Weekly Meeting - Made in Venezuela (Angela and Oriana Fuguet)

Made in Venezuela

Angela and Oriana Fuguet

Angela and Oriana Fuguet are Venezuelan sisters who left their homeland to live and work in the United Kingdom.  Angela came to this country some eighteen years ago to follow a career in cinematography.  Her younger sister joined her last year having been forced to leave because of the worsening political and economic situation.  They were going to tell us about life in modern Venezuela.

Oriana began their presentation with a graphic description of a typical day at home:  “It is 7 am but my alarm hasn’t gone off because the electricity supply failed again last night and my phone hasn’t charged.  No electricity so there isn’t any hot water; the pump cannot work, so there is no shower.  Water is precious as it only runs every fifteen days or so:  we store what we can.  My father charges his phone in his car and helps me to open the gates of our fortified home so that I can get to work.  At work we have a generator – most businesses have one as electricity is unreliable.  The internet is the slowest in the world.  I might get some work done today ....”

Angela then told us: “In 1996 I left home to seek a university education overseas.  I had always been encouraged to ‘follow my dreams’.  Little did I know that I would never see Venezuela again.”

The girls explained that twenty years ago Venezuela was the wealthiest country in South America holding the largest oil reserves in the world.  Then Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998 and, since then, the economy has deteriorated.   Chávez promised to use the country’s vast oil revenues to improve the lot of the poor, but the reality was that a fortune was spent without the benefit flowing to the needy, investment into the oil industry stagnated, the administration became more controlling and authoritarian and, allegedly, more than $400 billion just disappeared.

The situation has worsened in the past six years under the rule of Chávez’ successor, Nicolás Maduro.  Crime is rife, there are riots in the streets, public and health services have deteriorated to a point of non-existence and private companies are closing down as the people have no money to buy anything other than food – the minimum wage is now $16 per month.  Currency controls and other restrictions have made it impossible to import products and national production is now practically zero.  Inflation is now running at over 1,000,000% per annum and personal savings have been wiped out as a consequence.

It is understandable, therefore, that Oriana decided at the beginning of last year that she had no choice but to leave and she came to England to join Angela.  Together they run Made in Venezuela, a shop in Stroud that buys fashion and other items from Venezuelan designers and artisans and sells them in the shop and on the internet.  The idea is that they can make a difference by providing an income for at least some Venezuelans.
They have also developed an association with a Venezuelan support organisation called Barriguita Llena (“Full Tummy” in English).

Barriguita Llena was started by two sisters who decided to ask their friends living abroad for donations to enable them to buy ingredients so that they could cook food in their homes to feed the people most in need in the rural areas of the Peninsula of Paraguaná.  This not for profit support organisation continues to grow since it was started a year ago and Made in Venezuela has a link on its website for people to make donations to support it.

Angela and Oriana concluded by telling us that life has become unbearable for Venezuelans with many suffering from starvation.  The borders with Columbia and Brazil are flooded with thousands of refugees.  They quoted from an article in the Washington Post:  “The reason for the exodus is simple: once proud citizens of the richest nation in Latin America, Venezuelans now are starving.  A social survey showed that more than 90% say they do not have the means to buy sufficient food, and 61% say they go to bed hungry.”

This was a very moving tale of a humanitarian crisis that is seemingly being ignored by much of the world and we wish Angela and Oriana every success in their efforts to make a difference.

Richard Allison