Saudade Story


by Gabriel Gomez | Follow
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SAUDADE STORY


Meanig of Saudade
A Portuguese and Galician word. Wikipedia defines saudade as “A deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves”.
According to the Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa "It is related to thinking back on situations of privation due to the absence of someone or something, to move away from a place or thing, or to the absence of a set of particular and desirable experiences and pleasures once lived”.

Introduction

The nostalgia for the country and the people that might never return. We feel their absence in this empty home.
The Bolivarian diaspora is the voluntary emigration of millions of Venezuelans from their native country during the presidency of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.
“Nearly 1 million Venezuelans have left their country over the past two years, according to the International Organization for Migration, with experts citing a surge during the second half of 2017 when the economy took a sharp turn for the worse. That figure is in addition to the hundreds of thousands who departed between 1999 and 2015.” (Faiola, 2018)
The Bolivarian diaspora is the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas and refers to the emigration of millions of Venezuelans from their native country during the presidency of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, due to the establishment of their Bolivarian Revolution.

According to Newsweek, the "Bolivarian diaspora is a reversal of fortune on a massive scale" where the "reversal" is meant as a comparison to Venezuela's high immigration rate during the 20th century. Initially, upper-class Venezuelans and scholars emigrated during Chávez's tenure, though middle and lower class Venezuelans began to leave as conditions worsened in the country. The event has been compared to the Cuban exiles, Syrian refugees, and the European migrant crisis.

First Diaspora

In 1998, the year Chávez was first elected, only 14 Venezuelans were granted U.S. asylum. In just 12 months in September 1999, 1,086 Venezuelans were granted asylum according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Chávez's rhetoric of redistributing wealth to the poor concerned wealthy and middle-class Venezuelans causing the first portion of a diaspora fleeing the Bolivarian government.

Following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt in April 2002 and years of political tension following Chávez's rise to power, a spike in emigration occurred in Venezuela. In a May 2002 cable from the United States Embassy, Caracas to United States agencies expressing astonishment at the number of Venezuelans attempting to enter the United States, stating, "This drain of skilled workers could have a significant impact on Venezuela's future". By June 2002, many Venezuelans who had family or links to other countries emigrated, with many families who had immigrated to Venezuela beginning to leave due to the economic and political instability.

Following the 2006 Venezuelan presidential elections and the re-election of Chávez, visits to emigration websites by Venezuelans dramatically increased, with visits to MeQuieroIr.com increasing from 20,000 users in December 2006 to 30,000 users in January 2007 and a 700% increase in visa applications from Venezuelans at vivaenaustralia.com. In 2009, it was estimated that more than 1 million Venezuelan emigrated since Hugo Chávez became president. Since then, it has been calculated by the Central University of Venezuela that from 1999 to 2014, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, between 4% and 6% of Venezuela's total population, left the country following the Bolivarian Revolution.

Second Diaspora

Academics and business leaders have stated that emigration from Venezuela increased significantly during the final years of Chávez's presidency and especially during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro. This second diasporic episode consisted of lower-class Venezuelans who suffered from the economic crisis facing the country, with the same individuals that Chávez attempted to aid seeking to emigrate due to their discontent. Between 2012 and 2015, the diaspora of Venezuelans grew 2,889%.

In 2015, it was estimated that approximately 1.8 million Venezuelans had emigrated to other countries according to the PGA Group. It has been estimated in the year 2016 alone, over 150,000 Venezuelans emigrated from their native country, with The New York Times stating that it was "the highest in more than a decade, according to scholars studying the exodus". Venezuelans have opted to emigrate through various ways, though image of Venezuelans fleeing the country by sea has also raised symbolic comparisons to the images seen from the Cuban exiles.

The Colombian government believes that in the first half of 2017, more than 100,000 Venezuelans emigrated to Colombia. On the days before the 2017 Venezuelan Constitutional Assembly elections, Colombia granted a Special Permit of Permanence option to Venezuelan citizens who entered the country prior to 25 July 2017, with over 22,000 Venezuelans applying for permanent residency in Colombia within the first 24 hours.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, host countries throughout Latin America have stated that over one million Venezuelans have left their native country from 2014 to 2017. The intergovernmental organization International Organization for Migration showed similar figures, showing that about one million Venezuelans emigrated between 2015 and 2017.

Following the re-election of President HYPERLINK "Maduro HYPERLINK " in May 2018, there was an observed increase of Venezuelans fleeing the country since they believed policies would not change and Venezuela would continue to deteriorate.

Venezuela is in an economic free fall. As a result of government-led mismanagement and corruption, the currency value is plummeting, prices are hyperinflated, and gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen by over a third in the last five years. In an economy that produces little except oil, the government has cut imports by over 75 percent, choosing to use its hard currency to service the roughly $140 billion in debt and other obligations.

These economic choices have led to a humanitarian crisis. Basic food and medicines for Venezuela’s approximately thirty million citizens are increasingly scarce, and the devastation of the health-care system has spurred outbreaks of treatable diseases and rising death rates. President Nicolas Maduro is pushing the nation toward authoritarianism, shutting down the free press, marginalizing the opposition-led legislature, barring opposition parties from participating in elections, and imprisoning political opponents, and in the summer of 2017 broke the democratic constitutional order with the illegitimate election of a constituent assembly.

The economic and humanitarian crises, combined with rising political persecution, have forced many Venezuelans to flee; around five hundred thousand have left the country in the last two years alone. If conditions worsen, many more Venezuelans could flow into neighboring countries. Colombia would be burdened the most by these outflows, given the length of the shared border, the commercial links, and the personal ties millions of Venezuelans have there. Brazil, Guyana, and nearby Caribbean islands would also see an uptick in refugees that could overwhelm clinics and schools and potentially destabilize local economies and polities.


¨It’s not much of a life, but it’s better than home¨

The main idea was to represent in the small space a metaphor that plays with the emptiness that has an important part of everything as well as the colour and nostalgia of the scenes in this atmosphere. The model doesn’t stay quiet, she tried to found a place where she felt comfortable with her on loneliness, that’s why she interacts with everything she found as a way to find herself between the light, memories, rooms at the same time she creates and grows in a completely new scenario with expectation that might never get to be fulfilled due to the situation.

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Thursday, February 13, 2020