COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: VENEZUELA
AGE: 63
CHILDREN: 4 BUT ONLY 1 ON THE ISLAND
ORIGINAL OCCUPATION: MANAGED TAXIS AND OTHER TRANSPORT
TIME ON THE ISLAND: 4 YEARS

It was pure circumstances that we ended up staying here on the island. My daughter and I came here on vacation for a week. She was a student back in Venezuela and there were many strikes at her university. She had been involved in the student protests against the government in Venezuela, which brought certain prosecution and threats by police officers. She was feeling very tense and stressed, so I told her let’s take a few days and go to Curaçao to relax. In the first days of being here we noticed that the bank had blocked my dollar account, so I wasn’t able to pay for us being here anymore or fly back. We requested support from the Consulate, but they didn’t do anything.

The people where we were staying helped us with many things in those days. They truly went out of their way to make us not feel like a burden and told us not to worry. My daughter was desperate and started looking for work. She found a job working at a hindu shop so we decided to stay because the university in Venezuela was closed and there wasn’t any other way to get help. She started the process of getting a permit, but we lost a lot of money that way. They swindled us and we didn’t receive anything in the end.

My daughter has a boyfriend now, he is also from Venezuela, and they had a baby. We went to Kranshi to register the baby when he was born, but they told us that we had to go to the Consulate. At the Consulate they told us to go to Kranshi. The boy is 2 years old now and it’s still as if he doesn’t exist, because we can’t register him anywhere.

My message is that we’re not anonymous, faceless people. We’re normal people looking to live an honest life. We’re not shadows, we exist!