ShareOne of the five stars that used to adorn the facade of the Margarita hotel on the Venezuelan paradise island of the same name has fallen off. Not that there are any guests to notice. The hotel is abandoned, its peeling facade a symbol of the decline of an island once dubbed the “Pearl of the Caribbean” that has been robbed of its shine by a severe economic crisis. A short drive away by car, a herd of cows grazes in front of another vacant former five-star hostelry, Lagunamar. It looks as if an earthquake ripped through here, tearing the roof off a pool-side pavilion, tossing lamps and toilets around the garden and leaving mounds of rubble.
The damage is, in fact, the work of vandals, who steal scrap metal to sell at a profit or to build shacks. Margarita, a major source of pearls in the 15th and 16th centuries, used to be a playground for American tourists, drawn to its palm-fringed white-sand beaches and turquoise waters. But Venezuela’s economic collapse, high crime rates and growing international isolation in the wake of bitterly disputed elections have caught up with the island of 500,000 people.
The signs of decline are everywhere. Several clothes and souvenir shops along the main shopping drag, Santiago Marino, stand empty. And power outages are frequent. An explosion last month at a gas facility in the nearby state of Monagas led to blackouts of up to 20 hours at a time. “This is not the Margarita of the past,” Jose Padobani, a 26-year-old barman, told AFP.
‘All my friends have left’
An 80-percent drop in GDP over a decade of increasingly repressive rule by strongman President Nicolas Maduro between 2013 and 2023 pushed more than seven million Venezuelans - almost a quarter of the population - to seek a better life elsewhere. Many had hoped to return after July 2024 elections, in which polls showed an easy win for the opposition. But those hopes were shattered when Maduro claimed victory - despite results published by the opposition showing their man, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, winning by a landslide.
“All my friends have left, but I don’t want to leave,” says Juan Caiman, a 44-year-old furniture maker, whose Colombian father immigrated to Venezuela in the 1980s to escape the violence unleashed by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Caiman, who makes luxury furniture in an workshop near the abandoned Margarita hotel, is one of a group of business people determined to tough it out on the island.
Fadwa Hage, 55, owner of an adjacent sports shop on Santiago Marino, said those who had stayed behind did so to protect their businesses from looting. But she also sees tentative signs of a recovery. “This year, just on this one block, three new businesses have already opened,” she said. “We have beaches, mountains and lots of activities in which to invest. This island is unique!”
