Venezuelans abroad are skeptical that the presidential election will bring change in their country

Paola Pulgar, a 34-year-old Venezuelan, will not be able to vote in Panama’s presidential elections in two months. He did not update his voter information because they required a local ID, which he did not have in his hometown for humanitarian reasons, he said. It’s quite an emotional rollercoaster.

“At first it kept me awake. I resigned myself to my anger, it was so frustrating,” he said. Voice of America Bulkar graduated in chemical engineering and was active in an opposition political party before emigrating nine years ago.

There are at least 58,000 Venezuelans living in Panama, but like him, the majority cannot participate in the vote, where Nicolás Maduro wants to be re-elected president in an unfavorable environment, where all polls of private companies show Edmundo. González Urrutia, the candidate of the traditional anti-chavismo parties.

Although he cannot vote, he has a clear voice in his country’s politics. He said it was “hard to believe” in regime change Voice of America. “I don’t think there will be any different results in this election than what we’ve seen before,” he said.

Chavismo has been in power for 25 years, but its opposition hopes to turn popular discontent into an electoral victory in the face of the political, social and economic crisis of the past decade.

According to the R4V platform, which brings together 200 agencies and NGOs, local anti-chavism does not seem to have the same hopes for the Venezuelan diaspora.

“I have no hope, even though I would like to be surprised,” Mariangel Alana, a 33-year-old Venezuelan accountant living in Santiago, Chile, said of the final outcome of the presidential election.

As part of the 444,000 Venezuelans living in Chile, he said he had two opposing answers when asked who he thought would be elected in the July elections: one dictated by his “heart,” longing for candidate Gonzalez’s victory Urrutia; He described the other as ‘authentic’, with Chavismo winning.

“We have been living with a flawed electoral system for more than 20 years, so the best thing I can remotely do for my mental well-being is accept reality,” Alana said, assuming Maduro would be re-elected. .

Low participation

According to Votoscopio, an NGO led by journalist and electoral environmental analyst Eugenio Martínez, 6,000 Venezuelans managed to update their voter register data, and only 508 registered as new voters abroad, which took a month.

According to their research, immigrants and refugees abroad make up more than 4 million of the nearly 8 million voters.

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Outside Venezuela, only 69,189 voters could vote on July 28. During the special RE operation, only 508 voters were able to register as new voters and only 6,020 voters were able to change their voting center from Venezuela to their country of residence. https://t.co/GgQFqH1q7q pic.twitter.com/Y0WqnyWZvk

– Eugenio G. Martinez (@puzkas) May 2, 2024

Esteban Campos, social communicator, 43 years old and living in the United States since 2021, also does not expect political change in his country.

“Nothing is going to happen that hasn’t already happened. “What exists is a simulation, a show,” he said VOAHe is convinced that the solution to the crisis must be through an agreement between international actors such as Russia, China or the US, something he no longer sees today.

An estimated 545,000 Venezuelans live in the United States with legal status or are awaiting a response to their asylum claim.

Because the governments of the two countries have had no diplomatic ties since 2019, neither will be able to vote in July, invalidating the logistics of the vote, including updating voter data.

A generational problem and social differences

Campos is committed to digital platforms and fears that social divisions in his country will worsen after the elections.

“The gap between the poor and the government or those who do business with them will widen. The misery will deepen and people will continue to live off the money Venezuelans send abroad,” he predicted.

Gustavo Barrios, 47, of the popular Florida resort chain, has a similar opinion. “Although the panorama looks encouraging, I don’t think it will change with the elections. It is difficult and difficult to say, but this is what we have experienced in recent years,” he said. Voice of America.

María Alejandra Cáceres, a Venezuelan who lived for a decade between Uruguay and Chile, does not believe the government will acknowledge or allow her defeat.

“I don’t think there will be any major changes politically. “Socially, it will take generations to see major changes” that would allow his country to reverse what he called “social damage” during this century, he said.

The opposition is encouraging democratic and economic developments in favor of the return of Venezuelan migrants as part of its government and election campaign plan. The government, in turn, launched a migrant return program in 2018, the Vuelta a la Patria, in which 900,000 people took part, according to official figures.

Mariana Martínez, a 22-year-old young woman who immigrated to the United States in 2022, not only feels 2,000 kilometers away from her Venezuela, but also “too far” from current politics and news.

He believed that registering to vote was a “waste of time” because it was already clear to him that he would emigrate to the United States once he reached voting age in his home country. Today, he emphasized, his faith remains tied to “building” the future abroad, and no longer to the idea of ​​a political turnaround.

“Politics has eaten us too much. Yes, I want to vote, but I don’t even know who is participating,” he admitted, focusing more on his work than on election campaigns.