Like many Venezuelans who have left their country, illustrator Laura Guarisco (Caracas, 32 years old) has El Ávila, the protective hill of the capital of Venezuela, tattooed in her memory. Also on the skin, as a design was created using this silhouette on his left arm. “This will be the madness of the people of Caracas with El Ávila,” she says with a smile as she demonstrates it. He is accompanied by another tattoo on his right arm. A drawing of the “migratory warbler,” the bird he uses as an analogy in Nido (Planeta Cómic), the moving graphic novel he just published about the Venezuelan diaspora that has spread to neighboring Colombia and the rest of Latin America.
From the burgundy T-shirt to the suitcase in the colors of the flag that so many Venezuelans carry, the full nostalgic burden of migration is present in Nido’s vignettes. A comic that depicts the journey of those travelers who crossed moors and mountains by bus, on foot or hitchhiking to settle in a Colombian city in search of opportunities.
Illustrations from the book “Nido” (Planeta, 2023) by Laura Guarisco.Laura Guarisco
“The story wanted to connect to the emotional part,” to create a collective memory of a wound that many Venezuelans carry, says Guarisco, an architect and illustrator who lives in Medellín, on the terrace of a cafe on Avenida Jiménez in the historic center of Bogotá, on the slopes of Monserrate Hill, which fades in front of El Ávila. She does this on the sidelines of the Entreviñetas Festival, a space dedicated to comics and related arts, which led her to visit the Colombian capital last month.
The book begins with a birdwatching scene that introduces Ángel, the protagonist who, amidst vicissitudes, has crossed the border to settle in Medellín, like the author herself. He does so, driven by scarcity, hyperinflation and the violent suppression of protests in Caracas against Nicolás Maduro’s regime, a real event merging with fictional fiction. In the drawings you can almost hear the sound of suitcase wheels, which has become the soundtrack of the binational bridges between Cúcuta and the Venezuelan state of Táchira, the bottleneck of one of the largest migrant flows in the world. .
Illustrations from the book “Nido” (Planeta, 2023) by Laura Guarisco.Laura Guarisco
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More than seven million people have left Venezuela in successive waves, driven by the political, social and economic crisis. Although they have spread across the continent, Colombia is by far the main receiving country. Official figures – as of October 2022 – show that 2.9 million Venezuelans live on this side of the border, the vast majority intending to stay. Of these, almost 240,000 are in Medellín.
Every migrant carries his or her own story. Guarisco decided to leave Venezuela in 2016. “I was working in an architectural firm at the time, but there was a lot of inflation; One of the main reasons was that I no longer had enough money for many things,” he says. “Many had already left the country, I ran out of friends in the city I was living in and started looking for job opportunities in Colombia,” he remembers. His mother was born in Barranquilla, so he received dual citizenship and first arrived in the Atlantic capital, where he still has relatives. There he worked as a draftsman on architectural projects and later moved to Medellín.
Illustrations from the book “Nido” (Planeta, 2023) by Laura Guarisco.Laura Guarisco
Although he draws them in great detail in Nido, he never crossed the bridges connecting Táchira to Norte de Santander – although he did cross the border via Maicao further north in La Guajira when it was impossible to get plane tickets. “I was very shocked when I saw all these people crossing the bridge on the news, I put myself in their shoes. It touched me a lot to sometimes see whole families crossing with their suitcases, and also the stories of my friends. Many of my activities in Medellín crossed the border into Colombia.” He collected photographic information, watched documentaries, broadcast what he observed in Maicao, and also made the entire route on Google Street View to capture it in a story, which is captivating from start to finish.
–Are you aiming to create an archetypal character of the diaspora?
–I wanted to create a character that looked very Venezuelan. And in reality, they are parts of my Venezuelan friends. The stories I saw and heard, the stories that people close and not so close to me told, ultimately led me to Ángel when I wanted to draw him. I always imagined a male character because I wanted to tell the story of the demonstrations. When I went to marches, I was very shocked to see very young men who stayed until the end. Physically, it led to small friendships. Ultimately, all the stories that appear in Ángel happened to many of us. We all suffer directly or indirectly from water shortages, water shortages and marches. all these demonstrations or the deaths.
–Greek writer Theodor Kallifatides says that emigrating means distancing yourself from yourself. How do you deal with this distance from Venezuela?
– It is true that you move away from the person you were, but you also move closer to a completely new person who you do not know what he is like. And in the end a new person emerges. The experience with Venezuela was very painful at the beginning. Leaving the country of your own accord to study, learn about a new culture, or sightsee is not the same as having to leave the country because you have no other choice. You are forced to leave and leave behind family, friends, places, or who you were. It’s a kind of sadness. Drawing helped me bring out all of these emotions and be able to face them, put them on paper and look at them from the outside. My relationship with Venezuela is a little more peaceful. I have healed many things. I can now talk about Venezuela in peace, I’m back. I feel like I’m from both places because you can’t be from just any place. One of them is the places where it exists temporarily or permanently. You also need to take responsibility for where you live.
–Do you already consider Medellín your home?
-Yes. In addition, Medellín was a city that brought me back to comics, to find the spaces that helped me continue working on what I wanted to be. Even as a child, I always wanted to make comics. It also looks very similar to Caracas, it reminds me of my hometown. I found wonderful people who paved the way for me. That’s why I like him a lot. It’s been almost seven years now, I feel like I’m from Medellín, although they always ask me where I’m from when they hear my accent.
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