Why the best way to help Venezuelans is to help them leave Venezuela
With his new organization Salto, Guido Núñez-Mujica hopes to help 52 people this year — one each week — leave his home country for better lives abroad.
Venezuela was once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. But within the last five years, the economy has completely collapsed. The low price of oil has crippled the country’s main source of wealth, after years of economic mismanagement. Inflation is in the quadruple digits, and 80 percent of the population is now in poverty. Food is so short and people are so hungry that Venezuelans lost an average of 11 pounds per person last year. Today, Venezuela is commonly referred to as a “failing state.”
Venezuelan biologist Guido Núñez-Mujica, a TED Fellow, left Venezuela when he was 28 years old, and knows he can never go back. As he watched his country collapse from California, where he now lives, he decided the best way to help Venezuelans is by helping them emigrate, too.
Last month, Núñez-Mujica launched Salto, an organization that provides microsponsorships to allow Venezuelans to emigrate and build new lives abroad. Last year, he facilitated 22 people leaving Venezuela, and this year he plans to help 52 people migrate — one person every week. Here, Núñez-Mujica tells us about the new project and what he hopes to achieve by helping Venezuelans leave the country they love.
Tell us about the history of the current crisis in Venezuela, and what you’ve seen happen over the last few years.
Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998 after two failed coup attempts that left hundreds dead. He promised a new country with equality, without poverty, where people would have dignity and a voice. But shortly after his election, Chávez expropriated and nationalized farms and factories and gave them to political cronies who had no idea how to run them. Chávez also imposed currency exchange controls in 2003, though he was warned that it would destroy the economy and create corruption. Chávez accused farmers and business owners of wanting to exploit the poor and imposed price controls for food and other supplies. Local producers could not compete with heavily subsidized goods purchased with oil money, and many went bankrupt. Meanwhile, people in government were making millions of dollars with bribes from foreign companies that got twice the market rate for food exports.
So the collapse of the last few years has not been a surprise to me. Though Chávez is now dead, his regime continues through his successor, Nicolás Maduro. We have no food, no medicine, electricity is failing, internet access is slowly disappearing and forgotten diseases are coming back. For years, we had oil money to mask the signs of that demise. With the oil money now gone, the effects of negligence, corruption and fanaticism are now obvious. Years ago, this was clear to many, but now even most of the fiercest supporters of the Chavista government can no longer defend it.
What was it like to grow up in Venezuela? When did you move away?
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, two days after our Black Friday — the day in 1983 when our currency suddenly lost 50% of its value. I never got to live the mythical golden era of Venezuela. But while the economy after 1983 was not always good, there were still many opportunities. There was social mobility. My grandmother never learned to read or write, and my parents dropped out of school because they had to work, but I still got a good education. I had access to books to learn English and entered a free university that existed long before Chávez was president.
We didn’t have a lot of money, and moving to Mérida, a college town in the mountains, was particularly tough. Sometimes I went without eating for days because most of what my mother sent me was for rent. But my generous friends and some of my professors — especially my thesis advisor Dr Juan Luis Concepción — helped by buying me lunch and groceries for years. These people believed in me and helped me through a key moment in my life.
I left Venezuela in 2011, when my biotech startup got funding from the Chilean government. I moved to Santiago and stayed there even after the company failed. I did not go back to Venezuela because it was clear to me that it was going to collapse, even as many people still praised the Chávez government. I could have gotten a position at my old university, but the writing was on the wall.
Ultimately, I ended up in San Francisco and am now working as a data scientist for Slice, a tech company in Silicon Valley. I create and run mathematical models and statistical analyses for data products for corporate clients.
What does Salto do, and why?
Salto is simply helping others in the same way I got help. Altruism enabled me to get to where I am today; generosity gave me the boost I needed. Many people, even strangers, have helped me, nurtured me, believed in me. It’s only fair that I pay back by giving my time and resources to others who are in desperate need.
“Why should people be only refugees when they can be so much more? Many Venezuelans are very hard working, talented, really well educated. They deserve a chance.”
Salto is not about helping people to survive, but to thrive. Why should people be only refugees when they can be so much more? Many Venezuelans are very hard working, talented, really well educated. They deserve a chance. They will bloom and contribute to their host countries, to their companies, to their labs, universities, art centers. I am doing well, and I know that many others can do even better.
Why did you decide the best way to help your fellow Venezuelans is to help them leave the country, as opposed to working to improve conditions inside it?
The conditions inside Venezuela are horrible and getting worse. People have been reduced to a state of perennial dependence, either on the government or on their relatives abroad. If I help people to settle elsewhere, with a job so they can be independent, those people can then help others to get out, and so on. Salto makes possible a multiplier effect, and offers the promise of freedom and dignity, of a decent life, not mere survival in hell or in a refugee camp.
Of course, not everyone can leave the country, and I am still sending money to family and friends there. Sending aid provides some relief, though it does not solve anything in the long term: you send money, people get food and that’s it. But we’re building a network of solidarity, rather than trying to solve a problem way larger than us, losing our lives in the process.
How is Salto’s approach to helping Venezuelans migrate different from other aid solutions out there?
The Venezuelan government is refusing to accept aid, so the only official aid goes to the border regions of Brazil and Colombia. Some charities send food and medicines to Venezuela through unofficial channels. Venezuelans are also unofficially helping their family and friends. As far as I know, Salto is the only program focused on helping people emigrate.
How does it work?
People send an email to Salto and explain their situation, and we decide what we can do to help them. We try to support the largest number of people with the resources we have available, so often, those who need less are the ones who get aid first.
Salto also tries to personalize the help we offer. Some of our recipients have chronic diseases, so we try to get them a few months’ worth of meds before they travel. Others need connections to find jobs, help with immigration paperwork or psychological support to deal with the shock of adapting to a new reality. We try to get people in touch with others who can offer a hand.
Do you consider Salto to be a crowdfunding platform?
Salto is partially a crowdfunding platform, but it’s also much more than that. People can not only contribute funding, but also information, airline miles for a ticket, a spare room, mentoring, job tips and recommendations. We need money to fund this project, but we need a lot more. We need talent and expertise, we need time and effort.
Also, we expect that the people we help will in turn help others once they’re settled, expanding the reach of our initiative. So, for example, sometimes we’ll help only one of the members of a family, hoping they’ll be able to facilitate other members later. We feel that’s the optimal distribution of limited resources.
What does a typical journey out of Venezuela, facilitated by Salto, look like?
A typical person aided by Salto will start their journey by going to the Venezuelan/Colombian border and crossing over. Once in Colombia, they go to a Western Union office where they get cash from a wire transfer sent the day before. With this cash, they buy a bus ticket to Lima, Santiago or Buenos Aires, a 5,000 mile trip.
“We’re building a network of solidarity, rather than trying to solve a problem way larger than us, losing our lives in the process.”
Some of these people end up in an apartment in Santiago that we run and pay for. They’ll receive three months there with no rent, sharing rooms, and we’ll help them find jobs. So far, Salto has been funded by my own income and some small donations. Now we have a GoFundMe campaign to raise the cost for a year of apartment rental and expenses, as well as for bus tickets for 52 people out of Venezuela.
Your plan is to help one person leave Venezuela per week this year. Are you on track to do that?
We have helped 13 people this year so far. We’ve purchased plane tickets for two more who will depart shortly, and two more are scheduled to leave this month by land. So, yes, we are on track. Even if we don’t raise our funding goal, I’m still committed personally to make it happen, as I did last year.
Tell us about some of the Venezuelans you’ve helped emigrate.
Jośe Gregorio is a doctor who is living in Lima now with his wife Marolyn and their daughter. They are rebuilding their life in Perú, and their daughter is already in music classes and back to school.
Zaidee is an artist and grandmother who has moved to Santiago. At 65, she is now retraining herself as a caretaker for the elderly while she cleans apartments for a living. Her daughter Oli and her son David just arrived in Santiago last week from Venezuela, so she is very happy.
Ángel Daniel is an aspiring comedian and media artist in Bogotá. I don’t know him in person, but we once worked together on a project and when he asked for help, I said yes. He’s supporting himself as bike courier and is about to rent an apartment in Medellín to help even more Venezuelans, inspired by Salto.
What is Salto’s future? Where do you see the situation in Venezuela going?
I am very pessimistic about Venezuela. I see no solution. The government is made up of people who retain power by using fear and hunger as political tools. The opposition is a joke, and it won’t change anything. The country’s oil production capacity is down. Maybe by the time we have a change of government, sustainable power will have displaced fossil fuels in many areas, and the income from oil will be very small compared to now. There will be suffering, there will be mass death, there will be famine.
There is not a lot I can do. I cannot solve this situation. No individual can. Salto can only make a small dent — but for the people we help, it is life-saving. Mass emigration out of Venezuela has already started. We aim to help as many people as we can so they can also help others. In the future, we will have Venezuelans in many places doing well, educated and prosperous, ready to rebuild when the time comes.
The TED Fellows program supports emerging innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.
