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Venezuelans flee home only to end up homeless in Brazil
[JOURNALDUCAMEROUN] The homeless Venezuelan woman in the Brazilian town of Boa Vista was once an operating theater assistant. And she once had dreams.

But her dreams didn’t travel well. Three months after abandoning her profession to escape chaotic, collapsing Venezuela for a new life in neighboring Brazil, she finds herself destitute.

"We came seeking refuge, not to be beggars," said the 42-year-old woman, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals back in her hometown of El Tigre.

She and her husband lay together in a hammock strung up between two trees in a quiet street near the center of Boa Vista, capital of the Brazilian frontier state of Roraima, which has seen a big influx of fleeing Venezuelans.

According to city hall, there are about 25,000 Venezuelans living in the city of just 300,000.

They all come to escape misery. Many don’t succeed: 2,500 are homeless, the city says.

The couple looked exhausted. To get here took them five days of walking from the border and they’d hoped to work enough to be able to send money back to their family in a country where basic goods have disappeared from shelves and medical services have collapsed.

But after three months, they have no work and not even a spot in one of the crowded refugee centers.

And while Brazilians have been welcoming in general, the stress on the modest communities in the region is mounting. This month in the town of Pacaraima, a mob chased out hundreds of Venezuelans and destroyed their meager belongings.

In addition to poverty and fear, the couple increasingly face exactly what they thought they’d left behind in Venezuela ‐ hunger.

"(At home), we can work, but a salary of 15 days would pay for one or two days’ food," the woman said. "I’d go to work without having eaten for three days. I’d get to the operating theater weak from hunger."

Since arriving in Boa Vista she said she’d gained weight thanks to a daily plate of rice and beans donated by a church around the corner. At times, her husband said, he’d got desperate enough to start searching for food in the garbage.

"We’re not doing anything here, just living in the street and getting sick," he said, also refusing to be identified.

The ultimate irony?

The forlorn couple would like to go back home, but don’t have enough money to make the journey.

"I think we have a future," the woman said. "I just don’t see it here."


Posted by: Fred 2018-08-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=521732