My friend, a Venezuelan in exile - Jenn Villalobos

It was a privilege to sit down with my dear friend Jenn Villalobos to discuss a topic that's often overlooked: what it truly means to live in exile.

Jenn has been in exile from Venezuela for 27 years, part of the more than 9.5 million Venezuelans (30% of the population) forced to leave their homeland since the 90s. In this deeply personal conversation, she shares her journey from growing up between the US and Venezuela in the 1970s and 80s, to witnessing the dramatic transformation of her country, to making the impossible choice to never return.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What life was like in Venezuela before and after Hugo Chávez came to power
• The rapid descent from prosperity to crisis through corruption and oppression
• The personal cost of exile: losing friends, family separation, and raising children without their cultural roots
• The fear, grief, and survival mode that comes with watching your country collapse from afar
• The cautious hope emerging after Maduro's capture, and why change will take time
• What the rest of us can do: "Please don't look away. Don't forget."

This isn't just a political story, it's a deeply humanitarian and psychological crisis that has impacted millions of families for nearly three decades.

You can find Jenn’s blog post here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/un-shielded-thirty-one-days-hope-after-twenty-seven-years-villalobos-ufrrc/ 

My ask: If you have Venezuelan friends or colleagues, listen to their stories. Validate their experiences. And please, don't look away.

About Jen Villalobos:
Jen is currently Deputy CEO of FasterGreener (https://www.linkedin.com/company/fastergreener/) , an AI company focused on solving traffic congestion. She spent nearly 30 years in corporate roles focused on digital transformation and technology. She's also a journalist, a mother, and a Venezuelan who dreams of the day her daughter can experience the Venezuela she once knew.

#Venezuela #Exile #HumanRights #LatinAmerica #UncommonCourage #VenezuelanCrisis #Diaspora #HumanitarianCrisis

You can find me Andrea T Edwards | The Digital Conversationalist and Welcome - Uncommon Courage - An Invitation. 

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage 

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar 

Transcript

0:04

Welcome to Uncommon Courage, the podcast. My name is Andrea Edwards, and here we talk about all of the different aspects of the poly crisis, and there are many of those aspects. But one of the topics I really, really wanted to talk about was Venezuela. So when Maduro was, uh, kidnapped by the US, a lot of my Venezuelan friends who are in exile around the world were commenting happily on social media. And I wanted to reach out and say, do you want to do a podcast then? But I kind of held off because I think there's danger for people who are not in their country, especially if they've got family and friends who are still living there. So I kind of held off. And then the other day, my amazing friend Jen, Jen Villabalos, posted a blog on LinkedIn called

Unshielded: 0:50

31 Days of Hope After 27 Years of Exile. Now most of us would never know what it feels like to be in exile, and we never will know. So just from that perspective, I think it's interesting to understand. But also, now that we've had— I don't know, it's more than 31 days now— what's going on, you know? Is the hope still there? We've got the same party in power, we're seeing what's going on. So I thought this is a good time to bring my great friend, and you're going to love her, she's an amazing woman Jen into the conversation. So welcome, Jen. Hello, good afternoon, Andrea. Thank you so much for having me on this amazing podcast. I follow you, um, with a lot of discipline and rigor, and I know that a lot of the topics and content that you um, share, is, is very well investigated. And I know that I'm in a safe space, so absolutely go ahead and ask any questions. Thanks, mate. And honestly, if there's anything we can't talk about, we've both been living in parts of the world where we have to be careful, and that's okay. And that's a respect thing as much as anything. But you've started a new tech company, an AI company, and it's an example of tech for good. Do you want to just quickly talk about what you're doing at the moment and then we'll get stuck in? Sure, absolutely. So after almost 28 to 29 years in the corporate world, I decided that I really wanted to get ahead of the artificial intelligence game, and this is beyond utilizing the tools and understanding how to really scale out. The role that I was in previously was really more focused on digital transformation, so a lot of the core tech and you IT, know, legacy businesses, whereas I really wanted to be at the And forefront. so I decided to, you know, take a brave step and become the deputy CEO of a business called Castor Greener. This is a business that is headquartered in India, and it is, uh, the vision of an amazing, amazing, actually media personality, uh, Dr. Pranoy Roy. And Dr. Roy is one of the most intelligent, um, I would say, philanthropists that I've had the honor to work with. Um, he actually set up and created India TV with his wife, a tremendous journalist of the name of Radhika Roy, and they both have been through the thick and thin in terms of democracy and elections in India. And after all these years, they decided to bring to life one of their visions, which was to fix traffic. And so they patented a concept and an intellectual property kind of concept of several artificial intelligence— I'm going to call them engines to simplify, not to go too much into the technical side. But these engines pretty much utilize the proxy data from Google Maps in partnership with Google Maps to change the signaling of the traffic lights. And so the idea for us is instead of cities spending, I would say for every one intersection to get a full automated IoT device installed in four intersections, about$600,000, they literally don't have to spend anything. They can utilize the old infrastructure to be able to make it intelligent. And so that is what we're working for. We're pre-seed. And we're in the process of closing our funds. Oh, nice. Oh, congratulations, very exciting. And as you can all hear, very intelligent lady who knows her stuff. So, but today we're going to talk about you being a Venezuelan in exile. So I'm going to, I'm going to feature you, so hopefully that's, uh, that's okay. Uh, where is it? This one. Um, take us back to the beginning. You talk about your earliest story. What, what was life like in both, first of all, the US and then when you had to return to Venezuela with your family. So tell us that story because it's, um, it's it's a, a interesting one. It is. And so I was a child of the '70s and my mom and my dad were very early starters. Uh, they had us when they were in their teens, my sisters and myself. And one of the, the, the best practices that happened in Venezuela for, uh, children with high academic scores was to be able to open them opportunities to go overseas and come back through sort specialized funded government programs. And so both my mom and my dad got granted the scholarship of the Mariscal de Ayacucho, which is an institution pretty much focused on increasing the capabilities for Venezuelans back in the '70s, particularly for the oil industry, as well as for real estate, property development, and logistics. So these were industries that were in dire need of Venezuelans to really scale up. And that was what the Fundación Mariscal de Ayacucho did. My parents left for the US in 1975. Imagine this, I would have been only 2 years old and my sisters were going 6, 7. 6, 7, sorry, I had to make that joke. It's a joke in our house too. For the attendees out there, although I know it's not an important thing right now for Gen Alpha, sorry. But we pretty much lived our life in the US. I was surrounded by very young students, professional, very capable Latino immigrants or students that were immigrating to the US. We lived in Tucson, Arizona, and our lives was pretty chill. We were never, I would say, cast aside. I never really felt any type of racism, any type of isolation. As a matter of fact, Latino and Venezuelans were very much welcome within the Tucson community. They love salsa, they love merengue, so I never felt like I was not part of it. I met a lot of friends that were Hispanic American as well, and so we, we pretty much lived our lives with, with, with the, with the mixed culture between Venezuelan students, Mexican students, Ecuadorian students, and, and that was my upbringing with my parents. I'm sure it would be very different now. So, and then you returned to Venezuela. How old were you then? I was going, I think I was going on 13 years old, right? And born in Venezuela and I was with my mom and my dad. They were both already graduated. My mom had done an extra master's in organizational design and economics. So we stayed with my mom for a couple of years more before my dad went back to Venezuela to set up shop. By the time we arrived, my dad said very clearly to us, we're not staying in the capital, girls. We're gonna move to Lagunillas. And Lagunillas happens to be on the west coast of Venezuela, very, very, very close to the Lake of Maracaibo, which is pretty much a citadel that was created for the oil industry. These cities have been around since the 1930s. And Andrea, I kid you not, you would do a drone flyover over them and you can see them set up like American suburbs, 100%, with cul-de-sacs, with beautiful, neat little houses, white picket fences, with the difference that you had a lot of— well, you had a dike that protected us from the ocean coming in and a lot of of oil platforms at sunset. So that's what we saw and that's how we were brought up. What I understood back then from what I could hear from my dad, and this is why everybody in Venezuela spoke English back then. I think right now that's really declined. But when I was brought up and when my parents graduated, I would say 60% of the population spoke English. And it was because this interchange between the US and Venezuela. My father said to us very clearly, if you girls want to actually develop a career in corporate, the way to start it in Venezuela is we have to start with the oil industry. And none of us three really had any inclination, as you know, kids are very rebellious against what their parents do. We all studied something different. My sisters went into architecture and technology, and I went into mass communication journalism with a specialization in multimedia and computer sciences. And when I finished graduating as a journalist, we were already back in Caracas. And that is when things really started to change. So the economic era between 1980 and 1990 is one of tumultuous change. The first thing that you had is that you had in 1984, the Viernes Negro, which was the drop of the stock exchange of Venezuela. Right? So you had a very, very declining, really quick Bolívar. Against the dollar. The second thing that you had was a huge debt. So we owed so much money to many, many countries, and our international funds were being depleted by the governments back then. And there was a lot of social and economic disparity. I would say that maybe 60% of the population couldn't even read or write. By the time of the— which is very different from the golden age in the '70s. And with so much wealth coming in from oil, people used to ask the question, why isn't this evenly distributed? And the two funding or ruling parties back then were similar to like a Republican or a Liberal Party. So it was Acción Democrática and COPEI. They— everybody in a family were one or the other, but nobody was divided. There wasn't any anger. Of course there was like, My, you know, my candidate's better than yours. Your politics are better. One is more right-wing, one is more left-wing. But overall, Venezuelans were never disjointed by the political discourse, right? Until things started to get really, really bad. In 1994, I'm going to say the 24th of November, 1994, Chavez actually did a coup d'état. And this was young Hugo Chavez. He came in. I remember being young and being excited about what was happening because of the price of petrol have gone down very quickly, which obviously destabilized the economy. He got thrown into jail immediately after that. And we know that when a military, young military men are thrown into jail in Venezuela, that is actually pretty much protesting and trying to change the course of where the country was going. They're not going to have a good experience. We know that he was going to be either tortured or it was going to be very, very hard for him. By the time that he was freed, now we're talking about 1997, the first thing that he does is that he launches his career as a presidential candidate. And everybody was like, it's going to be very challenging for him to win. He doesn't have the majority of the votes. Very similar to what's happening in the United States. A lot of people underestimated when Trump took power. The similarities between how Chavez came to power and Trump came to power are very, very similar. So everybody that was in power used to think that they had no— or he didn't have any chance of winning. We as journalists had to go out into field and ask questions, and it was very clear that in the more impoverished and less rich part of of the, the city Chávez was a clear candidate to win, but the media wasn't reporting on it at all. They made it as a joke next to the Miss Universe that also became a candidate. So you had a Miss Universe, you had Hugo Chávez, and you had Salas Romer, who was actually the two parties that made a coalition. So you would think he would was not the case. So just going back to what happened in Venezuela when everything crashed, the economy crashed, and, uh, was it, was it just large-scale corruption? Uh. Yep, yep, large-scale corruption. So this is a legacy, and it's part of Latin America. Latin America overall has this terrible, terrible history of just large-scale corruptions oligarchy, the people who stay in power will do whatever it takes to keep the power, to keep the rich. And there's a big gap between the rich and the poor, as what happened in many countries in South America. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So just, just to be clear, so Chavez was elected. I remember he was a very big character. He was, uh, taking the piss out of the US every chance he got. So that was in 1997. So What happened? Like, what was it quick? Was it slow? I left. It was really interesting. I got my Australian visa as an international student the day, the day that Chavez was— when Caldera put on the the presidential, presidential ban over Chavez. I remember getting the call from the Embassy of Australia to say, Jen, your master's application for Wollongong University was approved. Please come. It happened while I was watching this on TV. And the feeling when he won was one of uncertainty, but people were calm. Why? Because we Venezuelans back then really didn't take politics too much to heart, right? Was like, you know what, we will navigate this. It will be okay. It looks like the dollar and the bolívar are actually strong. So this is good. We thought things were going to be okay. And I would say already by 2000, 2001's really radical changes starting to come into play. The first one was Chavez changed the name of the country. So what used to be the Republic of Venezuela became La República Bolivariana de Venezuela. And what meant for the people who were overseas like myself was all my documentation, from my birth certificate, from everything that I had, my national ID, just became completely obsolete. Wow. Right. And everybody who was overseas said, well, okay, how do we do to renew our passports? And then that was a control. Nobody could renew their passports through embassies of Venezuela or related embassies or sister embassies at all. That was the second one. And that was really strange for me. In 2003, they started having protests, and immediately when the process— protests started happening, there started to be, I would say, oppression. From the get-go to all the journalists. Unfortunately, I can talk about this. Two of my friends were actually abducted and killed during that. And that that was, was very hard for me. Two journalists, one from a very famous show. It was a journalist that used to do breaking news type of media, both online and on television called Alerta. She passed away. She was a young woman. And another friend of mine who used to work as a dual role for Amnesty International. Oh, I'm sorry about that. So one of the things that you talked about in your blog is that you basically went into survival mode. You said, I chose not to think, read, or relate to anything negative or political coming out of my country. And we all know that, that there's a cost to suppressing, yeah, those sort of feelings. So can you talk about, like, if you can go back and remember at that moment? Because you, you're already grieving friends. Like, what were you going through then? What was your thinking? And, and what was that impact like as you look back on it? Well, I think for me was I always thought I was going to go back, you know. I was going to finish my master's, I'm married, I go back, and I'm going to live happily ever after. Um, I had my child in Australia, so my son was born in Australia, and my plan was to introduce my son to my grandma, to my grandpa, to everybody. And the first piece of news that I got was, and this was advice from people in the country, Jen, just to let you know that Chavez is going to pass a bill that allows for if you come into the country with a child that was born or nationalized overseas, the government holds the right to keep the child in the country until they are 18 years old. Oh, okay. That was my first, um, I'm like, okay, I think I'm gonna apply for my Australian citizenship. That that was, was the first thing. I was, um, shocked. Then the, the shutdown of all the, the big media networks that you, that I grew up Radio Caracol, with Venevisión. This is stuff that had been for over 40, 50 years suddenly just being shut down. The paper that I used to write for, El Nacional, I had a column in El Nacional that was called Vida Comercial, or Commercial Life, that was focused on computer sciences and tech gadgets. That complete change, it was completely censored. You know, so there was no real source. And I think I felt personally very isolated and very scared. My grandmother was sick. This is my mom's mom. So my first grandmother. So I had all my four grandparents alive back then. And I knew that my mommy wasn't doing well. We call her mommy. And my mom said to me, Jen, I can't be with you for— with the baby. So my mom didn't get to see or be around Gabriel when he was born, when he was a baby. We spent 7 years before we decided to visit Venezuela again. So Gabriel went to Venezuela with Carlos and myself from Sydney with that, you know, the transatlantic route that you could do through Argentina and down the way back, um, to visit family. And it was a Christmas, I remember it was 2006, and we, we went in with our Australian passports. Immediately, and we did get grilled. We were asked all types of questions. How is it that you're Australian but your name is Villalobos and you were born in Petare? And so we will keep an eye on you and we need to track you. So they, they did warn us very clearly, but because it was Christmas in December, people were chill. Everybody wanted to have a party and have a fun time because we Venezuelans love to party, you know that. So it wasn't that bad. By the time, uh, you know, I saw my family, everybody was okay. I got to see my, my mommy before she passed away, thank goodness. And we went back to Australia. That was, um, I want to say, what was that, 2006, 2007, I believe, that Christmas. Um, and then things started getting worse with the nationalization of PDVSA, the first mandate from Chavez, and I never will understand this, is that the infrastructure that pretty much is the engine to the country stops being invested in. Why? Because sanctions. So if you don't have sanctions and you have nobody to trade, there should have been an alternative of, you know, another product. You know, you're trying to diversify, and in this case, your diversification are other countries, right? When you have just one type of product that you produce, which is oil, you're mono-productor, right? And didn't do any of that. He decided to pretty much sell the remaining oil and our international reserves, whatever we had, off to the highest bidder. And no capability was increased. Nobody studied engineering and oil tech, nothing at all. The dams— there was a beautiful hydraulic dam that we have in Guyana that used to be the pride and joy. I remember being You know, when you do the school trip, we used to go down to the south and see this dam because it used to pretty much ignite 40% of the country's electricity. That dam was shut down. And then there was many protests, many, many protests and many killings, and people started disappearing little by little. And so people just start living in their own bubbles. And then there is an exchange on the bolivar. And as you know, hyperinflation and the black market. And so they say what happens is that you start dismantling whatever was of the previous Venezuelan society of freedom, and you go into complete, complete Cubanization of Venezuela. Yeah, yeah, it's a— it's, it's, it's a— I mean, it's a shocking— it was quick and it was shocking. It completely— I mean, how do you— how did you— how did you deal with it? I mean, I know you said at the time you just sort of blocked it all out, but you know, like most people would say, well, it could never happen to us. I'm sure in Venezuela they thought it could never happen either, but then here and then there it was, you know. So what was that— what was that thinking like? Was it— I mean, there must have been such a long period of shock. I hear a lot of, uh, people like journalists talking about a failure of imagination that it could be as bad as it as it is. I think the US is going through a failure of imagination now. So can you help me understand that? Was it quick? Was it slow? I mean, it appears quick, but it. Was in 20 years, right? And so the way that I look at it is I relate it to my personal story. That was my operating environment. That's seeing my son. And so when I see my son doesn't speak Spanish, that my son doesn't like arepas, that even though I sing to him and I dance to him and I made him— thank goodness he has the genes for salsa now and got he's it. But this boy needed to hold on to an identity being, you know, we're living so far away and he became Australian. You know, when the World Cup happened and La Vinotinto would play, which is like my team, and there was another team, Gabriel's like, the Socceroos. And I'm like, oh gosh. So I would see And I was like, it's kind of sweet, but on the other hand, it's bitter because he can't share anything of my culture. Right. That was really— as much as I tried to replicate it, as much as I tried to find Venezuelans in Australia, we had a very small niche group of friends and it was very hard to keep the culture alive. So I think— but we held on to those small things as much as we could. From a political perspective, then you have to— 2011, right? So in 2011 was when Chavez was actually— there was another military uprising against him. And he was managed to get caught, but then he was released. He was even angrier. So the full force of— and I think the one thing Chavez did many good things, by the way, to maybe to give him some credit for the education of the impoverished, to try to increase literacy across the red zones, try to help as much as he can. However, they were just populist programs that were quite isolated. But I'm not going to take that away from him. It did help him quite a bit. What he also did very strategically was that he dismantled and completely imprisoned anybody who was— who helped him in the uprising, which is insane. So the same people that supported him to get into power was the people that he decided to imprison. And that is when— that is when the Eli Coide was created, this horrible, horrible— Eli Coide was supposed to be a kind of shopping center mall. Remember like Turf City in Sydney? Singapore, a similar vibe but huge, huge, like I would say 3 times the size of Turf City. And it became the center of, um, for the, the Secret Service, which is pretty much where they hold and they hold a lot of the political prisoners and where they hold torturers. And we know that that place, once somebody goes into the helipad, nobody comes out, right? For me overseas to see that was even harder. And so that's when I, I just made the blanket decision to try to see my family when I could by paying their ticket when they had chance to come out, leave the country to see me. And so I brought my mom to Singapore 3 times. I brought my stepdad as well with my mom, you know, 2 times. I was able to bring my niece, thank goodness, for my daughter when she was born in Singapore for her baptism, but very isolated incidents, right? So I was able to do that to try to— I would say my biggest journey was my family not being able to be in contact because I am a family woman. So I was brought up with cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody. I think if you saw the Bad Bunny halftime, that was the life that we had. And so I wanted that for my kids. And that's one of the prices that I think they had to pay. Yeah. Yeah, you all had to pay it, right? Yeah. But for them, it's harder because I know what it is to have a cousin, what it is to have an aunt, what it is to play in a big house. They didn't have that, and I think that's one of the prices that we, we pay. And I know that they're okay, they're in a much better— they are multicultural, very strong kids, but they don't have that. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's something that people who don't leave their home country will never really truly understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm raising a half Australian half English but Singaporean PR doing national service. They're like, well, they're all over the place, their accents are all over the place. But, but we've, we've always had a choice to return. Yeah, exactly. And that's what you didn't really have. And I mean, just being a journalist, going back in that Christmas must have been truly frightening. It was really hard. And then the— I think one, one story that I didn't write because it was going to get too long in the blog was the story of my sister. So my sister who Jackie, in, in the United States. So she's been exiled for about the same time I have. She's going on to— no, a little bit less, 24 years, sorry. And when she left Venezuela, she left very clearly on asking for— as a refugee in the United States, because my brother-in-law is the nephew of a very, very outspoken journalist against the regime. Right. And so that was very, very hard for them. And my mom was, okay, you have to get married before you leave, or I don't know how you're going to do this. So they, they got them a quick wedding and then send them off. And that was— imagine for my mom, first my other daughter in Australia, now this one in Miami. So I see everybody leaving. My sister, my sisters and I were very close, so we decided is to— how can we help other than economically? We're worried about the younger generation. So the younger generation didn't have access to safety. Imagine being a 16, 17-year-old, being able to walk out into the streets without being mugged, without being raped, without something happening to you, without being kidnapped because the situation was so dire for your shoes or for what clothes you were wearing. Kidnap Express happened between 2011 and 2016 quite regularly. And my, my brother-in-law and my sisters were kidnapped once. Imagine that, that just even if it was just for 24 hours is the most horrifying experience. And so we, we decided that after my sister's kidnapping, we need to get the kids out. And so what we did with my nieces who were in, in Venezuela, one of them left to Portugal because dad is Portuguese or has— he's Venezuelan with Portuguese passport. So EU passport, very easy. Send them off. Then the, the younger one who was still like 9, we— my sister says I need to hold on to her a little bit longer. I'm not ready to let her go. And she had to let her go at 15. So my sister has been floored, right? But my sister, one of the other twin, decided to stay, and she stayed to take care of my mom. Yeah. Oh, these big tough decisions. I mean, 30% of the population, 9.5 million Venezuelans, are living— have been living in exile. Yep. You know, that's a lot of people suffering. Um, is your sister safe in the States with what's going on over there now? Or— Yeah, so interestingly enough, you have a group of Latinos that are in Florida that I think, you know, that they still support the Republicans. So that's a very— it's interesting. It's, as I said, it's not as easy as a blanket of being on one side or the other. Um, But my sister's fine. She has American citizenship now. She's okay and doing fine. My nephew is fine, but my two nieces had to go to Europe and now are with her dad and once in a while come back to Venezuela to visit their mom. But it's, it's a lot of— I would say it's almost like applying to NASA every time we travel back home or they have to travel back home. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it splits the family up and it's very difficult, you know, to ever get it back. So looking ahead, so I was watching a lot of my friends, including you, sort of talking about this sort of feeling of hope. And you said you recognize that change is happening, though not at the finger-snapping velocity we expect. The system of hate, division, and oppression is still present. It will take time to dismantle. But I believe with all my heart that it will fail— oh, that it will fall. Sorry. So I don't know how many days have passed since, uh, Maduro and his wife were captured. Yes, 35. 35, right? We've got the— we've got the same party in power. Yeah. Um, the, the, the groups within society that sort of keep society under control— I can't remember the Spanish term for them they're still prowling and collecting. Yeah, uh, the Venezuelans within the country aren't speaking up, uh, so the fear is obviously still prevalent. Uh, we've seen oil deals. Um, how, how are you feeling now? Like, are you still feeling that it will fall? Um, yeah, okay, absolutely. And I, I think, um, The way that I like to think about it is that you start seeing the cracks. The first thing was the political prisoners. These— the, the release of the political prisoners is critical. Now, it's not happening at the speed that we would like, but from the first negotiation of 900, I think they're going on to 1,000 now, and they're starting to let go. There is a little bit of retaliation happening, by the way, so I'm not saying it's peach perfect and everybody's released and it's happy forever after. There are some challenges, definitely. There's still collectivos attacking, um, and they're, they're, they're— but, but the way that they're doing it now, it's a little bit more sloppy and it's messy. So they're starting to fight amongst themselves because they're trying to hold on. It's different when somebody has the power and has the control and what they don't. And what we're seeing is that the current regime who supported the whole machinery of Maduro— because Maduro was just the head, but this is a machine, right? We're talking about years of corruption, years and years of, of, of power and control, and that's not going to topple overnight. But what we're starting to see is that there's division amongst them, so they are starting to fight, which is a good sign. The second one is when you see Delcy Rodriguez making all these, uh, announcements about she wants peace and she's working, and the US saying this is great that she's doing it— don't be fooled by that, right? She is saying it out of fear. She is literally scared because she knows that she is going to come next. And so what is happening right now is that you have the delegation, you know, they opened up the embassy exactly a week ago. So you have Laura right now going in, being the interface of the US with Venezuela. She's absolutely fantastic. She arrived in Venezuela, no pompous, no big plane, no red carpet. This woman flat, like rolling up our sleeves, ready to start deals. We're starting to see, because the sanctions have been lifted, money flowing through for the first time. My sister sent me a photo. I wish I can send it to you if you can, with the price of chicken at$2 when it was always $16 or $17. And she was like, I can buy chicken, you know. And it's like these little signs that we haven't seen for almost 27 years. You can't deny them. And that's why I hold hope too, that what I'm hoping is that there was going to be a reelection and it's going to be a peaceful election and the proper and democratic legitimate elections that will put the right people in power. I think that that will happen before the end of the year. And that is my belief. The other thing is that when you start giving a country, just the basic access again to food and to water and to their rights, and not, not feeling that's going to be too much oppression. People are becoming much more comfortable going out to the streets, being more vocal. There are, uh, there's a group of moms right now completely camped out outside of the EDI, waiting for their children to be released every night. That never would have happened. So to see people are taking the courage and they're mustering this, seeing this confidence is for me a really good sign. And then the ones that is complicated is obviously the people who are currently in power, the Rodriguez, both brother and sister. They are— I want to let you know they are related to Carlos El Chacal, which is— I don't know if you remember that horrible, you know, terrorist, French terrorist, and he's a killer and a torturer. So they learned the ways of torturing through him. These people are definitely in power. I think they'll have two ways to leave eventually, which is pack up, take as much as they can and go, which will be the safest for them, or try to stay and fight and win over the people. And I don't think that's, that's gonna happen because right now they've not only terrorized the elite that before, or the people that had previous power, or the wealthy, it's everyone. And I see around around. Just when you see, when you see that, uh, BBVA, which is one of the banks, is starting to hire, that is fantastic news. Finally, finally I can actually send money to Venezuela without going through the US. That was another one, through QR code, which is fantastic. These are signs that I feel, um, fill me with joy, fill me with hope. Of course, I'm not saying that it's 100% safe. If you ask me Do I want to go back? Carlos and I were looking at flights. We were— it would be fantastic. I would love for Carla to see Venezuela. She has never been. She has never met my aunt who's over there. She has never met. And so we would love to, but at this stage, I don't feel comfortable. I would wait a couple of maybe 6 months to see stabilization, see the country a little bit more I would say, en route to becoming the wealth and happy, joyous power that it deserves to be, um, before we, we go. Most likely I will not move to Venezuela. Most likely I will continue to stay in Thailand, um, just because my life has been overseas. I don't see myself in, in Venezuela for a while. Yeah. And, and, but looking at what's going on with the U.S. government and corruption claims and Oh God, everything that's been happening over there. Um, do, do the Venezuelans who are living abroad, do they trust the Americans to help bring this new future to fruition, or is there trepidation around it? Because I think there's a little bit of trepidation depending on who, but they— the people that— and this is what it's— what I like to say is it's not a political war. It's almost like a religious spiritual one. This is about the human story behind it. So for example, even though I'm a big supporter of the opposition leader of Maria Corina Machado and I really, really admire her, I don't agree necessarily with her giving away, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize, um, just because as a female and as a woman who finally— like a Venezuelan woman who who received that honor, you know, it's like, ah, you gotta give it away. No, but, you know, desperate measures. You have to understand what is behind that and the why. And, um, even though I don't condone it, I understand it. It's the same with a lot of people right now. They, uh, there are a few of Venezuelans who are working in, uh, American oil industries that are heading back that have been completely— you go and start working. A lot of the ports at Puerto Maracaibo, which was closed, which never had any cargoes, have a whole bunch of cargoes. So I'll send you some of the videos, but it's really, it's really hopeful, you know, to see the momentum. But it's going to be a long journey, definitely. Yeah, yeah, it's a big rebuilding story, right? But it's so interesting because your perspective isn't what the rest of us are getting. Yeah, we get the mainstream, but you're, you're like, this port's open, wow, isn't that amazing, you know? And we know, and you know what that means. We might not necessarily know. All right, so for all of us non-Venezuelans, um, what, what, what do you say to us, like, as, as, you know, the 27-year journey through this situation? But, but also, um, how can we help? What can we do? I Just because you're doing this podcast, right, and you're asking me to be in it, you can't imagine what it feels. You're giving people like me a voice, and my only ask is please don't look away. Don't look away. Don't forget, right? This— we have been wanting— we have made so much noise for the past 27 years. It's the first time that we are making the noise, and I know in other news like Greenland or another country— well, my ask is please don't look away, right? Let's try to acknowledge also the complexity, right? This is not a political issue. It's a deeply humanitarian and psychological crisis that has been impacting, as you see, the people overseas. The number that I quoted was 9.2 million. That was from the year 2000. There were still people before that who left earlier. So imagine. So we don't know what the real numbers are. Just support the, the diaspora, right? Um, a lot of us are still in survival mode after leaving. You know, we still have to maintain our jobs to be able to support and send money to Venezuela. So if you have any opportunity, any skill that you say, hey, look, I'm interested in going and I'm feeling the big trade and I want to build a bridge with Venezuela community to help rebuild, please go ahead and do it. Venezuelans open to that diversity and that knowledge. This is not an isolated project. Then validate the truth. When I say that is because unfortunately there's a lot of fake news with AI out there. If you're not sure if a video was right or is it wrong, or you can't information on what's happening internally, right now the internet is completely open. So a lot of the news that's happening from Venezuela is coming out. I'm happy to give recommendations to anybody, what channels to look at, who to follow on Instagram, on TikTok, which everybody is using, on X as well. And make sure, but when you can, try to validate the, um, the information because there's a lot of misinformation out there. Um, help us keep the real story of Venezuelans alive. And then the big one, Patience, which I tell myself a little bit, because we have to understand that even though the regime is— even though Maduro is not around anymore and he's been removed, the regime hasn't failed. It's failing. Okay, it's failing. It's in the process of— it doesn't mean that's completely gone. And it's very important that we understand that this is a system of hate, that it will take it's take going to so long for Venezuelans to rebuild. My vision would be for my daughter to be maybe 30, 40 years old and go to Venezuela and have political conversations without families being, um, divided because of the views that they have. And I hope that she can live what I lived. And that, that for me is like the overall message. And she's only just 13 now, right? So 30 to 40. Wow. I'll bring us back up together. Thanks, mate. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about it. It's one of those stories, even in a friendship, it's always in the background of our friendship, but you don't often sit down and just sort of really talk about it. We could go on forever and ever. But yeah, if you've got space to give people a voice, Um, pay attention to what your Venezuelan friends are saying. That's what I've been doing. Uh, there's a lot of people with um, opinions, that, uh, aren't necessarily in align— so if they're not in alignment with what you're saying and other people I know are saying, I, I question them. Because if they're not Venezuelan, uh, if they're just somebody outside— so I think it's really important to get the inside story as much as we can. So But thank you for talking to us, and I hope that nobody watching this is ever put into the same situation, you know, and everything that comes with it, right? I, I think, um, what I love is— and again, I'm going to go back to— maybe I'm going to write about this also— is like the Bad Bunny halftime was such a pride for us Latino and Hispanic community. Um, but we have— you know that Bad Bunny has been one of the most amazing, amazing reggaeton artists from 2012, 2013. So I've known him for a very long time. It's funny that people are just starting to know him, but it takes— it's taken him forever, and he's had to say no to money, and he's had to do all these things to just put the Latinos on that world stage. It's the same thing for Venezuela. Like, I, I wish, you know, like, platforms like yours and anybody, when you get a chance, sit down, listen, ask questions. I understand that, um, just because, you know, we're supporting and we're happy doesn't mean that we are in agreement with what's happening in the US. Please try to, to, to, um, decouple the, the thinking that way. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's a good piece of advice. It's, it's the US bit that sort of makes me a bit apprehensive. But all right, thank you, my darling. I appreciate it, and I'll see you soon. All right, thank you so much, Andrea. Take care. Bye. See you. Bye.