“Where do I belong?”: Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream.
“If I am in Venezuela, where I was born, they said go to your country (Portugal), now in Portugal people called me Venezuelan and tell me to go back to Venezuela. And then is that moment I ask myself where am I from, who am I?” Maykol Gomes, son of Portuguese emigrants, and born in Venezuela.
Just a few decades ago, Venezuela was a magnet for immigrants from southern Europe. Now, the Portuguese diaspora is returning to its roots.
More than half a million Portuguese and Portuguese-descendents live in Venezuela today, following waves of immigration to the country during its oil-soaked boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Many of them were escaping Portugal’s 1926-1974 right-wing dictatorship (1926 - 1974)—and around 300,000 of the Portuguese diaspora in Venezuela are from the island of Madeira, an island with about 250,000 inhabitants today.
When Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela in 1999, some began moving back to Madeira. But when Nicolas Maduro assumed the presidency in 2013, this phenomenon significantly increased. Since last year, as the country faces an unprecedented economic and social crisis, Maduro has steered Venezuela toward dictatorship. In 2017, facing a lack of medicine and food, more than 10,000 Portuguese-Venezuelans moved to Madeira to start over once more. (The Portuguese authorities expect this number to double in 2018.) Now, they are like refugees in their own homes.
This photography-led project is about the Portuguese diaspora in Venezuela and how the trend of returning migration to Madeira is transforming the island. Many of those who are going back to Portugal are second and third-generation immigrants who were born in Venezuela. Their parents or grandparents left very poor conditions in Madeira to seek their ‘American dream’ in Venezuela. Now their kids are moving in the opposite direction—kids who might hold a Portuguese passport but no longer speak Portuguese. For many, it’s their first time in Madeira. Considered Portuguese when they were in Venezuela, they return to Portugal only to be seen as Venezuelan. Now they don’t know where they belong.
This work focuses on three families, who are being split up again because of this new emigration. The story shows both sides—the older members of the family staying behind in Venezuela and the younger ones starting over in Madeira. In addition, there is a story about one Portuguese who moved to Venezuela decades ago. Today, he can barely eat; his wife died last year because of a lack of medicine. He has no one abroad to support him and would like to return to Portugal but he can’t.
The project also shows the cultural influence of these communities. The first wave of emigration to Venezuela brought with it Portuguese food, Portuguese dance and some Portuguese traditions—some of which are stronger today in Venezuela than Portugal, particularly the relationship to Catholicism. This social and cultural phenomenon is also happening the other way around now: the people who are moving from Venezuela to Madeira are bringing the Spanish language and the Venezuelan culture with them. As I photographed in Madeira, they now dance and party to Venezuelan music and they eat Venezuelan food.
