Venezuelans in Colombia, hoping to return, participated in the Great World Protest

• The protest is part of a global call for action that is scheduled to take place in 18 cities in Colombia, where there are almost three million Venezuelans | Photo: EFE

Hundreds of Venezuelans gathered in the squares of Colombia, the country that hosts the most Venezuelans, to protest against the “fraud” in the Venezuelan elections, when the National Electoral Council (CNE) gave the victory to Nicolás Maduro, in the hope of being able to return to his country.

Shouting “Edmundo President” and carrying banners reading “Free Venezuela” or “Out with the dictator Maduro; Venezuela demands freedom,” several hundred Venezuelans and Colombians gathered in Lourdes Square in Bogotá.

“We are holding a worldwide protest demanding the ratification of our president Edmundo González, who was proclaimed by the citizen power, the will and the popular sovereignty of a country,” the director of the Venezuela Command in Bogotá, Mariluz Palma, told EFE.

The protest is part of a worldwide call for action in almost a hundred countries and is scheduled to take place in 18 cities in Colombia, where there are almost three million Venezuelans.

Migrants like Ana Ángela Jugo, who left Venezuela in 2019 after “a series of blackouts” in which she went several days without electricity.

She supported her family by working for a foreign company, which was going to lay her off because she couldn’t work due to the power cuts.

“I couldn’t let my family go through that. I took my computer and with my degree in hand I came here with nothing,” Jugo told EFE.

Migration “was not easy at all” and upon arrival, everything he owned was stolen and he had to start from scratch.

Demand a return to Venezuela

EFE

Their desire is to return, like that of many of the eight million Venezuelans who have left the country in recent years, motivated mainly by the economic crisis, but also by opposition to the Venezuelan government, and who are not “on vacation,” as claimed in Bogotá.

The Venezuelan, for example, said that Maduro’s departure from the government may not mean an immediate change, but it does open the possibility for tens of thousands of Venezuelans to return to help in the economic recovery of the Caribbean country.

Because “the economy will improve when we start working for it, when those of us who are here return and fight to rebuild our country,” Jugo said.

“This time it is different, there is a ray of hope that is really on the horizon because the world is realizing that there really is fraud, that they really are cheating and that in Venezuela the people do not have freedom,” this woman says, in a request that is now repeated in dozens of corners of the world.

Venezuelans participated in the Great World Protest

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