![]() In the business world, he was known more for making a deal then nurturing a company over the long haul, often taking a major risk, reaping the benefits and getting out. He later bought and sold airlines including Western Airlines, started the failed luxury airline MGM Grand Air and launched an unsuccessful bid for Trans World Airlines. You get a drive that's a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited." "When you're a self-made man you start very early in life," Kerkorian once told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He began buying property in Las Vegas in 1962 after selling his charter airline, which he later repurchased, and was on his way to becoming a Las Vegas power player. He was a skilled aviator who flew perilous missions delivering warplanes from Canada to Britain during World War Two and later opened a charter flight business serving gamblers wanting to get from Los Angeles to Las Vegas more quickly than a 10-hour drive. He twice tried to buy Chrysler - triggering a massive legal tussle - and made big investments in General Motors and Ford. Kerkorian mounted high-stakes pursuits of U.S. And these weren’t just another group of migrants, because whether I’ve been to their hometown or not, each individual showing up at the border has left behind a favorite meal, a community, and roots, in hopes of security and a future. I wasn’t just the journalist asking about difficult journeys and dreams ahead. They were standing on a street corner trying to connect to the CBP One app for asylum-seekers, and they generously chatted with me about the shop where I discovered the Venezuelan treasure of tizana (chopped fruit submerged in juice).Something shifts in a conversation when both parties spot a connection. Then there was a group of friends who’d fled the utter lack of opportunity in Mérida. When I spoke to the teen mother from Los Llanos who fled police harassment, I was struck by memories of fishing for piranhas just miles from her town. You can read the latest story from my colleague Christa Case Bryant today.Nearly every migrant I met in Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city across from El Paso, Texas, was from Venezuela. border to migrants and asylum-seekers from around the world for the past three years. The Monitor was at the border reporting a collection of stories in the lead-up to the end of Title 42, a U.S. But, last month reporting along the U.S.–Mexico border was the first time I’ve been so intimately reminded of the country and its people in almost 15 years. Economic, political, and human rights crises have pushed more than 7 million people out of Venezuela since 2015.I often think about Venezuela and the role it has played in my life – I even met my husband there. My host family’s six children are now building their careers across the Americas only their octogenarian parents remain in Venezuela. I lived with a local family, climbed the steep colonial streets to daily Spanish classes, and learned important lessons in humility (I was a 20-something who didn’t know much beyond “hola” when I arrived).Hugo Chávez was president, and Venezuela was already struggling with food shortages and political repression, but it was a different universe compared with today. In 2009 my career trajectory shifted dramatically when I was sent to a university town in the Venezuelan Andes on a Rotary fellowship.
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