Sairelis Rios (r.) is a 20-year-old Venezuelan who wants to be a translator and now, in a hammock hung from a tree that has become her home in the Brazilian city of Boa Vista, she still entertains dreams that, she said, will not be destroyed by "the failure of a revolution." Accompanying her is another Venezuelan fleeing the crisis in his country, Jose Antonio Garrido (l.), who earn his living as a juggler. EFE/Marcelo Sayao

She's a 20-year-old Venezuelan, wants to be a translator and now, in a hammock hung from a tree that has become her home in the Brazilian city of Boa Vista, she still entertains dreams that, she said, will not be destroyed by "the failure of a revolution."

"I'm not here because of politics. What brought me here was the failure of those politicians," Sairelis Rios told EFE. Together with her mother Keila and a dozen other Venezuelans, she lives in the street near the bus station in Boa Vista, a city that in recent months has received some 2,500 migrants from the neighboring country.

All earn their living from casual labor, having come to this impoverished city in northern Brazil from different parts of Venezuela and, they all agree, with the same intention: "To flee from hunger."

Sairelis and her mother come from Ciudad Guayana. Others are from Caracas, Barquisimeto and Merida, and despite living in the streets of Boa Vista, all say they are "better off" than in Venezuela, where "there's no food, no medicines, and no hope," according to a former non-commissioned officer of the army, Victor Soto.

In Ciudad Guayana, which some years ago was one of Venezuela's industrial powerhouses, Sairelis's mother sold bottled water and soda at the entrance to the Sidor iron and steel plant, which despite being one of the country's large basic industries, today is crumbling beyond recognition.

With that work, Keila told EFE that she paid for both Sairelis's high school and for her five years of English lessons.

However, the more employees Sidor lost, the fewer bottles of water and soda she sold and the less money she made, so that six months ago she decided to emigrate.

She had been told that many Venezuelans "were doing well" in Boa Vista, where like her daughter she gets random jobs cleaning houses - and says she earns more from that than she did from selling bottled water at Sidor.

A similar story was told by a Caracas native, 56, who preferred to remain anonymous. Working in Boa Vista as a car mechanic he manages to support his family that still lives in the Venezuelan capital.

"I was a taxi driver, but it got to the point where I couldn't work anymore. There were no more replacement parts, no batteries or tires, and there's my car, parked and falling to pieces," he told EFE.

Among the Venezuelans who said they fled because of the scarcity of basic products in their country and who have made the bus station their home is the juggler from Caracas, Jose Antonio Garrido, who lives on the money he is given for performing at traffic stops in Boa Vista.

Garrido sometimes shares Sairelis's tree home, but his ambition is to study at a circus school.