Catholic aid organizations in Brazil are helping hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled their economically stricken and politically unstable country.
Many have crowded into makeshift refugee camps in Pacaraima and Boa Vista, both in Brazil’s northern state of Roraima.
“Over the past few months, we have found anguished Venezuelans in shelters in Boa Vista,” said Fabricio Pellicelli, president and director of AVSI Brasil, part of the Italy-based AVSI Foundation.
“Something that was meant to be temporary, just two to three months, becomes more permanent, with people staying eight, nine months, even a year in these makeshift shelters, with little prospect of improving their lives,” he said. Pellicelli.
AVSI Brasil, as well as a number of other entities linked to the Catholic Church – such as the Scalabrinian Institute for the Human Rights of Migrants, the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Catholic Ministry of Migrants of the Diocese of Roraima and Caritas Brazil – work to help Venezuelans inside and outside the camps.
AVSI in Pacaraima has also requested the help of private companies to employ these refugees and move them to other parts of the country.
“Brazil is a country that opened its arms and welcomed me and for that I will be eternally grateful,” Dellana Maria Rodriguez, 43, who lived on the Venezuelan border with Brazil, told Catholic News Service.
“It was not an easy decision. It’s like jumping into the ocean and hoping that I can survive by swimming…I left my friends, my parents,” Rodriguez said.
