The unfolding crisis is stoking fears among Venezuelans, who want a better economy but see problems worsening

SAN JOAQUIN, Venezuela – The avocado trees across the street from Jose Hernandez’s tin-roofed home help feed several retirees in the rural community of San Joaquin, along a highway two hours southwest of the Venezuelan capital.

He and his neighbors cut the avocados with the owner’s permission and sell them to motorists at a nearby toll booth or on the streets of the nearby city of Valencia, which hasn’t been as hard hit by migration in the last decade as San Joaquin.

You live day by day. Her pension today is $3.70 a month, just 20 cents more than a gallon of bottled water costs. So no sales means there is no food.

“Sometimes we even have to trade avocados for food in other neighborhoods. We want jobs!” Hernandez, 67, exclaimed as he sat with a neighbor on his dusty, cement-floored porch. “He was a shipping agent, I sold goods downtown. There is no work at the moment. All the young people have already left. This neighborhood is deserted!”

The political, social and economic crisis shaping their South American homeland has developed since it began a decade ago as a result of a global decline in the price of oil, Venezuela’s most valuable resource, and the mismanagement of the self-proclaimed socialist government and the repression of its opponents Government.

The recent period has been particularly challenging after the economic stability that many had experienced for several months in 2021 and 2022 disappeared. They are once again struggling with ever-increasing food prices, business closures and painful thoughts of migration.

Amid this daily reality, Venezuelans are listening to election chatter as the opposition prepares to hold a primary on October 22 to select a candidate to challenge President Nicolás Maduro in a presidential election next year.

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But apathy and disgust toward politics and politicians — be they Maduro, his allies or his opponents — have deepened among young and old amid the litany of disappointments, allegations of corruption, rampant misinformation and state repression.

Maduro’s government managed to free Venezuela from a hyperinflationary cycle at the end of 2021 with government spending cuts, tax increases and foreign currency injections. For a time last year, workers could pull out a dollar or two and maybe even a few worthless bolivars, the local currency. Virtually everyone knew someone who ran a business from home, like selling sugar-free snacks on Instagram or offering group math classes.

The respite — after Venezuela’s economy shrank 80% from 2014 to 2021 — even prompted some Venezuelans to return from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and other Latin American countries that had welcomed them for years but where they were unable to find work after the pandemic Business. It also slowed the exodus from Venezuela.

But by January the stability was gone. May 1 came and went without the president traditionally announcing a minimum wage increase on Labor Day. At the last increase in April 2022, the monthly wage was 130 bolivars, which was equivalent to $30 at the time, but has since fallen to $3.70.

Today, a kilo of chicken costs about $2.40, a dozen eggs costs $2.25, and a liter (a little more than a quarter) of milk costs $2.

“It became very difficult. Even getting sick is difficult because when you buy food, you can’t buy medicine,” said Mayela Ramirez, 59, as she stood at her front door in downtown Valencia, once home to several auto assembly plants. “I have a nephew who has a problem with his brain – it’s growing like a ball there – and needs a biopsy, but he can’t afford it because it costs $150, so we’re holding raffles to raise money. “

Ramirez helps her husband run his auto repair shop, but it’s no longer uncommon for a week to go by without a single car being dropped off. She hasn’t shopped freely in the supermarket for a long time, where she now buys more vegetables than ever before because protein sources are too expensive.

She has noticed that people are leaving the country again, including four of her neighbors who emigrated at the end of September.

More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled their country, mostly to Latin American and Caribbean countries. But these days people are migrating with their eyes on the United States, not Colombia or Peru, which have taken in the most Venezuelans since the crisis began.

Over the past year, the number of Venezuelan migrants attempting to enter through the U.S. southern border has increased exponentially. U.S. Border Patrol agents have had more than 199,500 encounters with Venezuelans at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past 11 months, compared to 2,700 in all of 2020. There were more than 31,400 encounters in August alone.

Venezuelans have come to see the crisis as a numbing, contentless expanse of fighting, even as they use some of their larger disasters to gauge one year from the next: 2017 saw mass protests and repression against Maduro; There were severe food shortages in 2018; 2019 brought nationwide power outages; The year 2020 had queues at the gas station that lasted for days.

Concern is growing as people see many of these problems occurring all at once, even in the capital Caracas, whose residents have been partially spared some of the challenges of the crisis.

The variety of products on supermarket shelves and neighborhood markets is becoming ever smaller. Imported goods stores place merchandise at the front of the shelves to give the impression that they are fully stocked. Restaurants close. Filling a gas tank with subsidized fuel also requires careful planning. Power outages lasting hours are common in Caracas.

Many long for the days of “el Comandante” – the late President Hugo Chávez and his self-described socialist revolution of the 2000s. But regardless of their political affiliation, Venezuelans increasingly feel like pawns in a geopolitical game that ignores their empty wallets.

A 12-hour stretch on a recent day illustrated this growing sentiment.

Around 9:30 a.m., the highway that runs past San Joaquin was blocked by soldiers, reportedly due to unsafe conditions caused by downed power lines. However, they moved aside about two hours later after local leaders confirmed that Maria Corina Machado, the front-runner in the opposition’s presidential primary, had left the area.

At 4:30 p.m., the U.S. government, whose economic sanctions have failed to topple Maduro, changed its definition of security for Venezuelans as it announced the resumption of deportation flights to the South American country. The announcement came just two weeks after the country expanded protections for around 500,000 Venezuelan migrants, citing “increased instability and lack of security” in the country.

Around 6 p.m., news of the flights spread on social media and thousands of people gathered in Valencia for Machado. An hour later, the attorney general announced on national television a new criminal investigation into Juan Guaidó, an exiled opposition leader who led a parallel government to Maduro with US help

“The government needs to be removed, but what concerns us Venezuelans right now, right now, is the economy,” said Vanessa Martinez, 31, who does maintenance work at a rest stop for about $60 a month and didn’t know about the opposition’s area code .

“This is where you live day by day,” she said. “The situation is very sad.” Who knows when something will change.”