CNN
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Along 77th Avenue in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, a little corner of Venezuela is slowly expanding.
On the municipal map, the district is officially Unir II (“Unity”)But for many residents Barrio Hugo ChavezIt is named after the late Venezuelan president.
Many of the more than seven million Venezuelans who fled the country over the past decade now call Bogotá home, and the city is teeming with informal communities where migrants come together to help each other and combat persistent feelings of depression and homesickness.
María Álvarez is one of those migrants. A 27-year-old single mother from Valencia, Álvarez left Venezuela in 2017 when her son Gabriel was just one year old. They haven’t returned since; Gabriel only knows his grandparents from photos on his mother’s phone and the occasional video call.
“Everybody has left. I have family in Brazil, the United States, here in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile. Uncles, aunts, cousins, they’re all overseas. Only my mother, father and one of my brothers are left in Venezuela,” Alvarez told CNN.
Most of the 7 million migrants left Venezuela since 2014 amid an economic and political crisis brought on by a collapse in the price of oil, Venezuela’s main export, and chronic corruption and mismanagement by government officials, according to the United Nations.
About 2 million of them have work permits to work in Colombia, and life is going well for Alvarez and many others like her, who helped set up a foundation there after the pandemic hit. Unir II She aims to provide professional classes and psychological counseling to Venezuelans and Colombians. She now earns a living as a manicurist and has met her new partner.
But she still feels drawn to Venezuela: “I just dream of going back home and starting a life there. Colombia was good and I feel welcome here, but I long to go back,” she told CNN through tears.
Elections and a credible opposition party
But with the dictatorial regime of Nicolas Maduro firmly in power, dreams of returning home have long been thwarted – until now.
This month, Venezuela will hold its first elections in a decade, with Maduro’s government being challenged by opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who has a good chance of winning.
Last October, after lengthy and secretive negotiations with the U.S. State Department, President Maduro formally committed to holding free and fair elections in 2024.
That pledge has been at least partially compromised by renewed conflict between Washington and Caracas. Earlier this year, leading opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado was barred from running, as was her immediate replacement, Corina Lloris. The Venezuelan government has accused the White House of not fully lifting economic sanctions against senior government officials, and opposition supporters and members of Machado’s team have been detained in recent weeks.
Still, many experts believe the opposition has a good chance of ousting Maduro from power in the July 28 election.
Recent opinion polls have shown Mr Gonzalez leading Mr Maduro by more than 20 percentage points, and for the first time in years, the Carter Center and UN election observers have been invited to monitor the election.
In most other democracies, such a lead would give Gonzalez a commanding lead, but in Venezuela, governments have a penchant for clinging to power, and critics have long accused them of vote rigging and silencing the opposition.
Opposition protests were repeatedly cracked down on in 2014, 2017 and 2019, and hundreds of opposition leaders were arrested or exiled.
And yet, for many, this year feels different.
“Personally, I find it hard to believe that Maduro would give up power,” said Laura Dibb, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.
“But, you know, with international scrutiny and, of course, pressure from within the government and international pressure, with mass participation, there may be some way forward,” she told CNN.
Alvarez and many other migrants in Bogota feel the same way. “The only way Maduro can win the election is by stealing it, but if a new government is formed, I will go home that very day. Not just me, but hundreds, thousands… there won’t be enough planes to take everyone home,” said Ender Gonzalez, a 54-year-old from Maracaibo who has worked as a food delivery man in Bogota for the past five years.
The fate of immigrants like Alvarez, and millions like her, is what makes this election so closely watched.
Before the pandemic, it was common for Venezuelan migrants to seek opportunities in neighboring countries, but over the past three years, more than 500,000 have left. They traveled directly overland from Colombia through Panama and Central America to northern Mexico before heading to the southern U.S. border.
Venezuelans were the second largest group of migrants apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2023, a five-fold increase to a total of more than 260,000. The number was fewer than 50,000 in 2020 but is now rising, putting pressure on the White House to stem the influx.
The elections taking place in Caracas this month could have crucial consequences for U.S. President Joe Biden as the Democratic administration faces uncertainty in the November elections, with immigration policy being put to the direct vote.
Most experts who spoke to CNN believe that if Gonzalez wins, many migrants will decide to return to Venezuela, but if Maduro holds on to power, many more will likely try to head to the US border for both political and practical reasons.
In the early days of Venezuela’s migration boom, many Latin American countries offered emergency permits or temporary policies to migrants from the country, but many have now erected barriers to prevent people from moving freely.
Colombia, for example, has stopped issuing documents to recently arrived migrants, while Panama’s new president, José Raul Mulino, has proposed building a fence around the jungle connecting his country with Colombia.
Dibb estimates that as many as two million more migrants could be on the move by next year.
The Biden administration has played a key role in bringing about this moment, with Maduro agreeing to free and fair elections after the U.S. partially lifted oil sanctions and flights returning illegal migrants to Caracas resumed in October.
Direct negotiations between Maduro and the State Department appear to have halted, but Maduro announced last week that his lead negotiator, Jorge Rodriguez, would meet with U.S. officials to resume talks.
Washington has openly supported President Gonzalez, apparently believing that democratizing Venezuela would not only help in negotiations over energy policy and immigration, but also help Caracas move away from ideological alliances with China, Russia, Iran and others.
But with elections in both countries this year, what voters decide in November rather than July could make a real difference.
“We believe that if the Biden administration remains in power, the (bilateral) negotiations will continue,” Dib said.
“If we have a Trump administration, it will probably just be conducting business … without much consideration for what happens in terms of democracy and human rights.”
