‘To be reunited … would be a dream’: Venezuelan exiles’ fate hangs on vote

For Jessica Sierra, presidential elections this weekend will not only decide who will run Venezuela for the next six years. Like many of the almost 8 million Venezuelans scattered across the globe, they could also dictate whether she can finally return home and be reunited with her family.

“My parents, my grandparents, uncles, aunties, my little sister – they are all still there. To be reunited with them again?” She paused as she struggled to put into words what it would mean to go back home after four years struggling to make a living in neighbouring Colombia. “It would be a dream.”

Sunday’s vote will either secure a third term for Nicolás Maduro , the less popular successor of the socialist revolutionary Hugo Chávez, or elect the relatively unknown former diplomat Edmundo González , bringing an end to 25 years of Chavismo.

Maduro is unlikely to win many votes from the 7.8 million Venezuelans abroad – around a quarter of the population – who have fled Venezuela’s collapse under his leadership.

Most have been forced to leave their families behind to seek work due to the country’s economic collapse, caused by mismanagement and corruption and later compounded by US sanctions.

The Venezuelan migration crisis is the largest in the history of Latin America, and countries from Colombia to Peru have struggled to cope with the influx.

If Maduro claims victory on Sunday, experts predict the exodus could reach new heights.

“If there is no possibility of change many will leave,” said Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory at the Rosario University in Colombia, where more than 2.8 million Venezuelans have sought refuge. “There will be a new exodus of the younger population, whose education and work prospects are being destroyed under Maduro, plus the older Venezuelans whose children ask them to join them before the situation at home gets even worse.”

Despite having the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela is plagued by fuel shortages, insecurity and rolling blackouts. The local food basket costs multiple times the $130 monthly minimum wage, and 82% of the population lives in poverty, according to the UN.

Related: ‘It’s a pain you will never overcome’: crisis in Venezuela as babies die of malnutrition

After boycotting the 2018 election, which was widely deemed a sham, the opposition now senses a fresh opportunity to end Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian and unpopular rule.

Despite his former obscurity, González holds a 20% lead in polls. Much of his support was won by the opposition figurehead, former lawmaker María Corina Machado , who was barred from the contest by the Maduro government in January, leaving González to run as her proxy .

Knowing that nearly all Venezuelans have a relative abroad who has been forced to pack up and leave for a distant city, both the opposition and the government have been tugging hard at the heartstrings of broken families to secure votes.

“On 28 July we will win with our candidate Edmundo, we will free Venezuela and bring our children back home,” Machado told buoyant crowds in González’s home town in the central Aragua province.

One of Machado’s central messages to packed squares in towns and cities across Venezuela has been that a vote for the opposition is a vote for Venezuelans to return home.

Campaign videos show the mother of three holding the hands of crying mothers desperate to see their children again. In another, a couple ride alongside Machado’s SUV on a motorbike, sobbing. “I don’t want to leave the country, I want my children in a free Venezuela,” they plead through the window in tears.

Even Maduro, who for years denied that Venezuela’s migration crisis existed, has started appealing to the mass diaspora.

“To Venezuelan migrants,” he said on state television in February . “We love you and our love makes us say, ‘Come back!’ We are waiting for you here, this is your land.”

The opposition is urging the nearly 8 million Venezuelans dotted around the globe to vote so that they can revive the economy, restore freedom and get them home.

Related: Could Venezuela’s softly-spoken opposition newcomer end 25 years of Chavismo?

In practice it will not be so easy: the Venezuelan government is doing all it can to stop Sunday’s contest from being a fair one.

So far the government has barred candidates, jailed opposition figures and harassed the Machado campaign .

They have also denied access to observers from Europe tasked with ensuring Sunday’s electoral contest is clean and on Tuesday blocked several local online news media.

Perhaps Maduro’s most effective scheme is making it impossible for Venezuelans abroad to cast their vote.

The government stopped registering out-of-country voters in 2018 and only reopened registration in March.

Only about 500 people were added to the 69,000 voters who had registered before 2018, rights groups say.

None of the roughly 800,000 Venezuelans living in the US nor the 500,000 in Ecuador will be able to exercise their democratic right, because all consulates and embassies in those countries have been closed.

“It feels like this is finally the chance to make a change and I can’t do anything,” said 40-year-old Rodrigo Pérez, a lawyer from Caracas who now picks up odd jobs like painting to get by in his current home of Milan. “It really hurts, I feel like I’m failing my responsibility as a Venezuelan.”

Like most Venezuelans abroad, his family has been gradually ruptured and then scattered around Europe as the country’s slow-motion collapse progressed.

“I have five family members in Italy, six in Spain, others in Chile, Colombia and Ecuador. I do not know a single person who can vote! It’s impossible!”

Where voters are registered, the government is erecting bureaucratic obstacles to make it impossible , requiring visas and passports that most do not have.

In Colombia fewer than 20,000 of the 2.8 million Venezuelans living there are expected to cast their vote.

“It’s obvious what they are doing. Their strategy is not to let us vote because they know none of us would ever think of voting for them,” said Sierra, who like the majority in Colombia will not be participating as she has no visa. “It’s infuriating.”

Sierra said the election was so important that some of her cousins were travelling 700km back to Venezuela from Colombia’s second city, Medellín, to cast their vote in the hope of ousting Maduro.

If the opposition win she can finally think about going home. If Maduro holds on her younger sister will probably join her in Colombia to study or find work.

In a poll 65% of Venezuelans polled said they would consider going back home if the opposition wins.

If Maduro remains in power, however, 40% of the remaining population would consider leaving

“Ask any migrant, none of us want to be here but we have no choice,” said Sierra, who said she lost a close friend who died at the Mexico-US border in April after making the long journey north in search of work.

Even if the opposition wins there is still a good chance Venezuelan migration could surge due to the political instability and the growing prospect of conflict, cautioned Rodríguez.

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Maduro is not expected to let go of power easily and warned supporters at a campaign event last week that the South American country would descend “into a bloodbath” if the opposition beat him.

“Irrespective of the result, there will be a significant exodus,” Rodríguez said.

And it is possible the contest will never get that far. Analysts predict that the autocrat is too desperate to cling to power to run the risk of losing.

“If the government sees it can’t win by the numbers, they’ll likely delay the vote count and revert to other measures, like a supreme court ruling, to deny the opposition a win,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Cleaning up the restaurant she manages on a chaotic street in a commercial neighbourhood in Bogotá, Sierra said: “I have faith that the opposition can help lift us out of this darkness, a lot of hope.

“But you can have as much faith as you want – if they have the weapons, the army, and you think about everything they have done to hold on to power, that’s where the heart and the head collide.”