Clavel Rangel

Venezuelan journalist, editor and fixer. Co-founder of @Red_Amazonia.  Alfred Friendly Press Fellow 24', IRE and IWMF Fellow 24'. 

The Guardian •

‘We have to clear our names’: Venezuelan makeup artist who survived Ice detention tries to rebuild his life

Andry José Hernández Romero has already picked out the color of the suit he’ll wear to the next celebration of the Three Kings festival in his home town in the Venezuelan Andes. The carnivalesque celebration of Epiphany inspired the tattoos that landed him behind bars in El Salvador, accused of belonging to Venezuela’s most feared criminal gang, Tren de Aragua.The suit will be green, “like hope”, he said.Now free, and speaking over Zoom from his home, Hernández, 31, lifted his shirt to show two...
Chicago Caregiving •

Ongoing Fear

Mariela Sucre, a Venezuelan asylum seeker, has spent the past few weeks feeling utterly overwhelmed. There’s too much on her plate: working, caring for her 86-year-old mother (who has dementia), and waiting on an asylum case that hasn’t moved in the seven years since she arrived in the United States. Now, she faces a new worry: the Trump administration’s rollback of immigration protections.
“It feels incredibly unstable,” says 64-year-old Sucre. “I used to think, if they finally called me for an...
The Guardian •

‘They disappear them’: families of the detained see grim echo of Latin American dictatorships in Trump’s US

Neiyerver Rengel’s captors came one sunny spring morning, lurking outside the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and pouncing as soon as he emerged.The three government agents announced the young Venezuelan man had “charges to answer” and was being detained.“Everything’s going to be OK,” the man’s girlfriend, Richely Alejandra Uzcátegui Gutiérrez, remembers the handcuffed 27-year-old reassuring her as she gave him one last hug.Then Rengel was put in a vehicle and vanished into thin air: spi...
The Guardian •

‘He is not a gang member’: outrage as US deports makeup artist to El Salvador prison for crown tattoos

For as long as anyone can remember Andry José Hernández Romero was enthralled by the annual Three Kings Day celebrations for which his Venezuelan home town is famed, joining thousands of fellow Christians on the streets of Capacho to remember how the trio of wise men visited baby Jesus bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh.At age seven, Andry became a Mini King, as members of the town’s youth drama group Los Mini Reyes were known. Later in life, he tattooed two crowns on his wrists to memorialise...
The Guardian •

‘Deported because of his tattoos’: has the US targeted Venezuelans for their body art?

Like many Venezuelans of his generation, Franco José Caraballo Tiapa is a man of many tattoos.There is one of a rose, one of a lion, and another – on the left side of the 26-year-old’s neck – of a razor blade that represents his work as a barber.Two other tattoos pay tribute to Caraballo’s eldest daughter, Shalome: a pocket watch featuring the time of her birth and some black lettering on his chest that spells out the four-year-old’s name.“He’s just a normal kid … he likes tattoos – that’s it,”...
The Guardian •

‘He is innocent’: family of deported Venezuelan rebukes Trump claims

Donald Trump’s White House has described the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists who “rape, maim and murder for sport”.But relatives of Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old from the city of Maracay, say he was a hairdresser, not a crook.“He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother, Sebastián García Casique, said from their family home in Ven...
After the Darién •

After the Darién

This is the story of thousands of families, violently uprooted from their homeland, now struggling to build new lives and opportunities for their children. Schools, community members, and human rights organizations have played a crucial role in addressing their mental health needs and integration. Yet, as these families face ongoing hardships, the strength of those support systems is tested every day.The team of reporters working on After the Darién has spoken over the past year to more than thr...
Tiempo Latino •

Cómo comunidades de Miami encontraron soluciones climáticas con un modelo de participación comunitaria

¿Cómo lograr soluciones climáticas con la participación de comunidades hiperlocales diversas? Esa es la pregunta de la que partieron los investigadores del proyecto “Hyperlocalism: Transforming the Paradigm for Climate Adaptation study” (Hiperlocalismo: transformando el paradigma de la adaptación climática), un método de investigación diseñado e implementado entre 2019 y 2021 por investigadores de la Universidad de Miami para la planificación de la adaptación urbana. 
La premisa fue conseguir re...
Red internacional de periodistas •

Del secuestro armado al destierro, el capítulo del exilio de José Luis Calderón

La escena comienza así: un grupo de hombres con armas de guerra entran al set de TC Televisión, en Guayaquil, Ecuador, mientras los reporteros transmiten en vivo el noticiario del 9 de enero de 2024. Someten a técnicos y periodistas, y en cámara se ve al reportero y presentador José Luis Calderón tratando de mediar. 

Los pandilleros tienen el rostro cubierto, apuntan con la carabina de una escopeta y ponen una dinamita en el saco de José Luis. Y repiten: “Para que se sepa que no se debe jugar c...
Tiempo Latino •

Una red de jardines nativos florece en Miami y rescata especies en peligro

Miami.— El día que Cristina Whelan vio a la mariposa de alas oscuras Florida duskywing (Ephyriades brunnea floridensis) volar en su jardín de plantas nativas, en 2019,  se sorprendió. Le tomó una fotografía y la envió a la red de Native Plant Network del Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden de Miami, uno de los jardines botánicos más importantes del mundo, fundado en 1938.
Todos en la red se emocionaron. La Ephyriades brunnea floridensis vive únicamente en el sur de Florida y Cuba. Se trata de una...