The Daily - Is One Third of Venezuela’s Population About to Flee?

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

For years, Venezuelans have been living through one of the most severe economic collapses in modern history — one that has caused millions to flee the country. But this weekend, an election is offering many a real hope for change.Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The Times, explains why, after years under a repressive government, Venezuelans think this time might be different.Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: The “Iron Lady” of Venezuela threatens to unseat its autocrat.As many as one-third of Venezuelans would consider migrating if the country’s authoritarian leader is given another six years in power, one poll showed.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. For years, Venezuelans have been living through one of the most severe economic collapses in modern history, one that has caused about a quarter of the country to flee. But this weekend, an election is offering about a quarter of the country to flee. But this weekend, an election is offering many a real hope for change. Today, my colleague Julie Turkowitz on the woman who's inspiring that hope, and why, after years under a repressive government, Venezuelans think this time might be different. It's Friday, July 26th.

So, Julie, we've spent a lot of time over the past couple of days on the show talking about the thing that everybody's talking about, which is the American presidential election. But there's another important election happening, and that is the one in Venezuela on Sunday. The outcome could have some pretty serious repercussions, both for Latin America and also for the United States. You are covering it. Talk to me about what's at stake here. States. You are covering it. Talk to me about what's at stake here. So Venezuela is a country of roughly 28 million people that has seen somewhere between 7 and 8 million people leave in the last 10 years. In other words, about a quarter of the country has left. Many of our listeners have heard about this exodus because in recent years, many Venezuelans are showing up in the United States. Many of them are seeking asylum. And what they are leaving behind is a pretty stark economic, humanitarian, and political crisis. And I think it's important to note that the only other places in the world in which we see an exodus this large are places that are experiencing war.

If you're talking about Syria, Ukraine, the conflict in Afghanistan. Venezuela does not have an armed conflict, but it has a very dysfunctional economy and it has a very repressive government. And so this is the backdrop to the election on Sunday. And many Venezuelans hope that this election will reverse the immense suffering, restore democracy and stop this exodus that has caused so much damage inside Venezuela. Okay, before we get into this election and what it means to Venezuelans, I have to ask, why would the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, who, as you say, is this famously authoritarian leader, agree to hold an election in the first place?

Well, Maduro has long loved holding elections because a vote makes him look legitimate. The thing is that these elections have not really been free or fair in many years, but he's holding elections this year under great international pressure. The United States in recent years has placed punishing sanctions on the Venezuelan government. This has strangled not only the government, but also, you know, the Venezuelan people. And Maluta wants those sanctions to be lifted. And one way to get sanctions lifted is to do what the U.S. wants, which is to hold a free and fair election. Now, we know that this election on Sunday is not going to be free or fair, but it's happening. Okay, so let's explore that. How is it that voters in Venezuela, this

country that at this point is barely a democracy anymore, have actually come to believe that this time could be different? So the way that I like to think about it is through the lens of one woman whose life kind of embodies the challenges that Venezuelans across the country are facing right now. And that person is a young woman named Leonela Colmenares. She's 28 years old. She lives in the state of Táchira on the western edge of Venezuela, the border with Colombia. Tell me a little more about your memories of that normal life. Leonela was a kid when Venezuela still had a pretty decent economy. This was back during the era of Hugo Chavez.

Oil prices hit historic highs. His socialist project was redistributing the wealth throughout Venezuela. And Leonela remembers a comfortable childhood, food on the table, going on trips with her family to the beach. And having these big Christmas celebrations with her extended family, which is a very important Venezuelan tradition, sort of a staple of Venezuelan culture.

But as she gets older, life gets hard. Around the time when Chavez dies in 2013, his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, His hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, takes over and oil prices start plummeting. And this causes the economy to really go into a freefall. For Leonela, this means that her family now can't afford the medicine that her mother needs for her chronic pains. Leonela can no longer afford university tuition. She's in and out of university. She remembers this one day waiting in line all day long,

splitting headache from hunger. And at the end of the day, the only thing she's able to buy is a bag of corn flour. And then, in 2019, the U.S. imposes sanctions on Venezuela, which really strangles an already crippled economy. At the same time, Maduro, facing all of these economic problems, makes some changes and suddenly goods are coming into the country. There are things on the shelves, but they're so expensive that everyday people like Leonella cannot afford them. And Leonella is seeing this mass exodus take shape around her. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving.

Eventually, millions of people are leaving Venezuela to try and find opportunities abroad. And so in 2022, Leonella becomes one of them. She goes to Colombia, but what she finds is that life far from her country is really hard and she can barely make ends meet. And she's missing key moments in her family's life back home. So she goes back to Venezuela a few months later. Today, she works three jobs. She makes pastries.

She works as a university administrator. And she's an informal taxi driver using her car to drive people around. And yet she still can't afford her mother's medication. And on top of that, she's finding that so many people around her have left. The Christmas dinner table is full of empty seats. In your family, how many have left the country? Well, only in my family, there have been about 10 people. And she eventually says that at least 10 people in her immediate family, her cousins, her aunts, her uncles, have been part of this large exodus.

So she's back where she started. And it sounds like the circumstances are actually even worse. But you started this story, Julie, as a story of hope for Leonela. So what changes? What happens? What changes are the politics in the country. There is a new opposition leader on the rise, and her name is Maria Corina Machao. And suddenly, Leonella and a broad swath of the country

see a reason for hope and even a path toward building a country that they would want to live in again. We'll be right back. So tell me about this opposition leader, Maria Machado. So Maria Corina Machado is a longtime politician in Venezuela who has taken the country by storm. She is quite conservative. She grew up in a well-to-do family. She studied at a sort of elite boarding school.

She went to the U.S. at one point to study. She has cited Margaret Thatcher, the conservative icon, as one of her idols. She's a very strong believer in the private sector, believes that the private sector should be the motor of the economy, and she has long argued for the privatization of the country's state oil company. But the message that voters are really resonating with is not necessarily about her politics. It's about what she's not. She's not Maloudo. She's not Maloudo's socialism. And she has, I think, very smartly centered her campaign around the idea of reuniting families. I want to thank all the women in Venezuela.

Her rallies are incredibly emotional. For Venezuela, for our children. incredibly emotional. People crying in her arms. Begging her, bring back my father, bring back my brother, bring back my sister. There's a sort of almost deification, frankly, in the country. I think that she has played this up, her team has played this up. In a very religious country, her name is Maria, and she traverses the streets with people yelling, Maria, Maria, help me, help me.

And people throwing rosaries at her. She puts around her neck, if you watch her at campaigns, she wears not one, not two, but ten rosaries around her neck. And many people say she was brought to us by Jesus Christ. Last year, there was this one moment, which I think is reflective of so many moments that have happened since. Amid the crowd, there's all of these people holding up their cell phones that are connected to people in Colombia, family members in Peru,

family members in the United States, so that their brothers, mothers, sisters, children can see Maria Corina Machado. And there was this one moment when Maria Corina Machado addresses this woman who is holding up her phone and says, this is so your daughter can come back. And the daughter is on the other line. And so what she is saying is, elect me, I will improve the economy, and I will create a situation where the people that you love can come back and be with you in the country that you love. Of course, it's not really clear if these are promises that she can make good on,

but the fact that it almost doesn't matter whether or not she can is a reflection of just how desperate people are for change. And this message really resonates with Leonela. And with thousands, if not millions part of a different opposition political party, starts volunteering for Maria Corina's campaign. So how has Maduro responded to Maria Machado's rise? So Maduro is really trying to make it impossible for Maria Corina to become the president. Her movement is clearly very popular. It's shown in poll after

poll. And eventually the Maduro government does this thing where it bans her from running. And for a moment, the opposition is a little lost. They've just lost their candidate. And then the government allows her coalition to register somebody else. And the coalition is able to put a surrogate on the ballot. And this surrogate for Maria Corina is this little-known diplomat named Edmundo Gonzalez. So she's not even the candidate? So technically, no, she's not the candidate. But everyone in her movement knows that she's the real force behind his candidacy and that she is really the person that they are voting for.

So Maduro's government won't let Maria run, but for some reason he lets this other guy run on her ticket. Why does he do that? What most observers and analysts say is that he didn't expect so much energy behind Maria Corina Machado, and then he didn't expect when he banned her, when his government banned her from running, the opposition to be able to come around a new candidate. The opposition in Venezuela is notoriously fractured. And then the government did not expect Maria Corina to be able to transfer her popularity to Edmundo Gonzalez. They thought that they could control this election and that they could control this movement. And it has really become much bigger than Maduro and the people in his camp expected.

So he really underestimated them. And now he has a situation on his hands. The government has arrested dozens of supporters and fined people who simply offer services to the campaign. So we're talking of people who rent them a stage, rent them a truck, people who sell them food have been fined. prevent Maria Corina from making it to her own rallies. But so far, none of this has dampened support for the opposition. And in fact, the opposite is happening. It's making this campaign of Maria Corina and Edmundo Gonzalez even more popular. So it really looks like things are on a collision course at this point. We have the election on Sunday. There's this hugely popular opposition now hurtling toward it. And an authoritarian leader who's extremely unpopular and has been known to cheat to win. I know from my years of foreign correspondence, you know, a bad loss can actually be pretty hard to cover up. So it's hard to see how this plays out peacefully.

Right. There is an enormous amount of tension in Venezuela right now. If the result shows that the opposition has won, will the government of Nicolas Maduro hand over power? He has essentially said, if I don't win, there is going to be a bloodbath and a fratricidal war. If the government of Nicolas Maduro says, we won, is Maria Corina going to accept that? And are people going to go to the streets and protest if they feel that their vote has been stolen, if they feel that Nicolás Maduro has invented the numbers or somehow manipulated the election in his favor? And are you expecting to see violence, Julie? We don't know. There's a high likelihood that whatever result is announced on July 28th, or more likely July 29th, is going to be disputed by one of the sides. The question is how big

will the protest be? And will they spin out of control? What will be the response of the government? Will there be violence? A lot of people, including Leonella, have said that they're scared to protest. I mean, nearly 300 people have died in the country in protests in the last 10 years. Leonella specifically has said that she's not going to go to the streets. She's not going to protest and said she's going to protest with her feet and she's going to leave the country. She plans to travel to the United States, and she plans to do that despite all of the efforts that Biden and other politicians have made to stop people from doing this. And multiple polls show that as much as a third of the country is interested in leaving

if Maduro stays in power. So the loss of an opposition leader who is promised to bring people back might result in yet another mass exodus. Exactly. And I think that one thing that's really important to think about when you think about Leonela is that seven to eight million people have left the country. So many of those people are young people like Leonela. She has stayed. She has made a conscious decision. She left for economic reasons, but then she came back. If she leaves, it is sort of representative of this last slice of the country that could fight to make change.

Kind of giving up and saying, I have to leave. I can't fight the fight anymore. I have to leave for myself and my own protection. Julie, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. Thank you. in California has skyrocketed. It was the nation's most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.

His order could divide Democratic leaders in the state, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments, while others have denounced the Supreme Court decision as an opening for using inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis. And what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in her debut on the world stage since her rapid ascension as the presumptive Democratic nominee

for president. Harris did not stray from President Biden on policy, but she struck a stronger tone on the plight of the Palestinians. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent. Declaring that, quote, far too many innocent civilians had died in Gaza. A quick reminder to catch a new episode of The Interview right here tomorrow.

This week, Lulu Garcia Navarro talks to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the Democratic Party in this moment. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Claire Tennesketter, Olivia Natt, and Muj Zaydi. It was edited by Liz O'Balin and Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Francis Robles and Anatoly Kurmanaev. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you on Monday.