BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (AP) – Samuel Andrés Mendoza carefully chooses from dozens of colored pencils lying on his kitchen table and hums a reggaeton song while deftly contrasting the Dragon Ball anime character taking shape on his sketch pad.
It’s not just a pastime for the 14 year old anymore. Without his mother’s knowledge, he began selling his drawings on his Twitter page to help the family make ends meet and to pay for a special diet that doctors say he needs in Venezuela’s troubled economy.
“Hi. I’m Samuel, I’m selling my drawings for $ 1 to help my mom with my diet, buy her a house and shop so she doesn’t work on the street and get sick from 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 he now has more than 15,000 followers and sells dozens of drawings that he has worked up at a table between a worn-out sofa and a rusting refrigerator in the small family home in Barquisimeto, about five hours west of Venezuela. capital, Caracas.
“The truth is I didn’t know I was going to draw like this, but the time has passed and I managed to actually paint,” said Samuel this month, showing off his finished drawing of Dragon Ball’s Goku. “And here it is.”
In a crisis-ridden 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 tackle 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 a major power outage hit her homeland, just when she learned of her son’s diagnosis.
But they came home in December after losing her job and increasingly prejudiced against the growing number of Venezuelan migrants.
The mother of three now sells snacks from a table in Barquisimeto’s main square. She also found work as a cleaner. Still, it was hard to afford the relatively expensive high-protein foods her son needed, who is also diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a broad branch of the autism spectrum.
“It’s not easy,” said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, 38, discovered Samuel’s effort when he asked for her bank account information 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 has also portrayed football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and the animated SpongeBob SquarePants.
Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares, who runs an art school, saw Samuel’s tweets and gave him a scholarship to study drawing. Social media followers have also gifted him a laptop, a set of artist pencils, and peanut butter, a good source of protein.
Samuel, who said he could raise his prices as his skills grow, would love to create YouTube-like video game videos as he grows up.
‘I am really proud of him. I have no words, ”said Rodríguez. “But sometimes I feel angry, I feel helpless because I think at his age he needs to study, learn and don’t want to work to help me, while I’m the one who should do everything possible to give them comfort and nutrition. “
Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
This story has been corrected to show that the teen’s last name is Mendoza.