Editor’s Note: Many are branded the same way: criminals, prostitutes, illegals. But most of the 40,000 to 60,000 Venezuelan migrants who are now in Trinidad and Tobago—according to estimates from the UNHCR—have fled their crisis-stricken homeland to escape hunger, hyperinflation, electricity rationing, and prolonged political unrest. They’ve left family behind in search of food, jobs, and a better life.
Most of the time, we hear slices of their story; a mere snapshot or sound byte. Guardian Media Limited has been speaking with migrants to get a deeper understanding of the hardships they face. This is a profile of Luiz Estrada from Diego Martin, as told to Faine Richards in Spanish.
Twice in nine months, female drivers have sent Luiz Estrada vaulting off his bike.
The first time, a woman’s car knocked him down while he was turning along the highway. She sped off without stopping.
Fortunately, the second offender owned up to her transgression, emerging from her car in tears and insisting that she take him to the hospital.
“She was very nervous, more nervous than me,” Luiz recalls. “She was very worried, and in the end I just went to work. But the next day after I was knocked down, everything hurt: my body, my legs, my head. It was really hard that day.”
Luiz braves the “bad drives”, impatient motorists, and posses of pothounds on his hour-long bicycle commute to and from his job at a marine services company in Chaguaramas. At 6 am, he leaves his apartment to begin peddling down Morne Coco road in Diego Martin, waving at familiar faces along the way. His wheels hug the shoulder of the west-bound lane of the Diego Martin Highway as the four-wheeled commuters zoom past him.
He swings off at Four Roads, meanders through Westmoorings and out into Glencoe, passes the hardware stores and fishing depot in Carenage, and glides down the Chaguaramas stretch.
The routine, which takes an hour each way, is both refreshing and gruelling.
“To leave work tired and ride your bike home for another hour, it’s very hard” says the 43-year-old grandfather, his face bronzed by the daily roasting he gets in the sun. “But I have to do it.”
He does it to help support his wife, Beatriz, and his three youngest children, 17-year-old Paola, 13-year-old Kevin, and two-year-old Daniella. They stayed behind in Venezuela at the family’s home in Guayana City, one of the eastern port towns lining the Orinoco River that spills into the Gulf of Paria. His eldest daughter, 25-year-old Neanyelif, lives in Panama with her husband and child.
At the end of every month, Luiz takes $1500 from the money he earns as a rigger at the marine company during the week, and as a cleaner on weekends, to buy supplies for his family. Powdered milk, cereal, rice, medicine, toothpaste, clothes and shampoo are packed into boxes and picked up by friends who own a boat. They ferry the goods on a seven-hour journey across the sea to Venezuela, and drive them nine hours into the interior to get them to Beatriz.
This has been Luiz’ monthly ritual since he came to Trinidad last August.
“I had to leave my country, though it pained me, because as a father, I could withstand hunger if I had to. I’m an adult, and I could deal with it. But when hunger started affecting my children and my family, I came to Trinidad,” Luiz says, his voice breaking as the tears well up.
“Though I came on the boat to Cedros, what brought me here was hunger, necessity. It wasn’t for vacation or a better life for myself. Everything I do is for them, and if they can continue being happy over there, then I am happy here.”
From Churros to Cargo
Doing maintenance work on cargo containers in Chaguaramas was a skill Luiz was forced to learn on the job.
His typical work day in Venezuela began in a kitchen where he dunked wands of freshly-rolled dough into cauldrons of bubbling oil, the beginnings of the fried Venezuelan dessert, churros. He had turned his passion for cooking into an eight-outlet franchise, Luiz Churros. He employed kitchen assistants and customer service attendants.
The business later morphed into Luiz Tequeños, named after the fried cheese-filled pastry that is cousin to the sugar-dusted churros.
“In my family, I do the cooking. My wife cooks very little,” Luiz laughs lovingly. “My children love the food. My wife, not so much.”
Then, as Venezuela’s petroleum revenues took a hit from a global price decline, Venezuela’s government couldn’t afford to keep hefty subsidies on imported goods. Food prices climbed as government imposed price controls and slashed imports. Butter, flour, cheese—many of the ingredients that formed the core of Luiz’ menu—became difficult to get or near impossible to afford.
With the food supply so unpredictable, he had to shutter his stores.
“I closed one, I closed another, until I had just one left. It hurt me to close down, but we would go out to sell and people would have no cash to spend. I had two women working with me -they were my friends. But I had to let them go,” he says.
Luiz went nine months without an income. The family tried to survive on Beatriz’s salary, but it wasn’t enough.
He decided to follow the migration trail that has led many Venezuelans across the Gulf of Paria to Trinidad and Tobago, to find a job and get access to reasonably-priced supplies.
English is still a challenge; Luiz is hesitant to take taxis on his own because he would struggle to communicate with the driver.
He wants to learn the language, and plans to take classes.
But the language gap has not been a barrier to communicating with the Trinidadians he has met and befriended.
“Everyone has helped me here, no one has left me in the street. They helped me a lot, they have treated me in a good way. There are always some who reject you, but this doesn’t bother me,” he says.
As he tries to adapt to his new life far from home, Luiz tries to manage the heartache he feels missing out on his children’s lives.
Daniella, whom he lovingly nicknamed “Chuchi”—a Venezuelan term of endearment—turns three this week. The last time he sent goods home, he bought birthday presents of chocolate and toys for her.
As long as there’s electricity in Guayana City, he’ll get to sing happy birthday to her through video chat. That, and his gifts from Trinidad, will be the only way to balm the pain he feels missing out on her special day.