Lives Lost: Young Venezuelan dreamed of better life in Peru

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Yurancy Castillo did not want to leave her family.

But as inflation in Venezuela soared, rendering her salary as a social worker nearly worthless, the young woman known for her beaming smile and wild amber-colored curls decided her future rested far away, in Peru.

One of her three brothers sold his motorcycle to help her buy the expensive bus ticket for the long journey across four vast nations.

“Don’t worry,” she told her tearful mother before leaving. “I’m going or a better future.”

Those dreams would be stifled time and again.

In Peru, she found jobs selling sewing machines and waitressing, but they paid little. Peruvians, skeptical of Venezuelan arrivals, often made her feel unwelcome. But the biggest thief of dreams proved a diminutive, silent foe.

In May, she came down with a fever and a week later went to the hospital. She was admitted and given oxygen but did not improve. After three weeks in an intensive care unit deep in southern Peru, she died at 30.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from the coronavirus around the world.

___

“Children are supposed to bury their parents,” Mery Arroyo, 54, her mother, says. “I never thought my girl would leave before me, in another country.”

Castillo grew up in the city of Barquisimeto, a sprawling metropolis located along the banks of the winding Turbio River. Her father, a transportation coordinator at a milk and yogurt factory, made a modest living but the five Castillo children lived comfortably. Those were the days when Venezuela was still one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations, and there was always plenty of food at the dinner table.

Castillo, the middle child and one of two daughters, stood out at...