Why a similar election in Venezuela could affect the fate of hundreds of thousands of migrants – and Joe Biden –

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A little corner of Venezuela is slowly expanding along 77th Boulevard in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.

Municipal maps official please see that community Unir II (“unite”)Although it is known by this name to most of its population Barrio Hugo ChavezLater the late President of Venezuela.

Many of the more than seven million Venezuelans who fled their country over the past decade or more now call Bogotá home. The city is full of informal communities where expatriates come together to support every alternative alliance and fight omnipresent depression and homesickness.

Maria Alvarez is one such migrant. Alvarez, a 27-year-old unmarried mother from Valencia, left Venezuela in 2017 when her son Gabriel was just a year old. They have not returned since then. Gabriel knows his grandparents only from footage on his mother’s phone and occasional video calls.

“Everyone is gone… I have family in Brazil, America, here in Colombia, in Ecuador, even in Chile. We’re all abroad: uncles, aunts, cousins… only my mother and my father, and one of my brothers live in Venezuela,” Alvarez told CNN.

According to the United Nations, most of those seven million migrants left Venezuela in late 2014, when an economic and political emergency resulted from the collapse of the price of oil – a major export for Venezuela – mixed with persistent corruption and mismanagement by the president. In the hands of senior officials.

Nearly two million of them were granted permits to work in Colombia, where opportunity is serving well for Alvarez and many others like him. Then during the Covid pandemic, he helped build an infrastructure Unir II Entrusting Venezuelans and Colombians with skilled categories and mental consultation. She now makes her living as a manicurist and has met her unloved soulmate.

Nevertheless, she feels drawn to Venezuela. “I just dream of going home and making a life there. Colombia has been nice, I feel welcomed here, but I’m eager to go back,” she told CNN, crying.

An election and a distinguished opposition

However, with Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian government firmly entrenched in power, desires for their return have remained just that for some years. So far.

This time, for the first time in a decade, Venezuela will hold elections in which Maduro’s government is being challenged by opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who has a good chance of winning.

In October last year, Maduro officially pledged to hold free and fair elections in 2024 at the end of a lengthy and secretive negotiation process with the US government sector.

That assurance was at least partially compromised amid an unrelenting dispute between Washington and Caracas: The main opposition candidate, María Corina Machado, was barred from running earlier this year, as was her immediate alternative, Corina Yoris. Was. The Venezuelan government has accused the White House of not lifting all financial sanctions against executive officials, and has detained opposition supporters and members of Machado’s team over the past few weeks.

Nevertheless, many experts believe the opposition has a real chance of ousting Maduro from power in a July 28 election.

The latest polls put González more than twenty percentage points ahead of Maduro and for the first time in years, election witnesses from the Carter Center and the United Nations were invited to observe the elections.

If this were almost any alternative democratic nation, any such government would make Gonzalez a big favorite. But the federal government in Venezuela is addicted to clinging to energy. Critics have long accused it of vote rigging and silencing the opposition.

Opposition protests in 2014, 2017 and 2019 were repeatedly suppressed and many opposition leaders were arrested, or deported.

However, for many people this year feels different.

“I personally find it difficult to believe that Maduro will give up power,” said Laura Dibb, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.

“However, you know, if there is international observation and, of course, pressure from inside the government and massive involvement with international pressure… then that could lead to some inroads,” she told CNN.

Alvarez, and many alternative expatriates in Bogotá, think similarly: “Maduro can only win the election if he steals it. But if a new government is formed, I will go back the same day. Not just for me, hundreds, thousands… there won’t be enough planes to return home for everyone,” said Andel Gonzalez, 54, of Maracaibo, who has worked as a food courier in Bogota for the past five years Is.

It is the fate of migrants like Alvarez and hundreds of thousands of others like them that are making this one of the most closely watched elections.

Before the pandemic, it was common for Venezuelan migrants to seek opportunities in neighboring countries, but in three years’ time more than one million They have moved towards the southern border of the Americas, moving directly by land from Colombia to Panama and Central America, all the way to northern Mexico.

Venezuelans had the second-largest contingent of migrants apprehended by US Customs and Border Patrol in 2023, with more than 260,000 total encounters, five times more. From 2020 when there were not even 50,000, force was deployed in white areas to stop the wave.

With the Democratic leadership facing an uncertain election in November and migration insurance policies at the center of the voting, the duality of this moment in Caracas could have profound implications for US President Joe Biden.

Most experts who spoke to CNN believe that if Gonzalez wins, many migrants will decide to return to Venezuela — but while Maduro clings to power, both for political reasons and for sensible reasons, many will head to the U.S. border. You may be tempted to go.

In the early years of the Venezuelan migration surge, many Latin American countries introduced crisis permits and ad-hoc policies for migrants to the country, although many are now erecting limits to discourage the inexorable movement of the population.

For example, Colombia has opposed issuing documents to recently arrived immigrants, while Panama’s newly elected President Jose Raul Mulino has proposed fencing off the forests connecting his country to Colombia.

Dibb estimates that more than 2 million migrants could be on the journey after 12 months.

The Biden management has played an important role in achieving this date. Maduro’s message for neutral and fair elections came only after the US partially lifted oil sanctions, and then repatriation flights for undocumented migrants to Caracas resumed in October.

Direct negotiations between Maduro and the United States appear to have stalled, even though Maduro announced last fall that his chief negotiator, Jorge Rodríguez, was meeting with U.S. officials to restart talks.

Washington is openly supporting González, seemingly believing that a transition to self-rule in Venezuela would not only support negotiations around energy coverage and migration, but also free Caracas from its ideological alliances with countries such as China, Russia, Will also help in removal. And Iran.

However, with elections being held in both countries this year, it will be what voters decide in November rather than July, which actually makes more sense.

“If the Biden administration remains in power, I believe the (bilateral) negotiations will continue,” Dib said.

“Now, if there is a Trump administration, most likely it is just doing business… without paying much attention to what is happening in terms of democracy and human rights.”