Aruba in December. Venezuelan upheaval impact

No impact on Aruba from Venezuela.

Venezuela may be imploding or civil war, but Aruba is a sovereign country.

I guess what I was wondering is even though it is a separate country it is still in the vicinity and with the desperation coming out of that country I'm just wondering if there are some issues spilling over into the surrounding areas.

I'm not sure most people around the world really understand how bad it is in Venezuela right now. I mean there's actual starvation and Revolution Brewing

Thank you for the response. Yeah I'm really interested to see if anything changes for other places in the region. I just can't help think that it is going to have an impact. I just don't see any way around it. There's just too many people in such a large area that this is affecting.

I think one would have to be living under a rock if they don't realize how bad things have gotten in Venezuela, and the potential spillover effects. It has been in the news on an almost daily basis since at least last year. This is just a guess, but I would think most well-educated Venezuelans would flee to Brazil (most prosperous neighboring country), not a small island like Aruba which has finite opportunities, not to mention the safety risks of getting there. Moreover, Aruba is Dutch, so it's different culturally in a lot of ways. Most articles have mentioned Curaçao (also Dutch) for whatever reason.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/americas/hungry-venezuelans-flee-in-boats-to-escape-economic-collapse.html

How are you expecting this will affect your vacation exactly? I guess it really depends on the nature of your vacation...are you going to visit some all-inclusive or other resort, or something altogether different that you feel has some special risks?

Thanks for the article. I stay pretty up-to-date on current events but I really think there are lots of people who have no idea how bad it really is in spite of the reports people hear.

We are staying at the Riu which is an all-inclusive resort and I really don't have any personal concerns as far as safety or anything like that I was just curious how something with this catastrophic of results is impacting the surrounding areas and obviously there can sometimes be some safety concerns.

Your best bet is to talk with real locals on the ground to get their impressions as opposed to people on this forum. I'm sure you realize that all-inclusives are self-contained bubbles (whether in Aruba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, etc). It's hard to get a realistic take on anything when you're so isolated from the majority of the local population, a lot of whom live in poverty. Many people don't even leave the resorts at all during their trips. Hopefully you'll interact with enough people or see things on the ground to get a well-rounded perspective, and hopefully you'll report back.

I would venture to guess that there are many similarities to the Syrian crisis and its spillover effects.

We rarely stay at resorts when we go on vacation. And I'm sure we will tour the island as we usually do.

check the State Department website for any alerts for travelers.

My second cousin got to know many Venezuelans while living in South Florida. He said what they tell him is that things are really bad in Venezuela, but that the wealthy Venezuelans are still living pretty well.

Still, I have seen that occasionally the Venezuelan government will bar its citizens from leaving the country, since many go to nearby Colombia where there is food to buy.

I would expect that Colombia would be the primary country for refugees leaving Venezuela. The Brazilian border is in the Amazon basin, not so near population centers.

I noticed a comment about poverty in the Caribbean. Poverty depends entirely on what country or island. Aruba is relatively prosperous, as is Barbados, Antigua, St. Martin and the Virgin Islands. On the other end of the spectrum are Haiti and Jamaica.