BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (AP) – Samuel Andrés Mendoza carefully chooses from dozens of crayons lying on his kitchen table, humming a reggaeton song as he skillfully applies the contrast of the anime Dragon Ball character that takes shape on his sketch.
It’s no longer just fun for the 14-year-old. Unbeknownst to his mother, he began selling his drawings on his Twitter page to help the family get through and pay for a special diet, doctors say he needs in Venezuela’s troubled economy.
“Hi. I’m Samuel, I’m selling my drawings for $ 1 to help my mother with my diet, buy her a house and a store, so she doesn’t have to work on the street and get COVID-19 and buy butter. peanuts for me. Thank you, sir and madam, “he wrote on Twitter along with photos of four drawings.
He has attracted the attention of many and now has over 15,000 followers, selling dozens of drawings he worked on at a table between a used sofa and a rusty refrigerator in the family’s small home in Barquisimeto, about five hours west of Venezuela. capital, Caracas.
“The truth is, I didn’t know I was going to draw like that, but time passed and I managed to paint perfectly,” Samuel said this month, pointing to the final drawing of Goku Dragon Ball. “Here he is.”
In a crisis-stricken country, where workers earn an average of $ 2 a month, its sales can make a big difference to a family budget strained by its need for high-protein foods to cope with some form of malnutrition.
Like millions of other Venezuelans, Samuel and his mother, Magdalena Rodríguez, emigrated in search of better conditions. They went to Colombia in 2019, when large-scale power outages hit her home, just as she learned of her son’s diagnosis.
But they came home in December after she lost her job and found growing prejudice against the growing number of Venezuelan migrants.
The mother of three now sells snacks from a table in Barquisimeto’s main square. He also found work as a cleaner. However, it was difficult to afford the relatively expensive protein foods her son, 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 information about his bank account so that people could pay for his work.
Samuel, who said he started drawing at the age of 5, has a penchant for anime characters, but also played football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and animated SpongeBob SquarePants.
Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares, who runs an art academy, saw Samuel’s tweets and gave him a scholarship to study drawing. Social media also gave her a laptop, a set of artist pencils – and peanut butter, a good source of protein.
Samuel, who said he could raise prices as his skills advance, would like to create YouTube-style videos about video games when he grows up.
“I am just proud of him. I have no words, “Rodriguez said. “But sometimes I feel angry, I feel helpless, because I think at his age he should study, learn and not want to work to help me, when I am the one who has to do everything possible to give their comfort and food ”.
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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
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This story has been corrected to show that the teenager’s last name is Mendoza.