Our Story: Between Polenta and Arepas
It was the year 1947 when the Žibert family arrived on the Venezuelan coast…
My "Abu" (abuela - grandma), who was a 10-year-old girl at the time, didn’t know the language and suddenly found herself in a distant, hot, and noisy land. They were a large family that had been through a lot and had little, but if there’s one thing Venezuelans and Slovenians share, it’s resilience. A war beyond their control drove them from their country and led them to adapt to tropical life.
When they arrived, Venezuela was at its economic peak, the world’s largest oil exporter. The capital, Caracas, was expanding rapidly with very advanced reforms for its time. But being such a rich country, dictatorships and power struggles were not far behind. The Venezuelan economy began to decline severely in the late 1990s… in the year of my birth, 1999, the dictatorship that we still have today began.
My grandmother is a strong, beautiful, and intelligent woman. In her best years, she was tall, with abundant light brown hair and eyes that were sometimes gray and sometimes blue. She had a slender upper body and wide hips—a true spectacle for Venezuelans. She was hardworking and meticulous with her investments, all shaped by the teachings and scars of war: “Save money,” “Spend little, no luxuries.” A simple woman.
What my grandmother wanted most was to have children.
This was not possible in her first marriage to a fellow Slovenian immigrant, but in her second marriage to a Venezuelan man from the countryside, my father and uncle were born.
After living her entire life in Venezuela, Spanish became her first language. I am the eldest of four girls, and it’s said that at the moment of my birth, Abu quit her job to take care of me. She taught me to read and write, teaching me as she had learned: Spanish for immigrants, strict and clean. The education in Venezuela wasn’t great, but my grandma built the foundation that allows me to be here now writing this newsletter. I remember very clearly sitting on her lap in the garden, practicing how to pronounce punctuation marks.
My childhood was full of polenta, cabbage, sausages, potatoes, and lots of “strange” soups, singing “Marko skače” and “Angelček varuh moj.”
I grew up looking at paintings of Triglav, edelweiss, and Bled, imagining a green land full of castles and dragons.
When, in 2019, the Slovenian government issued a statement: “All descendants of Slovenians have the right to apply for repatriation,” my opportunity had come!
Repatriation promised support to return to the homeland of your grandparents, but the winters and the language were enough to scare even the bravest. Not me! I sent my application in 2019, then COVID happened… life continued, and after much persistence, I was granted repatriation in January 2023.
At 24 years old, I left my life in the tropics and came to this green, cold land full of castles and dragons.
Oh wow, what a strange language, but what a beautiful country. I arrived in the summer, perfect to adapt to the changing climate in time. The strange soups here weren’t strange, and they had more things besides polenta! They love jam… and hey, where’s the rice? They eat potatoes all week…
Adapting wasn’t easy. I felt very alone and different, but I knew that, like the seasons, this was part of my personal growth. It filled me with joy to recognize the words “kruh” and “miza.” I explored a lot, but couldn’t remember the names of where I went… or where I came from… so many consonants together.
A year has passed, a lot has changed, but the goal remains the same as when I took my two suitcases and kissed my mom goodbye:
“I want to be able to call Slovenia my home, just as Venezuela will always be my home.”
Rosa | CocoBee