29/01/2021 | Writer: Aslı Saban
Femicide is another issue that accompanies Venezuelan women and girls in Venezuela and in the host countries.
In our “Latin America Region” article series, our guest is Maria Corina Muskus Toro. She is human rights defender. She is one of the pioneers of Venezuelan Woman Rights in the Latin America Region. She is the founder of ‘’Venezolanas Globales’’ Initiative. We discussed with Maria about the Venezuelan Crisis, xenophobia, gender-based Violence, Venezuelan Migrant Women’s problems.
How many years have you been working in social work, human rights, protection, advocacy areas?
I have been working as a human rights lawyer for almost 10 years. I completed my bachelor's degree in law in 2012 then and since 2014, I have been working in the human rights area, in particular when protests in Venezuela and repression began as a widespread practice from the government. In 2015, and thanks to a scholarship I received, I migrated to the USA, to pursue a master's degree in gender and human rights. Ever since I have been actively working in the areas of migration and human rights. My aim is to make Venezuelan's migrant situation, humanitarian crises, and the Venezuelan crisis in the human rights area visible.
As we know, the Venezuelan crisis is an essential topic in Latin America, can you give information about Venezuelan refugees in host countries in Central America Region?
Venezuelan refugees have migrated to in every country in Latin American. Colombia hosts almost two million Venezuelan refugees. Because it’s one of the land borders with Venezuela.
It is also important to consider the migration of Venezuelans has had different stages through our history. For example, six or seven years ago, high level class of Venezuelan migrated to other countries to study or work. In 2017, the complex humanitarian crisis started in Venezuela and we started to see the “caminantes”, which means the walkers, Venezuelan women, children and men started to walk from Venezuela to other countries even to Ecuador, Chile and Peru. We can also say Brazil hosts a large number of Venezuelan migrants. It is not a preferable choice because in Brazil they do not speak Spanish. But also in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile host a large number of Venezuelan refugees.
Venezuela after the second world war back in the 90s hosted refugees from Europe, the Middle East Region. We can also state that after the dictatorial regimes started in the Latin America, such as in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, Venezuela started to host refugees and migrants from the region. Venezuela was a country that hosted refugees from other Latin America. Another example is back in the 1990s when the conflict between army and guerrilla started in Colombia, many Colombian started to migrate to Venezuela.
Venezuela has been a country that hosted refugees and migrants before and is now sending refugees to other countries due to the complex humanitarian crisis.
Let’s talk about Social Cohesion; Venezuelan refugees do not have a language barrier if they migrate to countries which have spoken Spanish; is it easy to implement a social cohesion in host countries between host community and Venezuelan refugees in Latin America Region?
First of all, most of Venezuelan refugees do not live in camps in the region. This is an advantage because they are not separated from host communities. This is an advantage that allows to create social cohesion. But this does not happen in Brazil for example, where many Venezuelan live in refugee camps.
Venezuelan refugees do not have a language barrier in most of the countries in Latin America except for Brazil. We have a similar culture. , many xenophobia attacks have happened against Venezuelan refugees in host countries. For example, in Panama, members of congress also deliver hate speeches. One of our main foods is ‘’Tequenos’’. They opened a hashtag ‘’we don’t want tequenos in Panama. For example, in Colombia, the Major of Bogotá has made public statements saying that a lot of the crime in the city was committed by Venezuelans. This has an impact on the perception of Venezuelans in this country and does not help with social cohesion.
In Ecuador, a man killed a woman and this was recorded and displayed on social media. They started to say that the man was from Venezuela. The local communities started to kick out Venezuelan migrants from their homes, persecuted them, scared them, threatened them, and started to burn Venezuelan migrants’ goods. It was awful.
In Peru, many young, single successful and educated Venezuelan migrants have arrived. Now, there is a perception that Venezuelan migrants are taking the jobs of locals . So it is also very difficult to live in countries where the community feels that Venezuelan migrants will take their jobs from their hands. . This creates xenophobia attacks or speeches.
When we think about Peru or Colombia, these countries also have a poverty problem. Therefore the host community feels threatened by Venezuelan migrants. Imagine in a country where the citizens cannot access their basic rights, what are the opportunities for migrants?
Can we talk about GBV, Human Trafficking, Cheap Labor problems among Venezuelan Community in Latin America Region?
This is a very important issue that I have documented and I am still following. Violence against Venezuelan migrant women and girls or being trafficked is carrying a high risk and vital topic. In Trinidad and Tobago, a country currently ignoring the grave human rights violations in Venezuela and the need of international protection of Venezuelan refugees is struggling of human trafficking, also Colombia, which has received around 2 million migrants and refugees has also a human trafficking problem. Generally, Venezuelan women and girls that are migrants and refugees are at high risk of being subject to human trafficking. They are also at high risk of being victims of rape and sexual violence. When women walk from Venezuela to Colombia or Peru, they also generally face with many difficulties we hear or receive rape cases when Venezuelan women arrive to host countries.
We should understand why people migrate from Venezuela. Because Venezuelans do not have access to basic necessities. Such as food, water, electricity, basic human rights. When we see women who came from borders to host countries, we can find out many women are pregnant, looking for protection for them and their newborn child that they cannot find in Venezuela. These pregnant Venezuelan women have a fear of dying of hunger or losing their babies while delivering in Venezuela due to scarcity of health supplies.
For example, it is a well documented case of a Venezuelan woman that was raped at the border of Venezuela and Colombia, after she was struggling to get access to sexual and reproductive health for a safe abortion. So we can say that Venezuelan women are very vulnerable. So they cannot access their economic needs and rights in host countries.
It is also very important to highlight that femicide is another issue that accompanies Venezuelan women and girls in Venezuela and in the host countries. In Mexico, we have seen cases of Venezuelan women killed in ways that can only be a femicide. Because cartels, drugs have trafficked and captured some Venezuelan migrant women. They see Venezuelan migrant women as sexual objects. It is important also to mention that some Venezuelan migrant women are recruited from Venezuela, and afterwards they become victims of human trafficking.
What about the situation of cheap labor and child labour problems among Venezuelan Migrant Community ?
Many Venezuelan migrants have earned %30-40 less salary than citizens. But we can say that many migrants in different countries face with this problem in host countries.
Therefore many children became stateless . I can see children in the Venezuelan diaspora in Mexico, they cannot access the education rights because they don’t have a birth certificate if the country requires them to enrolling refugee children in schools. Some host countries can just give rights for some refugee children to attend schools. Because we migrate to countries that cannot provide essential rights to their citizens. As I know, many Venezuelan children, if they are not have access to schools , they are working in host countries. Because they need money. Most Venezuelan refugees and migrants are working in the informal economy in Latin American countries. Many Venezuelan women also work in the beauty sector, domestic jobs, in developed countries.
How you decided to participate feminist movement in Venezuela? What are you doing Now?
In terms of what I am doing, I created an initiative that gathers and connects women from the Venezuelan diaspora in different cities in the world, including Latin America, Europe, and the USA. There wasn’t any group or networking that supported women from Venezuelan diasporas specifically. We are now 2500 women in our Facebook group. We have 13 women as Ambassadors from different countries. We are organizing workshops, meetings, gatherings to learn new skills, do networking, and of course channel help to your country Venezuela.
In terms of Venezuela, there is a great feminist community and movement in Venezuela which is started a moving of women’ voting rights in Venezuela. There are feminist human rights activists and NGOs in Venezuela that are working in favor of gender equality. It is important to highlight that there is a big gender gap that exists in opposition groups and leaders in Venezuela. We don’t see women leaders in high-ranking positions in opposition political parties. Needless to say there are many brave and strong Venezuelan women in political parties, but when you escalate to the top, you see fewer of them . It is important that we continue to advocate for public spaces and political positions for women so that our views and opinion are on the table.
What is your message to young people who want to work in civil society organizations as a Role-Model?
My message to the young generation is that they should work for a better world. We need new and creative persons in different areas that can change the status quo and rethink ways of doing things, not better, but differently. They should also believe in the importance of building community. They should spend time knowing the human-rights community and local communities as well. They should walk step by step to pursue their dreams and see changes that we can’t see. You can’t make big changes immediately, it requires energy, resilience and doing it one step at a time.
It is also very important to learn other languages. For example, learning English is very important. Speaking other languages, it opens you to new opportunities and professional growth.
Tags: human rights, women
