Immigrants from the old continent: The cycle repeats itself 60 years later.

Hi Steemit, this time I decided to put aside my usual scientific articles, to tell you in some way, something that has caught my attention, while talking with my grandmother sitting on the porch of his house. At 80 years old, she still remembers how he came to Venezuela 60 years ago, from the Canary Islands, fleeing from the dictator Francisco Franco, today with nostalgia to learn that soon I would leave the country, he told me with tears in his eyes, that the cycle repeated itself 60 years later -What would your grandfather and I know, that all his grandchildren would flee Venezuela from a dictator like we did a few years ago- She told me.

Old stories?

The following seconds I began to reflect on what I had heard and remember in the things that have crossed my mind lately, the family I left, my girlfriend, the friends who leave, the daily problems that push us all to flee in herds as in the time of Franco. Years ago when you heard about leaving a country was something so distant, even though my grandparents were Canary emigrants and told me their journey to get to Venezuela and the reasons they came, it was like listening to old stories. In this Post, I want to share with you the story of my grandparents and relatives in Venezuela.

60 years ago

My grandmother told me that in her country, product of the dictatorship, the economic situation was unsustainable, that she had to stand in line with a pot to eat in the soup kitchens, they did not have clothes to protect themselves from the cold, nor medicine. She even told me that once he suffered a fracture in one leg and his cast was a simple roof tile of his house so he would not have been able to walk well for a long time. In the gatherings that we held many times told me how his uncle Pablo the first emigrant of the family had to do to flee from the Canary Islands, an impressive story I confess.

First relatives in America

At nightfall at the end of 1958 on a hot night my uncle Pablo and a group of friends would embark on a wooden board with the lights off so that the Civil Guard would not catch him. They left from the island of La Gomera towards the island of El Hierro looking for the lighthouse, because from that place it was easier to take their way to America, from those same waters Cristobl Colon once came to the new continent.

Inmigrants

My uncle Pablo and his group, after a long and rudimentary journey of many days in the Atlantic Ocean managed to reach Brazil by mistake. As they could they told the relatives that they had arrived with good. My grandmother tells me that on that day there was a party on the island. In Brazil, Tio Pablo started working on a rubber farm and then he would get sick with malaria, so he would decide after a certain time to move to Venezuela, the country that from the beginning It had been his goal. When he arrived at the port of La Guaira, he realized that this place reminded him of his island of Tenerife because of its sea.

Some time later Pablo was able to raise money to start bringing other brothers. That's how my great-grandparents Salvador and Esteban arrived, and the rest of the Canary emigrants, filling the Guaria and Venezuela with them, when the Canaries began to move around the interior of the country. Carminita, as they also tell my grandmother, through that migratory movement, I would know her great and only love, my grandfather Juan (He was called like me).

A love story

It was the year of 1959, the mother of my grandmother would begin to receive letters from Venezuela from her husband Salvador, as her mother could not read or write my grandmother Carmen was the one who was in charge of the whole operation. Meanwhile, in La Guaira a cousin (Juan: my grandfather) of my grandmother who was also emígrate and whom she had never met was in charge of the same function with his father, over time he asked for a picture of his cousin because he wanted to know her, he loved her writing and that's how that love story began. As time passed, the wedding bells would ring for Carmen and Juan on the beautiful island of La Gomera, as my grandfather could not go to the wedding. His representative in the marriage was his cousin Marino. That day she posed at the door of the church alone but beautiful, eager to meet her husband in person. A few days later, Carmen embarked on the ship Santa María to Venezuela, where she arrived at the Puerto de la Guaira by night, and was amazed with such beauty on a hill full of lights, something she had not seen on the islands, Descending could see her husband at the foot of the boat waiting for his beloved, she tells me that her eyes lit up because it was more beautiful than the picture that had once sent him. My grandmother's father was also there with other migrants from the Canary Islands to welcome him to the land of grace, called by the Canaries the eighth island. For them Venezuela was like their land, since it had given them every opportunity to progress.

My grandparents on the left and their parents on the right (La Guaira, Venezuela)

Immigrants of the last century and this.

My grandmother never thought of returning to her country because here she has spent almost all her life, this land gave her many opportunities to the point of having a life of comforts. Today Carmitina seems a shadow of that beautiful woman she was, but she always says -I stay in Venezuela-, although she longs to visit La Gomera for a last goodbye. They have offered help to take her away for good, but she resists because she does not want to leave her children and grandchildren. She fell in love with a beautiful country called Venezuela that gave so many people opportunities to grow and develop. I miss that country that my grandmother tells me, nostalgia invades me because I would have wanted to spend all my life in it. So far a family story of our history as immigrants, of the last century and this.