La lucha: Resilience and persistence in the journey of Venezuelan migrants
As Venezuela faces deepening political and economic strife, it has brought about one of the biggest human displacement crises in the world. A migrant’s journey to a new country centers around safety and opportunity, and the stories of these Venezuelan immigrants epitomize relentless determination.
By Nicole Chiarella
Samuel Molina thought he was just going to Disney World. At 11 years old, he never thought that when he left Venezuela — his home country and all he had known — he’d never go back. Death threats, kidnapping threats and the hope for better economic opportunities served as catalysts for his parents taking Molina and his sister to the United States. Molina’s parents shared that universal parental desire to provide their children with the best life they could. In order to do so, however, it required that the family leave behind everything and everyone they knew. Eight years later, Molina, 19, now attends NYU as a public policy and history major. They haven’t been back to Venezuela since.
“The country was not in a good place for us,” Molina recalls. “[My parents] didn’t see a future, especially for me and my sister, so they decided to move.”
Molina’s story isn’t a rarity. In the 2022 fiscal year, U.S. border officials apprehended more than 2.3 million migrants at the southern U.S. border with Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants comprising 24% of those apprehensions. These migrants often flee deteriorating economic and political crises in their home countries. Venezuela in particular has seen a worsening displacement crisis in recent years, driving the emigration of nearly six million migrants — second only to Syria.
Matias Gonzalez, an asylum practitioner in New York and an immigrant himself, credits the unstable government in Venezuela as one of the main forces spurring the massive exodus of Venezuelan nationals.
“A lot of the civil strife that is happening, including persecution, oppression,” Gonzalez explains, “[…] kind of flows from the lack of stability that the Venezuelan government is providing.”
Venezuela, once a prosperous, oil-rich country, has further descended into economic and political chaos during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro. Maduro, the successor to Venezuela’s previous president, Hugo Chávez, came to power in 2013, narrowly beating the opposition candidate with only 50.6% of the vote. He inherited a country still gripped by Chavismo and economic sanctions; a country that hadn’t recovered from an oil strike that significantly reduced its gross domestic product; a country that made arms deals with Russia; and a country that had a fractured U.S.-Venezuela relationship. Ruling under a socialist party, Maduro’s government has faced allegations of rampant corruption. While hyperinflation in Venezuela has somewhat eased in recent years, 50.5% of the Venezuelan population still live in poverty as of 2022 — though this represents a roughly 15% decrease from the previous year.
Political upheaval has also plagued the country. Maduro illegitimately created the Constituent Assembly which virtually dissolved the country’s democratic institutions, resulting in the collapse of the rule of law. The U.S., and more than 60 countries, does not recognize Maduro’s regime, instead supporting Interim President Juan Guaidó and the democratically-elected Venezuelan National Assembly. In addition to the unraveling of Venezuela’s political system, allegations have surfaced of human rights abuses. Amnesty International highlighted a report that found a high probability that crimes against humanity had taken place in the South American country. These abuses stem from the country’s intense political repression; reports have found multiple cases of torture, executions, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions.
In light of the darkness consuming Venezuela, migrants still don’t necessarily want to leave — as was the case for Molina and his family when they left their home country. Molina said that his family could have gotten by in Venezuela; his mother had a decent job at a Pepsi-Cola factory and could secure in-demand items, like milk, for her family with little trouble. But they wanted more for their children — so they left. Nevertheless, because of their immigration status and the closure of Venezuela’s borders to the U.S., the Molina family couldn’t go back to Venezuela even if they wanted to.
“My parents didn’t want to leave,” Molina says. “There was a point where I was mad at them that we left […] The fact that I had to leave so many friends behind — I never knew when I was going to see them again. I remember I was just hopeless.”
This isn’t an uncommon feeling among Venezuelan migrants, as Nora Margaret Anderson, a New York based immigration lawyer, points out. Anderson, whose work focuses on securing work visas for immigrants, acknowledges that people want a safe and stable country to go home to but it’s oftentimes not their reality.
“Nobody treks thousands of miles through […] the Darién Gap […],” Anderson starts, “because they wake up in the morning and they say, ‘Oh, gosh, I think I’ll become a migrant today.’ People leave their home country to seek asylum because they are at their wits end.”
Even for those who do want to leave their country in search of a greater life, there’s tremendous emotional anguish that accompanies such a decision. Seven years ago, Stephany Diaz decided to emigrate to Peru from Venezuela to find better opportunities and escape the political and crime crises. Diaz recalls having to sacrifice her comfort in Venezuela for her journey to Peru; upon arriving in Peru, she experienced homelessness. She had nothing, she says. Aside from her mother and sister, a majority of Diaz’s family remained in Venezuela. Diaz sums up her time leaving Venezuela in one word: horrible.
“There wasn’t a day I wouldn’t cry,” Diaz remembers. “There wasn’t day I wasn’t sad, like when you take a child from his mother […] I wanted to leave; nobody asked me to leave. I wanted to go to a country where opportunities were waiting for me […] I wanted to do something, to be somebody.”
Regardless of whether a migrant does or doesn’t want to emigrate, they often encounter challenges acclimating to their chosen country’s culture. Diaz, for instance, recounted her struggle with learning to socialize in Peru and appreciate the country’s culture, especially the cuisine.
“I had to learn to open myself up more to people, to practically change myself,” Diaz said. “When you migrate, you have to be able to accept other cultures, to appreciate and love the culture […] Even with food — Peru has nice dishes, but they are not mine. It took me a lot, but you learn.”
The struggle of acclimation resonates with other immigrants, like Angelica Martinez Servigna, who immigrated with her parents to the U.S. from Maracaibo, Venezuela, twenty years ago. Servigna, 22, admits she can feel friction at times between her American and Venezuelan cultures. Though she feels intimately acquainted with American culture, the law doesn’t recognize Servigna, a senior in NYU’s dramatic writing program, as an American. Servigna has argued with her boyfriend over her identity; he claimed that she, after living in the U.S. for twenty years, was “basically an American.” She responded with a resounding no.
“My mother has never let me forget,” Servigna says. “She’s like, ‘You are Venezuelan first. That is where you were born. That is who you are.”
Servigna’s relationship with her bicultural identity echoes that of Molina. Molina says that he struggled socially and academically when he first arrived in the U.S. He didn’t know English. He didn’t understand American culture. Molina didn’t want to leave the English as a second language class he was in because doing so meant he’d leave the only Latino community he felt he had in school. After transferring schools, Molina continued struggling with making friends because they couldn’t relate to his culture.
“When I moved, I was forced to assimilate,” Molina commented. “At that point, if I wanted to make any friends, they had to be in English; they had to be other Americans. That was scary […] It was hard to meet people who just don’t have the same culture as you […] You can’t even talk about the same shows you watch, the same things you enjoy, the same music that you would listen to.”
Even now, having lived in the states for eight years, the U.S. doesn’t feel like home for Molina. During his time here, Molina has been confronted with the racism that underpins the way Americans view South American immigrants. Molina realizes the privilege he had at only having to focus on school; he excelled in his academics and learned English quickly. These feats, though, were twisted by his American friends.
“A lot of friends would tell me, ‘You’re one of the good ones,’” Molina said. “‘You’re not loud or a criminal. You’re smart and you act white.’”
An immigrant’s journey is often littered with obstacles and trauma and pain, as illustrated by the experiences of Molina, Diaz and Servigna. Their trials and tribulations are unfortunate yet unpreventable growing pains of creating a new life and home in a foreign country.
“The resolve of an immigrant is unparalleled,” Gonzalez says. “I saw it in my own family. When you want to provide a better future for yourself and your children, there’s no hardship that’s too hard.”
Resilience underscores the stories of Molina, Diaz and Servigna. They each acknowledge the importance of family and community in their experiences immigrating and acclimating to their chosen countries. They also recognize that their immense sacrifices have provided them with opportunities that may have otherwise not existed. Molina can pursue his ambitions of political organizing and becoming a politician. Diaz has since gotten married and can now focus on growing her family. Servigna can follow her passion for documentary filmmaking.
“I still see [my parent’s decision to leave] as brave,” Molina said. “It took me a while to get it, but I see it as extremely brave. It’s something that they did for me and my sister […] I’ll admire them forever.”
