MARACAIBO, Venezuela – When Ana Villalobos heard that a group of Venezuelan migrants was at the center of a political controversy that was raging in the United States, her reaction was swift and painful.
Just a few days ago, her daughter left this crisis-raved city and traveled north with 40 other people, some children and pregnant women, determined to overcome Darién Gap, one child. The famously dangerous road lies between Panama and Colombia, on a quest to reach the United States.
Soon after, she lost contact with her.
Ms. Villalobos later learned that Republican governors had transported newcomers like her daughter to other states.
“We Venezuelans have suffered a lot, because they treated us that way,” she said.
However, reaction among Latin American officials has so far been largely muted to the latest moves by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who sent two planes carrying migrants to Martha’s Vineyardand Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who sent two buses to Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington.
Some in Latin America have voiced accusations that Mr DeSantis and Mr Abbott have been largely out of touch with the Venezuelan crisis – and even hypocritical, as Republicans have been vocally critical of the Venezuelan government how harsh. Nicolás Maduro, whom they blame for the crisis.
Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, wrote on Twitter that Mr DeSantis was using migrants as “political props”, which he called “disgusting and reprehensible”.
“Many of these simply dismiss the alleged concern that GOP politicians in FL claim to have democracy and human rights” in Latin America, he wrote.
Mr. Maduro has not made public anything about the migrant shipment or the growing political situation in the United States.
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On Friday, a lawmaker in Colombia, Karmen Ramírez Boscán, who represents Colombians living abroad in Congress, said that elected leaders in the United States were wrong to use “pain and people’s suffering for political gain”.
“Migration is not a weapon for politics,” she added in an interview.
In the wake of the latest movement of migrants out of Florida and Texas, other leaders in Latin America have attacked more broadly about the United States’ treatment of undocumented migrants.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico has also criticized American politicians for using migration as a political tool, including earlier this year when Abbott signed an executive order allowing the Texas National Guard to detain keep migrants.
“Because there are elections in November, they are looking for sensationalism, because of the scandal,” Mr. López Obrador told a press conference in July. “We don’t appreciate having anti-immigrant campaigns for election purposes, I consider it immoral.”
In Maracaibo, a city in the oil-rich state that once flourished in western Venezuela, 53-year-old Villalobos said her daughter, a high school graduate, had left for two jobs, selling clothes and working. Working at a restaurant, not earning money. family “even enough to buy food for a week.”
Ms Villalobos said: “We have five people here, two elderly and one child, and we are desperate.
She had not heard from her daughter for several days.
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One of her neighbors, Zulay Chirinos, had a friend in the same group who had left to try to come to the United States. That friend, 21, was four months pregnant, Chirinos added.
“They asked me: Why take the risk?” she speaks. “She took the risk because it was a choice between dying on the way, or dying here.”
The migrants sent across the United States by governors are a small part of the extraordinary crisis unfolding further south. Since 2013, millions of Venezuelans have fled the economic, social and democratic crisis overseen by the country’s leftist government, which economists call the worst crisis ever. outside of war in decades.
Many of these migrants have fled to other countries in South America. But as the pandemic has ravaged South American economies, many Venezuelans are now heading north.
An estimated 6.8 million Venezuelans, more than a fifth of the population, have left the country, the largest international migration in the history of the hemisphere.
The United States has tried to stem the flow by supporting a visa program that allows Venezuelans to live and work in Colombia. But that has only a limited effect.
Last year, the number of people crossing the Darién Gap, which connects South and Central America, hit a record, jumping from less than 10,000 in 2020 to more than 130,000, according to Panamanian officials.
This year, brutal forest road crossings are on track to break that record, and the majority of the migrants are Venezuelan.
Daniel Cooper Bermúdez, director of Hearts on Venezuela, an organization that raises awareness about the country’s humanitarian situation, said that US politicians are using Venezuelan migrants “as a political move.” .
“In a country that claims to be a representative of freedom and a promoter of human rights for its people, there needs to be cohesion inside and outside of Venezuela,” he said.
And in Maracaibo, some say the influx will only continue as the dire situation in Venezuela shows no sign of abating.
Two bricklayers in the city, a father and a son, set out for the United States on Friday.
Yudi, the wife and mother of the bricklayers, said they left because they couldn’t afford food. (Yudi, fearing that sharing her story would get her family deported if they came to the United States, asked to use only her name.)
“We fear what might happen to them, but none of what they get paid for their work is enough for anything,” she said. “Sometimes you have to take risks.”
Oscar Lopez Reporting contributions from Mexico City.
