The unexpected emotional toll of a project on trade

For our first major project for the Infographics & Data Visualization class is on International Trade with the specific topic left up to us. I immediately knew I wanted to do the project on trade with Venezuela and it's decline over the past decades. I thought I had a pretty good idea about what I was going to find once I began my research, but... I really did not. After the Constituent Assembly fiasco in 2017, I stopped following the day to day political events in Venezuela. It was too upsetting.

So I'm not sure why it was surprising to me that this research process ended up having an emotional impact. I was definitely not expecting to tear up while working in my office on a Sunday!

The last year in Venezuela has been the worst yet. It was already horrible but now... it's just difficult to describe. If you want to get a full sense of the humanitarian crisis, here's the link to the UNICEF Report.

Since I can't fit all of this information in an infographic, I wanted to share some of it here. For example, here's a graphic from the Wall Street Journal describing the issues with rapidly rising consumer prices with the last reported number from 2015:

I was able to find this data (Consumer Price Index) for food and non-alcoholic beverages. In December 2015, the rate was 315%, the most recent number for September 2019 is at 37,852.76%!!!

The overall inflation rate is insane. In 2015, the inflation rate was 111.8%.

In 2019, it's 10,000,000%!

Yes, that is ten MILLION percent.

In May 2018, the CDC released a Level 3 travel warning for Venezuela,

which means "Avoid all nonessential travel" due to the health infrastructure breakdown in Venezuela:

“Outbreaks of infectious diseases...adequate health care not available. During the past year, over 1,000 confirmed cases of measles, including more than 50 deaths, have been reported in 9 states. In the past 2 years, over 1,600 suspected cases of diphtheria, including over 140 deaths, have been reported in 22 states. In 2017, over 400,000 cases of malaria were reported."

I was born in Valencia, Venezuela and that's where I lived until I was 9 years old. We moved to the United States in 1999 when Chavez became president. Back then, we were the first in our family to leave the country. My mother's older sister and her family joined us a year later. Just in the past few years, I now have family in eight countries outside of Venezuela and the US: Colombia, Panama, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Canada.

However, I still have many family members living in Venezuela, including my father, paternal grandfather, and many aunts, uncles, and extended family members.

Therefore, it was heartbreaking to see that:

In March 2019, the US Embassy officially closed in Venezuela. In May 2019, the Department of Homeland Security suspended all commercial passenger and cargo flights between the US and Venezuela.

In April 2019, the US Department of State issues a Level 4 warning for Venezuela, which means "DO NOT TRAVEL," stating: “Do not travel to Venezuela due to crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, kidnapping, and arbitrary arrest and detention of U.S. citizens.”

To put things in perspective, here are the other countries with Level 4 warnings:

Afghanistan

North Korea

Iraq

Yemen

Syria

South Sudan

Somalia

Mali

Libya

Iran

Central African Republic