At the far end of the Emerald Line 9 is Vila Natal, a neighborhood about 18 miles south of downtown São Paulo, Brazil.
The last stop is full of enthusiastic sellers who sing, perform and rhyme, offering fake Apple watches, Trident chewing gum, electric shavers.
The neighborhood is one of several enclaves where Venezuelan families live. Like Yoselyn Kalkuryan, who is 35 years old, married and has three children: 13-year-old Santiago, 9-year-old Sofia and 4-year-old Josue.
This year marks the fifth year of mass migration of Venezuelans. Since 2018, more than 7 million people have left the country due to political chaos and economic collapse. About 400,000 of them went to Brazil, where they worked hard to find work and learn a new language.
Kalkurian left Venezuela in June 2021. Her husband said he didn’t want to come, so she grabbed her kids and left him.
“He constantly said that if he is going to fight, he wants to fight in his country. And I said: “You can go ahead and fight in your country because I’m leaving,” he said.
Trips like his are made every day to Brazil.
According to Brazil’s federal police, 17,397 Venezuelans entered the country in February, more than in January and up nearly 40% from the same month last year.
Kalkurian previously worked as a school secretary in Ciudad Bolivar, eastern Venezuela. She says it has been very difficult to survive, even though she has a home there.
“All our wages would go on food. And it will last only three days. For the rest of the month, we had to figure out how to buy groceries again,” he said.
After they first arrived in Brazil across the border, Kalkurian and her children spent three months in shelters in Pacaraima and Boa Vista, in the northern state of Roraima.
Villa Natal in Sao Paulo was not really his choice.
“I didn’t choose it,” he said.
“When they were doing the interiorization process, they asked if we have anyone who will host us. We didn’t have anyone, we don’t know anyone here.”
The internalization program, launched in 2018, voluntarily relocates Venezuelan refugees from northern states to other cities in the country. The program is run by the federal government with support from the United Nations Refugee Agency and several partner organizations.
The shelter in Vila Natal had vacancies. Kalkurian and her children lived in a shelter for several months, and then she was able to rent a one-bedroom apartment. He converted the kitchen into a second bedroom and created an outdoor cooking area.
“We were not ready.”
The mass migration of Venezuelans to Brazil has surprised many.
“We weren’t prepared to receive such a large number of migrants, and people don’t stop coming,” said Carolina Nunes, operations and cooperation manager at the Brazilian non-profit organization Refúgio 343.
“It’s really a crisis. A crisis that continues and does not stop.
Refúgio 343 helps migrants with education, health services, and they partner with companies to find people jobs.
The unemployment rate in Brazil is 7.9%. That’s half of what it was in 2020, but that doesn’t mean migrants can get good jobs.
Nunes said many migrants end up working in the meatpacking industry, a sector that has trouble recruiting Brazilians because of the tough nature of the work.
“There’s a whole team of HR from meat processing company JBS based at Operation Salute. They hire refugees for all the factories in Brazil,” he said.
A week after Kalkourian left Venezuela, her husband also left the country, but the couple did not reunite until months later.
Kalkurian’s husband now has one of those jobs at a chicken processing plant in Sao Paulo. But Kalkurian himself is unemployed. He used to work remotely selling ads in Spanish, but was laid off last year and has been unable to find a new job.
“I lost a few jobs because I can’t speak Portuguese well,” he said.
Kalkurian has a temporary residence in Brazil and he has the right to work. Venezuelans can also apply for refugee status here if they intend to stay permanently in Brazil. Calcurian has a two-year, renewable residency visa. But he said he wants to return to Venezuela.
His eldest son, Santiago Lopez, who is studying computer programming, also wants to return to Venezuela. He misses his father (who is different from the father of his younger brothers) and he has a hard time adapting to Brazilian culture.
“It’s so different if I tell you I’m going to spend three hours on it,” he said.
Donor fatigue
Talita Yamamoto, who coordinates refugee services at Caritas, the Catholic Church’s aid agency, says donor fatigue is a major concern in the fight against the crisis in Venezuela.
“Everyone is a bit tense, wondering how it will work because Operation Salute now has a smaller budget and countries are not contributing as much compared to when the crisis first erupted in 2018.” He said:
Yamamoto said the demographics of the migrants they serve are also changing.
“Because of Venezuelan migration, in 2021 we served more women than men for the first time,” he said.
In 2016, only 36% of the refugees they served were women. In 2021, that number reached 52%.
This month, four more members of the Kalukourian family arrived in Vila Natal, Sao Paulo, from Venezuela.
He said they decided to move to a smaller town in the southern state of Santa Catarina, where they thought it would be easier for everyone to find work.
“We have to fight because it’s hard here, so we have to try somewhere else,” he said.
In his case, women are leading. Her niece is already there, and Kalkourian is set to move in with her children at the end of April. Her husband will follow later.
Editor’s Note: Vanessa Regatao contributed to this story.