What is the Venezuelan exodus, and where have Venezuelans gone?

The Venezuelan exodus

La diáspora venezolana

c. 2015. Venezuela, once the richest country in South America and a magnet for immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Colombia, has in a decade become the source of…

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

Where: The Spanish Caribbean, The whole Spanish-speaking world, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, United States, Spain

What happened

Venezuela, once the richest country in South America and a magnet for immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Colombia, has in a decade become the source of the largest displacement in the modern history of the Americas. Falling oil prices, economic collapse under Nicolás Maduro, hyperinflation, shortages of food and medicine and political repression drove people out from about 2015. By August 2023 the UN counted more than 7.7 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants worldwide, over 6.5 million of them in seventeen countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, above all Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil; later many went on to the United States and Spain. Many left on foot, across the Andean border posts, with their children. The true number is higher, since many are not counted, and after the disputed election of 2024 emigration continued.

Say it

Desde 2015 más de siete millones de venezolanos han salido de su país.

Since 2015 more than seven million Venezuelans have left their country.

Why it matters

A quarter of Venezuelans now live abroad, and their arepas, their accent and their diminutives are changing the Spanish of Bogotá, Lima, Santiago and Madrid; the exodus is also the hardest test of Latin American solidarity in living memory.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela — R4V Inter-agency Coordination Platform (UNHCR/IOM)
  2. Over four million Venezuelan refugees and migrants struggle to meet basic needs across the Americas — IOM / UNHCR press release