First Images of Hugo Chavez Since December Surgery

Worldcrunch

The Venezuelan government has posted the first photographs of President Hugo Chavez since his cancer surgery more than two months ago in Cuba. In the images you can see Chavez lying down, surrounded by his two daughters, with signs of a tracheal breathing tube.

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(source: Venezuelan government)

There has been much speculation about the Venezuelan leader's condition, after he was forced to miss the inauguration for his fourth term last month. Venezuela's Interior Minister Ernesto Villegas has given the most recent official update on Chavez's health: “The respiratory infection that he suffered was triggered during his post operatory recovery, and it has been controlled, although he still has some respiratory insufficiency, which is why he breathes with the help of a tracheal cannula.”

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Migrant Lives

Migration

What's Driving More Venezuelans To Migrate To The U.S.

With dimmed hopes of a transition from the economic crisis and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro, many Venezuelans increasingly see the United States, rather than Latin America, as the place to rebuild a life..

Photo of a family of Migrants from Venezuela crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum

Migrants from Venezuela crossed the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum.

David Peinado via Zuma Press

Julio Borges

-Analysis-

Migration has too many elements to count. Beyond the matter of leaving your homeland, the process creates a gaping emptiness inside the migrant — and outside, in their lives. If forced upon someone, it can cause psychological and anthropological harm, as it involves the destruction of roots. That's in fact the case of millions of Venezuelans who have left their country without plans for the future or pleasurable intentions.

Their experience is comparable to paddling desperately in shark-infested waters. As many Mexicans will concur, it is one thing to take a plane, and another to pay a coyote to smuggle you to some place 'safe.'

Venezuela's mass emigration of recent years has evolved in time. Initially, it was the middle and upper classes and especially their youth, migrating to escape the socialist regime's socio-political and economic policies. Evidently, they sought countries with better work, study and business opportunities like the United States, Panama or Spain. The process intensified after 2017 when the regime's erosion of democratic structures and unrelenting economic vandalism were harming all Venezuelans.