The Inventory of Exodus | Translation

► Click here to return to the episode official page, or here to see all the episodes.

♥ We live in difficult times. We are a non-profit media, and our permanence depends on listeners like you. If you value our work, join Deambulantes, our membership. Help us elevate Latino voices and tell the story of our communities. Your contribution is directly invested in our journalistic work and makes all the difference.

►Do you listen Radio Ambulante to improve your Spanish? We have something extra for you: try our app, designed for Spanish learners who want to study with our episodes.

---

The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence. 

[Daniel Alarcón]: Hello, before we begin, I want to say that at Radio Ambulante we have been paying close attention to the situation in Venezuela. We are referring, of course, to the attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming out of the White House toward the country. Last week, it was revealed that President Trump approved CIA operations within Venezuelan territory.

Well, we’re not a news program… That’s what El Hilo is for, which, by the way, recently released a very good episode on many of these issues. But we do think it’s relevant, and part of our mission, to try to better understand what has been happening in Venezuela and how many of the Venezuelans who have left feel. So, with that in mind, we bring you today’s story. Enjoy.

This is Radio Ambulante, I’m Daniel Alarcón.

This week’s episode begins in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 2, 2017. That day, Soledad Giménez Guevara locked the door to her apartment, a spacious and bright duplex in the municipality of Baruta.

[Soledad Giménez Guevara]: I closed my house as if I were going to the supermarket. The beds still had the bedding we used. In the bathroom were the towels and all our toiletries and hygiene products. And you could go into the kitchen and get coffee and prepare it. And there was food in the pantry. I left everything like that.

[Daniel]: She headed to the airport with a 23 kilo suitcase, the maximum weight allowed by airlines. She was going to visit her only daughter, Amanda, who at that time was 22 years old and had settled in Santiago, Chile eight months earlier. In her suitcase, she carried some clothes, a hand-painted wooden Christ figure, and many photos, including one of El Ávila hill, a peak in the central part of the mountain range that surrounds the Venezuelan capital from east to west.

[Soledad]: I remember thinking at that moment that I was bringing them to Amanda. Because I wanted her to have photos of her family and her city.

[Daniel]: Soledad wanted to spend time with her but also take a break from Venezuela. She needed to get away from the country’s social and economic crisis, which was overwhelming her.

[Soledad]: I mean, there came a point where every day at 7 in the evening I felt a terrible, terrible unease. It was something that wouldn’t go away, it was like ahh. Like something was coming into my heart. And I would say, we’re not okay here. We need to see where we can go. Time is running out, time is running out.

[Daniel]: The insecurity in Caracas had affected her and she completely lost her peace of mind. Over time, another concern was added. Money was covering less and less. Until that point, this had never been a problem for her. She was a lawyer with almost 30 years of experience, who had worked for large private companies. But in 2017, in Venezuela, there was an annual inflation rate of almost 900 percent, and she increasingly had to spend more to buy the same food. That is, if she could find it, because shortages were enormous.

It was in the midst of all this that Soledad visited her daughter in Chile. She initially planned to stay for just a month, but for one reason or another her stay kept extending. And she began to miss those she had left behind in Caracas.

[Soledad]: My parents had already passed away, but I still had an aunt who was like my second mother, and that aunt is a very lovely old lady, super nice, and I used to visit her every day. So there was her, my aunt Vicky, and there was my little dog. A boxer. Um, Kira. Mmm. 

[Daniel]: But three months after leaving, her aunt died. And the idea of returning to Caracas began to seem increasingly distant. So she arranged to bring Kira over. And that’s when she realized she probably wasn’t going back to Venezuela.

[Soledad]: When I thought that if there was no one waiting for me there anymore and Amanda was here. I said: Well, I’ll stay here, try to do something here.

[Daniel]: Since her law degree wasn’t recognized, she started trying other things. She worked as an advisor at a private health insurance company and cared for the baby of a Venezuelan couple. Until she started working as a migration consultant, helping foreigners who arrived in Chile to get settled.

Four years had passed, and she was feeling more established in the new country. So she made a decision: it was time to sell the apartment she had left in Caracas. The one where she had lived for 16 years. Where she had raised her daughter and spent the best moments of her life.

[Soledad]: It was very pleasant, very, very pleasant. It was a very nice time that I remember with great affection.

[Daniel]: Making the decision to sell it wasn’t easy at all. But there was another problem too. Her house had remained intact: full of books, clothes, and furniture. Full of photos and objects that were part of her identity. Much of her history in those 115 square meters. And now, from a distance, she would have to figure out what to do with everything she had left there.

Journalist Cecilia Diwan, along with our producer Aneris Casassus, reported this story. Here’s Cecilia.

[Cecilia Diwan]: When Soledad finally decided to put her Caracas apartment up for sale, she felt overwhelmed. She had all her belongings there and didn’t know what to do with them or where to begin. It was very difficult to handle emptying it from a distance, and she also didn’t want to lose the memories she cherished most. She started by asking her friends if they knew anyone who could take care of the matter in Venezuela. A friend who had emigrated to Madrid told her…

[Soledad]: “Sole, but Mairín is doing that.”

[Cecilia]: Mairín Reyes Betancourt. Soledad already knew her: she had been her colleague and had helped that mutual friend resolve an issue.

That time, the friend’s aunt had no one to spend New Year’s with because her entire family lived abroad. Mairín immediately agreed to help and took care of sending dinner to the lady. Mairín had always been like that: supportive, willing to help everyone. A natural problem-solver, so to speak. And it was after that when an idea occurred to her. This is Mairín:

[Mairín Reyes]: That led me to reflect and think, well, look, I’m going to dedicate myself to providing services for people who are abroad and are always requiring someone.

[Cecilia]: At that time, Mairín had little income and thought it would be a good career move. In her 60 years, she had already had several business ventures. Now she felt ready for a new one. When Soledad heard about what she was doing, she didn’t hesitate to ask for her help with her house.

[Mairín]: She told me: “Hey Mairín, it’s great what you’re doing, I need you, I’m not going to return, I’m going to sell my property. It has some leaks. Will you take care of that too?” I told her “yes.”

[Cecilia]: After being uninhabited for many years, Soledad’s apartment had begun to deteriorate. It’s a problem that most houses of those who left face. Since no one takes care of solving the problems that arise, the homes begin to fall apart.

The same happens in the common areas of buildings. Because for those who stayed, it’s impossible to cover the maintenance costs.

Soledad then thought that the best strategy to sell her house at a good price was to leave it in good condition. Mairín took care of all the details. She hired an architect and started going every day to supervise the repairs.

They also agreed that Mairín would take care of emptying the closets, drawers, and cabinets. Soledad was opening the doors to her home but also to her privacy.

Mairín began with the task. First, she checked a filing cabinet that had three drawers. There Soledad kept all the documentation related to her work.

[Soledad]: There was everything there, from all the eras. She would say to me: “Soledad, how can you save so many papers? What is this?” And I would say: “Mairín, I don’t know exactly what’s there, but you, you start pulling things out, you start pulling things out.”

[Cecilia]: Mairín read each of the papers, which were hundreds, and sent photos to Soledad so she could decide what to do with them.

[Mairín]: I would ask her, “And what do we do with this?”: “No, Mairín, I can’t bring that with me, tear that up.”

[Cecilia]: She tore up work certificates, diplomas, and files… but very carefully saved photos and other papers.

[Mairín]: There were things that even if she had said no, leave it. I would say well, but look, this is from when your daughter was little. “Oh, it’s true, no, save it for me.”

[Cecilia]: When she finished with the filing cabinet, she continued checking the different pieces of furniture in the house. She talked for hours on the phone with Soledad, telling her what was in each place…

[Mairín]: And she would start telling me the story of where it came from. Who had given it to her. If it was her father, if it was her mother, then I would listen to all that story before continuing to work.

[Cecilia]: Soledad remembers very well when it was time to get rid of a wooden bookcase that her father had given her when she started studying Law.

[Soledad]: And that one, when they went to sell it, it hit me, it hit me. Having to part with my father’s bookcase. More than many other things.

[Cecilia]: But Soledad wasn’t the only one affected…

[Mairín]: It really hit me because, well, I knew her closely and I had been in that house several times. For me, it was very impactful. It was painful, I think that job was one of the ones I did with, wow, with a constant lump in my throat.

[Cecilia]: Because it wasn’t just a job. It was recognizing that Soledad, like so many of her other friends or relatives, was not going to return.

[Mairín]: It’s also moving to see that someone has to start from scratch in other borders and possibly doing things that perhaps here they never imagined they would do.

[Soledad]: There were times when I felt very moved because she would say to me: Sole, I’m here in your house and it seems to me, uh? It seems very strange that I’m here and you’re not. And I broke down. I broke down because that’s when I realized that effectively my house was being dismantled.

[Cecilia]: It’s because until that moment she hadn’t fully processed her departure.

[Soledad]: I realized that I hadn’t said goodbye to my country when I left, and my migratory grief was delayed.

[Cecilia]: Migratory grief is a phrase often used by those who have emigrated. It’s the feelings and thoughts that arise from having to leave behind the culture, language, family, friends, personal history, and part of the life they built in their country. Because for some, migrating is like being born a second time, but in another place.

For Soledad, her migratory grief only began when dismantling her house from a distance. Because she wasn’t just saying goodbye to her material things…

[Soledad]: It’s not what those objects are worth in money, it’s the memories that are indissolubly associated. A chair is not just a chair, a chair is where you sat to breastfeed your daughter, a sofa is not just a sofa. A sofa is the sofa that belonged to your ex-husband, who died at 43.

[Cecilia]: Things she had dreamed of keeping to someday give to her daughter Amanda…

[Soledad]: So imagine all the work, all the processing you do to come to accept that you’re not going to sit in that chair anymore, you’re not going to sit on that sofa anymore, but on another one. So then you learn a bit to practice detachment.

[Cecilia]: But among the things Mairín found, there was something Soledad didn’t want to part with: some earrings that belonged to her aunt Vicky. Mairín kept them in a box with photos and sent them to Chile so she could have them with her.

[Soledad]: And every time I want to put on something, like something nice and colorful, I say: “come on, Vicky, accompany me to such and such a thing.” And I put on the earrings.

[Cecilia]: When Mairín finished her work, the apartment sold very quickly, but also very cheaply. Because with the country’s crisis, property values plummeted. An apartment, according to what Soledad told us, went from costing 150 thousand dollars to 40 thousand or less. There were many Venezuelans wanting to sell and few able to buy.

And although Soledad didn’t make a good deal, she takes comfort in knowing that she didn’t leave any unfinished business in Venezuela.

[Soledad]: And with that I made peace. Having this thought brought me peace, my spirit calmed or was serene because I used to wonder on many nights when I woke up in the early morning, I would say what did I leave? What could I have brought with me? What is it that I need now? And, and that generated a lot of restlessness, a lot of unease. And the day I said Sole, you brought what you needed to bring and what stayed there you no longer need. On that day I found peace.

[Cecilia]: Mairín spent many hours emptying Soledad’s apartment but didn’t want to charge anything for her work.

[Mairín]: And I told her “No, you don’t owe me anything, because I’m going to take it as my training.”

[Soledad]: And look, what she said was so true because from then on it became her reinvention.

[Cecilia]: Soledad’s wasn’t the only house to be emptied. In just over 10 years, nearly 8 million Venezuelans left the country, almost a quarter of the population. And there are more than a million empty homes. And in them, objects that are traces of the life that was once there. And Mairín was willing to help many others reconnect with their memories.

[Daniel]: We’ll take a short break and be right back…

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Cecilia Diwan continues with our story.

[Cecilia]: Mairín began to shape her project. She understood that she had to adapt to each need. If bills needed to be paid, she would do it. If a pipe broke in a house, she would fix it. She was willing to solve any problem that arose. Now all that was missing was finding a name.

[Mairín]: When the idea matured and the name matured I said it will be called “I Solve It For You.”

[Cecilia]: But she soon realized it was too much work for her alone. So she proposed to her nephew, Carlos Enrique, that they become partners. He had already helped her sell Soledad’s furniture on virtual platforms. Besides, they are very close. This is Carlos Enrique:

[Carlos Enrique]: It’s a very nice relationship, of respect, of much affection. And well, now that we’re in this, well, I’ve learned many things and they’ve also taught me many things.

[Cecilia]: Carlos Enrique was the only young person in the family who hadn’t emigrated. He was 22 years old, studying International Relations, and had also worked in buying and selling auto parts with his father. But when his aunt proposed the job, he became enthusiastic. Together they thought about optimizing the method for emptying houses: first, they would need to make an inventory and then decide with the owners what to donate, what to sell, what to keep, and what to throw away.

And, by word of mouth, the first houses to dismantle started coming to them. Generally, the people who contact them are middle-class, over 50 years old, and have children. They are Venezuelans who thought they would return, which is why they left their houses fully furnished.

Mairín organizes video calls with them to get to know them and understand what they need. Also to gain their trust. After all, they will give her access to their home, and unlike in Soledad’s case, for them Mairín is a complete stranger.

For Mairín, it never ceases to be impactful to enter a house that has been closed for so long.

[Mairín]: And pleasant, like oh how nice it is not, because generally there is dust, there are cobwebs of course. There may be bugs, cockroaches, chiripas, X.

[Cecilia]: And the smell you feel when entering is very particular.

[Carlos Enrique]: As they say here “stored smell,” I don’t know what the stored smell is, I imagine it’s the smell of earth, smell of dust, smell like of damp wood. Because ten years, a house locked up really creates a lot of humidity.

[Cecilia]: Once they are inside, they begin to check everything. They usually use gloves, masks, and tweezers, to avoid allergies in the eyes and skin. They open doors, drawers, closets.

[Cecilia]: They record several videos with everything inside the house and then send them to the owners. Because often they don’t even remember what they left in their houses.

[Mairín]: Hello Sara, Mairín Reyes, how are you? from “I Solve It For You”…

[Cecilia]: Together they decide what to do with each thing and then they begin to pack.

[Woman]: But we have to pack this one like this to be able to put the lid on it.

[Cecilia]: On many occasions, Mairín helps them part with things they really no longer need to keep…

[Carlos Enrique]: My aunt might talk to him, tell him that well, it’s an experience already lived, that he really enjoyed it and that makes the person, well, maybe come to their senses and decide to throw away the paper or well, whatever else they’ve kept.

[Mairín]: You can touch it again

[Cecilia]: Here, for example, is Mairín in an uninhabited house, checking a piano with an expert that hadn’t played for years…

[Mairín]: Look, and it will be difficult at this time to sell a piano, because they are not going to take the piano.

[Man]: Aha, this is the advantage that it’s a Schirmer, the brand that is a very good piano.

[Cecilia]: One of Mairín’s priorities is to be reserved and discreet.

[Mairín]: I think we all have something that is intimate and something that is ours, that we have the vulnerability due to the condition of having to share it with someone that maybe we had never considered, well, but that’s how it is.

[Cecilia]: Mairín adapts to each client’s requests because each one comes with very specific needs. Gonzalo Jimenez Sargazazu, for example, was especially concerned about his library.

Five years after Gonzalo had settled in Spain with his wife and son, he decided to hire Mairín to empty the apartment they had left intact in Caracas.

[Gonzalo Jimenez]: I asked Mairín to take photos of each section of the library. And then on my computer, I would zoom in and identify which book was in each section.

[Cecilia]: And so, more than seven thousand kilometers away, he would tell Mairín which books to sell and which books to keep.

[Gonzalo]: And that’s one of the things that has cost me the most to part with and understand. Because one says that one has to, let’s say, that this is a life lesson, that one has to be detached, that one has to thank God that here we are better than in Venezuela. But there’s a part of me that feels that it lost part of its heart in those things that I treasured, that I kept.

[Cecilia]: When Mairín had almost finished the job, she gathered about 12 boxes with the objects that Gonzalo wanted to keep.

[Gonzalo]: I dream of recovering those 12 boxes, in those boxes I do believe there is part of that treasure I built. Not everything is lost.

[Cecilia]: Meanwhile, Gonzalo’s treasure remained in Caracas in the safekeeping of his niece, journalist Laura Helena Castillo. Laura Helena met Mairín when she went to pick up those 12 boxes and immediately knew there was a story to tell. So she proposed to Mairín to do a report on her work. With the clients’ approval, Mairín accepted. So Laura Helena and photographer Fabiola Ferrero accompanied Mairín for several weeks to three of the houses where she was working.

Fabiola was immediately struck by the care Mairín put into each object. An incredible precision in noting down each little cup, each ornament in the house in huge Excel lists. This is Fabiola.

[Fabiola Ferrero]: This itinerary that she is making of the absences seemed super poetic to me as well. I think she wasn’t so aware of the beautiful nature her work has, right? Of taking care of that memory.

[Cecilia]: Fabiola would go through each house and stop to portray the deterioration. Walls with stains left by paintings that were no longer there. She would take photos of mountains of stuffed animals, which Mairín and her nephew would later take to a children’s foundation. Or she would open drawers and capture images of hundreds of coins that, in the face of constant crises and devaluations in Venezuela, had completely lost their value.

[Fabiola]: They were these houses, where you could see there had been life, where you could see there had been an aspiration to greatness or progress, not only social, but cultural, of ideas, in general.

[Cecilia]: Traces of an economic success built on the oil of the second half of the 20th century, in Saudi Venezuela, a time of glory that disappeared.

But the reminder of that Venezuela that no longer is, is not only evident in empty houses, but also in the streets: the pavement in poor condition, the sidewalks practically impassable, the trees that are not cared for, nor pruned.

[Lorenzo]: And if you go through a Venezuelan city, practically anywhere where there are these tall buildings, at night, you can count the number of windows that are lit and places where they are turned off. We can say it’s half and half.

[Cecilia]: This is architect Lorenzo González Casas, professor at Simón Bolívar University and specialist in urban planning history. And if Caracas looks neglected, the deterioration is felt even more in the interior of the country.

[Lorenzo]: That image of the main street, uh, abandoned, which remains as if it were a Hollywood set in which the wind passes and takes away the lightest things, the straw from the stables, in many places there is that feeling.

[Cecilia]: The exodus is also felt in the job positions that were left vacant in industry, commerce, health, or education.

[Lorenzo]: Places that are emptying, places where there are fewer people, places where there are fewer children. That feeling at the bottom of what it produces is a great sadness.

[Cecilia]: There are studies that say that a third of Venezuelans who stayed suffer from sadness and even depression. The rate increases to more than 50% among those over 60 because they have been left alone.

[Mairín]: Put it this way, of my friends, suddenly, one has three children and two are outside, she has one here. I have only one and he’s outside. My brother has three and two are outside. So your environment tells you what is happening.

[Cecilia]: That’s why more and more people are dedicated to caring for older adults who are alone. And they act as a sort of substitute child.

In Mairín’s case, her nephew Carlos Enrique, the one who works with her, has become a kind of substitute son, a presence that helps her cope with the absence of her own son – Román – who left Venezuela almost a decade ago.

And although Mairín misses him very much, she doesn’t think about leaving the country. She has friends with whom she meets to play dominoes, she enjoys cooking for her nephew, having a whiskey, and occasionally going to the beach.

Her venture continues to grow and allows her to live well. She has already emptied more than 30 houses. And among so much inspecting, organizing, fixing, and selling, Mairín received an unexpected request: someone was thinking of returning to Venezuela and also needed her help.

[Daniel]: We’ll take a short break and be right back..

[Daniel]: We’re back. Cecilia Diwan continues with the story.

[Cecilia]: One day in July 2024, Mairín Reyes received a call from Fabiola Ferrero, the photographer who had portrayed her work.

After having lived four years between Colombia and France, Fabiola had decided to return to Venezuela and needed Mairín’s help to restore the house she had left abandoned in Caracas.

Fabiola’s migration story is different from the ones we’ve told. We could say it starts in 2014, when she began working as a photojournalist in Caracas, portraying the Venezuelan crisis. She worked for local and international media and was doing very well. By selling one or two photos a month, she already had enough to live comfortably. But the same wasn’t happening around her. Her environment began to shrink. First her friends left, then her cousins. Then her parents and two siblings who lived with her. By 2019, Fabiola was left living alone in a four-bedroom house, uninhabited, but full of objects and furniture. It was hard because the silence and abandonment she had been portraying for so many years in Venezuela, she now felt in her own apartment.

In 2020, she also decided to leave…

[Fabiola Ferrero]: I remember that I would go to say goodbye to people at the airport with fewer and fewer people in the car until no one came to say goodbye to me because they had all already left.

[Cecilia]: At first, she was only going to be away for a couple of months. She left Caracas airport in March 2020 for Bogotá, where her parents had emigrated. In her suitcase, she only took clothes and one of her cameras.

[Fabiola]: I think I left, if not on the last, on one of the last planes that left Venezuela before they closed the borders.

[Cecilia]: First, she stayed in Bogotá because of the pandemic, then extended her stay for a job, and then because her boyfriend lived there. Until finally she stayed in Colombia for three years. And in 2023, she won a scholarship at a French university and moved to Paris for a year.

During all the time she was outside Venezuela, Fabiola lived in several different furnished houses that she rented. At first, it was very hard for her to feel those places as her own. One night she even woke up disoriented.

[Fabiola]: I mean literally it was as if I had stepped a bit outside my body and I was saying: I don’t recognize any of this. This pillow doesn’t smell like me. This pillow smells strange. This wall doesn’t have a photo that I recognize. There isn’t any object that I can link to a life of mine, to a life that belongs to me.

[Cecilia]: So she decided to create routines that she respected wherever she was, like walking, riding a bicycle, going to the gym…

[Fabiola]: Looking for yourself in those routines and in those very minute gestures, right? Because sometimes it’s that, sometimes your home is a minimal, tiny gesture that you can make to reconnect some of your senses to a version of yourself that you already know. For me to feel that I’m not just floating through the world and through foreign spaces, right?

[Cecilia]: She also hung photos, bought cushions and objects with which she tried to create some kind of bond of history.

[Fabiola]: You expect that at least something that surrounds you has a memory attached to it. So I would say: This teapot is not the teapot my mom uses. It’s not the teapot with which I sat down to talk to someone one morning. I mean this teapot doesn’t have anything, a new teapot. So like, well, what you have to do there. Cling to the idea that in a week that teapot will have something that reminds you of something more.

And so, in the slow construction of those memories, begin to feel bits of home, because otherwise the rootlessness is too much… I mean you completely detach from everything.

[Cecilia]: During those years outside her country, Fabiola was always returning to Caracas. It was precisely on one of those trips that she portrayed Mairín’s work. Each time she returned for short periods, she stayed at an acquaintance’s house or rented an Airbnb. Because while her family home had remained closed and no one lived there, it was full of dust and had begun to deteriorate.

[Fabiola]: You’re seeing there like, like the shell of the house and then when you get closer is when the signs of abandonment start to appear.

[Cecilia]: That’s why when she finally decided she wanted to return to Venezuela, she called Mairín to help her recondition the apartment. It was the first time anyone had asked her to do that…

[Mairín]: I’ve always worked for houses where no one is going to return to them anymore and that are going to be sold as properties.

[Cecilia]: Mairín accepted the challenge. She immediately reconnected the internet and electricity services. She solved the humidity and leak problems. She changed the water heater because it was rusted. And there, more problems arose.

[Fabiola]: Or one day they turned on the water and the pipes burst. So everything flooded.

[Cecilia]: Fabiola, who was still in France, didn’t get too involved in the details. She left everything in Mairín’s hands. After several months of work, everything was ready, and on February 13, 2025, Fabiola landed in Caracas.

[Fabiola]: I arrived here the day before Valentine’s Day and I said well, I’m going to arrive, how romantic I am, arriving on Valentine’s Day again to Caracas and I don’t have a group of friends to celebrate it with. It doesn’t matter. I arrived anyway and had flowers because Marin had left them for me.

[Cecilia]: Since her return, Fabiola feels at home. Although she perceives that it’s a very different Venezuela from the one she portrayed in 2017, when there was a lot of anger and verbalized pain in the street. And it’s also different from the one she visited in 2021, when silence and abandonment dominated.

She’s still trying to decipher the Venezuela of 2025. But she feels that people, despite being in a hostile context, are trying to preserve and build their small spaces of normality, of joy. As she does in her family’s apartment where, like so many other times, she began to make the place her own. She arranged small corners with new objects and also gave new life to others that had belonged to her father, her brother, her mother.

[Fabiola]: So I chose a corner of the house and bought some plants and a hammock. That is like the space where I say ok, this, this little piece is my house, and that space is made with new things that I added but it’s also made with the desk that was my father’s, a little blanket that was from, I don’t know, my mother or my grandmother, a carpet that was in my brother’s room, an abandoned table that didn’t have space anywhere. And a bit with those pieces I put together my little corner. And I sit there in the afternoons.

[Cecilia]: Fabiola has been settled in Caracas for several months and feels, at last, that the place where she lives is hers. Something that Mairín helped her build.

Mairín, for her part, is excited at the thought of receiving more cases like Fabiola’s. Because she wishes that soon things in Venezuela will improve, so that her son and everyone else will return.

[Mairín]: Hopefully when they decide to return, then instead of saying goodbye and closing houses, I will dedicate myself to having welcome parties.

[Cecilia]: But in the meantime, she will continue emptying houses, those that once had life but were put on pause, like dead.

OUTRO

[Daniel]: Laura Helena and Fabiola’s report on Mairín’s work was published in 2022 in the media outlet Prodavinci.

We thank Dina Díaz Benaim, Román, Mairín’s son, and her daughter-in-law Zuli, whom we also interviewed for this episode.

Cecilia Diwan is a journalist specializing in international politics. She co-produced this story with Aneris Casassus. Aneris is a producer at Radio Ambulante and both live in Buenos Aires.

This story was edited by Camila Segura and by me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. The sound design is by Andrés Azpiri with music by Rémy Lozano, Ana Tuirán and Andrés.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, and Luis Fernando Vargas.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.

Radio Ambulante is a podcast from Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed in Hindenburg PRO.

If you liked this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donate and help us continue telling the stories of the region.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thank you for listening.