AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah

@guardian.co.tt

The ini­tial cel­e­bra­tions among the lo­cal Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty ap­pear to have fad­ed, along with their hopes of re­turn­ing home soon, as un­cer­tain­ty about Venezuela’s fu­ture lingers.

Since Sat­ur­day’s cap­ture of now-oust­ed pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, Guardian Me­dia be­gan pur­su­ing a sto­ry, fol­low­ing their jour­ney as they hoped to re­turn home.

But soon af­ter, they with­drew, cit­ing con­cerns.

In a text mes­sage, one mi­grant said it is “still il­le­gal” to talk about the regime, ex­press­ing fear of the In­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, whom they la­belled as “very bad.”

“It is a del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion right now in Venezuela, so I don’t want to give any an­swer about that sit­u­a­tion. That’s prob­lems for my fam­i­ly right now,” Venezue­lan mi­grant Juan Perales said.

But there are oth­ers who have re­mained op­ti­mistic about the sit­u­a­tion.

“I have no pref­er­ence to Venezuela and Trinidad. Venezuela is my coun­try, I have fam­i­ly that Tri­ni too. So if Maduro go or no go, me okay,” said Luis Or­dis­goitis.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, neigh­bour­ing coun­tries are brac­ing for a new Venezue­lan mi­grant wave, as many an­ti-Maduro Venezue­lans be­lieve the strict para­mil­i­tary regime re­mains in place.

“You take away the head (Maduro), but you leave Del­cy Ro­driguez, Jorge Ro­driguez (Na­tion­al As­sem­bly head), Vladimir, Padri­no Lopez (De­fence Min­is­ter) and Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo (In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter). You’ve done ab­solute­ly noth­ing,” ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon said.

Figueroa Leon said the shift in mood among mi­grants is ex­pect­ed and that the fears that pushed Venezue­lans to flee re­main or, in some cas­es, have wors­ened.

“If you are caught on the street and the Guardia Na­cional stops you, but I send you a Maduro meme, a meme of Del­cy, a meme of any­thing re­lat­ed to the regime, you go­ing to jail, you know broth­er. Be­cause you re­ceived it,” Figueroa-Leon ex­plained.

“And they will look for me to see if I have any fam­i­ly left in Venezuela and go af­ter them.”

Venezuela’s road to re­cov­ery can­not be pre­dict­ed, says IR ex­pert

In a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts over the past few days, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has an­nounced that Venezuela will trans­fer up to 50 mil­lion bar­rels of oil to the US and the South Amer­i­can coun­try will pur­chase on­ly US-made prod­ucts un­der a new agree­ment – all in keep­ing with Trump’s promise to fix the coun­try’s oil in­fra­struc­ture and econ­o­my.

While this is left to be seen, In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IR) ex­pert Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan says there is no fixed time­line for eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, and the road for­ward can­not be pre­dict­ed.

“The pow­er struc­ture...still re­mains. And as a re­sult, changes in eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion take time; they don’t hap­pen overnight,” Bryan said.

“But even­tu­al­ly, I sup­pose it will re­turn to a good ex­port mar­ket econ­o­my. But it will take some time.”

Mean­while, ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers say Venezue­lan mi­grants should re­main in T&T be­cause they help “boost the econ­o­my.”

“I want them stay be­cause you know what, it is them spend­ing the mon­ey in Trinidad right now. Trinida­di­ans not spend­ing a cent. This Christ­mas was okay for me be­cause why, be­cause Venezue­lans buy,” one Ch­agua­nas ven­dor said.

One busi­ness­woman, who wished to re­main anony­mous, said her work­ers be­lieve they will go back home soon.

“They say Venezuela gonna get back bet­ter. I don’t feel so.”