INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Kory Hernandez takes care of students while she substitutes for a missing teacher in a suburb of Caracas.Caracas, Venezuela:
An unruly 9-year-old bolted from his classroom, prompting a volunteer teacher to chase him down the hall
He would normally be hauled straight to Romina Sciaca's office
But the guidance counselor was gone - part of a wave of staffers to flee Aquiles Nazoa Elementary School.This collapsing socialist state is
suffering one of the most dramatic outflows of human talent in modern history, with Aquiles Nazoa offering a glimpse into what happens when
a nation begins to empty out
Vast gaps in Venezuela's labor market are causing a breakdown in daily life, and robbing this nation of its future
The exodus is broad and deep - an outflow of doctors, engineers, oil workers, bus drivers and electricians.And teachers.So far this year,
48,000 teachers - or 12 percent of all staff at elementary and high schools nationwide - have quit, according to Se Educa, an educational
The vast majority, according to the group, have joined a stampede of Venezuelans leaving the country to escape food lines and empty grocery
store shelves. Children play during a break at Aquiles Nazoa Elementary School.At Aquiles Nazoa - a school named after an ill-fated poet -
Sciaca was the first to go, heading for Chile a year ago
Reinaldo Cordero quit a few months later, leaving behind his second-grade class and a salary that hyperinflation had shrunk to a
black-market worth of around $29 a month.Esperanza Longhi - who also taught second grade - quit in February
She's at home, packing for Peru
To get there, she'll go through Ecuador - the same country where Maryoli Rueda, who used to teach third grade, recently moved.Principal
Deliana Flores has tried and failed to find qualified replacements
As droves of teachers leave, some grades in Venezuelan schools have gone months without classes
At Aquiles Nazoa, the third grade stayed home for two weeks
Desperate, Flores is plugging holes with unpaid volunteers - basically school moms such as Kory Hernandez, 24.But it isn't really
working.Hernandez dragged the 9-year old back into the classroom by his shirt sleeve, then sunk into her seat and sighed."Quiet," she said
helplessly, as her class erupted in open rebellion."Please," she said
"How are you ever going to learn"---Think of Venezuela like one big factory where the societal assembly line no longer works - partly
because there are fewer and fewer people to run it. A view of Kory Hernandez's classroom wall that reads "Touring Venezuela."During the
first five months of the year, roughly 400,000 Venezuelans have fled the country, following 1.8 million who left over the last two years,
according to the Central University of Venezuela
Yet even those numbers may not fully capture the scope of the exodus
Aid workers dealing with the crisis in bordering nations say an average of 4,600 Venezuelans a day have been leaving since Jan
1 - putting the outflow during this year alone at nearly 700,000.The Venezuelans are running from a nation broken by failed socialist
policies, mismanagement, corruption and lower global oil prices - the country's principal source of cash."It's not just about a few doctors
leaving anymore," said Tomas Paez, a migration expert at the Central University of Venezuela
"It's about (understaffed) hospitals closing down whole floors."Tens of thousands of Venezuelans - especially from the upper classes - began
leaving the country following the rise of left-wing firebrand Hugo Chavez, who became president in 1999
But in the past year, Venezuela's economy has fallen off a cliff, prompting a more drastic exodus
Experts say the outflow is set to surge in the aftermath of the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro on May 20
Denounced internationally as illegitimate, the election removed any real chance for change
Amid food shortages, hunger is pervasive and growing in a country that was once Latin America's richest per capita
Without medicines, treatable diseases such as HIV and malaria have become rampant
With hyperinflation soaring toward 14,000 percent, it now takes five days work at the minimum wage to buy a dozen eggs.The value of local
salaries is falling by the day
In the middle of 2017, an average teacher's salary was worth nearly $45.Today, it's worth about $8."If we continue like this, Venezuela
won't even be a Third World country anymore," said Flores, the school principal. People use light from cellphones or candles during partial
blackout in Caracas's La Carlota neighborhood.Massive gaps in the labor force are undercutting critical services here
Inside the darkened halls of a Caracas subway station on a recent afternoon, for instance, passengers climbed broken escalators and filed
past closed ticket booths
The conditions reflect the shrunken workforce; last year, 2,226 subway employees - more than 20 percent of the staff - abandoned their
posts, according to Familia Metro, a Caracas-based transit watchdog group."There's a huge lack of people in operations and maintenance now,"
said Ricardo Sansone, head of Familia Metro
"They have no people to sell tickets at many stations, so passengers are often not even paying to use the subway."At the Jose Manuel de los
Rios Children's Hospital in Caracas, 68 doctors - or 20 percent of the medical staff - quit and left the country over the past two years
The hospital's cardiology department is now only open for a morning shift, since three of its six specialists are gone
There are 300 vacant nursing positions
Personnel shortages are so bad that the facility can only staff two of its seven operating rooms."It now takes eight months to a year for a
surgery appointment," said Huniades Urbina, a senior staff pediatrician. Kory Hernandez stands in the door of a classroom at Aquiles Nazoa
Elementary School.This year, thousands of blackouts have hit Venezuela, darkening cities for weeks at a time
A lack of imported spare parts to fix the poorly maintained power grid is one problem
But so is "the flight of our trained workers," said Aldo Torres, executive director of the Electricity Federation of Venezuela, an
association of labor unions."Every day, we're receiving dozens of calls from colleagues saying they're going to Colombia, Peru and Ecuador,"
"They're being replaced by people who are mostly not qualified."---Seven miles down the road from Aquiles Nazoa Elementary School, the
campus of Simon Bolivar University is oddly quiet
Once considered the MIT of Venezuela, a university that churned out some of the best Latin American engineers and physicists is now in
danger of becoming a ghost town.In 2017, 129 professors - nearly 16 percent of the staff - quit, the vast majority to leave the country
It's no surprise, officials here say
Using the black market rate for dollars, a professor's salary here now tops out at about $8 a month, because of hyperinflation.Thirty
professors retired last year but have not been replaced, in part because of a lack of qualified candidates
The university is so short-staffed that three departments - languages, philosophy and electronic engineering - are about to close.Yet as
Venezuela's young people depart in droves, Simon Bolivar also does not have the demand it once did
Three years ago, electronic engineering had nearly 700 students
Now, it's down to 196.Jesus Perez, 20, is one of the students who are just giving up
He was studying to be a computer engineer
But over the past six months, he's lost 10 pounds from a lack of food
"I can't wait anymore," he said
So far, 15 of my friends from school have left the country since February."He'll go to Peru, a country that two decades ago was far poorer
than Venezuela.What will he do"I don't care," he said
"Be a waiter, clean floors
I can't ask for much."A 40-minute bus ride away from Aquiles Nazoa Elementary School, Deiriana Hernandez sat on the floor of her one-room
home, puzzling out her homework.A student at the school, she is on her third teacher in one year
Another quit to leave the country
Kory" - is a volunteer who only recently finished her high school equivalency degree.Deiriana recently spent two weeks at home because her
school could find no one to teach third grade
With a volunteer teacher, she can at least go to class
But she and other students are slipping behind.Their grades are falling, and behavioral problems are worsening
But she can barely read.She was looking at a list of 16 words now, and instructions to separate them into four groups - animals, colors,
cities, plants.She scratched her head and called for her mother."You don't understand" said her mom, Yanelis Blanco, 26.Blanco was
nervous."She's behind for a third grader," the mother said
"She doesn't read correctly, has lots of grammatical errors when she writes
It's a terrible thing that her teachers constantly leave."Deiriana's classmates are also leaving
Last year, her class had 24 students
Now they're down to 19.Two days after Deiriana labored over her homework, her mother received news from the school.Mrs
Kory had quit.For Deiriana, it's back to staying at home, where her family is discussing another big change
Unable to put enough food on the table, her father is thinking of going to Peru to look for work."At least maybe that way we can pay for
private schools where teachers, I imagine, are being paid better and given incentives to stay" Blanco said
"I don't know."(This story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
