The murder of Yaidy Garnica raises concerns about violence against Venezuelans in Chile.

In the Acuario Passage of Cerro Navia, there are no longer any Venezuelans living. The only migrant family of that nationality that had been in this alley located in this neighborhood of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, has left the city. They are the daughters, with their respective partners, and the granddaughters of Yaidy Garnica Carvajalino, a 43-year-old woman who was shot in the chest on June 15 by Miguel Sergio Cordero Toledo, one of her neighbors, while celebrating Father’s Day.

With the burial of Yaidy, Cordero’s handover to the authorities, and the departure of her daughters from the house—reported to EL PAÍS by their lawyers—an era of tensions between new and old neighbors, foreigners and locals, has ended. This has laid bare the growing concerns over xenophobia and racism against Venezuelans, who have formed one of the largest migrant groups in this country and others in the region in recent years.

In the days following the murder, Yaidy’s eldest daughters, Alexandra León Garnica and Ehilin Ortiz Garnica, participated in gatherings rejecting what happened in Plaza de Armas, holding candles, banners, and manifestos against violence towards migrants. Along with their mourning and the additional trauma of witnessing their mother’s murder, they have initiated legal defense efforts and dealt with the narratives that have stigmatized her.

Security camera footage from that night shows how several people struck the door of Yaidy’s house, leading to a pushing and shoving altercation among them. Subsequently, a man entered with a shotgun, stepped into the group gathered in the fight, and ultimately aimed and fired the weapon at the woman.

The story has been portrayed as a dispute over the loud volume of music they were listening to and has entered social media discussions as a sort of justification appealing to one of the anti-Venezuelan narratives that fuel hate speech. Last August, a video of a group of Venezuelans dancing and listening to music amid snowfall in Cajón de Maipo went viral. It was a recording for a music video, but the scene spread on social media with outrage as if it represented a cultural clash between Venezuelans and Chileans. In February, tensions escalated during the Viña del Mar festival due to the performance of Venezuelan comedian George Harris. In Yaidy’s case, her nationality was also mentioned as an insult. “Go listen to music in your country, you fucking Venezuelans!” was one of the shouts directed at them the night she was murdered, according to witnesses reported by local media. It has also been pointed out that the woman had a criminal record, something her lawyers later denied.

Yaidy Garnica emigrated in 2017 from the Llanero State of Portuguesa to Chile. A year later, she brought her daughters with her. During that time, she regularized her status and had obtained permanent residency in Chile. In 2022, after the pandemic, she moved to Cerro Navia. She worked in the shipping area of a sports shoe manufacturing company, reported the portal Crónicas de Chile.

Defense lawyer Braulio Jatar, a Chilean-Venezuelan and partner in the law firm handling the case, emphasizes that the crime has a background of conflicts in the neighborhood involving threats and accusations for being Venezuelan. “They are the only Venezuelans living in that passage. That had generated a situation of misunderstandings in various forms, that disconnect of not recognizing the other,” he commented via phone to EL PAÍS. “There was a situation that escalated to high tension, and the gravity is downplayed when it’s said to be a problem about loudspeakers.” However, previous episodes of violence did not lead to reports to the authorities, the lawyer claims. Yaidy’s daughters’ lawyers have collected the video footage from the security cameras that night and aim for the harshest sentence for the murderer.

Hate Speech

For activists, Yaidy’s murder is a hate crime. “It occurs in a context where hate speech against migration, particularly Venezuelan migration, has intensified. A narrative has been promoted that stigmatizes Venezuelan migration, associating it with organized crime, delinquency, unemployment, and all the problems the country faces. This has deeply permeated society,” says social psychologist Vanessa González, a Venezuelan in Chile and director of Migrantas, an organization created in 2022 for the defense of migrant women. “If these messages are disseminated among mass media and authorities, they become ingrained in society. These hate speeches and racism contribute to such unfortunate events.”

González, who has made migration her study focus, asserts that what happened is “a maximum alarm indicator,” especially for women. “In Chile, there is political violence against the migrant community,” González states. “It falls more heavily on the bodies of women, diverse groups, and Afro-descendants, due to its intertwining with gender and racial violence. These hate speeches are reproduced in practice with institutional violence, as rights are continuously denied for not having up-to-date documentation.”

Chilean institutions, she claims, have not created effective policies for integrating Venezuelan migrants, despite civil society strongly denouncing the situation. Last November, Migrantas, along with other organizations, went to Congress to express their objections to the urgent migration law reform requested by the Executive. For the activist, the situation represents a regression in rights.

“The largest proportion of migrant individuals in Chile are Venezuelans (42% of the total foreign population, according to the National Institute of Statistics), and the policies are based on selectivity and consular visas that prevent people already living in the country from regularizing their status. This continues to promote irregularity,” González points out. “There are over 500,000 people who could apply for regularization, half of whom are women and girls, but there is a tremendous lack of political will to grant them access to documentation that does not exclude them from other rights.”