Every time Venezuelan singers from the diaspora, like the talented María Fernanda Castillo, sing Luis SilvaVenezuela’s song, the skin of an entire country crawls again. “I am desert, jungle, snow and volcano, and as I walk I leave a trail of the rumor of the plain in a song that keeps me awake,” intones this young woman, also from the plains, from Barinas, the cradle of the Chavista revolution that has only brought her nightmares. .
We are in the center of Guayaquil, where this 26-year-old young woman works several hours a day to raise her two little girls. Today Isabel Sofía, six years old, is with her, whom she baptized, fleeing from reggaeton fashions and mixing names “because she wanted her to be like a princess.”
Five years away from his country, but always close. And also the adoptive one. “If I could, I would vote for Noboa, of course. And in the Venezuelan primaries (October 22) I am going to vote, I am already registered. And I am going to do it for change, for María Corina Machado. I have always kept hope for my country to change,” María Fernanda explains to EL MUNDO.
“We are looking forward to the elections, a large majority of us are in favor of Daniel Noboa. We are even incorporated into some of his electoral commands. Reasons? The obvious ones! Aside from the controversy caused by Luisa González regarding Venezuela, She is the dolphin of one of the main allies of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and she still has a very pronounced closeness.
Around 2,000 Venezuelans are eligible to vote here. And the vote will be massive for Noboa,” Aníbal Rivero, one of the leaders of the Venezuelan community in the country and member of the local committee for the primaries of the Venezuelan democratic opposition, clarified to this newspaper.
González provoked the anger of the emigrants by ensuring that “Venezuela has better living conditions than Ecuador now. Yes, totally, and they (Venezuelan emigrants) are running back to Venezuela, because it is safer than Ecuador. Venezuelans are terrified of Ecuador “.
The revolutionary fake shook up the electoral campaign and consolidated Noboa at that time, who had managed to gain the support of losing candidates in the first round. “When I arrived there was a lot of security, everything was much cheaper, but over time it got worse, and so did crime. I know many friends who have gone home, but after a short time, after seeing how our country was doing, they have returned to Ecuador and other places, like the US and Spain,” clarifies María Fernanda.
Former president Rafael Correa is not only a historical ally of the Bolivarian revolution, he also serves as a special advisor to Maduro. Several members of his former ministerial team have participated in the neoliberal turn of the Venezuelan economy, which has de facto adapted the dollar as the currency of common use.
Almost half a million Venezuelans currently live in Ecuador. The data handled by emigrant organizations refute what González said, beyond the recomposition of the migratory map in the region, whose final destination is not Venezuela.
Looking ahead to the primaries on the 22nd, “we are going to have voting centers in Guayaquil and Quito, with 16 polling stations arranged on the fields of the Pontifical Catholic University. There is a very marked trend in favor of new political structures,” adds Rivero.
While María Fernanda, with Spanish blood in her veins, finishes the last stanzas of the second Venezuelan anthem (“if one day I have to be shipwrecked and the typhoon breaks my sails, bury my body near the sea, in Venezuela”), her little girl dances around, carried by her mother’s music. In five years, the woman from Barinas has worked in “almost everything, except the bad ones”, from a family employee to a cocktail bartender on the beach.
At the feet of both of them, a pink piggy bank, which matches their t-shirts and on which reads a legend, written with dignified letters: “Donate to art.”
