Escape from Chávez

The subtitle in this issue of the Latinamerican Newsweek reads: “10 years of authoritarism has made tens of thousands of professional venezuelans abandon their country”. Among other things, the article talks about the exodus that has left PDVSA (Venezuela’s oil company) in ruins and how the insitutes of scientific investigation have been completely left out.
The article says:
“Nobody cares if a 20 year-old engineer or a specialist in computers decides to leave the country. However, that loss will be felt after a decade”, states Raúl Mestres, a human resources expert from Caracas whose son and daughter left Venezuela recently. . .”If we sit and think of the opportunities we have lost, we would break down and cry”.
We, who have had the “fortune” to escape, struggle to adapt and grow within the adversity of exile. From a distance, with guilt and hurt, we see how everything we miss about our country crumbles. What we mess changes and each time we return we stop recognizing the Venezuela we left. From the outside we also want to break down and cry.