Rosibel Diaz used to affectionately call her 4-year-old son \u201cmy chubby boy.\u201d She couldn\u2019t stand it when he started going hungry.<\/p>\n
So in November, Diaz packed up her family\u2019s possessions and boarded a bus with the boy and her 11-month-old daughter to escape Venezuela\u2019s famished interior. She now lives under a blue tarp in a trash-strewn alleyway of this Brazilian border village, where she begs for food.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t go back,\u201d said the rail-thin mother, who lost her job as a home nursing aide four years ago. She leaned against a pole, feeding a piece of bread to the baby. \u201cWe are surviving here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Survival for Venezuelans such as Diaz is becoming a matter of flight. About 10,000 Venezuelans are streaming into Brazil every month in search of food and medicine, authorities say, camping out on the streets and swamping government services in Amazon frontier towns ill-prepared to receive them.<\/p>\n
Oil-rich Venezuela has been an immigrant destination for much of its history. Now it is a place to flee. Chronic food shortages, rampant violence and the erratic and often paranoid behavior of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro have turned the country\u2019s border crossings and beaches into escape valves.<\/p>\n
It is an exodus by land, sea and air. Venezuela\u2019s well-to-do can leave on planes, if they haven\u2019t already. Rickety boats ferry small groups of migrants to Curacao, Bonaire and other Caribbean islands a short distance from Venezuela\u2019s north coast. But those numbers are dwarfed by the tens of thousands pouring into Brazil and Colombia each month \u2014 either for emergency shopping trips or long-term stays.<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s economic meltdown and political chaos have left its neighbors fearful of a large-scale humanitarian crisis that could bring even greater numbers of needy migrants.<\/p>\n
Every month seems to bring a new low. Maduro attempted to outlaw Venezuela\u2019s largest \u00adbanknote in mid-December, a measure that he said would strike at foreign powers conspiring to sabotage his socialist government. Instead, cash dried up, retail commerce froze, and Maduro suspended the move as rioting and looting erupted.
\nIt was a reminder to the whole region that Venezuela is burning on a short fuse, and Maduro\u2019s cash-strapped government will need a major boost in global petroleum prices to avert disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working with the understanding that things will get worse,\u201d Gustavo Marrone, the highest-ranking immigration official in Brazil\u2019s Justice Ministry, said in an interview. \u201cThe immigration issue can only be fixed when you deal with the problem at the origin, not at the \u00addestination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maduro abruptly closed Venezuela\u2019s border with Brazil and Colombia on multiple occasions last year, ordering the crossings reopened with just as little notice. This, too, appears to be fueling a sense of urgency among Venezuelans who opt to face precarious living conditions in neighboring countries rather than suffer the hunger and social breakdown back home.<\/p>\n
Brazilian government services are buckling under the weight of the sudden influx of Venezuelan migrants. Their arrival has overwhelmed Roraima, a poor, sparsely populated state the size of Wyoming.<\/p>\n
Venezuelans account for 60 percent of all hospital visits along the border, according to the Health Ministry in this northern state. Infections from sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing from the arrival of so many Venezuelan prostitutes. In December, Roraima\u2019s governor declared a state of emergency and appealed for federal assistance to cope with the crush of border-crossers.<\/p>\n
Venezuelans can enter Brazil without a visa and remain for 90 days, but even Venezuelans who don\u2019t have passports can skirt formal checkpoints to enter the country illegally. Pacaraima is surrounded by an indigenous reserve that straddles the border, making it easy to cross into Brazil.<\/p>\n
Almost overnight, sleepy border towns such as Pacaraima have been transformed into bustling hubs of international commerce, where makeshift supermarkets pop up selling food, medicine, soap and other goods that are hard to find in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
[In Venezuela, buying too much food can get you arrested ]<\/p>\n
Venezuelan shoppers crowd Pacaraima\u2019s main street carrying plastic bags stuffed with their rapidly depreciating bolivars, looking for the best prices on 50-pound sacks of rice they can haul back across the border. Nearly every business in town \u2014 from the beauty salon to the local tourism agency \u2014 decorates its storefront with big bags of rice and sugar.<\/p>\n
Shopkeeper Adriano Brito sells sacks of food alongside the tires and car jacks in his auto parts store. In six months, his sales have jumped from $3,000 to $25,000 a day. \u201cI had no idea it would be so sudden,\u201d he said.
\nAlthough some Brazilians welcome the business, many are worried that things are spiraling out of control.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no security or sanitation,\u201d said Osvaldo do Para, 55, who owns a restaurant next to the alley where Diaz and several other families live in a squatter\u2019s camp. Tattered sheets and underwear were flapping on a clothesline a few feet from his patio tables. \u201cI\u2019m having to suffer the consequences of another country\u2019s neglect of its own people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although they can easily enter Brazil, Venezuelans can\u2019t work legally unless they apply for an immigration or refugee visa. Because the visas are hard to obtain, many Venezuelans have taken informal jobs selling food, cleaning car windshields at traffic lights or unloading trucks at the border. The unregulated work has heightened tensions with locals, who say they are unable to compete with the Venezuelans\u2019 low wages.<\/p>\n
The crisis is similar in the Colombian cities along the border with Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Colombian authorities last year registered 6 million visits by Venezuelans crossing into their country, many of them to purchase food and other goods that have become scarce back home.<\/p>\n
There are no formal immigration checks at the busy crossings, so Venezuelans can freely enter Colombia as tourists, and it is unknown how many aren\u2019t going back. But Christian Kruger, Colombia\u2019s top immigration official, said many Venezuelans are remaining in the country to work illegally. Colombian authorities reported 2,000 Venezuelans last year who were caught working without authorization, Kruger said.<\/p>\n
But Kruger and other officials said they remain committed to an open-border policy that facilitates commerce and offers a lifeline to families who can\u2019t find enough to eat in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t turn our backs on the Venezuelan people at their time of greatest need,\u201d he said, adding that it would be logistically impossible to shut down the \u00ad1,400-mile border between the countries, which is heavily forested and crisscrossed by smuggling trails.<\/p>\n
Still, Kruger added, Colombian officials are preparing for the worst, and would be ready to cope with a collapse in Venezuela or a mass migration. The United Nations and international aid organizations would also be called on to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery government institution in our country knows what it has to do,\u201d he said, including the military, police and health authorities. \u201cWe know it isn\u2019t something that would only affect our border region. It would be the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: LatinAmerican Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosibel Diaz used to affectionately call her 4-year-old son \u201cmy chubby boy.\u201d She couldn\u2019t stand it when he started going hungry. So in November, Diaz packed up her family\u2019s possessions and boarded a bus with the boy and her 11-month-old daughter to escape Venezuela\u2019s famished interior. She now lives under a blue tarp in a trash-strewn alleyway of this Brazilian… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}