Impressions from Fieldwork in Roraima
Sofia Cavalcanti Zanforlin is a professor and researcher in Communication Studies at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). She received her doctorate from the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is a member of the Núcleo Migra - Migrations, Mobilities and Contemporary Population Management and the coordinator of the Diaspora and Media Working Group. This article was originally published on the website of newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil on January 26, which kindly granted the right to reproduce the article in issue 59 of the weekly bulletin of the Washington Brazil Office (WBO) dated March 24, 2023.
Data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) show that 5.6 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015. Between January 2017 and August 2021, Brazil welcomed 635,257 Venezuelans, after the influx skyrocket 922% in the previous two years. The Brazilian government adopted the strategy of offering shelter and locating Venezuelans in rural towns through the creation of the Refuge (Acolhida) Operation (OPA) in 2018. The effort is carried out by the Brazilian Army, the United Nations (through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration, (IOM) and non-governmental organizations that work with immigrants in Roraima and in other states that receive them.
This situation stimulated a joint research project of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) to work with an expansive notion of borders. The project wished to discuss the collaborations between the military and humanitarian organization. The project participants also wanted to listen to migrants who are refugees in Roraima, as well as those placed in rural communities by the OPA.
During the first ten days of September 2022, researchers from UFPE and from UFRR carried out fieldwork in Boa Vista and Pacaraima. The research project, “Frontiers of Mobility in Contemporary Brazil: Communication and Migrant Experience in Ensuring the Reception and Social Integration with the Acolhida Operation,”was financed by the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). It allowed researchers to visit encampments and shelters where they discovered a paradox about the political positions of those Venezuelans they contacted .
The answers to the interviews followed approximately the same script: a recognition of the importance and social changes that took place under Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the deprivations that have occurred since his death in 2013, and the rise to power Nicolás Maduro, including his military partnerships, militias, and groups involved in drug trafficking and mining. We then asked about politics in Brazil on the eve of the first round of elections on October 2, 2022. The answer was: “We support Bolsonaro.”
“Migrants crossing the border are documented and sheltered by neoliberal pedagogy: by NGOs and the UNHCR that offer solutions emphasizing entrepreneurial activities that are individualistic and erase social complexities”
According to the interviewees, if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – who is similar to Chávez, but is a supporter of Maduro –won the election, what had taken place in Venezuela would occur in Brazil. “Where shall we go?” they asked. For them, keeping things “as they are” seemed to be the safest approach to the current situation. In addition, they pointed out issues that circulated on radio programs, social media networks, and WhatsApp groups: “Lula will expel Venezuelan migrants from Brazil and end OPA activities on the border.”
It is important to point out that the interviewees offered eloquent set of answers with an analytics complexity about the political, economic, and social situation in Venezuela, the conditions and experiences with shelters, and the work of NGOs and humanitarian organizations. When they point out that that Brazil would become another Venezuela, they argued that social reforms will be overturned by economic sanctions and that the political and social situation will deteriorate in Brazil. The same people, however, seemed to be easy victims of lies about the peremptory expulsion of migrants. During conversations, when confronted with the similarities between Bolsonarism – synthesized by support for military participation in the government and for the defense of the relationship with the militias – and the Maduro government, the response was silence or reflective consent. When we pointed out that under the Lula government, the Immigration Law was slowly modified with an amnesty in 2009 during Lula’s second administration, in addition to issuing a humanitarian visa, again, the answers were silence and reflections.
The situation points to some questions about the importance of defending basic civil rights and paying attention to the ways communication works: migrants are equally immersed in the media ecosystem, which researcher Muniz Sodré conceptualizes as media bios, characterized by connections between the market, finance capital, and the diminishing role of state-run public programs. This ecosystem intensifies the circulation of information, since it adds to the binding experience of a common public sphere, which has inflamed the majority since the 2018 with elections lies circulating on official networks and in the underworld of fake news.
It is also important to take into account the experiences that guide work with migrants in Brazil. For the most part, migrants crossing the border are documented and sheltered by neoliberal pedagogy: by NGOs and the UNHCR that offer solutions emphasizing entrepreneurial activities that are individualistic and erase social complexities. The move to rural communities, on the other hand, takes place through precarious jobs, notably slaughterhouses, which urgently need to be investigated. “The crisis is within each one’s head” was an emblematic phrase also heard in the field by migrants who manage to support themselves through their businesses, whether it is the physical experience of selling food at a given location, working as an influencer, or acting as an intermediary in sending remittances through social networks.
Although migrants do not have the right to vote in Brazil, they are part of Brazilian society and are the focus of extreme right-wing groups. They feed on language that is based on lies and instills fear as means of maintaining support among already vulnerable groups. The researchers left the field with an impression, which will be explored more in the following stages of the study, that the paradox of the political positions of the Venezuelan migrants is much closer to portraying a structural problem, which is not just about clarifying lies, but calls for lasting solutions that in fact assure civil and human rights. Entrepreneurship, if it is the solution pursued, needs to be reformatted by the State, through public policies and economic and social institutions that encourage cooperation rather than that being the exception.
