CÚCUTA, Colombia — For the past three weeks, Wilya Hernández, her husband and their daughter, 2, have been sleeping on the garbage-strewn streets of Cúcuta, a sprawling and chaotic city on Colombia’s side of the border with Venezuela.
Though Antonela, the toddler, often misses meals, Ms. Hernández has no desire to return home to Venezuela.
“I need an angel,” Ms. Hernández said, holding back tears at 1 a.m. on a humid recent night. “We can’t go back, and we can’t stay here.”
It is a view shared by thousands of her compatriots who have fled to Cúcuta, where the struggles of adapting to life in a new country can seem more attractive than the hunger and upheaval they endured back home.
Venezuela is steeped in economic and political turmoil. Inflation last year surpassed 2,600 percent, according to opposition lawmakers, which has exacerbated severe shortages of food and medicine.
Venezuela is now governed by a Constituent Assembly, composed of close allies of President Nicolás Maduro. The opposition-controlled Congress has been sidelined, the highest court is stacked with Maduro loyalists, and the national guard has been ordered to take a hard line on any protests.
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