One of my childhood memories is being in a playground and playing Miss Venezuela. It was not a small thing. We grew up with this pride in our origins, a country where the large range of mixed races resulted in our ‘mestizaje’ and the Miss Venezuela, a night when families would get together to support the representative of their local region, was at the centre of this narrative.

Only after several years did I realise not only the self-inflicted damage on our national psyche, but that other countries would also have this image of ourselves as the country of the beauty pageants. What we did not know was that in times of crisis, this was to become a double-edged sword.

Due to a political, economic and humanitarian crisis, Venezuelans are fleeing and leaving everything behind to reach safety. According to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela tops 4 million, this has become the largest migratory flow in the history of the American region and after Syria it is currently the second largest in the world.

Recently, it was announced that while for the first-time applications of asylum seekers in the European Union from Syria — the largest nationality represented — were down 8% from 2018 to 20,392, Venezuelans came in second, with 14,257 citizens.

While a government accused of committing gross violations by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is in denial, Venezuelans are living a daily nightmare without seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Last month, the Organization of the American States (OAS) released a report according to which Venezuelan migrants and refugees could reach between 5.3 and 5.7 million by the end of 2019, and between 7.5 and 8.2 million by the end of 2020.

This would mean that with a former population of 30 million the expectation is that around 30% of them will be gone by next year. While Venezuelans are desperately trying to leave the country and hoping to send money for food and medicines back to their beloved ones, the whole situation has become a breeding ground for trafficking, sexual slavery, child exploitation, forced prostitution and survival sex of Venezuelan women and girls.

The sexualisation of this tragedy is widespread. Starting with the Dominican Republic, where Venezuelan women have arrived to work as sex workers. I was told by a friend working in this sector that because many Dominican men prefer to hire the services of the Venezuelan women due to the novelty and their appearance, it has altered local dynamics and generated rivalry with local sex workers.

In Mexico, the aspiring model Kenny Finol who ended up working as an escort, was brutally tortured and murdered by a drug dealer and hitman. Last year, the Colombian police detained in Cartagena a Navy Captain accused of pimping, prostitution and trafficking more than 250 girls and adolescents, mainly from Venezuela. While the ring was comprised of foreigners and Colombians, including members of the state security apparatus, the Captain dared to order the minors to have a tattoo bearing his name, a trait indicative of ownership and thus sexual slavery.

Something similar is happening in Trinidad and Tobago, where the police have detained corrupt police officers involved in gangs, money laundering and human trafficking with Venezuelan girls being their preferred targets.

Moreover, because the Venezuelan government decided to close the borders, there are accounts of women being sexually and physically abused when they attempt to cross irregular paths and of sex workers being returned by Colombian immigration officers aware they could be raped upon their return. But the tentacles of trafficking are also extending outside the Americas region.