JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Venezuela still was a prosperous country when Oswaldo Hernandez Tabata visited Cuba in the 2000s to further his dentistry studies. He heard good things about that country’s health system but was disturbed by how the communist government restricted people’s lives.
“I was in Havana and saw certain things and told myself, ‘This will never happen in Venezuela,’” he said.
A few years later, socialist Hugo Chavez began expropriating thousands of private companies, forced producers to sell below cost, fired experienced administrators and appointed cronies to run the government. Corruption grew as did shortages of basic goods. Oil exports plummeted, and the Venezuelan economy collapsed.
Chavez died but his right-hand-man Nicolas Maduro took over in 2013. The shortages got worse, and breadlines became commonplace amid hyperinflation.
Hernandez found himself packing his bags in the Venezuelan tourist resort town of Puerto La Cruz and heading for Mexico.
“It’s not easy to leave (but) socialism is a synonym for communism. When they take away your freedoms – from being independent to depending on the state – it’s time to leave,” the maxillofacial surgeon said.
He arrived in Juarez, and unlike millions of Latin Americans fleeing poverty and political oppression in the past few years, he did not cross into the U.S. to seek protection. He stayed in Juarez.
“They told me, ‘Google Juarez, it’s not pretty.’ It may not be, but people here are different. Half of them were not born here, so they understand migrants,” Hernandez said. And “the ways of Mexicans and Venezuelans are similar. We like Mariachis, we like (the late singer-author) Juan Gabriel. You adapt more quickly.”
He co-founded International X Dental Clinic five years ago and now provides jobs for 10 Mexican residents at a building less than a mile away from the Monterrey Tech campus in Juarez.
Hernandez and other Venezuelan professionals interviewed in Juarez recently credited their assimilation and success on the Mexican border to hard work and a willingness to fit in. They opined some of their countrymen who arrived more recently aren’t interested on what Mexico has to offer them.
“Some Venezuelans may not like my opinion,” he said, going on to list nationalities of individuals who arrived to Venezuela during the oil boom of the 1970s and filled vacant jobs. “I came here, and I had to do everything legal – paperwork, appointments, validation of my professional degree – it took me 18 months. […] Now I see groups coming with the American dream. They were sold something that is not real.”
NMSU grad brings technology into maquiladora training room
New Mexico State University film studies graduate Jonalex Herrera began crafting training videos for Juarez maquiladoras in 2018. Using his experience in virtual reality media, he thought of a way to make them more dynamic and give employees a 360-degree realistic vision of the work environment.
“On the tech side, we focus on creating virtual reality and augmented reality to train maquila workers. We are working directly with industry, and we have a success case with Johnson & Johnson,” Herrera said. “We did 14 videos for their immersive training center. We are talking about how to step into a cleanroom, how to apply the 5S (Japanese method) in your work area. All that through virtual reality that speeds up leaning and retention.”
Herrera owns New Discovery Media in Juarez, with subsidiaries specializing in technology, film and marketing media.
His journey to the U.S.-Mexico border began shortly after Hugo Chavez was re-elected president of Venezuela at the turn of the millennium. “We saw all this turbulence with Chavez; he was already in power and there were all these (street) demonstrations. My family already was in Juarez, so we left Venezuela in search of a better future,” Herrera said.
He secured a Mexican student visa and started taking information technology classes at Monterrey Tech (Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey). That was followed by “creative claustrophobia” that led him to apply for a student visa in the United States. His NMSU degree led to short entrepreneurial stints in New York City and Miami.
He returned to Juarez as a business owner with cutting-edge digital skills that led to projects such as mapping Juarez’s historical monuments in 360-degree virtual reality and equipping a migrant with a visor to document his journey into the United States.
“I was able to go many places, but we have things to do (in Juarez). It has given me so much,” Herrera said. “When you arrive as a foreigner to a place that is not your own, what you can contribute has a lot to do with how you are received. In Juarez, I was able to do things that I would not have been able to do in Venezuela. Juarez has people of great human quality.”
Juarez residents make Venezuelan entrepreneur feel at home
Luis Eduardo Bosco didn’t know what to expect after people in Juarez noticed his “different” Spanish accent. He got his answer when a neighbor knocked on his front door.
“She didn’t know me and there she was at 5 a.m. every Sunday to bring me pozole. Those are the things that make you feel like you belong,” said Blasco, a Venezuelan business entrepreneur who came to Juarez 20 years ago. “If you ask me about Juarez, I will tell you Juan Gabriel is right in saying it’s No. 1. People say it’s not pretty, but its people are charming. It is multicultural, with migrants from Mexico and migrants from abroad.”
Blasco went to Spain, then Mexico after Chavez came to office and the shortages of basic goods including toilet paper besieged Venezuela. “I saw a lot of left-leaning populism. People from Cuban descent told us, what’s coming to Venezuela, we already lived through. Open your eyes,” Blasco recalled. “People wanted a change but didn’t see what came. Venezuela gave a great gift to the world when a lot of its educated, hard-working people left, and I am saddned.”
In Juarez, he used his entrepreneurial skills to start a business that supplies maquiladoras including massive FoxConn in northwest Juarez.
He described the industry as highly competitive and hard to get into because of its very detailed requirements and quality-driven nature.
“I saw a lot of industry; I saw a lot of opportunity. I did give (the United States) some thought but the opportunity was in Mexico. In time, you fall in love with it,” he said. “I am very happy in Mexico. I could not have achieved in Venezuela what I have achieved in Mexico.”
Blasco regrets that many recent arrivals from Venezuela are no longer finding in Mexico the warm welcome he was greeted with. But he said it’s much easier to get a work permit than it was when he arrived.
“People see them with distrust, and that hurts all of us. As in all countries, there are good people and bad people,” he said. “My message to them is, come to work, to become better. Earn your future, don’t expect it to be handed down. (Mexico) already helped you opening its doors. We know how difficult it was to get papers in Mexico – we spent years on that – now it’s easy.”
Herrera, the oral surgeon, said some new arrivals have been sold a “false dream” by third-parties that life is easy if they cross the border into the United States.
Blasco agrees that’s a fallacy.
“Life in the United States is as hard as anywhere else. You may have a car, but things are much more expensive,” he said. “It’s very difficult to talk to Americans if you don’t know their language. (In Mexico), you already know the language and the culture is somewhat similar. I stayed here. So, my recommendation is stay here – if you are willing to work.”
ProVideo contributed to this report.
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