Violence and instability continue in Venezuela and many have left the country to escape a collapsing economy, seeking asylum overseas.
Miami Herald Reporter David Ovalle was in Scotland in July for the 2018 British Open Golf Championship when he met a Venezuelan family who'd settled in the country. Ovalle then discovered that the Hernandez family were not the only Venezuelans in Scotland. He reported that about 2,000 Venezuelans were recorded to be living legally in Scotland last year.
Ovalle joined Sundial to discuss how the Hernandez family is adjusting to life in a world very different from their home country.
WLRN: Did you know there were so many Venezuelans living in Scotland before this trip?
Ovalle: I would have never guessed in a million years that there would be a community of Venezuelans living in Scotland. I did not realize that there was any kind of ties there but apparently, more than a decade ago when Chavez basically fired almost half the workforce of the oil company down in Venezuela, there was a lot of workers ... in the oil sector that needed employment. So Aberdeen, Scotland is a major oil producing area in the North Sea and they were having a boom right around the same time so they started hiring a lot of Venezuelan workers. This is when the connection first started and then, of course, it's progressed as the economy's gotten worse in Venezuela and people have looked for places to land, flee the chaos and the poverty there.
So this couple that you found, Carlos and Nathaly Hernandez, tell us a little bit about them and how did they end up there?
Their story is very similar to a lot of the people who have left the country. They were actually pretty well-off, educated and ran a farm. Nathaly worked as an accountant. They were sort of insulated from a lot of the chaos going on because they were able to produce their own food and able to make good money and then the crime finally intersected with their lives. A group of teenagers basically held Carlos hostage for four to five hours at his farm looking for money and looking for goods and they eventually released him because he managed to convince them to let them go. When he got back, he said 'we have to leave.'
Aberdeen seems the polar opposite of what they're used to. What was that transition been like for them?
For me, that was one of the most fascinating aspects of the story ... exploring those "fish out of water" cultural exchanges. Being Hispanic myself and being from a warm-weather place, even me going to visit there was odd, let alone that family going to stay there. Simple things like the fact that it's always gray, the architecture is all the granite ... that's completely night and day different than Caracas. The food was a huge adjustment. They were used to having fish that was fresh and in Aberdeen, everything is fried. Carlos was telling me that they tried to make a paella, a traditional Spanish seafood and rice dish, and it just came out horribly bland. And of course, the biggest thing is the language.
What did they tell you about their future hopes? Do they hope one day to go back to Venezuela? Have they just accepted that maybe this is going to be home?
I think they accept that it's going to be home. But I think like many immigrants, including my mother coming from Guatemala 30 years ago, they always sort of have that thing hanging in the back of their mind: that they're going back one day. And sometimes the years melt away and you realize home is where you've placed your roots. But they certainly know that they can't go back the way things are now.