The hands of Yosbelin Pérez have made tens of thousands of the aluminum round gridles that Venezuelan families heat every day to cook arepas. She takes deep pride in making the revered “budare,” the common denominator among rural tin-roofed homes and city apartments, but she owns nothing to her name despite the years selling cookware.
Pérez, in fact, owes about $5,000 because she and her family never made it to the United States, where they had hoped to escape Venezuela’s entrenched political, social and economic crisis. Now, like thousands of Venezuelans who have voluntarily or otherwise returned to their country this year, they are starting over as the crisis worsens.
