think that leaving Venezuela became more a mediatic, than a human phenomenon.
In social media and networks, groups say that just after crossing the border, all the problems of the population of a nation, that has been openly blocked for months and attacked from many sides for years, are just gone but, news! Negative campaigns on networks, manifestations of hatred for origin, xenophobia and stories about abuses and mistreatment, attest that when arriving in those countries the problems are far from ending and the reality is quite different from what the campaign that invites to leave the country says.
Welcome?
Episodes of xenophobia have always been registered in all nations and experts says that the nationals of the receiving countries see the immigrant as an intruder who can take away their jobs, that are already scarce for them, they see in the newcomer someone who accepts to work for less pay, worsening the precarious economic situations, and who, in addition, consume their already insufficient resources.
At the end of the 20th century, Nelson Mandela and Mary Robinson, at that time a High Commissioner of the UN for Human Rights and also Secretary General of the World Conference against Racism, signed a document admitting that: “Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance have not disappeared. We recognize that they still persist in the new century, and their persistence is rooted in fear: fear of the different, fear of one another, fear of the loss of personal security. At the same time that we recognize that human fear is in itself impossible to eradicate, we are convinced that its consequences can be eradicated”.
The so called “Vision for the 21st Century” Declaration realized that intolerance is an aged phenomenon that keeps people separated to avoid common causes against systems that feed on cannibalism among brother peoples.
Characters like Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini and the representatives of the Vox party in Spain support their political campaigns based on fear and hatred towards those who come from other lands.
In Latin America
Venezuelans are now the subjects of hate, and their drama is used to divide, scare and stifle union attempts that threaten the established system.
Aged regime around the US that was threatened when the 21st century arrived with bets on socialism in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Eastern Caribbean countries.
Diana Carolina
An example of hatred for origin against nationals occurred in Ecuador after January 20, 2019. An unfortunate and heinous murder occurred in the streets of Ibarra, north of Quito. It was Diana Carolina’s femicide; a pregnant woman who received slashes from her sentimental partner in the presence of several police officers who, outnumbering and being more armed than the offender, failed to avoid the crime for 90 minutes that the hostage situation lasted.
In front of the mobile phone cameras, the kidnapper armed just with a knife killed the woman; nobody stopped him. The next day, the headlines highlighted only that a “Venezuelan man” did it.
The attention was not focused on the absurdity of the inability of several armed policemen with shields and riot gear to subdue a single man; what stood out in the stories was the nationality of the subject.
In response to the murder, the president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, announced “the immediate formation of brigades to control the legal situation of Venezuelan immigrants in the streets, in the workplace and at the border” and that restrictions would be established against the entrance of Venezuelans.
That caused a wave of violence that ended in the anti-Venezuelan aggression under Moreno’s slogan that said “#TodosSomosDiana”, explaining that for Venezuelans “we have opened the doors, but we will not sacrifice anyone’s safety”.
Now in Peru
More recently, Venezuelans are victims of xenophobic campaigns that accuse them of being the cause of Peruvian crime, unemployment and insecurity, a nation that is going through a political crisis that includes the recent removal of the president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, for the case of corruption.
Under the slogan “Maduro, pick up your trash. Outside of Venezuela”, on September 28, a nighttime protest against insecurity in that country spread rapidly in networks.
President Nicolás Maduro blamed the Peruvian oligarchy and Martín Vizcarra, president of the Inca nation, for tolerating violent acts.
That same day, the return of more than a hundred Venezuelans to their homeland was ready.
They asked to return to escape the hatred they claim to have suffered, but the plans were frustrated when the company in charge of providing fuel for Conviasa’s flight for the return, refused to refuel the aircraft.
The excuse was that the measures of the US Government against Venezuela prevented it, so they were stranded for more than a hundred hours, and with no place to shelter, including elderly adults and children, some of them sick and the most of them disappointed to have left their homeland.
The Vega family had to live on the street
Juan Carlos Vega, one of the Venezuelan migrants who was stranded in Lima due to the refusal of the fuel supply, said: “I am in the street, living in the street. I arrived here in Peru two months ago and I have been on the street for 18 days, nobody has given me a helping hand, nobody has offered me a job because I am Venezuelan, as they tell us ´venecos´”.
He explained that his decision to travel was for “friends who tell us they are well outside and it is a lie”.
According to his experience, for a Venezuelan to survive “must have a good job, very good luck and yet the services consumes you”. His original plan was to stay at a friend’s house, but it was not achieved and he spent all his money in hotels until he was in a street situation with his wife and son.
“What I can tell you is not to come, do not leave the country because you are going to be treated badly, you are going to be in the street; like me, with no money even for a deodorant and being out of the country is hard”, Vega stressed from Lima with frustration after bad experiences, among which he says that he, his wife and son were called thieves and murderers and that they received teasing from the moment they disembarked from the bus that moved them to the Inca nation.
She went out looking for well being and returns with bad health
It is highlighted among the arguments to decide to migrate, the possibility of accessing better health and social protection plans, but that was not what Paola Medina lived, another Venezuelan whose experience of migration to Peru was very different from her original plans.
She lived in Lima for a year and three months until she was able to return last Wednesday, October 2, when the flight arranged by the Government to repatriate two hundred Venezuelans was able to refuel to fulfill its mission.
Medina explained that she spent six months without finding work, during which time she dedicated herself to sell Venezuelan chicha in the streets.
“On November 28, I clearly remember, there was a Peruvian tripped us and the whole merchandise was spilled on the floor and on February 15 I got a part time job in a bakery; I was paid half of the salary, nothing more, but three months ago they scheduled me for a full shift, but I got sick two months ago; I had a facial paralysis”, she said while waiting for the flight held in Lima.
The Venezuelan assured that she did not receive the necessary attention in the hospital: “They told me that if they treated me for an emergency, they would give me an injection for pain; because I got a pain from behind my ear, but they did or said nothing about the medical tests or medications I needed”, she said.
She said she had to pay a private neurologist who prescribed medications that apparently affected her liver and caused hepatitis. To her health deterioration case is added to have suffered a cancer about two years ago that merited the removal of the nodes of her left arm and now she fears that the disease has returned: “because my breast has turned totally hard”, she explained.
“I think that if someone says ‘Peru’ to me I would shake because, at least my health, didn’t do very well in here”, Medina said.
