Gail Alexan­der

While Venezue­lan res­i­dents mourn the late Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez, some of their fel­low cit­i­zens in T&T hope to re­turn to Venezuela next month to vote for that coun­try to make a fresh start. Oth­ers do not wish to re­turn.Out of the num­bers in T&T, there are about 100 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who came to live here af­ter be­ing fired from Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) dur­ing Chavez's tenure. Sev­er­al were re­luc­tant to speak.

Os­car Mo­ril­lio, a for­mer PDVSA work­er, said he was now work­ing in T&T but planned to re­turn to Venezuela when the elec­tion is held with­in 30 days af­ter Chavez's death.He de­clined to speak about Chavez but said, "I am re­turn­ing to vote as I would like to have a new pres­i­dent and a fresh start for my coun­try–and that start­ed on Tues­day."Venezue­lan-born busi­ness­woman Chep­ina Reyes de Aboud said while Chavez did a lot for his sup­port­ers in Venezuela, oth­er sec­tors went through great dif­fi­cul­ty dur­ing his tenure.

Not­ing Chavez's work in Venezuela's health and oth­er sec­tors, Reyes de Aboud not­ed Chavez in­sti­tut­ed his pro­grammes in a pop­ulist-style regime which caused di­vi­sion in the coun­try, af­fect­ing some sec­tors neg­a­tive­ly.Reyes de Aboud said Venezue­lans would have to see what hap­pened af­ter his death.She added: "The peo­ple are griev­ing now and that has to take its course nat­u­ral­ly. Af­ter that we have to look to the fu­ture to see how Venezuela moves on. It's a coun­try with a lot of his­to­ry be­hind it and a lot of po­ten­tial ahead."

A Venezue­lan woman, whose hus­band was killed dur­ing a bur­glary four years ago when the fam­i­ly re­turned home, said crime had over­tak­en many sec­tors of Venezuela. She said many Venezue­lans in T&T would be scared to speak about Chavez since a lot of them came to T&T to make a bet­ter life af­ter hav­ing to leave Venezuela ow­ing to prob­lems in that coun­try.An­oth­er for­mer PDVSA work­er, now liv­ing in T&T with his fam­i­ly, said while he was hap­py Venezuela now had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be free, he would not re­turn, even to vote. Speak­ing in halt­ing Eng­lish he said the bo­li­var had lost val­ue by al­most 1,000 per cent com­pared to the Colom­bian pe­so .

Say­ing ba­sic foods, like oil, milk, sug­ar and the like, were hard to find, he said he did not think Venezuela would im­prove since many sys­tems were down.Venezue­lan-born Yese­nia Gon­za­lez, who has lived in T&T for 30-plus years, said: "It's the end­ing of an era. We all have to go through death and new be­gin­nings flow from that. I hope Venezuela will have a good pres­i­dent who is de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and will do the right things for the peo­ple."World lead­ers must re­mem­ber, you are here to­day and gone to­mor­row and you should use your pow­er to help bet­ter the peo­ple."She added: "Venezuela, which is so oil-rich, should by now have been as proper­ous as Dubai but many things were af­fect­ed there and some old-fash­ioned things were brought back, mak­ing it go back­ward."I hope it moves for­ward now and does bet­ter than be­fore. But they might have prob­lems be­fore it set­tles down with the new regime. Chavez's death should be a les­son for all lead­ers–in Venezuela and T&T–not to just give away mon­ey but to ed­u­cate the peo­ple."