I had been living in Buenos Aires for 8 years when my cousins arrived at my apartment in 2017 after fleeing Venezuela. The country’s economic collapse, a slow-burning process years in the making, had become impossible to endure. Routine power outages. Unbearable food scarcity. One of the country’s most comprehensive living conditions surveys found that nearly two out of three Venezuelans lost an average of 11 kilograms that year.
These conditions, which would have been challenging for anyone, proved insurmountable for a couple in their thirties with a five-year-old.
I’ll never forget their exhausted looks. Those long, endless hugs. Their eyes tearing up at any mention of what was happening in Venezuela.
Most of all, I remember the bodies.
Months of shortage had emaciated them. Sharper cheekbones. Slimmer waistlines. Even their clothes hung differently. Venezuela beat strongly inside us both, but the scene was a reminder that it was in the bodies of those who remained where the crisis hit the hardest.
