BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (AP) – Samuel Andrés Mendoza carefully chooses from dozens of crayons spread across the kitchen table and hums a reggaeton song while contrastingly applying the Dragon Ball anime character that takes shape on his blog of notes.
It’s no longer just a hobby for 14-year-olds. Without her mother’s knowledge, she began selling her drawings on her Twitter page to help the family survive and pay for a special diet that doctors say she needs in Venezuela’s troubled economy.
“Hello. I’m Samuel, I sell my drawings for $ 1 to help my mom with my diet, buy her a house and a shop so she doesn’t work on the street and get sick of COVID-19 and buy me peanut butter. . Thank you, sir and madam, ”he tweeted along with photos of four drawings.
It caught the attention of many and now has more than 15,000 followers, selling dozens of drawings he has made on a table between a worn sofa and a rusty refrigerator in the small family home in Barquisimeto, about five hours west. of that of Venezuela. capital, Caracas.
“The truth is, I didn’t know I would draw like that, but time has passed and I’ve managed to really paint,” Samuel said this month, showing off his finished drawing of Dragon Ball Goku. “And here it is.”
In a country affected by the crisis, where workers earn an average of $ 2 a month, their sales can make a big difference to the family budget that has the need for high-protein foods to cope with some form of malnutrition.
Like millions of other Venezuelans, Samuel and his mother, Magdalena Rodriguez, emigrated in search of better conditions. They left for Colombia in 2019, when widespread power outages affected their homeland when they learned of their son’s diagnosis.
But they returned home in December after she lost her job and found growing prejudice against the growing number of Venezuelan immigrants.
The mother of three now sells snacks from a table in Barquisimeto’s main square. She also found work as a cleaner. Still, it has been difficult to afford the relatively high-protein foods his son needed, who also has a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, a broad branch of the autism spectrum.
“It’s not easy,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez, 38, discovered Samuel’s effort when he asked for bank account information so people could pay for his work.
Samuel, who said he started drawing at the age of 5, has a penchant for anime characters, but has also played football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and the animated SpongeBob SquarePants.
Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares, who runs an art academy, saw Samuel’s tweets and awarded him a scholarship to study drawing. Social media followers have also given him a laptop, a set of artists ’pencils and peanut butter, a good source of protein.
Samuel, who said he could raise his prices as his skills advance, would like to make YouTube-style videos about video games when he grows up.
“I am just proud of him. I have no words, “said Rodriguez. “But sometimes I feel angry, I feel helpless, because I think at their age I should study, learn and not want to work to help me, when I am the one who has to do everything possible to give them comfort and feed them. “
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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
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This story has been corrected to show that the teen’s last name is Mendoza.