For Older Venezuelans, Fleeing Crisis Means ‘Starting From Zero,’ Even at 90
" she said, "and then everything goes toward survival." There was no alternative, she said,
but to leave: "To stay is to die." In October, Carmen María González de Álvarez reversed her parents’ journey from Europe. that You work toward your golden years, you save,
Los Teques said that We want to live in tranquillity,
Caracas said that I feel like a foreigner in Venezuela now; it’s not the Venezuela I know,
Fernando said that Very hard, very intense,
"But at the moment it’s impossible." In the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans — by some estimates as many as two million — have
migrated abroad, with the tendency accelerating in the past several years during the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Nicolás Maduro.
Who’s going to give me work?" The family also had to tear themselves from the close-knit cocoon of their extended family
and their community in the Caracas municipality of El Hatillo, where Mr. Álvarez was a civic leader.
"All our life is here, we have our roots, our house, we’ve lived nicely, we have our family," Ms. Reyes paused.
" she said. that I don’t know if we are going to Spain, but we are thinking about it because we can’t live here,
" she said in a recent interview at her apartment building. that There isn’t food, there isn’t medicine, there isn’t anything,
Within a few months, if her children’s plan works out, she will move to Spain, the country of her birth, leaving behind Venezuela, the country where she has lived most of her long life
and has loved like no other, even if that love these days has been painfully unrequited.