The Aguiars were starting over in Madeira and losing their sense of belonging and identity. Rita and Carlos Aguiar emigrated to Venezuela in 1981 chasing their “Venezuelan Dream,” and they had their five children there. In August 2017, they abandoned Venezuela, seeing no future in the country for themselves and their family. They left behind all they had fought for and their three oldest kids. Their children Stefany and Jhon moved with Rita and Carlos to Madeira. Carla, Liseth and Francisco stayed. Liseth died in May 2019 of hepatitis, and Francisco is stuck in Venezuela without a Portuguese passport. Carla married Josué Artiaga in December 2017 in Venezuela and moved to Madeira in August 2018 while she was pregnant. Their baby, Josué Raúl, was born in January 2019 back where his grandparents came from, culminating this reversed migration.
The Aguiars left Venezuela in the face of a deep political, economic and humanitarian crisis, but they also left their loved ones, and their love for the country where they were born or lived in for so long.
Perspective | A family between two identities, migrating back to their ancestral land
More than half-a-million Portuguese and Portuguese descendants live in Venezuela today, after waves of immigration to the country during its oil-soaked booms of the 1950s and 1990s. A photographer followed one family as they reverse-migrated back...
