What it's like to be young and Venezuelan in a time of chaos

Gabriel Alfonzo Sanchez stands quietly at a stove in the Colombian beach hostel where he works, pushing his lunch of chopped vegetables and rice around a frying pan, the dog-tag around his neck jingling as he stirs.

To the bikini-wearing backpackers busy squashing avocados in the background, nothing about him would seem out of the ordinary: he’s just another 26-year-old in surfer shorts and flip-flops, carrying his slender frame and wide shoulders casually, flashing a playful smile now and then.

But Gabriel is Venezuelan. And like most of his friends and peers right now, he’s a long way from home and living a life that is anything but a holiday. Last year, he gathered up what he could and fled Venezuela’s devastating economic and political crisis, joining an estimated four million people – 10 per cent of the country’s population – who have left since 2014.

A collapse in oil prices combined with a strained political landscape under the Chávez and Maduro governments – causing tension with both domestic elites and the West – has made food, medical supplies and water almost non-existent in what was South America’s richest country just 17 years ago.

Hyperinflation and devaluation of the Bolivar mean savings and incomes are now almost worthless; violence and disorder plague the streets, prompting students to drop out of universities at an alarming rate. Whether emigrating on foot, bus or plane in search of new horizons, they are now driven by a determination to build the lives that their country once promised them.

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