Since the discovery of massive offshore oil reserves in 2015, Guyana has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world: Its GDP increased 32.2% last year alone. It has also emerged as an attractive option for Venezuelans escaping their country's humanitarian crisis.
In Georgetown, the capital, the pistons of the country’s newly minted commercial engine are roaring into motion, but the rapid influx of investment is yet to be felt in the rural areas where an increasingly high number of the Venezuelan migrants have settled.
According to official data, around 25,000 Venezuelans live in Guyana – representing about 3% of the country’s population of 800,000 people. But due to the porous borders, the lack of police presence, and an inefficient paper-based registration system, the real figure could be far higher.
Guyana – a former British colony where English remains the official language – is still one of the poorest countries in the region.
The oil discoveries were off the coast of Essequibo, a region that represents roughly two thirds of Guyana’s land mass and is contested by Venezuela. Despite an escalation of border tensions in recent years, a growing number of Venezuelans have been migrating to Guyana, many of them members of the Warao Indigenous community.
As soon as they cross the border, Venezuelans are exposed to the risk of human and sex trafficking by organised crime groups known as sindicatos, and many also end up being exploited in illegal gold mines or falling prey to corrupt border officials.
“If you cross without documents, you have to pay,” Joelianny, a Venezuelan migrant whose last name is being withheld for security reasons, told The New Humanitarian. “If you don’t speak English, you don’t know how to defend yourself.”
She says a policeman asked her for gold, which she didn't have. She was eventually allowed to pass through the checkpoint, but only because the skipper of the boat taking her across the border negotiated on her behalf.
Because Guyana did not sign the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, Venezuelans are denied the status of refugees and left in a legal limbo.
They can apply for a three-month renewable stay permit, but the document doesn’t allow them to legally work, preventing them from having access to proper job opportunities. Migrants living in remote areas must travel long distances to gather the paperwork and get the renewal – if they can earn enough money for such trips and to pay for the renewal.
An estimated three in four Venezuelans in Guyana take low paid, informal jobs to survive. In rural areas, they find even less work and sometimes just do anything they can in exchange for food: One Venezuelan man in Yarakita, a Warao migrant community near the border, said he had worked four days straight in a nearby mine to earn only 1,000 Guyanese dollars – about $4.70.
In July, The New Humanitarian visited two rural communities and a river port that is the gateway to the country’s interior to explore the reality facing Venezuelan migrants living in Guyana’s remote areas – neglected by the authorities and cut off from humanitarian aid.
The Warao’s sense of community
Around 10% of those who have crossed over from Venezuela are members of the Warao Indigenous group. Communicating primarily in their own language, their culture and historical territory long predates Guyana and Venezuela’s boundary dispute, and they often settle together in communities such as Yarakita, a small village in Barima-Waini, also known as Region 1.
In town, discrimination against Venezuelans has no place. The wooden structure pictured above is a popular location for community gatherings – there, among Waraos, distinctions between Venezuelans and Guyanese carry little weight.
However, like many of Guyana’s remote communities, Yarakita has limited access to basic services and is cut off from humanitarian aid. After the pandemic, the government distributed about $48,000 to communities in the region and launched programmes fostering development and youth employment, as well as agricultural sustainability. But the community still lives in extreme poverty.
A report published in 2023 by the UN’s migration agency, IOM, showed that 48% of Indigenous Venezuelans in Guyana had no regular immigration status, and at least one in five complained bitterly about their livelihood or food security situation.
Some agricultural programmes have been launched by an NGO in the area to try to boost self-sufficiency. Progress, however, is hard, as Yarakita’s lush greenery belies the sand-based soil’s hostility to edible crops. Much of the food in the region still has to be imported, resulting in significantly higher prices. It is not uncommon for locals working in agriculture to receive payment in the form of rice. According to the IOM report, 17% of Indigenous Venezuelans in Guyana eat only once a day, while 53% have two daily meals.
Clean water is also scarce. A new well is set to be built by the end of the year, increasing the community’s access to drinking water. For now, though, it is still a struggle to secure the basics.
Transience and isolation
Fifty-eight-year old Maurice (above) left Venezuela for good seven years ago because he couldn't find medical help for his sick daughter.
Yarakita was not new to him. Like many living near the border, he had been travelling between Venezuela and Guyana since childhood.
Transience is burned into the identity of the Warao community. In fact, instead of Yarakita he calls the village “Haulingover”, in reference to the journey between the community and his previous home in Venezuela.
“You’re hauling your boat right across the creek, right across the hill,” he said. “That’s why [we] call it Haulingover.”
Despite the strong sense of community, life in the isolated jungle region is hard. Maurice gestured to one of the slim tree trunks that make up the structure of his home in Yarakita and said: “[It took] two hours paddling and two and a half hours walking to get this tree here from Yarakita creek.”
“We are receiving no help”
Belkis Martínez – known as Señora Belkis by the locals – makes her way across the planks of wood used as ad hoc walkways to navigate the deep mud surrounding the Amerindian Hostel – a migrant shelter in the border town of Mabaruma.
The dilapidated building, which is home to 80 Warao migrants from Venezuela, is perched on the murky waters of a swamp.
“We are surviving. We have to work hard,” Belkis told The New Humanitarian. “The organisations that were supporting us three years ago have stopped. At the moment, we are receiving no help. We have to organise ourselves.”
Initially set up and managed by the local government, the Amerindian Hostel is now being run by the migrants themselves. In need of a leader, the residents elected Belkis as the de facto head of the community – a role for which she receives no remuneration.
A nurse back in Venezuela, Belkis has been unable to find opportunities in the same line of work in Guyana due to her inability to speak English. Instead, like the rest of her community, she does what she can to survive – taking odd jobs around Mabaruma, and begging and searching through trash for leftovers.
“There is no food,” she said. “I wish to God that [the government] would help us and that support comes, because it’s really hard.”
Struggling for the basics
Residents of the Amerindian Hostel, like this Warao man and his son, do not have to pay to stay here. Some have lived in this crumbling wooden building for years.
By day, most of the men go out to work in Mabaruma. There, they take whatever jobs are available – unloading goods from ferries, construction, or working in one of the town’s two stores.
Women usually take care of the children and are the ones routinely searching through the trash or begging on the street.
The community lacks running water and must buy 450-gallon tanks from Mabaruma. Buying a tank costs around 50,000 Guyanese dollars ($237) – not much less than the $288 minimum monthly wage. The tanks have to be refilled every four or five days for another 5,000 Guyanese dollars.
The many children at the hostel do at least manage to go to school. However, according to UN data, 59% of the Indigenous Venezuelan children in Guyana do not attend formal classes, largely due to the distances involved and the language barrier.
Living in a squatting zone
Bartica – on the west bank of the Essequibo river – is a key port for delivering workers and resources to the mining region of Cuyuni-Mazaruni.
It is also a popular arrival point for boats from Venezuela. Many migrants have settled in a squatting zone with no running water or electricity, setting up a makeshift community from salvaged material.
During the rainy season, the only road connecting the squatting zone to the outside world is prone to flooding, leaving children wading through muddy water to reach the local school. Homes are basic and makeshift – many constructed on stilts using a mixture of wooden boards, corrugated metal, and tarpaulins branded with UNHCR’s insignia.
UNHCR distributed these materials last year – part of a specific project that also provided people with mosquito nets and cans for drinking water. The UN agency has also distributed relief supplies such as solar lamps and water purification tablets to Venezuelan migrants across Guyana, and plans to distribute baby kits soon.
“People have come who want to take us out of here”
The Cuyuni-Mazaruni region has pulled in many Venezuelans desperate to earn a living, but for those in the squatting area integration doesn't come easy.
Last December, tensions between Guyana and Venezuela skyrocketed. Disregarding an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had ordered the annexation of the region. For Venezuelans in Guyana, this has meant growing hostility.
Thirty-year-old Joelianny (in the picture with her six-year-old son) lives with her husband and two children, aged 10 and six. They wash with rainwater and have to rely on a solar-powered lamp for illumination at night.
“People have come who want to [drive] us out of here,” she told The New Humanitarian. “Some Guyanese said this land belonged to them.”
Constant discrimination
Venezuelan migrant Raquel Rivas and her Brazilian-Guyanese partner, Diego Jonas, live in the squatting zone. Jonas works on a truck that delivers drinking water in Bartica.
When she crossed the border two years ago, Rivas left behind three children, to whom she is now able to send money thanks to Jonas' work.
“I left Venezuela because of the situation there,” said Rivas. “There was no money for food, no money for shoes or clothes for my kids.”
Like Joelianny and her family, the couple has faced discrimination from members of the local community.
“Many Guyaneses say a lot of bad things about Venezuelans,” said Jonas. “Practically 100% or 90% say bad things,” he added. “There’s a Guyanese man living right here who insults Venezuelans.”
Edited by Daniela Mohor.
