Caracas, Venezuela
The WPA has announced that the Ladies World 10-Ball Championship will take place in Venezuela in October. Before any players decide to participate, they should make themselves aware that The United States State Department has reissued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory, the highest classification of travel warnings, due to “crime, civil unrest, kidnapping, and the arbitrary enforcement of local laws” in Venezuela. Here is their statement:
“Reconsider travel due to wrongful detentions, terrorism and poor health infrastructure,” the advisory continues.
Violent crimes such as kidnappings, armed robbery, carjacking and homicide are common in Venezuela. There is also a “high risk” that Americans could be wrongfully detained.
Political rallies, often against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, are common in the region and occur without notice. Maduro is seeking a third term in office in the country’s July elections.
Under Maduro’s tenure as president, millions of people have fallen into poverty and more than 7.7 million others have tried to flee the country, according to The Associated Press.”
The State Department clarified the warning on their website:
“In our Travel Advisories, we advise you not to travel to high-risk (level 4 travel advisory) countries or areas. This is due to local conditions and/or our limited ability to help there. These places are dangerous and by visiting you may be putting yourself at extreme risk.
You are subject to the local laws of the country you are visiting. If you violate that country’s laws, you could be arrested and prosecuted, even if your actions would not have been against the law in the United States.
We have limited or no ability to help you in many high-risk areas, even during an emergency.
The United States does not have a diplomatic or consular presence in some countries. We cannot provide any consular services in most of these places. In a few of these countries, the United States works with an official protecting power who can provide very limited assistance to U.S. citizens.
We may have limited or no ability to help you if there is a crisis in the country you are visiting. Please refer to our webpage on what we can and cannot do in a crisis.”
With all of this being said, promoters in Venezuela are doing everything they can to change the worlds views on Venezuela. A recent promotional piece touted the efforts being made in the country.
“With its economy in full recovery, Venezuela is gradually returning to normalcy. Major international sporting events have been held in recent years, demonstrating first-class organizational capacity, infrastructure, services and security for all national and foreign participants.
Thanks to private investment, Venezuela has successfully held the most important baseball events, the most popular sport in the country. It has also hosted World Cup qualifiers, international tournaments, basketball qualifiers, cycling competitions, and other events with the participation of national and foreign athletes.
The Venezuela Pool Open 2023 was an example of success. Athletes from Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, Spain, France, Ecuador and Venezuela proved it.
The joint effort of National Federations, sports clubs, private promoters, security companies, hotels, food and transportation, have managed to meet the requirements of international sports organizations, and the events have had worldwide reach thanks to television broadcasting through major channels such as ESPN, DirecTV, Fox Sports, and private and public TV channels in Venezuela.
All the events have had the support of the National Government, through the security forces, civil protection, immigration services, consular services, and sports authorities at the service of the private effort.”
We recently had a chance to speak with Karim Belhaj, CEO of Predator (who will be promoting the event). We asked him if Predator had any concerns about the safety of the upcoming event.
“Before we put an event somewhere, first thing I do, is I go there myself. Is it a place I would go and hang out? I went to Caracas for the first-time last November, and I was pretty impressed. My trip was seamless. I didn’t have any issues. So, for my travel, leaving from the US, yes, I had to book two flights, one to Panama, and then to Panama to Venezuela. My flight was fine. Arriving there was fine. Compared to all the Latin countries that I visited, it was fine. In some aspect, it was a lot better.”
I looked at the number of international events that they have They have a lot of qualifiers for the Olympics. For a lot of international Latin America or America Championships for baseball, basketball tournaments that they invite 10, 20, 30, 40 countries. And they’ve had a lot of events in ’23, and a lot of events scheduled in ’24 from other sports. What we saw was positive. Personally, I like Venezuela. It reminds me a little bit of Morocco in terms of culture, very family-oriented.”
If you do plan on going to these events, remember that you need a Visa. All US citizens must have a Visa for any travel purposes. Visas to travel to Venezuela have to be obtained well in advance of any travel. The Venezuelan government suggests starting the process 90 days before expected travel dates. Also, there are no direct flights from the USA and the shortest flight time we could find was 13 and a half hours with one connection.
The WPA did not respond to a request for information about security precautions for this event.
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