Venezuela's Economic & Migration Crisis - with Marina Hernández

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks with Venezuelan journalist Marina Hernández about her move to Argentina, and the context which drove her - and millions of others - away from her country.

For more information on the work of María Hernández, copy and paste this link: https://linktr.ee/ninaescritora

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome back to Latin America Correspondent. I'm delighted to say that today I'm here with Marina Hernandez, who's a Venezuelan-born journalist based currently based in Buenos Aires, who specializes in narrative reporting on social issues. Marina is also a poet and a writer of fiction and is the author of Los Hijos de la Revolución. We're going to put some links to Marina's work in the podcast info for anybody who wants to follow through and just look at some of her work elsewhere. Hi Marina, welcome to the podcast.

Maria Hernandez: 0:33

Hello, thank you.

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:35

No, no problem at all. Good to be talking to you. I know obviously, like the no-brainer, the place to start is you're Venezuelan, but you're in Buenos Aires. How does how does that happen? Can you just talk us through that, please?

Maria Hernandez: 0:51

Yeah. Um, well, like many, I had to leave the country because of the situation there in Venezuela. I left eight years ago, so I've been living here for eight years. Um, my migration, different to others, was not so traumatic. I came here, I studied here. That's where I got my degree on science of communications and journalism. Um, I can still enter Venezuela, so I visit now and then. Uh, but yeah, that's that's my reality.

Jon Bonfiglio: 1:21

Can you just take us into the a little bit of the broader context? I mean, of course, there's various ways of statistically speaking about the mass migration out of um out of Venezuela, the biggest movement displacement of people in the history of Latin America, um, up to a third of the standing population of the country leaving in the course of the last sort of 10, 12 years. But can you maybe just sort of paint a picture for us in real sort of human terms, as to what that looks like? I mean, obviously for you personally in terms of leaving the country, but also for other people as well, and and and what those processes, as you alluded to how for a lot of people it's a deeply traumatic, has been a deeply traumatic process to leave everything behind, not know where you're going, and so on. So maybe you could just draw some of those strands out for us if possible.

Maria Hernandez: 2:13

Yeah, I believe when I say it was not traumatic, I meant the conditions were not traumatic because I came in a good situation, etc. But there is always something traumatic about leaving your home in these conditions in which, yeah, I go there to visit, but I cannot remain uh a lot of time. I cannot go back uh whenever I want. I cannot go back to live there. And uh as the political persecution gets worse, uh, I went to Venezuela last month and I was scared to go. So I am not sure uh if I will be able to return again in the future, but um the basically the situation was there were three, what I call three big momentums of of migration, uh big waves of migration in Venezuela history that are linked to the protests. One was 2014, uh right after President Hugo Chavez died. And so there was a kind of a dispute on uh whether or not Maduro was the legitimate winner of the elections that followed a bunch of protests, and so a lot of people left. When I left, which was in 2018, was after the 2017 protests. So basically, growing up in Venezuela under these terms, and more so I would say when I reached the age of choosing, you know, a career to go to university around you know, 18, 19 years, the conversation around our friends was always how are we going to live? Like, what are your plans to go? So um, I mean, it was actually one another social event. I mean, we used to go to despedidas, which is what it's called like a birthday party. Like you would go to a birthday party and a despedida every every weekend to say goodbye to your friends. Um, for my group of friends, it was one of the first ones to leave, but right now, from a group of five people, we are all outside the country. Um so when I left, it was after a couple of particularly rough years in Venezuelan history, which was 2016 and 2017. 2016, uh Trump was in office back then. There were a lot of sanctions. So we struggled to find food, we struggled to find the most basic uh needs, kind of a little bit similar to the Cuban situation that has been going on for a while. Um I remember I used to do like one time I did eight hours offline just to get two packages of harina pan, which is uh uh an element we used to do, arepas, it's kind of our breath, and one uh package of sugar. After that, followed the 2017 protest where a lot of people died. I used to protest there, I used to be an activist in the movimiento estudiantil. Um particularly, I never lost a friend, but I did see a lot of friends being persecuted. We were always scared. Um, and you heard you heard people die in the same protest as you were there. Um maybe, I don't know, just a couple meters in front of you. You heard that uh someone was died, was murder, sorry, or someone was uh incarcerated, for example.

Jon Bonfiglio: 5:32

Yeah, and I think it's also obviously you're in Argentina, but it's also worth contextualizing for people who don't know. I mean, we hear a lot about, of course, at the moment there's a whole Venezuelan-US thing, but we hear a lot about Venezuelan migration and deportations from the USA. But it's also worth sort of just explaining that this sort of the diaspora, this exile, this removal of people from Venezuela has actually moved absolutely everywhere. I mean, a little bit to Europe, but more broadly right across uh Latin America. Now these narrative stories keep cropping up in different complicated contexts. So then there's now a sort of a secondary migration that we're hearing about uh because of the recent uh elections in Chile, where there's sort of persecution of Venezuelans that have been in particular in the north of the country, the sort of perceived link to the Trendar Agua Gang, and sort of this move now from Chile up into Peru. So it's actually had a whole series of knock-on effects right um across the uh the region. Again, with such a huge displacement of people, how can it, how can it not? I'm guessing that where you are in in Argentina as well, there's a substantial uh population of um displaced Venezuelans there, also.

Maria Hernandez: 6:40

Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely um, as you said, we are everywhere. I believe, and I remember watching news about uh Venezuelans in Iceland, for example, a couple of years ago, and we are definitely in Venezuela. I would say that um you have different targets of people. Uh the persona that migrates is different uh in in each country. For example, when you go to Chile or Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, that's the migration of the poorest people because basically the Chilean economy is more stable than the Argentinian one. And uh in Colombia and Peru is because they're near, I mean, you can go walking, or it's not the distance are not so far. Um and I always say this, I would say that the persecution to Venezuelans is also a persecution to the poor people. Um we are, of course, more welcome in Argentina because of the nature of the Argentinian people. They are always very open uh to immigrants. In fact, it's it's a part of their constitution. Um, but also I feel like the profile of the Venezuelan that migrates to Argentina is different than the one who migrates, for example, to Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru. I would say it's more like a middle-class uh person that looks for other things. For example, I chose Argentina because I wanted to um finish my degree, I wanted to go to university, and I couldn't do that in Chile, for example, because uh school is very expensive there. So I came here and a lot of people uh with my same profile came here. As of right now, we don't experience a persecution like uh Venezuelans in Chile do. But with the recent uh after Millet won the presidential election, he has changed a lot of rules of migration that no president before changed in the country. So he changed the rules basically of how you can apply for the Argentinian citizenship, which is something that a lot of Venezuelans are applying for. Um, and recently he also created uh migratory police, kind of like um I mean, what what people are scared of these are kind of like the Argentinian version of ICE. Um and so that that's very worrying. But before Miley, I would say that uh we are very welcome, and I do not feel, for example, afraid to speak and people noticing my accent in the street, uh, where I know people from Chile that are living in Chile do experience that.

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:03

Maybe we can go back to your recent visit to Venezuela and just get into the nuts and bolts of that a little bit. Um, I read a piece that you wrote in which the the arrival, the your arrival at the airport, Simon Bolívar Airport, and the sort of the tension that you felt, the nervousness that you felt. Can you just walk us through that and then your your sort of arrival into Caracas? How long had it been since you since the last time you've been? Is this the first visit you've done since you left?

Maria Hernandez: 9:31

No, no. Uh I've been two years, almost two years, since since the last time I went there. Um, well, actually, I mean, uh the country changed a lot since last year's election. Um before that, you could go to Venezuela, and of course you could experiment uh persecution, but if you weren't like too involved uh in maybe political activism, or if you were not a journalist and stuff, you can you can I can say that you can go in and out relatively safely. But after the election, after Maduro's fraud, uh the the landscape changed entirely. People living in Venezuela were scared, a lot of people went to jail. Um, I mean, the settings are are crazy of the persecution there. And so a lot of people was were also scared to go to Venezuela. Since uh I am a journalist and I do a lot of research. And this year in particular, I've done a lot of uh political uh research on Venezuela, I wrote a lot of articles. I was afraid, but I chose to take the risk. And so I bought a ticket, and then two weeks later, Trump sent uh the ships to the border. I remember when I read the news that Trump uh had put some reward, like he upgraded the reward for Maduro's head. I made a video on my Instagram kind of laughing about it because he has done that so many times. Like it was, I believe, I don't know if it's a second or third time that that work that reward was increased. And then I don't know, maybe a month later or less, he sent the ship. So I was very afraid to go there. I actually, and that's what I what I talked about in the chronicle, I hesitated until the very last moment. But uh I haven't seen my family for two years, and also, and I'm sure you can relate to that, that journalistic instinct of knowing what's going on on the ground uh made me go there. And I felt that attention that I've never felt before in any of my trips to Venezuela. Um, one thing very clear that happened to me is that when I interviewed people, or even when I met with friends at a coffee and I asked about the political situation, they lowered their voice in whispers. So that is something that never happened to me before, like just meeting regular people in a cafe in Caracas, uh, that they felt the need to lower their voice because someone could hear them. And I and I tell a story, but a particular story in that, well, I'll t I tell many, but one particular story that I tell in that chronicle is that I was interviewing an ex-political prisoner, which name I can say, in a cafe, and we were talking about her experience. Uh, this person was in jail after the protests of 2017, and she was mentioning uh that big jail where all political prisoners are, el helicoide. And in the middle of sentence, she stopped talking and she noticed there were two men sitting in front of us in the cafe at 5 p.m. and maybe a Wednesday in Caracas, looking right at us. And she was so scared that we had to pay the bill and leave immediately because she was very scared that she said the word helicoide too loud. Um, not, I mean, that's for like regular people, and for example, for my friends that are involved in politics, are even more afraid. I took precautions of deleting all messages, um, videos, even some of my social media information of my journalism before I went to Venezuela and when I left Venezuela as well. Because uh something that my the Maduro regime is doing is uh looking through your phone, and if you have something, maybe a message or a picture or whatever that tells that you are not uh aware um you don't support his regime, you can go to jail. Um so unfortunately nothing happened to me. But yeah, I felt definitely attention that I've never felt before.

Jon Bonfiglio: 13:30

There's obviously other complications at the moment. Um Venezuela needed other complications, it's been living through a hugely, a hugely complex period uh for the last however long it is you want to you want to measure it socially, economically, politically. But now, of course, there's this other potential threat and ongoing discourse on a daily basis in terms of uh the fleet, the the armada that is off the shore and what may take place there. What was the feeling on the ground, um the sort of the reaction of people, the sense that people had as to this other looming threat just off the coast?

Maria Hernandez: 14:13

I would say that the majority of the people inside Venezuela are actually looking forward uh from an invasion from the United States. Um after last year's election, and after so many uh protests, negotiation trials, but especially after last year's fraud, um and after the big lift that was going to vote, all the campaign that Maria Gorina Matalodid and all the sorrow that came afterwards, the prosecution, etc. People are desperate for a change. And they believe, not everyone, of course, but yeah, the great majority, they believe that that change can come from the United States. That this is uh something more deeper than just uh Maduro. I feel like the speech of Chavez uh before, Chavez and then Maduro uh with this leftist speech, uh has kind of uh with I mean the combination of the speech and the results of this uh regime, that of course is fatal, has made it that people believe that the United States is the best place to go. So, for example, you have a lot of uh Venezuelan support in Cine Doral, you have a lot of people inside Venezuela seeing Donald Trump as the savior that will come here and end this. And they say that because they are scared, because uh they are hopeless, but also because in reality they feel like they have tried, like the opposition has has tried a lot of strategies uh among these years, like negotiation, there was this kind of coup patent uh with uh Juan Guaidó, uh the elections. So that that feel of desperation, uh I feel like is turning into hope towards an American invasion.

Jon Bonfiglio: 16:05

Yeah, and I mean it's natural, isn't it? You if what you've experienced is a hugely uh problematic, um sort of dominating, autocratic leftist regime, which has left you with nothing, which has destroyed the country, then of course you're going to be pretty desperate to look to the opposite um end of the political spectrum to bring about change, or at the very least, to end your current context. We spoke a little bit about the elections last year, um, just to give I'm sure most people who are listening are aware of what took place in the elections last year. But for anyone who isn't, of course, uh there were presidential elections in the summer of uh last year of 2024 in Venezuela. And um I've covered and spoken about many um electoral thefts, let's say, over the years, but I don't remember one that was as blatant and as amateurish as the one that took place in Venezuela in 2024. It was the most obvious um political fraud that I think I've ever experienced. It was almost even there was kind of almost an arrogance to it, like not even a serious attempt to hide what was what was taking place. And of course, that was uh there's been some high points of of hope uh during this this period under Maduro, and last summer felt as though there was a real opportunity to legally bring about the end of a regime, which obviously didn't manifest due to electoral fraud. I think there's no question about uh there's no controversy about describing it in that way in particular. I I think um given again the context that uh Venezuela is living with with the US at the moment, maybe we can just move to Maduro specifically. Um there seems to be some uh negotiation ongoing discourse between Trump and Maduro in a series of off-ramps. I guess a big question is will he does it look as though the US is gonna back down, so will Maduro go willingly through some kind of agreement, or is he gonna be um back to a corner and some kind of forcible action uh for some kind of forcible action to take place? Do you have any sort of sense um politically about where Maduro may use his agency over the course of the next couple of weeks and months?

Maria Hernandez: 18:40

Yeah, well, it's very hard to predict. So whatever I say, I mean it's just predictions. Uh there we are all very confused on this this whole scenario. Um back in the day, I mean, when when even when Donald Trump increased the reward for for Maduro, it seemed like very unlikely that he will put on this effort and money uh to attack Venezuela or to threaten Venezuela, whatever you want to call it. So I would say Maduro, I would say he's willing to negotiate. Um, not his exit. That is something that he has left very clear that he's not willing to do. There are rumors that a lot of negotiations uh have been done for with the United States and with Maria Gorina Machado and the opposition of maybe a Pacific exit, um, where Maduro can go to the exile, maybe in Cuba or Russia, and he has refused to do that. I believe he's willing to cooperate depending on what Donald Trump wants. Um, and this is a variable that I believe should always be taken into account when analyzing the situation, because besides uh the argument that he's ending narco traffic in the Caribbean, which of course he's not, I mean, attacking uh little boats on the Caribbean without further investigation is not ending narcotraffic. I don't believe any anyone is believing that. But his intentions are unclear. Like, do he does he want a change of regime? Is he willing to attack underground to put Maria Corina Machado as the president? Like, what are his true motivations? He seems to be, which is something very uh typical of Donald Trump, I would say, to talking, like contradicting himself. Um, recently he said that, as you, as you mentioned, that he was talking to Maduro, um, that he was willing to negotiate, but before that, like maybe one or two months ago, he would say that he was not willing to negotiate, that he was willing to go into ground. So um, I would say Maduro, to answer your question, Maduro is willing to negotiate, but that would depend on what Donald Trump wants. If what Trump wants is basically uh Maduro out of the government, I don't think he will be uh willing to do that. Uh and in the case of like uh a war happens that the United States actually attacks on the ground, uh Maduro has a lot of uh support from Russia, which is not in the best, in the best situation right now, but he still has a lot of a lot of support to go into Donald Trump. So uh the scenario is very unlikely. I was not expecting, well, I was not expecting any of this, but I was definitely not expecting a negotiation between Trump and Maduro. So I don't know if that answers your question. It's kind of a tricky one.

Jon Bonfiglio: 21:30

Yeah, my understanding is that um Maduro has uh offered the US exclusive access to a certain um um percentage of Venezuelan oil fields, uh, recognizing that part of what the US wants is sort of exclusive access to um to Venezuelan natural riches and resources, but that's been rejected as well. So I I would say it's not necessarily Trump's aim to bring about regime change, but Trump has people around him. Uh I mean Maria Corina Machado is a voice, is a strong voice in Isaiah at the moment, but of course Marco Julio and a number of others who are really intent on on using on leveraging this this situation to bring about um the end of this particular kind of administration in Venezuela. But I I think you're right, it is very difficult to see how this how this ends. You can't see boots on the ground from the US, but again, the US isn't gonna isn't gonna back down. So um, yeah, the steps forward as well as being conflicting and contradictory, which I think as you say very accurately is kind of Donald Trump's modus operando, it's kind of a stream of consciousness, just whatever he thinks comes uh comes to mind. It's certainly a situation that we couldn't have predicted four or five months ago. I think it's fair to say. I mean, the fact that you have this huge standoff and these extrajudicial killings taking place in the Southern Caribbean based on the notion that the US is defending itself from um sort of institutional destabilization by drug traffickers is something that I don't think anybody could have created. Um I'm guessing you didn't see this coming either. No, not at all. Um Marina, uh I want to thank you very much for for your time. Hopefully we can talk again somewhere further down the line. Uh really appreciate it and uh stay in touch and hope things go well for you in Argentina.

Maria Hernandez: 23:29

Thank you. Thank you for an opportunity.