José Sarmento Matos

Photographer
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Where do I belong?_Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream
Location: London
Nationality: Portuguese
Biography: I am a 35 years old Portuguese documentary photographer based in between Lisbon and London. After studying Journalism at UCP in Lisbon (2007-2010) in December 2015 I completed an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London... MORE
Private Story
Where do I belong?_Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream
Copyright José Sarmento Matos 2024
Updated Jan 2020
Topics Abandonment, Belief, Birth, Borders, Capitalism, Celebrations, Children, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Wars, Community, Corruption, Crime, Desert, Dictatorship, Disability, Documentary, Dreams, Editorial, Education, Elections, Emotion, Faith, Family, Feminism, Freedom, Globalization, Happiness, Health/Healing, Historical, Homelessness, Hope, Human Rights, Hunger, Immigration, Isolation, Landscape, Latin America, Love, Media, Migration, Military, Minority, Motherhood, Oppression, Peace, Photojournalism, Politics, Portraiture, Poverty, Pregnancy/Birth, Prison, Protests, Relationships, Religion, Reporting, Revolution, Soldiers, Street, Technology, Travel, War, Water, Womens Rights, Workers Rights, Yearning, Youth
Where do I belong? Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream. 

Where do I belong? is a story about a Portuguese-Venezuelan family and their reversed migration from Venezuela to Portugal.

This photography-led project is about the Portuguese diaspora in Venezuela and how the trend of returning migrants to Madeira is transforming the island. It focuses on one family that went to Venezuela seeking a better life, but had to return to Madeira as they increasingly struggled to get basic goods and with no bright future in sight.

The father and the mother of the family, 64-year-old Carlos Aguiar, and 55-year-old Rita Jardim Aguiar, moved to Venezuela in 1981 to chase their dream. They had 5 kids. In August 2017, the couple had to move back to Madeira, where Rita’s mother and sister welcomed them. They moved with their two youngest kids, Jhon and Stefany. The family had been grappling with extreme adversity in Venezuela, including food and medicine shortages. They left behind their three others kids and four grandsons because the family could not afford the flight costs for everyone. The couple and their youngest kids were only able to move after receiving help from the Regional Government of Madeira and from the Portuguese government, that dealt with their situation as a high risk case. When Rita and Carlos started working in Madeira they were able to start sending money to help their family in Venezuela.

28-year-old Carla Aguiar, one of the daughters who stayed behind, got married in December 2017, to Josué Artiaga, 36 years old, without her parents being present to witness the ceremony. In April 2018, she got pregnant. From that moment, the family’s priority became finding a way to move Carla to Portugal so she could give birth in a safe place, in a hospital with basic conditions - in the last few years, the number of women and babies losing their lives during childbirth in hospitals in Venezuela has skyrocketed.

Josué Raul, Carla and Josué ́s son, was born in Madeira. The son of Venezuelan parents, and grandson of a Portuguese couple (Rita and Carlos), is the culmination of this family’s reversed diaspora. They plan to stay in Madeira and start over there.

Francisco, 36 years old, and Liseth 31 years old, Carla ́s siblings, were left behind in Venezuela. Liseth could not get a Venezuelan passport for her kids and Francisco can’t get his Portuguese passport. Plus, they weren’t able to pay for their flights. Liseth Aguiar died on May 10 2019 in Venezuela with hepatitis due to lack of treatment available in the country.

More than half a million Portuguese and Portuguese-descendants live in Venezuela today, following waves of immigration to the country during its oil-soaked boom of the 1950s and 1990s. Many of them were escaping Portugal’s 1926-1974 right-wing dictatorship —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 Portuguese immigrants began moving back to Madeira. But when Nicolás Maduro assumed the presidency in 2013, this phenomenon increased significantly.

Since 2017, as the country plunged into an unprecedented economic and social crisis, Maduro steered Venezuela towards dictatorship. Struggling to gain access to food and medicine, between 5,000 and 10,000 Portuguese-Venezuelans moved to Portugal, making the opposite journey to start over once again. Now, they are like refugees in their country of origin.

Even when born in Venezuela, Portuguese-Venezuelan people tend to be considered Portuguese or as children of Portuguese immigrants. But now that they are moving to Madeira, with their Portuguese passport, they are seen as Venezuelan, as foreigners and immigrants. Now they don’t know where they belong.

This project is about both sides of that dilemma. It ́s about a family that is being separated again, starting over in Madeira and losing their sense of belonging and identity. They are leaving the Caribbean country in the face of a deep political, economical and humanitarian crisis, but they are also leaving their loved ones, and their love for the country where they were born or lived in for so long.

Also by José Sarmento Matos —

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JAMAIKA - FILM

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Jamaica for Bloomberg Businessweek

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HOME

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"To Understand "˜Brexit,' Look to Britain's Tabloids"

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New York Times Manchester

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Where do I Belong?

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Series

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Life-style - Comercial

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Festivals. Portfolio for Barclays

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Blight of Berbers

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Portraits & Headshots

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homepage

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How can I help you?

Jose Sarmento Matos
Where do I belong?_Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream by José Sarmento Matos
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