M y name is Yilmary Perdomo. I’m one of thousands of Venezuelans who have left our country because of the political and economic crisis. Most of us have come to Brazil or Colombia. Our lives now, although better than they were in Venezuela, are far from perfect.

When people ask me why I left in 2016 before the crisis, I tell them that back then the country was already in political trouble, the outside world just didn’t know it. We did not leave because we wanted to. Inflation was very high so people tried to buy food and things like medicine, as soon as they were paid. But this meant there were always long lines at the store and sometimes you could wait four to five hours to then go into a store, only to find very little left. People are going hungry. Very educated people, like lawyers and engineers, are leaving the country because there are few opportunities. But their qualifications don’t count in other countries so they end up working other jobs like taxi drivers or fast food servers.

I left my home in Aragua, in the north of Venezuela, with my husband, stepson and two small children.

Though the arrival of food lines was very worrying, as was the increasing interference of the government in many workplaces, it was the lack of security that made us decide to leave.

Although I admit my family had discussed moving away, when we finally decided, it was very fast. My mother-in-law started to get calls threatening to kidnap my daughter if we didn’t pay a ransom. My daughter stayed at home for six months and didn’t go to school because I was too scared to send her.