Venezuelan poets in exile tell Piotr Kozak about their experiences of leaving their home country, their conflicted feelings towards it, and the promise and sadness of their lives abroad.

This article was written for the magazine of Exiled Writers Ink.

They cast you out, you slip away, you leave
Whatever you say feels clumsy, awkward –
never enough
there’s no place for you anywhere
You’re like a delicate Chinese vase of pain. ¹⁾Eleonora Requena, Partir es Andar, To Depart is to Walk, Luba Ediciones, Buenos Aires, 2023

For Venezuela’s writers, poets and critics of the current government, these are certainly strange and uncertain times. How to make sense of it all? The country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was captured – along with his wife Cilia Flores – during a controversial U.S. military operation at the beginning of January. This intervention immediately generated intense political debate and condemnation. It was strongly criticized by António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, who in an official statement expressed concern that the rule of international law had not been respected –a view shared, among others, by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Speculation is rife about its true motives and the subsequent fallout: was the regime finally about to collapse? Would new leadership emerge, and free and democratic elections soon follow? And what of the estimated 7.9 million Venezuelans who have abandoned their country in desperation, mainly dispersed throughout the Americas – one of the largest displacement crises in modern history – might many now feel circumstances were favourable for their return?

For the Chile-based social communicator, journalist and poet Diosceline Camacaro Martínez, any hope of real change was fleeting. Maduro may be gone, but the regime remains firmly in place, now under the protective umbrella of an oil-hungry US government, with orthodox hardliners side-lined by pragmatic opportunists ready to make deals with los imperialistas yanquis. The executive and legislative branches are now headed by interim president Delcy Rodríguez, while her brother Jorge – a psychiatrist, writer and former Vice President – has been President of the National Assembly since 2021, giving him sweeping influence over the country’s legislature.

‘There’s a lot of uncertainty,’ said Diosceline. ‘People still don’t have access to basic rights like healthcare or food… but most of all, we’ve lost our humanity.’

The displacement of such a large segment of the country’s population has resulted in painful sacrifices for many Venezuelan families: grandparents who have only ever seen their grandchildren on a computer or smartphone screen; sons and daughters living in distant countries without the economic means or conditions to return home to bury deceased parents; and many children left behind to be cared for by relatives or friends while their own parents work abroad. A whole society marked by separation and fragmentation, with no clear end in sight to the social, economic and political crisis engulfing the country.

‘And these are the stories many of us keep to ourselves,’ remarked Diosceline, ‘because over the years we’ve spoken out about these things and then we’re accused of being traitors – that we abandoned the country because we don’t like ‘the left’ – although people did so simply because they wanted to live, to have a better life. But in the end, we’re a reminder that lives are disposable.’

To illustrate the everyday struggle to meet basic needs, she recounts how a friend and colleague, the distinguished essayist and poet Harry Almela, spent an entire day standing in a long queue under the hot sun just to purchase some chicken. A couple of days later, he suffered a massive heart attack and died. He was 64, already in fragile health and – like many in the country – facing severe difficulties accessing proper healthcare and medication, a situation that has resulted in countless avoidable deaths.

Thousands of Venezuelan writers and poets now live abroad, actively engaging with their host societies, with each other, and with those who have remained back home.

One such poet and teacher is Eleonora Requena, who has been based in Buenos Aires for the past nine years. She left Venezuela reluctantly, feeling that her life and voice were being suffocated by a climate of insecurity and the absence of basic guarantees, and followed her adult children into what she describes as an unwilling exile.

‘I never imagined I’d have to leave my country in this way,’ she said. ‘Exile is certainly full of complications; but on the other hand, new doors have opened in terms of readership and dissemination.’

A translated collection of her poems, Outside Texts: Textos por Fuera, was published by the New York-based Ugly Duckling Presse in 2022. In Argentina, she has also experienced the friendship and solidarity of a culture that deeply values the written word, along with its long tradition of offering refuge to political dissidents.

Eleonora also compiled, together with fellow poet Kira Kariakin, the online publication El Puente es la Palabra (The Bridge is the Word), with the support of the Catholic charity Caritas. Published in 2019, the anthology brings together the work of 100 displaced Venezuelan poets, whose writing reflects the challenges, setbacks, personal costs and achievements of the migrant diaspora. Looking ahead, such initiatives may well contribute to future processes of reinsertion and reconciliation within an increasingly fragmented society.

Although most would undoubtedly wish for different circumstances, Venezuela’s displaced poets and writers have found new audiences, new openings for publications and creative opportunities that are often denied those who are left behind, amid the turmoil of present-day Venezuela.

In many ways, more Venezuelan poetry is being published than ever before – albeit largely outside the country. Within Venezuela itself, writers, often supported by compatriots abroad, continue working actively with their communities and encouraging new generations. Yet in the current domestic climate, anyone wishing to raise a critical voice must proceed with extreme caution – or speak in carefully coded ways. Otherwise, the consequences can be severe: imprisonment, beatings, or worse.

To conclude, I ask Eleonora for a verse that might sum up her experience of displacement. Her reply:

Donde te creíste a salvo
también duele

Where you thought you were safe
it still hurts