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Millions of Venezuelans abroad won’t be able to take part in the presidential elections this weekend as President Nicolás Maduro seeks a third term in the Miraflores Palace, having promised to win “by hook or by crook“.
Almost eight million Venezuelans have fled the troubled country according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and it’s estimated that more than 4.5 million are eligible to vote. Yet, only 69,211 of them can participate in the upcoming elections.
A week out from the July 28 vote – where Maduro, a former bus driver, looks to extend his 12-year rule – a flight from Madrid to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, carries passengers full of hope and determination to change the country’s authoritarian leadership.
Venezuela is deeply divided, and political and economic turmoil has resulted in social unrest and a severe humanitarian crisis, leading to one of the largest migration crises in recent history. Numerous reports have also highlighted human rights abuses.
On the flight to Caracas is Edgar Ochoa. The 22-year-old has been living in Iceland for two years, but is returning home to vote, something many Venezuelans have been denied from doing abroad due to registration barriers imposed by the Venezuelan regime in an effort to protect their rule.
Edgar woke up early on 19 July, at a hotel near Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport. There was no way he was missing his flight: “I would have gone crazy if I missed this flight,” he told Byline Times.
While going home to visit family, Edgar was also “returning with a mission: I’m going to vote. We have to get this guy out,” he continued, referring to 61-year-old Maduro who is running against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a former diplomat and the candidate representing the opposition.
Like many young voters in the country, Edgar will be participating in a presidential election for the first time, representing an important demographic for the political race.
Most young Venezuelans have never experienced a different governing party and have lived under their socialist ideology since 1998, when Hugo Chavez Frias was first elected president.
Far from home, far from the ballot box
Of the hundreds of thousands who have emigrated in recent years, the NGO, Votoscopio, estimates that only 508 Venezuelans worldwide managed to register abroad between March and April, the brief window the ruling regime allowed ahead of the election.
Critics accuse the country’s main electoral body and its diplomatic services of creating unprecedented obstacles and deliberately shutting out a key demographic of voters, almost 25%, who would be expected to back the opposition.
The Maduro regime has also been accused of trying to stave off an opposition win by barring the most popular opposing candidate, Maria Corina Machado, who a few months before the election was banned from holding office for 15 years, leaving González Urrutia to run as her proxy.
But that didn’t stop Edgar – who before leaving Venezuela made pizzas after dropping out of school due to the economic crisis – from making a journey of almost 8,000kms with more than 48 hours in transit, including an overnight layover from Reykjavík to Madrid.
“This is our last hope, and we cannot waste it,” Edgar told Byline Times.
An older couple on the same flight are also travelling to vote. “I told my wife: ‘Imagine if we lost by two votes,’” says a grey-haired man while holding his wife’s hand.