Former choir director Ana Marvez could not stand to see the musical skills of her fellow Venezuelans go to waste in Chile, their host country. To showcase those hidden talents, she started an orchestra.
One of the most heart-wrenching aspects of being forced to leave one’s home is having to give up your profession, says Ana Marvez, a 34-year-old music teacher and choir director who left Venezuela to seek safety in Chile around five years ago.
Ana considers herself lucky. Not only did she find work within weeks of her arrival in the Chilean capital, Santiago, but she also managed to secure a position that was at least tangentially related to her former career – a minimum wage job as a secretary in an arts school.
The same cannot be said of the majority of professional musicians who are among the more than 457,000 Venezuelan refugees and migrants now living in Chile. Most are forced to take any job they can find to get by.
Now, 350 musicians – most of them Venezuelan refugees and migrants, while others hail from Colombia, Peru and Mexico, as well as Chile – take part in the project, which includes a symphony orchestra, a choral ensemble, and several music classes for children.
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