Venezuelan migrants in Mexico worry for their loved ones as political unrest roils their homeland

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Yenny Morales, 33, left her native Venezuela because she felt she had no other option. Her 9-year-old son has a mental health disability, and in a country where 80% of people live in poverty, she couldn't afford a specialist.

“I had to flee, because my son couldn't see a neurologist. The health of my kids comes first,” said Morales, who has been waiting in Mexico for an appointment to request asylum in the United States.

Since Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, in which both incumbent President Nicolás Maduro and the country’s main opposition coalition claimed victory, her worries have shifted to her family back home. “This is fraud,” she said, referring to the widely criticized results. “And now that’s what our families are fighting against.”

She said she had not heard from her family since Tuesday morning.

Morales, who lives in a makeshift camp in the heart of Mexico City, is among the millions of Venezuelan migrants growing increasingly anxious for their friends and family back home. After having trekked through Central America in search of a better life, they are closely following the protests triggered by the announcement that Maduro had secured a third six-year term.

Sunday's election was one of the most peaceful in the country's recent memory, reflecting a widespread hope that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule.

“I'm very disappointed with what I'm seeing,” said Gerardo Uzcategui, 56, who spent four years in Cali, Colombia before beginning his journey to the U.S.

The former police officer who oversaw the security of a government minister said all of his family has now fled. He has a daughter in Argentina and a son in Mexico.

“We were happy around 3 p.m. on Sunday, thinking there was going to be change,” he said. “But 11 p.m. came around and everything changed. It's really, really hard on us.”

Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% have led to social unrest and mass emigration in Venezuela – pushing more than 7.7 million people to migrate in the last decade.

Morales' phone is flooded with information about what is happening in her home country. She shared an audio of a friend warning protesters to cover their faces, videos of children banging pots and pans — and a photo of a close friend who she said was killed after the first day of protests.

The Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal reported Tuesday that 11 people, including two minors, had been killed in unrest related to the election.

Herberto Lugo, 48, said he’s relieved his family back in Venezuela is OK, since they live in the coastal city of Maracaibo, where violent protests haven't reached them. But that doesn’t change his views on Maduro’s iron grip on Venezuela.

“We’re uncomfortable, and we won’t conform to what is happening in our country,” said Lugo, who thinks opposition leader and former diplomat Edmundo González was the clear winner of the election. If given the chance to go back, he said, he would join in the protests.

“People in Venezuela are fighting, and we hope he leaves this week,” he said, referring to Maduro. “If he doesn't leave this week, he'll never leave.”

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