Why a fair election in Venezuela could change the fate of millions of migrants – and Joe Biden

This month, for the first time in a decade, Venezuela will hold an election in which Maduro’s government is being challenged by an opposition with a credible chance of winning.

A small corner of Venezuela is spreading slowly along 77th Street in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Municipal maps formally refer to that neighborhood as Unir II (“unite”), but to many of its inhabitants it is known as Barrio Hugo Chavez, after the late Venezuelan president. Many of the more than seven million Venezuelans who fled their country over the past decade or more now call Bogota home. The city is brimming with informal communities where migrants come together to help each other integrate and combat the ever-present melancholy and homesickness. Maria Alvarez is one such migrant. A 27-year-old single mother from Valencia, Alvarez left Venezuela in 2017 when her son Gabriel was only one. They haven’t returned since. Gabriel knows his grandparents only from the photos on his mother’s phone and the occasional video call. “Everyone left… I’ve got family in Brazil, the US, here in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Chile too. We are all abroad: uncles, aunts, cousins… only my mom and my dad, and one of my brothers remain in Venezuela,” Alvarez told CNN. Most of those seven million migrants left Venezuela after 2014, according to the United Nations, amid an economic and political crisis brought about by a crash in the price of oil – a key export for Venezuela – combined with chronic corruption and mismanagement at the hands of government officials.