This article is focused on the following UN Sustainable Development Goal:
It's no secret all the critical issues Venezuela is facing at the moment. Such as political corruption and gross economic management. Though food and supplies shortages are also widely talked about regarding Venezuela, not a lot of people are thinking about how this is affecting the elderly community still living in the country. Most of the elderly people still living in Venezuela are people who were left behind by their families when they left the country in search of better opportunities. Venezuelans that are still in the country to this day are either extremely poor and weren't able to leave the country when all of this started or working in favor of the corrupt government. The elderly community in Venezuela represents people who were left behind and forgotten about and we need to talk about it. “The United Nations estimates that the number of Venezuelans who have fled the country will reach eight million this year—making it one of the largest refugee crises since the Second World War”(Taladrid). People are leaving the country at an incredible speed, that's a fact.
How does this affect the elderly community's hunger? The whole crisis Nicols Maduro (President of Venezuela) has brought on Venezuela has made the elderly community not be able to have a minimum standard of living. Most people eat every other day and sometimes go through long periods with food that compares too little to nothing. A lot of people go out on the streets and beg because they are starving but those people that they are begging to give them food are also barely making ends meet and probably eat once a day as well. Something very sad is that some people in the elderly community are so malnourished they don't even have the strength to go up to people and beg for food so they end up dying alone of starvation in their houses. Some people who made it to this state of malnourishment and starvation are Pedro Salinas and his wife Isabeila Henandez, the 83-year-old couple was found dead in their apartment and not having enough food to survive.
From my own experience of living in Venezuela for 3 years from 2016 through 2019, I can confirm that “The Hunger Of Venezuela's Seniors” is real and it's been happening for years. Most people that left the country were young people sent to other countries around South America such as Argentina or Colombia to work and to send money to their families that had stayed in Venezuela. Kids were also sent to different countries by their family members to live with distant relatives in other countries to give them better opportunities such as Portugal or Spain. So many people are in poverty and most of them couldn't even afford one plane ticket, but the families that could afford maybe one or two tickets would send young people to fly out instead of elderly people. The elderly community is the one that has been affected by this food and supply crisis the most because they are mostly the ones that are still living in Venezuela. Something that I vividly remember from living there is whenever my family and I went to the airport to leave the country for vacation there were always a bunch of emotional goodbyes going on. From what I remember a lot of the goodbyes had the younger family leaving the country and getting on a plane trying to leave for another country and the grandparents staying behind in Venezuela and wishing them good luck and saying that they hope to see them soon. Something that still gives us some hope that maybe more of the elderly people might start leaving the country is that according to, The New Humanitarian “After holding out for years, an increasing number of Venezuelans over the age of 65 are now leaving the country, many following relatives who left earlier.”
I don't think the elderly community in Venezuela ever imagined that their life could be this way. Some of them had always known that they would be poor but what's going on there isn't just people being poor, it's human rights violations. Coming from the richest country in South America, this crisis is hard to fix because it's small compared to the other ones that have happened in Venezuela and are still happening at this moment. Even compared to the other humanitarian crises and human rights violations regarding Venezuela at this moment this still isn't talked about as much as it needs to be. Colombia has tried to help Venezuelans by opening its borders to them and giving them the resources they need but with 5,000 of them entering their country every day, their main priority is not helping the ones that are still there. It's devastating to know that until the current government leaves all of these crises including the hunger of Venezuelan seniors aren't going to end any time soon. Just because something or someone isn't talked about or forgotten about doesn't mean it stopped happening or they dispersed, the starving elderly in Venezuela are a factual real-world example of it.
Remember, change starts with you.
The New Humanitarian. 2022. In Venezuela, the elderly are the ‘invisible victims. [online] Available at: <https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/02/25/Venezue
la-elderly-hunger-crisis> [Accessed 9 October 2022].
Nast, C., 2022. Aging and Abandoned in Venezuela’s Failing State. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/aging-and-abandoned-in-venezuelas-failing-state> [Accessed 9 October 2022].
2020. “They are starving the country”: Malnutrition takes hold of older adults in Venezuela. [online] Available at: <https://presidenciave.com/regions/they-are-starving-the-country-malnutrition-takes-hold-of-older-adults-in-venezuela/> [Accessed 10 October 2022].
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