RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@gmail.com

Flee­ing star­va­tion and strife in their home­land, Venezue­lan fam­i­lies have set up a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty on the Ica­cos beach­front, sur­viv­ing on hand­outs from lo­cals.

The mi­grants live in ply­board shacks and cook com­mu­nal­ly on a sin­gle table­top stove.

The shacks can­not ac­com­mo­date every­one so when dusk falls, many of them string up ham­mocks on the trees along the beach­front and brave the bit­ing cold at nights.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fam­i­lies on Wednes­day, more than ten chil­dren were seen play­ing along the beach­front. Cloth­ing was strung from out­door lines and there ap­peared to be no toi­lets.

Us­ing Google Trans­late, Al­varo Perez said they came to Trinidad by boat 11 months ago from Tu­cu­pi­ta. Eigh­teen mem­bers of a fam­i­ly live in one shack and Perez said they work hard to­geth­er to make ends meet.

Since COVID-19, many of them have not been work­ing. Perez said he does con­struc­tion jobs while the oth­ers do any odd jobs they could find in the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

Even though the shack was mod­est and did not have a prop­er roof or walls, the mi­grants kept every­thing clean and neat. The shelves were stacked with neat­ly fold­ed cloth­ing and a few toys.

On­ly one bed stood in the open-air sin­gle room, which served as a kitchen, liv­ing room and bed­room. Three chil­dren who could be no more than five years old played on a car­pet­ed floor. All of them had run­ny noses and their tiny feet were cov­ered in black dirt.

Fried fish siz­zled in a fry­ing pan on the stove while Perez stacked some chick­en on a cool­er filled with ice.

Ica­cos res­i­dent Aneer Ojeer who lives next door to the Venezue­lan fam­i­lies said it was heart-wrench­ing to see them sleep­ing out in the cold at nights.

“They can­not do bet­ter for them­selves. The chil­dren and women stay in­side but the men sleep out­side. They came here be­cause they could not find any food to sur­vive in Venezuela. They are see­ing hard times here but they say it is bet­ter than what they have been go­ing through in Venezuela,” he said.

He said the vil­lagers sup­ply the fam­i­lies with food.

“When we catch fish we bring it over and give them to cook. Some of them work with the fish­er­men and they try to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to keep the chil­dren hap­py,” Ojeer said.

He ex­plained that the mi­grants were de­cent, hon­est, hard­work­ing peo­ple.

“I would love if some help could be giv­en to them. They are good peo­ple. They re­al­ly need some help,” he said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent Cindy Balchan said the Venezue­lans were get­ting a lot of help with food.

“Every day peo­ple come and drop things off to them be­cause word gets around about how they are liv­ing,” Balchan said.

She ex­plained that the Venezue­lans were thank­ful with the help they have re­ceived but said there were many oth­ers who were suf­fer­ing even more than those on the beach­front.

Coun­cil­lor for the area Shankar Teelucks­ingh said it was no se­cret that some Venezue­lans were de­vel­op­ing squat­ting com­mu­ni­ties on pri­vate lands, pri­vate co­conut es­tates and on the beach­front.

“They are strug­gling to find food. They have no ba­sic hy­giene ameni­ties, no toi­lets and they have no ba­sic food and wa­ter sup­plies,” he said.

Since COVID-19, Teel­cuks­ingh said many Venezue­lan fam­i­lies were fac­ing even worse con­di­tions than they ex­pe­ri­enced in Venezuela.

He said the mi­grants were work­ing on the co­conut es­tates and were do­ing any­thing pos­si­ble to sur­vive.

“They are get­ting food and ham­pers but they need some em­ploy­ment or some as­sis­tance so they could be treat­ed as de­cent hu­man be­ings. These mi­grants have to stoop at the low­est lev­el to pro­vide a meal for their fam­i­lies.

“In Bil­jah Road, res­i­dents have to pool re­sources to­geth­er to as­sist these fam­i­lies be­cause the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment has failed to as­sist them in any form.

He said there were over 40 Venezue­lan chil­dren in the Ica­cos com­mu­ni­ty who need­ed as­sis­tance with school­ing.

Over 16,000 mi­grants were of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the amnesty pe­ri­od but Teelucks­ingh said thou­sands more have en­tered the coun­try since then and were strug­gling to sur­vive.