Day after day the crowds flock to the Expresos Flamingo bus terminal in Caracas to begin checking out of their crumbling nation.
Some carry their earthly possessions in suitcases or backpacks, others plastic bags containing water and snacks for the long journey ahead. All share a dogged determination to escape.
“Food became so expensive that for months we weren’t able to eat three meals a day,” says Harry Flores, 41, who has been queuing for nine days with his family in the hope of boarding a bus to Peru.
When he does secure those seats, Flores, an unemployed computer engineer who sold his car to bankroll the trip, will join a historic exodus from what was once one of South America’s wealthiest and most stable societies.
The UN estimates that 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled since 2015 with Colombian authorities predicting 2 million more could follow by 2020. That would mean some 4.3 million people – 14% of Venezuela’s population – had taken flight.
Hundreds more made it into Peru through its northwestern border on Saturday despite new rules preventing Venezuelan migrants from entering without passports, which many lack because of the upheaval in their country. “We must act humanely with this vulnerable population,” said Abel Chiroque, the local ombudsman.
Last week the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, vowed to reverse the country’s slide into hyperinflation and deprivation with what he called a visionary plan for recovery, growth and economic prosperity.
Maduro’s “revolutionary formula” includes lopping five zeros off the old inflation-stricken currency, the bolívar, and introducing a new one, the sovereign bolívar, as well as raising the monthly minimum wage by nearly 6,000% from next month.
“This is my economic recovery programme. It’s mine! And when I say it’s mine, I mean: it’s the people’s,’” Maduro tweeted on Wednesday, a day after his country was rocked by a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that some interpreted as a political metaphor for his teetering regime.
Few experts believe Maduro’s measures will produce the economic miracle he promises.
“There is zero chance it will work,” said Javier Corrales, a professor of political science at Amherst College in the US and the co-author of a book on Venezuela’s political and economic decay called Dragon in the Tropics.
“The one big lesson – especially from Brazil, which had many years of four-digit annual inflation – is that just dropping zeros from your currency doesn’t do it. The new measures do nothing to solve the two basic structural problems that are causing inflation: the deficit, which is probably around 15–20%, and, secondly, the expectations on the part of people that the currency has no backing anywhere,” added Corrales.
In Venezuela, the plan has added bewilderment to the growing sense of despair.
“When I went to the market today some prices had almost doubled,” complained Edelia Zambrano, a 31-year-old risk analyst from Caracas.
Sandra Campos, a 32-year-old accountant, suspected she had been overcharged for her breakfast because of the befuddling new system. “The clerk charged me 50 times the price, because she confused the numbers. There’s too much confusion.”
Uncertainty, too, surrounds the fate of Maduro, a 55-year-old former bus driver [£] and foreign minister who became custodian of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution after his mentor’s 2013 death but has overseen the country’s economic collapse.
Just this year two plots to bring Maduro down have reportedly been foiled – one in May when a conspiracy involving top military officials codenamed Operation Constitution was thwarted, and another in early August when two explosive-laden drones failed to reach their target during a rally in Caracas.
Many of the Venezuelans fleeing abroad are adamant a peaceful solution is no longer possible. “We’ve got to get him out: to eliminate him,” said Carlos Briceño, a 37-year-old from Maracaibo, as he queued to cross from the Colombian border town of Ipiales into Ecuador last week.
Harold Antanas Trinkunas, a Venezuela specialist at Stanford University, said such scheming would inevitably persist, meaning Venezuelan and Cuban spies would need to be on constant guard against “outlandish” if amateurish attempts to kill Maduro.
If, as seemed likely, Maduro’s economic plan failed to stop the rot an Arab spring-type uprising was also possible which could lead to “a very unpredictable outcome as we saw in the Middle East and North Africa”.
Trinkunas added Maduro might also be purged by his inner circle and replaced with “a more competent strongman” such as longtime rival Diosdado Cabello.
For now, however, Venezuela’s president appears to be in control. “He seems to have put down potential challengers, he has purged the military a little bit after this drone attack and the Constitution [plot], he seems to be keeping Diosdado Cabello at bay and has definitely made himself very much the front and centre of these new economic reforms. So my guess is that his hold on power is better than it was maybe a year ago,” said Trinkunas.
Corrales also saw the most likely challenge coming from within but said Venezuela’s leadership had proved surprisingly resilient.
Political career
Nicolás Maduro has ruled Venezuela without two of the greatest assets possessed by his mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez. He has not been lucky. And he has no charisma.
Chávez enjoyed an oil bounty and sublime political talents that secured his power at home and reputation abroad.
Maduro, in contrast, inherited a wobbling economy addicted to high oil prices and a system of authoritarian populism dependent on showmanship and patronage. Oil prices tumbled and Maduro proved to be a fumbling showman, exposing the financial ineptitude and ideological hollowness of the “Bolivarian revolution”.
This could have doomed his presidency, which began in 2013 after Chávez died, but the former bus driver, a hulking bear of a man who rose up trade union ranks, turned out to be tenacious and ruthless.
Born into a working class family in Caracas in 1962, he left school without graduating and drove buses for the Caracas metro. He became a union organiser and early supporter of Chávez, who, after leading a failed coup, led a leftwing coalition to an electoral landslide in 1998.
Maduro was the speaker of the assembly before serving as Chávez’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2013, a visible if largely silent presence as the comandante held court on the world stage. Chávez anointed Maduro as his heir before succumbing to cancer.
The story of his rule – and Venezuela’s agony – is a determination to keep power amid economic collapse, humanitarian disaster and international condemnation. Since January 2019 his presidency has been disputed, with Juan Guaidó being sworn in as interim president, and recognised as Venezuela’s ruler by some international powers.
Crisis after crisis has buffeted his government – hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages, power blackouts, mass protests, drone attacks, defections, US-led sanctions – and Maduro has remained standing, resolute, implacable.
It is a remarkable position for a man who, in a 2014 Guardian interview, described himself as a bit of a hippy and a fan of Led Zeppelin and John Lennon.
“I never aspired to be president,” he said. “I always honour something that commander Chávez told us: that while we were in these posts we must be clothed in humility and understand that we are here to protect the man and woman of the streets.”
“The regime has tonnes of cracks so it could collapse at any moment but ... it may not happen right away,” he said. “The survival of this regime is already pretty remarkable because it’s not like this crisis just started a few months ago. Venezuela has had very high inflation and huge scarcity since 2010 and a recession since 2014. So this has been going on for five years, if not longer, and the government [remains] pretty stable.”
In the meantime, the daily pilgrimage to the Expresos Flamingo terminal continues, even if buses sometimes fail to arrive because the economic crisis prevents drivers from keeping their vehicles on the road.
“The bus company told us to come back tomorrow,” said Johanna Diaz, 25, an unemployed waitress who was trying to reach Ecuador and insisted she would not abandon her place in the queue or quest for a fresh start.
“I won’t leave,” Diaz said. “There’s no way I’m losing my spot.”
