Robbe Street is no longer suspiciously called upon (robar, in English) to take the name of an entire nation: Venezuela. Walking down this street with barely any lighting and rough asphalt in the heart of populous Georgetown, Guyana's capital, you immediately enter the center of Caracas. There are stalls on the sidewalk selling arepas, cachapas and tequeños, typical Venezuelan dishes. Accents of Apure, Miranda and Sucre can be heard on the neighbors' terraces, lit by light bulbs in the middle of the night. Many of the estimated 35,000 Venezuelans living in the country have made this place their home.
“In Guyana there is racism, but also a lot of money,” says Kenny Rodriguez, a 30-year-old Venezuelan with three children who wears Oakleys without snowboard-style sideburns. He came here by canoe from San Martin de Turumbang on the border and began working in the gold and diamond mines. “But Conchale, there are a lot of diseases there, a lot of malaria,” he remembers. That encouraged him to come to Georgetown and set up a food truck around Robbe Street. He walks down the street and waves: “Hey, my friend,” “Dad, what happened?” He realizes that this is a place where you earn people’s respect “if you don’t become a bandit .”
Kenny Rodríguez and Ángelo Ruíz, two Venezuelans who run a food stand in Georgetown.Juan Diego Quesada
This semi-unknown country, a former British colony where the custom of speaking English and driving on the right remained, with a population of just 800,000, is experiencing an oil boom thanks to deposits discovered off its coasts in 2015 by the American Exxonmobil. In the last two years, the inflow of money has finally become noticeable: in 2022, GDP grew by 62% and this year is expected to end with an increase of 37%. Accordingly, no country in the world reports comparable figures to the IMF. Currently, 400,000 barrels of oil are being produced per day and experts estimate that this will rise to 1.2 million in four years. The government hopes to triple the per capita income of its citizens, currently around $10,000, in a short period of time. Economists cannot recall a comparable impact on an economy in such a short period of time. Guyana could become South America's Dubai overnight.
In this land of gold, Venezuelans have found the future that was denied them in their country. According to UNHCR, 7.7 million people have emigrated around the world due to the severe political and economic crisis that this country is currently experiencing. The majority were distributed in Peru, Colombia, Chile and Brazil, but some have chosen to come to Guyana, a country with two ethnic majorities: the Afro-Guyanese, descendants of slaves, and the Indo-Guyanese, who arrived during the war times of the British colony. . Joana Flores, 45, arrived six years ago because she did not apply for a visa to enter the country. He hasn't left the country again: “I've lived here my whole life, I brought my two daughters with me and adopted a little black baby in a hospital here,” he explains in the bar he set up on a corner in Georgetown has , Spanish in GT.
He started selling cakes on the street, raised enough money and opened this place that offers breakfast and lunch to groups of workers at Venezuelan companies. In the evenings it turns into a bar with Latin music. It has not experienced an episode of racism, even now that President Nicolás Maduro has revived the old dispute over the ownership of Essequibo, a region rich in minerals and oil that Venezuela claims as its own.
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Joana Flores in her bar, Spanish in GT, in Georgetown.Juan Diego Quesada
Lashawn, a dreadlocked Guyanese, 23 years old, in jeans and barefoot, and a worker at a nearby car wash, comes in to buy a few beers.
“The Venezuelans are very cool, they came to brighten up the neighborhood,” he says in English.
Joana vehemently defends Guyana: “Thanks to this country, my daughters speak English and can work, which they would not be able to do in Venezuela. “This is my home.” At the bar he has three employees, two Cubans and a Venezuelan, a chef named Daniel Contreras. She doesn't want to hear anything about the dispute between her country of origin and the host country over the Essequibo, which can only bring problems and resentment and distance her from the locals. The two countries experienced weeks of tension that went so far that the international community feared that the matter would lead to war.
Three months ago, 45 Venezuelans were arrested by Guyana's security forces as they attempted to enter the country illegally in a dilapidated fishing boat on the east coast of the Essequibo region. They carried their belongings and fighting cocks. A day earlier, another 80 were intercepted at the border. Local authorities believe they set sail from the island of Grenada. After processing by immigration authorities, they were released.
—What does Maduro want Essequibo for? To turn it into shit?
can be heard saying at the door of a two-story house on Robbe Street. Here, mixed Cubans and Venezuelans live in rooms that they rent to a man from Guyana for $300 a month. The night falls gently, it is the ideal temperature to wear an undershirt. Life seems easy while drinking brandy on the building's stairs. David Chacón, a 19-year-old Venezuelan, works in construction. His English is broken. The other day he was walking so calmly down the street when a group of Guyanese pushed him for no reason. He held back and moved on, he didn't want any problems: “I don't mess with anyone.” Cuban Salvador González, 48, says he experienced some episodes of racism, especially when he worked behind the counter of a store and the Sometimes he didn't understand customers because he didn't yet speak English. He now works as a bricklayer, plumber and carpenter. All to send money to the three children he had with three different women.
Venezuelans and Cubans live in the same building on Robbe Street, the street in Georgetown now known as Venezuela.Juan Diego Quesada
Juan Daniel Mendoza sweats because of the humidity. He arrived in Guyana with a wife and two children.
“They brought me in as a trick,” he says, making the rest laugh. I imagined it would be like Las Vegas, but Georgetown is ugly. Of course there is work and money is seen. Sometimes I had a strange feeling. If there are five black Guyanese working on construction and I approach, I am the white sheep. They act like it doesn't exist.
At that moment, a woman with a child in her arms looks out the window and screams: “Maduro is not good, a beautiful country is over.”
The clock strikes midnight. Venezuela, the old Robbe Street, is emptying. Tomorrow it will be dawn again in this little Caracas.
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