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How the Venezuelan migration crisis affects South America
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 27, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Venezuela has seen a mass exodus of
citizens fleeing poverty, hyperinflation, failing public services and
shortages of basic necessities.
Here, AFP looks at how this situation came about and its impact not just on
the country, but also on South America as a whole.
– What is the scale of Venezuelan migration? –
According to the United Nations, 1.6 million Venezuelans have been
displaced in the region since 2015 as the fallout from the country’s economic
crisis took hold.
It says 2.3 million Venezuelans are now living abroad but others put the
figure much higher. The Central University of Venezuela’s diaspora think-tank
says 3.8 million people have left the country since socialist revolutionary
Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998.
Venezuelan sociologist Tomas Paez says between 10 and 12 percent of
Venezuelans currently live abroad in more than 90 countries.
Traditionally, the majority were in Colombia, the United States and Spain –
– but Peru has seen the biggest influx percentage-wise since 2015 with the
numbers increasing more than 150-fold.
As most are leaving on foot, it’s an arduous journey in a continent that
has an area of 17.8 million square kilometers (6.9 million square miles).
Many end up sleeping in makeshift camps or on the streets, living off food
donations and trying to earn scraps cleaning car windows at traffic lights.
– Why did this happen? –
It all began when president Hugo Chavez entered office in 1999, according
to Paez, but the crisis has accelerated since current President Nicolas
Maduro’s assumption of power in 2013.
Venezuela’s over-reliance on its vast oil reserves — 96 percent of its
earnings come from crude — caused a problem when the price plummeted in
2014, causing shortages of foreign capital.
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The government’s response was to print more money, but that only pushed up
inflation, ushering in four years of recession.
Paez says “insecurity” and the “repudiation of the… ownership of one’s
own life,” are the main factors driving Venezuelans to flee the country.
Add to that “economic deterioration … the terrible scarcity and value of
the bolivar” and the situation has become “a humanitarian crisis,” Paez
argues.
– How does it affect Venezuela? –
Initially the country was hit by a brain drain and an exodus of capital.
“At first the immigration was by people with capital and a university
education,” said Alfonzo Iannucci, who runs a website that diffuses
testimonies from the Venezuelan diaspora around the world.
Tomas Perez Bravo, of the Central University of Venezuela diaspora think-
tank, says now there is only one type of person leaving the country.
“The poor are leaving because now everyone is poor.”
He adds they are fleeing on foot “not because they’re not chemists,
sociologists or engineers” but because “it would take 30 years to save up for
an airplane ticket.”
Carlos Malamud, Latin American analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute think-
tank in Madrid, says the exodus is a deliberate ploy orchestrated by Maduro,
who’s “using migration as a political weapon against the opposition.”
– How does it affect the region? –
Iannucci says “the avalanche of Venezuelans” has “collapsed” border towns
ill-prepared for such an influx, such as Paracaima and Boa Vista in Brazil’s
Roraima state.
Venezuelan migrants were blamed for a rise in petty crime and competition
for jobs and hospital beds there, leading a band of local vigilantes to torch
migrant camps and chase them back over the border.
“We’re close to breaking point,” said Roraima state government secretary
Marcelo Lopes.
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But Iannucci thinks things are going to get worse: “This is just the tip of
the iceberg.”
The impact isn’t entirely negative, though, and can also be of great
benefit to host countries, Perez Bravo says.
“In Argentina they say that those arriving are young, entrepreneurial and
well-qualified.
“Some 60 percent of doctors applying for jobs in Chile are Venezuelan.”
Peru and Ecuador both announced stricter border controls before then easing
them.
Ecuador is organizing a meeting of 13 Latin American countries next month
while the UN is to set up a special team to ensure a coordinated regional
response to the crisis.
– How does it compare to other migrations? –
In terms of numbers it has already surpassed the Cuban exodus following
Fidel Castro’s revolution that toppled the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.
Around 1.4 million Cubans fled to the US with another 300,000 heading for
other parts of Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, according to the
Washington-based Migration Policy Institute think-tank.
But that was over six decades, not four years.
Most Cuban migrants went to the US, but “Latin American societies aren’t
prepared for such wide-scale arrivals,” says Malamud.
The Venezuelan exodus “is a complete crisis.”
“Given the distances covered, this phenomenon could be compared to the
refugee crisis in Syria,” he said.
According to the UN, 5.6 million Syrians have fled the country while
another 6.6 million are internally displaced as a result of seven and a half
years of brutal civil war.
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