CARACAS, Venezuela — During the past four years, Venezuela has become practically synonymous with crisis. Images from the nation depict drawn faces, lines for subsidized food, hospitals without supplies and riots.
Thousands of young Venezuelans have left for cities with stronger economies and more opportunity: Lima, New York, Bogotá, Barcelona. Many of those who stay are anchored by financial limitations and family obligations. Still others have chosen to hone their crafts in Caracas.
Juan Carlos Ramos started his clothing brand, Era, in 2016. After that first year, protests broke out across Caracas and Era faded. In early 2018, he revived his brand of printed T-shirts and hand-painted jackets, emblazoned with names and quotations written in English that often speak to the urban tropical culture of Caracas: a denim jacket that says «Revenge is Wild Justice» and a patch that reads «Venezuela, fierce town.»
Mr. Ramos can make more selling to consumers on Instagram than he could making an hourly wage in most other industries. «The dream,» he said, «would be to go somewhere and get to a point where I’m making enough money that I could come back here and live well, but everything, everything is very complicated right now.»
Ana Cartaya, 21, his girlfriend, is a consummate multihyphenate — a fashion student, dancer, model and tattoo artist — still undecided about which to fully pursue. Her dance troupe stopped rehearsing, but she keeps busy with modeling, tattooing and school. She feels stunted by the lack of opportunities.
«I feel like I’m always reaching for something that I can’t have,» she said. «I feel like I’m in a prison. For a long time I’ve felt like I never could achieve any of what I could have achieved if I’d left a while ago.»
In another part of Caracas, people danced beneath multicolored lights hanging from trees at a house. «I feel like there is more need than ever for parties,» said Maria Betania Chacin, who performs as D.J. Mabe. «The people have to discharge all the tension.»
At a gym, Carolina Jimenez, a mixed martial arts champion, and Luis Itanare, her boyfriend, wrestled during training for Brazilian jujitsu. Last year, she won a major victory at Lady’s Fight Night in Poland, a competition on the women’s mixed martial arts circuit, after running a crowdfunding campaign to cover the expenses of getting there.
She was signed by an agent, but the next steps for her career are uncertain. She trains twice a day andtries to stick to a high-protein diet in a country where people are increasingly living on yucca and pasta as the price of meat soars.
«A lot of people have to be more focused on looking for how to live than how to create,» said Yarua Camagni, a dancer with the Fundación Compañía Nacional de la Danza, who supplements her income by teaching classes in dance, Pilates and yoga.
«Those who stay, continue and struggle out of love for their profession. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s possible to keep on dancing in Venezuela.»
Food and medicine are in short supply, but not creativity.