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Violence hits Venezuelans twice and, hurt, they flee from it again
Posted On 24 Jan 2019
Ecuadornews:
Fear of racist attacks after a Venezuelan citizen murdered an Ecuadorian in Ibarra led to the return of 250 Venezuelans to their country, in three flights on Wednesday, January 23. From there they fled violence and from here the same. From Guayaquil departed an airplane with 61 people.
He left his girlfriend and work to return with his family
“You will see that you are going to return to Ecuador or I will see how to go to Venezuela as soon as possible,” Cynthia Solano told her boyfriend, Leonardo Yaonis, as they embraced and counted the minutes on Tuesday night so that a Bus would pick him up and take him to Quito for the trip back to his country, after living two years in Ecuador.
The 26-year-old, a professional in administration, came to Ibarra to work on what he could and together with a group of his compatriots made friends with ibarreños.
That’s how he met Cynthia. “I have my family in Venezuela, an aunt of mine died recently with cancer and I do not want to be far if I lose another member of my family. But I also feel very sad because here in Ecuador I also made my family, now I have to say goodbye to the family I made here, we do not have the same blood, but we do share happy moments, “said Leonardo.
The foreigner said that despite having an employment contract in Ecuador, he preferred to leave: “I do not care, because I want to see my family alive again.”
Pregnant returned for fear of new aggressions
The Venezuelan Melisa (protected name) did not care that in two weeks she will have her third child. The fear of being attacked in Ecuador pushed her to take the decision to leave Ibarra, where on Sunday unrest broke out against Venezuelans after the death of a young woman in that city.
She packed her things and together with her two sons, aged 4 and 2, they left for Quito to take the flight offered by the Venezuelan Government to their fellow citizens who want to return to their territory.
“It does not matter that there are no medicines in Venezuela, we know that the situation is hard there, but I do not want my son to be born here in Ecuador, I am afraid,” Melisa said.
The woman had decided to stay in Ecuador thinking that here she was going to give her children a better future.
“After what happened over the weekend, we do not want to continue in this country. We were attacked, our children did not stop crying, they broke the doors and we felt they wanted to kill us. It is better that we start from scratch, but in Venezuela, “said the immigrant who returned with some uneasiness to her native Venezuela.
Parents were left alone to dismiss their relatives
Leonel Marabai raised his right hand to the sky when he saw the takeoff of the presidential Boeing 737-200 aircraft that departed with his wife and son from the Simón Bolívar Air Base in Guayaquil, at noon yesterday.
They returned to Caracas as part of a group of 61 passengers who agreed to the government’s return plan. In their case, they were motivated to travel on labor issues and with uncertainty due to the episodes of xenophobia in Ibarra. Despite this, he clarified that he has not lived these events in Guayaquil and Duran.
“Horrible, because we know the situation that Venezuela is experiencing. I feel we could have endured a little more here, but as you can see, my son is a baby and we did not want to put ourselves at risk of being hit by the street because it is difficult to pay for a room, “Leonel said.
These months, the Venezuelan has worked in several barber shops without achieving job stability.
With him, Axel Pozo together with Lorennis Moran fell into an uncontrollable crying when he saw the departure of his in-laws, sisters-in-law and his daughter. They hope to raise money with their work in a restaurant to reunite with their family in their country.
‘We did not sleep peacefully, nor did we go out of fear’
They were among the first people to fill out the forms at the Venezuelan consulate in Guayaquil. Berqui Méndez and his son Vladimir Lupares came down from the Professional Center building, on Av. Juan Tanca Marengo, his face saddened.
They arrived in the country at the end of December, coming from Peru. “We walked six days to get to Ecuador, it was hard because first we were in Colombia, from there we went to Peru and stayed for a week,” the woman said before boarding the bus that took them to Simón Bolívar Air Base, to return there to Venezuela on a humanitarian flight.
Méndez said that in the short time of her stay in Guayaquil she dedicated to selling sweets in urban buses and that represented $ 5 a day. “When I was good I made up to ten dollars, just like my son,” she added.
However, she said that in the wake of the murder of an Ecuadorian woman at the hands of a Venezuelan, in Ibarra, she and her son were filled with panic at the reaction there was in that city.
“That’s really what makes us leave. As a result of that we have not been able to sleep peacefully, nor have we left because of fear, “said the woman. (I)
