Robbe Street has stopped being called in a suspicious way (robar, in English) to embrace the name of an entire nation: Venezuela. Walking along this street with hardly any lighting and rough asphalt, located in the heart of the populous Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, immediately transports you to the center of Caracas. On the sidewalk there are stalls selling arepas, cachapas and tequeños, typical Venezuelan food. In the neighbors' patios illuminated by light bulbs that flicker in the middle of the night, accents from Apure, Miranda, and Sucre can be heard. A good number of the estimated 35,000 Venezuelans who live in the country have made this place their home.
“In Guyana there is racism, but also a lot of money,” says Kenny Rodriguez, a 30-year-old Venezuelan, three children, wearing Oakleys without sideburns, snowboard style. He came here in a canoe from San Martin de Turumbang, on the border, and began working in the gold and diamond mines. “But conchale, a lot of diseases there, a lot of malaria,” he remembers. That encouraged him to come to Georgetown and set up a food cart around Robbe Street. He goes down the street waving, “hey, my friend,” “daddy, what was it?” He is clear that this is a place where you earn people's respect “if you don't go banditting.”
This semi-unknown country, a former British colony where the custom of speaking English and driving on the right remained, with only 800,000 inhabitants, is experiencing an oil boom due to the deposits discovered by the American Exxonmobil in 2015 off its coasts. In the last two years, the money pouring in has finally been noticed: in 2022 its GDP grew by 62% and it is expected that this year will close with an increase of 37%. No country records similar figures in the entire world, according to the IMF. Right now it produces 400,000 barrels of oil a day and experts estimate that in four years it will reach 1.2 million. The Government hopes to triple the per capita income of its citizens in a short time, which is currently around $10,000. Economists do not remember an equal impact on an economy in such a short space of time. Guyana, overnight, could be the South American Dubai.
Venezuelans have found in this land of gold the future that was denied to them in their country. 7.7 million have emigrated around the world due to the serious political and economic crisis that that nation is experiencing, according to UNHCR. The majority have been distributed throughout Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, but a few have decided to come to Guyana, a nation with two ethnic majorities, the Afro-Guyanese, descendants of slaves, and the Indo-Guyanese, who arrived during the times of the British colony. . Joana Flores, 45, arrived six years ago because they did not ask for a visa to enter. She has not left the country again: “I have lived my entire life here, I brought my two daughters and I adopted a little black baby, in a hospital here,” she explains in the bar that she has set up on a corner of Georgetown, Spanish in GT.
He started selling cakes on the street, raised enough money and opened this place, which offers breakfast and lunch to groups of workers from Venezuelan companies. At night it becomes a pub with Latin music. She has not suffered any episode of racism, not even now that President Nicolás Maduro has revived the old dispute over ownership of Essequibo, a region rich in minerals and oil that Venezuela claims as its own.
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![Joana Flores at her bar, Spanish in GT, in Georgetown.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/RqsmWxs39O0auZVMm6Vk2NbFmeI=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/RM7C64NZKBGQZO5FCZYQDCOJUE.jpg)
Lashawn, a dreadlocked Guyanese, 23 years old, in jeans and barefoot, and a worker at a nearby car wash, comes in to buy a couple of beers.
“Venezuelans are very cool, they have come to brighten up the neighborhood,” he says in English.
Joana defends Guyana vehemently: “thanks to this country my daughters speak English and will be able to work as professionals, something they would not be able to do in Venezuela. This is my home”. At the bar she has three employees, two Cubans and one Venezuelan, a cook named Daniel Contreras. He doesn't even want to hear about the dispute between her country of origin and the host country over the Essequibo, that can only bring problems and bitterness, distancing her from the locals. The two countries have experienced weeks of tension, to the point that the international community has feared that the matter would lead to a war.
Three months ago, 45 Venezuelans were detained by Guyana's security forces when they tried to enter the country illegally in a dilapidated fishing boat, on the east coast of the Essequibo region. They carried their belongings and fighting cocks. A day earlier, another 80 were intercepted at the border. Local authorities believe they set sail from the island of Grenada. After being processed by immigration authorities, they were released.
—What does Maduro want Essequibo for? To turn it into shit?
is heard saying at the door of a two-story house on Robbe Street. Here Cubans and Venezuelans live mixed in rooms that they rent to a Guyanese man, at a rate of 300 dollars a month. The night falls soft, it is the ideal temperature to wear an undershirt. Life seems light while drinking brandy on the stairs of the building. David Chacón, a 19-year-old Venezuelan, works in construction. He speaks broken English. The other day he was walking down the street so calmly when a group of Guyanese pushed him for no reason. He restrained himself and continued on his way, he didn't want problems: “I don't mess with anyone.” Cuban Salvador González, 48, says he has suffered a couple of episodes of racism, especially when he worked behind the counter of a store and sometimes did not understand the customer because he had not yet mastered English. He now works as a bricklayer, a plumber, a carpenter. Anything to send money to the three children he has had with three different women.
![Venezuelans and Cubans live in the same building on Robbe street, the street in Georgetown that is now known as Venezuela.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/GZMOeS4O-Y8wfNa86xL73HGEV34=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/5DVO3WWNGFFQHEK3OUE2ZF3PVA.jpg)
Juan Daniel Mendoza sweats because of the humidity. He has arrived in Guyana with a wife and two children.
“They brought me in as a trick,” he says, making the rest laugh. I imagined this as Las Vegas but Georgetown is ugly. Of course, there is work and money is seen. Sometimes I have felt strange. If five black Guyanese are working on construction and I approach, I am the white sheep. They pretend it doesn't exist.
At that moment, a woman, with a child in her arms, looks out the window and shouts: “Maduro is no good, a beautiful country has ended.”
The clock strikes midnight. Venezuela, the old Robbe Street, empties. Tomorrow it will dawn again in this little Caracas.
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