As the artist that I am, invaded by knowledge and experiences, I always manage to focus on the fact that everything involves learning and that experiences are necessary for the evolution of our dancing soul. Expressing these raw experiences could be exaggerated, real, raw, or disguised according to the criteria of the person who will read it; my need has always been to transmit knowledge to other generations and to all possible populations, which is where I have obtained the impulse to decide on migrating. I live three hours away from the border with Venezuela and this place is already marked by the cultural difference that goes from the language of this country, Portuguese, to even their fictitious way of seeing life in terms of society and consciousness.
I migrated on May 1, 2019, it’s been almost a year after I departed from Venezuela; the experience was drastic and involved constantly falling to the ground. As a Venezuelan I feel a little ashamed for those people who say that they help Venezuelans, but in the end they use us at the beginning of our arrival here. We are fearful of not having what to eat in an unknown country, of not having money, or a place to sleep without disturbing anyone, that our emotional situation declines in a way that you let them use you for low-paid work, for example; Not only for our brothers who have been here for years but also for non-governmental entities, the Venezuelan who just arrived is a constant product for sale, they need our strategies, our capacities, and our tools so that very expensive projects be achieved for the benefit of the institution or the persons in charge.
As time passes you get more experience related to work and how the market is managed, if you are focused on achieving your goals, even with challenges, and if you have studied, then you already have a great advantage. Thank God I managed to start working for an NGO (I need your help to finish an entrepreneurial project and make corrections on the book of methodologies to implement for our migrant students) that allowed me to study the constitution with trained lawyers from Sao Paulo, otherwise, I would not have understood how to survive in a country with so much social inequality.
There are laws here that protect you as a woman, but it turns out that Brazil has the highest rate of domestic abuse towards women in South America, so in the end, everything falls on bureaucracy, on demonstrating something on social networks and not attacking the reality, the news is published and everything just stays there; They have incredible laws for the protection of children but child abductors are never caught, day after day children disappear and there is no trace of the culprits. In a shelter for Venezuelans I lived a horrible experience, an adult man was standing at the door calling a girl who was at my classroom, and the girl told me: “Teacher, that man is telling me to go there, he is calling me,” I went out, I saw an adult man, I put all the children in the shelter and I told them about the importance of ignoring those who knocked on the doors, that they ignore those calls, and I repeated it many times until they managed to memorize it, after which I called someone in charge of security, he approached the man and when he did not give a specific answer, he left without giving any kind of identification or explanation and only said that the girl was lying.
That same day at the bus stop, there was a kidnapping, this time they did manage to rescue the girl because the one who wanted to sell her was her stepfather. Also while I was at the bus stop I heard from a Venezuelan criminal (he identified himself as such) that he had arrived in Boa Vista when Maduro took the prisoners out of the prison El Dorado, and he said that here Venezuelans get more robbed but that he doesn’t support that; that day was unforgettable. However, weeks later I was the victim of two kidnapping attempts related to my son, in the first, I was riding my bicycle on the way home, at 7:00 p.m. and we began to be chased by a man on a motorcycle who wanted to take my Son from me, I never thought this could happen, what saved us was that we were one block away from a police command. The second one, I was leaving the children’s hospital, at 8:00 p.m., at the bus stop a woman who was with a man approached me and said: “It’s too late”, when she tried to grab my son by the arm, I crossed the street without seeing if any cars were coming, we ran without stopping, block after block, until we reached a church that was full of people, there I called my husband and then we met up with him. From that moment on, nothing was the same, not even visits to the park with my son.
From kidnappings to unjustified increases in rents just for the fact of being migrants, the months go by quickly trying to grow confidence, trying to make it clear to your employer that you are a trustworthy person, that you are a professional, that you are not a thief (the National television always shows us as if we were doing wrong). When they don’t understand what you say, because of your badly spoken Portuguese, then you speak English and there, they do give you a little respect.
Walks are long, because due to not knowing anything at all or anyone who guides you well, then you spend months walking to deliver resumés, I’m talking about more than 5km a day. Little by little, you meet accessible people, and depending on the situations that arise, you learn how to move around the city, our great friend “La Bicicleta” (the bicycle) is our best tool. Then you feel confident enough to ride a bus, and the possibilities gradually increase, and that’s how we got to work for Uber with a bike; an incredible possibility to make money in quarantine and exercise simultaneously.
Regarding education, I can comment that as soon as I arrived I went to the organism that registers children in municipal schools, however, you have to wait for them to call you, and since I am not one of those who like to wait, I went directly to the Ministry of Education and I got a place for my son to study for free just two weeks after my arrival. All my efforts are aimed at ensuring that he has a better future and has better options when he grows up.
The Venezuelans who live in the shelters, in their majority, have not enjoyed a good education in these twenty years of socialism, and for that reason, those who do not manage to enter a normal school, go to classes in a school located within the same shelter. And even, the UNICEF and a Brazilian NGO reinforce the education of those who go to a normal school. Those of us who are part of this project face the risk that our contract will not be renewed due to the pandemic, but we are still waiting for a response.
As for the artistic part of me, I can say that I have achieved some of my goals; My resumé has improved a lot, and I have been able to take part in plays. The biggest problem regarding art lies in the people who decide if they accept you or not, dance is privatized, contrary to what happens in Venezuela, where dance is free or at least offered at low cost, in Brazil, not everyone is able to enter the theater. There are many cultures here, we have Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and even migrants from other regions of Brazil, and that is why I think it is necessary to achieve greater cultural integration, which could enrich us much more and create a much more cordial coexistence. At the moment, I am happy with my achievements and the contributions that I can give anonymously, the only sadness lies in having my family away.
