Back in eighth grade, the absolute worst period of my far-from-normal high school years, a teacher asked in class if someone “could be an emigrant and a migrant at the same time.” Everyone in class didn’t know how to answer, even the two smartest ones — but I, the worst student in the classroom grade-wise and a burned-out disappointment, saw a brief return to the smart top ace student that I was, and answered yes, as one was deemed an emigrant from the country they came from, and a migrant in the eyes of the country the moved to. The teacher was surprised that the lonely fat kid was the one that got it right.

Little did I know at the time that I was about 23 years away from becoming one of the over eighth million Venezuelans that left their country in what is now widely described as the worst migrant crisis in the Western Hemisphere. Maduro, his socialist regime, and the people who still defend it as it benefits their own agendas like to claim that this migrant crisis was caused by external factors such as the 2019 U.S. sanctions but no, it began almost a decade before that.

Leaving Venezuela and its socialist regime behind was my driving force ever since our mother passed away on March 31, 2018, my main quest, if you wanna call it that way. Getting my brother out from all that misery and ensuring he lives a good life was a mission I inherited from my mom, who was attempting to achieve that prior to her cancer diagnosis in 2015. It is also that which I promised her I’d do on her deathbed.

I failed time and time again throughout the course of six years, and not for the lack of trying. My goal was to find a legal way to migrate with my brother, be it a work visa or what have you, but because of my teenage and early adult academic mistakes, I have no university education, so I’m no professional at anything, and I’m not exactly the most intelligent or skilled man there is. 

Keep in mind that even if I had obtained a work visa to any country, it wouldn’t have automatically solved my brother’s situation, as he is not my son and I’m not his legal guardian. Good intentions and deathbed promises have no legal value at a consular office — and I know this wholeheartedly after working at an embassy for three years.

Asylum perhaps, it’s what many suggested, but I would actually have to prove it at a court. I didn’t have a U.S. visitors visa since I didn’t have the financial resources that could sustain any visa application in the past, added to the fact that the U.S. embassy in Venezuela closed down in early 2019. This meant that, unlike many, but so many Venezuelans who committed immigration fraud in the U.S. by entering with a visitors visa and then requesting asylum, that was not an option in the cards for me. 

One of my neighbors actually did this in 2018, and even obtained a Social Security Number, but then he “felt sad” in 2019 and returned to Venezuela, and told me all about it. I don’t know what happened to him. 

U.S. asylum became a “business” in Venezuela, with lawyers offering it through social media as if it was a manicure or pedicure, with seasonal sales even. Local politicians — including regime-affiliated ones — offered asylum “kits” with documentation, including made-up news articles, that you could use to win a case. I’m no lawyer but that sure doesn’t seem legal to me, and those were cards I would never use. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself using forged documentation provided by someone from the selfsame socialist regime whose actions deprived my mom of a proper fighting chance against her cancer. 

Between 2018 and 2022 several friends and acquaintances from all corners of the world worked towards helping me attain a secure and legal pathway to migrate with my brother. Unfortunately, we were met with financial roadblocks, technicalities, or greater obstacles such as the closure of their respective embassies in Venezuela, that shot down  these plans.

The closest I was at “winning” this game was shortly before the 2020 COVID lockdowns, but as I mentioned in the previous chapter, I basically completely lost in November 2021.

Obtaining Italian citizenship was perhaps the easiest thing to do, as it was something I was eligible to from the moment of my birth, as my dad is an Italian citizen. The thing is, though, that he never registered his wedding to my mom nor our births, so in the eyes of Italian authorities, we did not exist.

I tried to obtain it several times between 2011 and 2019, only to fail over and over again — then, a friend encouraged me to try again in 2022 after he obtained it with the help of his mother.  At that point I had nothing to lose, so why not try again?

My father insisted that it was not possible because his last name and that of his parents was spelt wrong by Venezuelan authorities when they arrived on a boat in the 1950, yet this didn’t seem to have prevented his brother’s children from obtaining it, curious, isn’t it?

And so, I struck a bargain with my father.

In exchange for a photocopy of his Italian birth certificate, the one, main thing that I needed, I would explain the case of his daughter to the Italian Consulate and use my own consular experience to figure out exactly what she needed to do to get her citizenship. It took a month and a half for him to send me the copy, though, and I had to wait for him to finish eating pizza with his family that evening before he sent me the email.

With that in hand I requested two appointments at the Italian Consulate in Caracas in February 2022, one for me and one for my brother. The Consulate responded to me about a day later, scheduling my appointment fo the 13th of June, 2022 and my brother on the 17th of June instead. That gave me about four months to get everything ready.

This is perhaps, where me working at a Venezuelan embassy for three years paid off in my life. First things first, I needed to obtain new copies of our birth certificates, as the ones in my possession were old and not up to the latest standards of the Venezuelan regime. Mine was from around the year 2000. 

I found several copies of my brother from several years, the most recent one being from 2015 — close, but no dice, as it lacked the new QR codes that they all come with. I also needed a copy of my parent’s wedding certificate with the same modern characteristics.

Now, I could’ve gone to Maracaibo and tried to get these on my own by going to the respective offices listed in the old copies. As for my brother’s birth certificate, my father was capable of getting this for me but I knew he wouldn’t do it, so that meant a quick trip to a city I have not been to since 1996. I started to do some number-crunching and it would’ve been quite the investment, but worth it.

This is Venezuela we’re talking about, and when it comes to bureaucracy, the best and painless effort to do anything is to wet the right hands. An old friend used to say “if you wanna make someone truly suffer just make them go to a Venezuelan public office” and that by no means is an exaggeration. 

After some brainstorming a relative reminded me that my mom knew someone who could obtain all of this for a price. Fortunately for me, I had made a backup of all of her files, documents, and media — that included phone contact lists, the problem was that my mom kept hundreds of contacts on her phone, but thankfully she was diligent enough to label who was who.

I spoke to the person, who had no idea my mom had passed away, and explained what I needed. She messaged me back a couple days later and told me how much I’d have to pay for all of her document-finding services. The amount was much less than what I’d have to spend finding them myself. She also offered to have them apostilled, another thing I needed, but it was way too expensive for me, so I said I’d do it myself.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I had those documents with me by the end of March. Next step: the apostilles. Apostilles are a nightmare and a half to get in Venezuela, and boy, what a mess getting them was. Even getting an appointment is uphill because it still uses the same ID number-based restrictions that the regime used to ration food and other supplies.

The system threw me the next closest days to sometime in early May, basically burning April for me. I wanted all those weeks and went with my brother — only to find out that the country’s apostille system had broken down and was offline, much to my anguish.

I went the following week as instructed and what they told me was to go to the headquarters of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry for information because they would only process people who had an appointment for that day. I went there, and met yet another endless line of people who had a similar issue, only for an official to tell us that the system would “reschedule” our appointments.

The system did reschedule our apostille appointments, but on a date after the Italian Consulate one. This greatly demoralized me because I once again had been screwed over by the socialist regime’s gross and eternal incompetence.

Still, I had an appointment at the Italian Consulate, and getting those is extremely hard, so I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. I went there feeling like I used to feel back in eighth grade when you had to bring something for an assignment (documents in this case), everyone had theirs fully ready, but I didn’t.

Still, I eventually got attended by a Consulate staff member. I explained the situation and he understood completely. He stamped a special note on my appointment sheet that allowed me to go back any day whenever I had everything in order — best of all, he added a note allowing my brother to go in with me so long as I brought a medical note explaining his condition.

I also explained my half-sister’s case, and gave all the information provided to my father, thus fulfilling my end of the bargain.

After years of being mistreated at local Venezuelan government offices, it all felt like a whiplash of fresh air. After that, my luck started to turn around. I accompanied my brother to his apostille appointment, explained his situation, and they allowed me to assist him — going as far as to expedite him for the first time ever.

The next week, I went back to get the apostilles on my birth certificate and at my parent’s wedding, the latter of which was tricky since the document does not involve me, and since my mom passed away I needed a power of attorney from my father to get it.

A Venezuelan lawyer friend of mine suggested to just say that I have no contact with my father and that so long as I had my mom’s death certificate it should work, but he wasn’t sure. After a few scares and extensive reviews, the applications went through. The last step was to get everything translated in Italian by a sworn translator, fortunately for me, I met someone that day that was doing the same exact thing as me, and she gave me the number of one such translator.

A couple days later and finally, I had the two folders ready to go. I got a medical note from a friend of my mom so that my brother could go in with me, and we both were there in the early hours of June 30, 2022. We arrived so early we were the first in line. About two hours waiting in the rain outside and finally, our applications were accepted.  All that remained was to wait five to six months for it to be processed before getting our Italian passports.

Several months later, in late November 2022, the much awaited emails arrived. Unfortunately, I had been finally struck with COVID during those days, so I had to wait to be somewhat recovered before requesting our passports.

We went back to the Italian Consulate in early December to get our passports, although I had recovered from COVID, I wasn’t looking my best, but not like I cared. The doors opened at around 08:30 a.m. and we left two hours later, brand new passports in hand.

That was it, our key out of Venezuela. At last, after so many failed attempts at getting it through the ages, the passport was in my hands. Venezuelan law states that Venezuelans who are dual citizens of another country can only make use of their Venezuelan nationality while in Venezuelan territory. 

This means that in order to leave on a plane we’d need to renew our now-expired Venezuelan passports. $400 down the drain and several weeks later, we finally got that sorted out. What came next was to figure out where we could go.

At the same time, I had to slow down my escape plans due to a string of stuff that took place around those times, such as some severe family drama that concluded with my young cousin moving with us after my family, who abused her for years, bribed their way into the United States. The constant power surges and brownouts blew up over a third of the power breakers in my mom’s apartment, including the main one, which completely melted down. I had to spend a decent amount of money on repairs.

I had a general idea of where to land in Italy after getting numerous suggestions from friends and strangers alike, so I started to make the definitive plans while sorting some remaining affairs in Caracas, such as the estate documents for my mom’s place. Due to the holiday season severely jacking up the cost of flight tickets, I had to wait until late January 2024, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford them. 

The Maduro regime shut down most air travel routes to and from Venezuela, leaving only a handful open. In order to arrive in Italy we had to go to Spain first for a layover. The other alternatives were layovers in Turkey and other countries.

Then, at last, on January 22, 2024, we made our escape. I said my goodbyes to my cousins, and left them in charge of my mom’s apartment. We left everything that we owned behind, carrying only 3 luggages, some video game consoles, a damaged laptop living on borrowed time, and some savings. 

Upon arriving we were met with a massive line even though we were about four hours ahead of schedule. This was, after all, the first flight to Spain after the holiday price surge. A regime official took everyone’s Venezuelan passports to “check with Interpol,” ours was eventually returned as the line slowly progressed.

While waiting, I noticed that at some point the regime had the airport’s digital billboards and other signs redone to have Russian, Chinese, and Farsi translations as its main ones. In case you forget who are Maduro’s top buddies.

The bottleneck that caused the line turned out to be a Bolivariana National Guard member that stopped people to ask questions. He stopped me to ask about my brother whom, according to him, “looked weird.”

I had to explain his condition, brain surgery, and all that. He allowed us to proceed after a few more questions. It was a rather uncomfortable moment, I’ll say that much. Everything else went smoothly, the Iberia check in, all of the migrant controls, etc. A couple more hours later and we boarded the plane to Madrid with priority check-in, courtesy of a friend of mine, who chipped in for those as a gift.

That plane was my first flight trip in over a decade and the most “first world” plane I’d ever been inside of. Seats with Android-powered touch displays for entertainment, free cheap headphones, a dinner with wine, and a pillow and blanket to rest? Whoa, we’re in the big leagues now.

While he and most of the rather full flight managed to sleep, I couldn’t. The flight was a bit rocky, with a lot of turbulence. The most I managed to do was take off my shoes and listen to music for a bit. I must confess that I did not have a jacket for my fat self. I had been given a leather jacket that’s definitely not my size. My brother does have one that fits him but that’s all I had. I had my first encounter with cold weather as soon as we stepped off the plane — boy, I was not ready for that.

The flight to Turin, Italy, was mere minutes away, so there was no time to rest, we scanned our initial passports and rushed all the way to another terminal, through a train that my brother enjoyed taking. Then, a couple minutes later, we boarded the flight to Turin. My brother was able to sleep for most of that flight, but I couldn’t even rest for a few minutes.

We arrived safe and sound to an Airbnb I rented for a month, which I thought would be enough time for us to settle in, get our local paperwork, and find a place to rent. The woman handling it was very kind. She showed us the place, left us a set of keys, and explained how garbage disposal and recycling works around here (it’s serious business).

That’s when I finally crashed and passed out. We both woke up right before sunset, and we walked to a nearby supermarket, like the strangers in a strange land that we are. We had our first dinner here, and that’s when the feelings started to kick in. I had been fighting for that moment for almost six years, but the realization of all that’s left to do, and all that I’m gambling with this trip (my brother’s wellbeing first and foremost) began to weigh upon me — it still does. I got a bit teary-eyed.

First order of business the next day was to get a jacket that would fit me and a pair of new SIM cards because without them our only way to communicate is through Airbnb’s wifi. I eventually found the one jacket that would fit me, but man, the phone part was insanely difficult for some reason.

I charted the route to a store, we went there with our passports and Italian tax ID, and left with 2 SIM cards. The lady told us in broken English that the cards would start working with mobile data within the hour, but the phone numbers (calls, sms) would work on Friday. A few hours later and only my brother’s SIM had working internet. I went there the next day, they checked again and they said “1 hour.”

This went on for days. By Monday, my brother’s SIM finally had a working number — except it had the number assigned to my SIM instead, so I took that SIM in the meantime. I went back on Tuesday and I got the Venezuelan response of “the system was down,” so they could not check. Went back on Wednesday, and the lady, which by now knew me by name, basically re-registered that SIM from scratch. She said it’ll be finally done by Friday.

Then, on Thursday, as we were heading back, I received a message from the store asking me for a copy of my passport and to go back. She ended up giving my brother a new SIM and taking the non-working one back, so finally, 8 days after the fact, my brother has a working SIM.

As for the local paperwork, I found myself stuck on an unwinnable loop that almost made me give up.

You see, we are Italian citizens, yes, but at the time we did not had residency in Italy. In order to obtain that — and thus our local ID cards — we had to find a place to rent, but to find a place to rent I needed local documents, or at the very least my health card. To get the health card you need the local ID, and to get the local ID you need a place to rent — but to get a place to rent… you know where I’m doing with this. The fact that we were Italians that did not speak Italian made most rental places “wary” of us, added to the fact that my brother’s condition made it “risky” to rent us due to local laws often siting with tenants over landlords.

Time does seem to be a flat circle, because I found myself in a similar position than my mom was more than 25 years ago when we had nowhere to go, and only a few days left on an apart-hotel in Maracaibo. I remember her crying but I did not understand why, now I do. I was pushed to the limits of my stress, and without any ease of mind I didn’t even get to explore Turin, a beautiful, underrated city, I gotta say.

I even had a embarrassing situation with the local bus system, forcing me to sign up on an app on the fly to get a ticket for me and then do the same process on my brother’s phone for a ticket, making me miss a stop a few miles away and forcing me to walk back. A couple days later we had another appointment across town, it was a drizzling cold noon, and the guy spoke Spanish, so I still had some hopes up.

The place was very well located, I’ll say that much, but the building itself was very old, had no elevators, and the place was on the 5th floor. No problem, a home is a home, and like I often aid, I never get to choose in my life. I went through a lot as a kid, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, to start complaining about housing conditions these days would be asinine.

The apartment itself was okay-ish. No living room, just a hallway with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. It even had pretty decent fiber internet. After I explained our situation and what I did for a living, he told me in perfect Spanish (from Spain) what other people at that point had refused to say: That we were “low priority” prospective tenants because of our situation. That said, he’d pass on the information to the owner of the place, but there were others in line, the same story I had been told more than ten times by now.

I started feeling even worse because deep down I know I made a huge mistake in my youth when I flunked college, and I had been paying the price for that since. Had I studied a career properly, who knows, maybe things would have gone differently in my life, I would’ve had the financial means to save my mom at the time, and all that… My frustration and hopelessness started to spill over to my brother, who was present with me at that appointment. He too started feeling down and withdrawn. 

Saturday, February 10, 2024 what is by far, the worst day of us during that journey. It rained all day, but we still had an early morning appointment at another place across town, it was the last one on the list. I woke up defeated, but an appointment is an appointment, even though I already knew what was going to happen. Because it was raining, and it was a bit rather far from our location, we left the Airbnb a bit earlier to make sure we arrived on time, as there was a bit of walking to be done from the bus stop.

We ended up arriving about 15 minutes earlier, which, for some reason, the guy that showed us the place was not fond of even though he was already there. The apartment was rather far away, yes, but it had been recently renovated and boy, it’s the best apartment I had seen so far. I’d love to have grown in a place that looked like it.

The place had two bedrooms with brand new beds and furniture. The second bedroom, however, had no door installed, and the owner of the place wanted to rent it as-is. I said it was no problem. The kitchen was also brand new, and the living room was very modern looking.

The guy only spoke Italian, no English or Spanish, but we still managed to understand him and I’d respond with my broken rudimentary Italian and some Spanish clutch here and there. Not like it mattered because at the end, he repeated the same thing the previous guy had told us in Spanish, except in Italian, and more blunt and harsh.

This demoralized both of us, and we left the place defeated. That was the breaking point for my brother. He started to cry and blamed himself for crying, adding that he “did not want to see me cry anymore.” He must have heard or seen me cry over the past days, even though I thought I had concealed that from him.

It was still raining and very cold, but I tried my best to try to calm him down, and offered to take him somewhere nice to eat once the rain was over, except it rained all day and night. To make matters worse, the bus was delayed by almost an hour and a half for some reason. By the time we arrived he was freezing. I took him to the bathroom, cranked open the shower’s hot water to make steam, and used warm water from the sink to help him wash his face. We changed clothes and laid on the beds to warm up.

It was my worst defeat in recent years in a long string of defeats. At the end of the day, I wasn’t strong enough to secure a place to rent. I have no career, alone, I’m older by the day, and yeah, I had lost, I’m sure my family would get a kick from that. We spent the rest of that day trying to warm ourselves up. It stopped raining sometime during Sunday midnight. We went to get more groceries around noon, and upon arriving, I couldn’t take it anymore and broke down a couple minutes after arriving.

That was it, I had lost, and had perhaps, committed a huge mistake in coming here. Turns out I was not prepared, I was not smart, strong, or resourceful enough to find a place to rent. My brother hugged me and started crying too. I stopped because I did not want to see him cry, so I tried to calm him down.

I found myself at the very verge of throwing in the towel, quitting, and returning to Venezuela because I was stuck on that loop and therefore couldn’t get a place to rent after the Airbnb rental ended. Then, in what is without a doubt one of the wildest experiences ever, I received help thanks to my mom’s good deeds in life.

A friend of mine, who doesn’t speak Spanish mind you, stumbled upon the email address of a group of Venezuelans in the Piedmont region. By then I had reached out to several groups, including Catholic ones, but no one had given me a response. I reached out to this group of Venezuelans, and gave a comprehensive explanation of what was going on, and how we needed to find a place to stay in order to get our local documents and finally get everything rolling with this new life of ours.

The leader of the group responded me, and said she was trying to find a way to help us — now this is where I say it was all thanks to my mom.

You see, back in 2015, shortly before my mom got diagnosed with cancer, a good friend of hers, Oncologist Dr. Clamores Gonzalez, had been diagnosed with leukemia. She was feeling very ill during her first rounds of chemo at the same Hospital my mom worked at. One day, my mom went to help her and gave her some stuff she wouldn’t feel as much pain. A friend of Clamores was present too, whose child was getting chemo. She met my mom on that day.

Clamores and my mom helped each other during those difficult years of Venezuela’s collapse. She eventually made it out of Venezuela after obtaining Spanish citizenship through her parents, got a marrow transplant, and spent years isolated on a hostpial getting treatment. She eventually beat leukemia, thank God, and she’s always stayed in touch with us.

I called her on those days, and vented on how frustrated I was over the whole ordeal, mentioning the group of Venezuelans that were trying to help us — and that’s when it clicked for her. It turns out, that friend of hers, who met my mom by chance on that day, now lived in Turin, and she had been helped by the selfsame group. She vouched for us. 

It also turns out that the son of the group’s leader had been following me on Twitter for years, and we had talked here and there.

I eventually got in touch with someone else in that group, who interceded and allowed us to find a place to rent in a small town in the Cuneo province where she lives. The next few days saw them helping us get our local paperwork and other things. Slowly but surely, we eventually got our Italian ID and healthcare cards, a bank account, and other basic things. 

I’ve been extremely grateful to them because had it not been for their help I don’t know how I would’ve ended up. They’ve been very kind to us from day one, especially to my brother. They’ve invited us to local events and even to New Years. Hallacas, Venezuela’s flagship Christmas dish but one that requires a lot of family effort to prepare, is a tradition we hadn’t partaken in since 2017, months before my mom died. They invited us to engage in this Venezuelan tradition, which was quite heartfelt to me.

The help my brother and I received, and the work that group does to help others, including Venezuelans back home, is one of those things that remind you that the world can be as cruel as it can get, but there will always be people willing to do good.

My mom had been trying to leave Venezuela’s misery and build a new life for my brother and I since as early as 2009, but her 2015 cancer diagnosis changed it all. It took me six years, six long years of failures, but I finally achieved the first half of the promise: to get Christopher out of Venezuela.

Now it’s up to me to work hard towards building a good future for him. I don’t know how I’ll achieve this, as I’m but a flawed man with nothing but a bunch of dreams in his head.