“I came from Trujilo because I needed to get a job, but also because life there is getting very difficult. Even though people work, they don’t have gas, electricity or petrol. Cooking has become a herculean task. First you have to buy whatever you can, whatever reaches us and then we have to look for firewood or coal to cook it. This is not an exaggeration; this is what it’s like.”
The statement by Rebeca Torres, a 24-year-old cashier at a bakery on Rómulo Gallegos Avenue in Caracas, demonstrates the new phase of migration in Venezuela: internal displacement. After the departure of more than 4 million people, according to figures from international organisations, many of those who stayed in the country decided to leave their homes in the interior of the country to go to the big cities, especially Caracas.
Rebeca, who was able to complete her high school studies in Boconó, which is a tourist and agricultural city in the Venezuelan Andes, now tries to earn money to send her mother and two younger siblings, one of whom is in a wheelchair because of illness. “To take him to the hospital for his checks we have to use my uncle’s car. We often can’t go because there is no petrol, so we have to get until he gets it,” she says.
