‘You’ll never become a good Venezuelan if you stop being a good Hungarian!’ – A Conversation with Alice Diego-Fedor, Part III
Fleeing the Hungarian communist regime, little Alice’s parents entrusted her to her grandparents in 1949. They reunited only seven years later, in January 1956 when the 8 years old girl was finally able to travel with her grandmother to Caracas, where she also met her two younger brothers who were born there. She soon began helping ‘56er refugees as an interpreter, which later became her profession. At the age of twelve she spent a year in Vienna and at fifteen she enrolled at the Hungarian secondary school in Burg Kastl, Germany, where she later met her Spanish husband. After ten years spent in Germany, they moved (back) to Caracas in 1973, started a family and played an active role in the local Hungarian community for decades. Fleeing the Venezuelan communist dictatorship, they returned to Hungary in 2010, where she continued putting her language skills, energy and commitment to good use through the Kastl Alumni and the Venezuelan Hungarian Association.
Antal-Ferencz Ildikó
Let us turn to your family. You mentioned that your husband liked Hungarians, and that the Hungarians of Caracas accepted him easily.
Yes, my husband integrated perfectly – not only into the Hungarian colony of Caracas, but also among my former Kastl classmates. Every one or two years, Kastl class reunions were organised at Pentecost, and we always attended from Caracas. I graduated in Kastl in 1968, and in 1969 I already went to my first reunion with Vicente. At our 50th graduation reunion, one of our classmates from Munich made a beautiful commemorative video about the fifty years, remembering also those who had passed away, and to my great surprise he included Vicente as well, even though he had not been our schoolmate. I think that was when I truly mourned him…
The Hungarians of Caracas loved him as well; he had a wonderful character. That is why I loved him too. (laughs) I cannot thank him enough for not only tolerating Hungarian life in Caracas but actively encouraging it – for example by suggesting that our children should definitely attend Hungarian kindergarten, otherwise they would not learn the language. When they started school and we discussed matters that concerned my husband as well, we spoke Spanish at home; but as long as the conversation was about everyday routines or the children’s behaviour, we spoke Hungarian. My husband used Hungarian expressions too: “hamizni’, ‘csicsikálni’. I loved it when, at some Hungarian gathering, he suddenly announced: “Alízka, vamos csicsikálni!”
It was him who chose Hungary when, due to the increasingly worsening conditions in Venezuela, the question arose of returning to Europe. It’d have been expected of him to prefer Spain, but once again he sensed my secret desire, and we moved to Budapest. Unfortunately, he was only able to enjoy our stay for seven years: in 2017, he passed away as a result of an aggressive tumour.
Were your children born there? What do they consider home nowadays?
They were born in Caracas, but grew up in a tricultural environment, as the impact of our years in Germany was also present in Venezuela. My Spanish husband represented German companies there, and I headed the German section at the Central University, where I taught German and English, so we were in constant contact with Germany, the embassies and our old Kastl friends.
After Hungarian kindergarten, both children attended the aforementioned Emil Friedman School. At the age of six, Ricardo (Riki) became a cub scout. Adrienne (Adri) was only four, but she also wanted to go to camp. Since I gave lectures there as well, I went along for a few days and helped her when it was necessary. My backpack was bigger than she was… Both children attended the leadership training camps in Fillmore, New York. Riki served as boys troop leader in Caracas for four years. Both danced in Gyöngyösbokréta and attended church with us – they lived Hungarian community life like all of us.
This lasted until they graduated from Central University. Afterwards they looked around and saw no future… Riki studied international relations and wanted to become a diplomat, but he didn’t want to represent the communist system, so he moved to Europe, as did Adri later. We had a base in Spain; my husband’s close family numbers seventy people, as both great-grandparents had eight grandchildren on each side. We also had a base in Hungary, because my husband bought this flat as early as 2000, so there was a place for them here too.
Riki enrolled in a master’s programme at Valencia Business School, studied international business management, and also travelled to Hungary, where he met Emőke, whom he later married. At 19, Emőke moved to Valencia to live with my son and studied psychology there. Adri qualified in tourism management also in Caracas. When she came to Budapest for her brother’s civil wedding, she met her future husband, István. They founded their family 18 years ago in Hungary. I’m delighted that both our children married Hungarians. Their civil weddings were held in Budapest, but both insisted on having their church weddings in Caracas, with their old friends and in the Protestant church. The scouts formed an honour guard; there was a bride’s dance, just as at my wedding and every Hungarian wedding in Caracas for more than 30 years afterwards – I introduced that custom, and my daughter’s wedding was the last of that kind…
What about your grandchildren?
I have two grandchildren born in Spain: Annabella, 21, and Alexander, 15; and two born in Hungary: Nándi, 16, and Dániel, 13. Adri didn’t want to give up the name Diego, so they are called Nándor and Dániel Sarkadi Diego. Many ask where their names come from, and they proudly reply: they had a Spanish grandfather… Diego is even displayed on the back of Nándi’s ice hockey jersey.
I love spending time with them. For their birthdays, they receive a three-day grandmother-grandchild trip. Last year I visited Rome for the third time, and we’ve been to Vienna four times; we’ve also travelled together to Barcelona, London and Munich. I feel that these trips are the best legacy I can leave them.
What language do you speak with your family members?
Both my children speak Hungarian very well, as I put a lot of emphasis on this since their childhood. The ‘Spanish’ grandchildren learn Hungarian with more difficulty, because there is no Hungarian community in Valencia, but they attend the Rákóczi Association diaspora camps: Bella has already been three times, and Alex is coming for the third time this year. One can speak Hungarian with them, but I mostly speak Spanish. Languages are truly important to me, but smooth communication with my grandchildren is even more important…
The same was true initially with my Hungarian grandchildren; for example, Dani doesn’t attend the Spanish-language Orinoco scout troop in Budapest founded by his mother, but the II. Rákóczi Ferenc troop in Tököl. Nándi, however, loves languages and already speaks Spanish nicely. Both attend(ed) a German minority school, so the German connection has also been preserved.
You mentioned, your mother moved to Hungary. When and why?
My father died in Caracas in 1987. When no family members were living there any longer, I had him exhumed and officially brought his ashes here. When my mother passed away, we said goodbye to them together – not in a conventional way, because I don’t like cemeteries – we found something else, very beautiful.
When Chávez won the elections in 1998, my mother gathered the three of us and said: ‘Children, I’m going to sell everything I can, divide it among you, and move back home to Hungary, because I’m not going to go through this twice in my life.’ We replied: ‘Oh, Mami, you see everything so bleak – there won’t be communism here…’ My mother kept her word, and by the end of 1999 she was already in Hungary. It took us ten more years for the penny to drop…
By then our children were already living in Europe and had begun to worry about us more and more because of the daily kidnappings, burglaries and robberies. Even so, it was extremely hard for us to dismantle our home, leave behind friends and colleagues, and the beautiful university campus – more beautiful than any American one because of the incredible subtropical vegetation. Back in the day, when Tibor Tollas, one of the most prominent émigré poets, once visited us and we young women went to the airport to greet him, he said: ‘Girls, do you know why I love coming here? Because it is this constant enthusiasm of nature that moves me so deeply…’
How did your final move to Hungary take place?
When everyone slowly (or quickly) became impoverished, I stopped shopping in supermarkets, because they became outrageously expensive, and suddenly I found myself – as a university professor and the wife of a very successful businessman – standing in line for vegetables at a small village market. That was when I asked myself: ‘How did you end up here? And what will happen to you tomorrow?…’ That evening I sat down with my husband and we looked around: ‘Why are we clinging to this? This is no longer home. The children are no longer here. Is this just four walls for which we are now sacrificing time with our children and the development of our grandchildren? And besides, they could burst in and occupy it at any moment, and then we won’t even have this…’
That evening, I took down the first picture from the wall – that was how the dismantling of our ‘no longer home’ began. We could not sell the house, only six years later, for one third of its value, and we had to be grateful even for that. Around that time my daughter and her family were buying a house in Tököl, so we did not give the furniture away cheaply: we put everything we could into a container and shipped it home. After due family consultation Adri inherited the furniture; it wouldn’t have fitted into my son’s flat in Valencia anyway. Since then the family dining table, the rugs and the entire children’s bedroom furniture have been in the house in Tököl. My grandchildren, Nándi and Dani sleep in the same beds and study at the same desks as my children once did! These are such high-quality pieces that – as my son-in-law says – even their grandchildren will inherit them. When my son first entered his sister’s new house, he said: this feels exactly like home in Caracas…
We had a very loyal domestic employee, Sandrita; she and her husband waved to us as we set off for the airport. We also had very good neighbours; in fact, we lived in a ‘private’ street, which was only accessed by those who lived there. Our children played together, rode their bicycles and roller-skated in that street. Of the 22 families, 17 were forced to leave the country. We also left with heavy hearts, even though we had been ‘practising’ it for six years, because while we could not sell the house, we spent the summers alternately in Spain and Hungary, where my daughter and my mother lived as well. Fortunately, for those six years we also had a Chilean tenant, until the company he worked for collapsed; then he too left the country and returned to Chile. After that we went back only very rarely, mainly for matters related to the house and especially to see old friends. But after a certain point, it no longer made sense…
What happened to your brothers and their families?
My brothers followed my mother earlier than we did: Rudi’s family a year later, and when things became very bad, Laci’s family moved, too. By then both had families and children. Hungary did not work out for Rudi; he divorced and returned to Venezuela a year ago. He missed the Caribbean Sea, the climate and the people so much that, despite all attempts to dissuade him, he went back alone. She lives on Margarita Island, which is a wonderful tropical paradise, but life there is still complicated. Her daughter and granddaughter live in Hungary.
Of the three of us, I was the most Hungarian, Rudi the most Venezuelan – he also studied in Kastl, but returned to Caracas after a year – and Laci was the most German: a year in Vienna and then Kastl left a strong mark on his life as well. From Germany, he didn’t want to return to Venezuela, but our parents ordered him back, because my bohemian brother had run away from Kastl at the age of 15 with a friend to emigrate to Israel and join a kibbutz – for reasons unknown, since they had no ties there. The Bavarian police brought them back, and our parents took him home rather than letting him embark on another mad adventure… At the school in Caracas where he graduated, he met a beautiful Venezuelan girl, Maritza, who later raised their two children as Hungarians as well. Laci worked for years for Lufthansa. When they relocated to Hungary, he also brought cancer with him and soon passed away here six years ago.
Their daughter is also called Fedor Alicia. (My mother must have been a very ‘progressive’ young woman, because at the end of the ‘40s she had me christened Alice, which I hated at home because it was mispronounced, so I became Aliz in Hungarian circles and Alicia in Spanish ones. However, my younger brother Laci wished for his daughter to be named after me, so now there are two Alicia Fedors living in Hungary.) My nephew Miklós (Miku) became a famous professional soccer player: at the age of 16, during one of our summer holidays in Spain, he was playing football on the beach and was noticed by somebody, who invited him to the Valencia FC youth academy. Miku stayed in Spain; the Spanish football federation loaned him out many times – to Qatar, Madrid, Scotland. He travelled the world and married a Venezuelan girl from the very same building where they had lived in Caracas back in the day. When things became very bad in Caracas, Miku suggested that his mother and sister move to Spain. (My brother Rudi arranged Hungarian citizenship for every child in the family – not only my grandchildren, but even the cousins.) ‘Little Aliz’ as we call her, trained as a primary-school teacher but couldn’t get a job in Spain, even though she learnt the Valencian dialect. She gave private lessons, cared for children and elderly people and cooked – she had previously completed a chef’s course in Caracas. This continued until they had had enough, and through the repatriation programme they moved to Hungary, where little Aliz achieved in four months what she hadn’t managed in eight years in Spain: she became a full-time Spanish teacher at a highly reputed secondary school. She was received with great warmth and is very happy: she and her mother can support themselves. The repatriation programme includes a language course of up to six months, and Maritza is making a great effort to learn Hungarian… She is also an active member of the local Venezuelan–Hungarian Association.
You’ve also been living a very active community life in Hungary…
I’m a little community-building ant – I believe that there is strength in community and they represent the future. When we moved back to Hungary, I immediately became involved in the Ibero-American community. At that time a very kind acquaintance of Peruvian origin organised our meetings, but only informally. I took an active part in the Panoráma Club’s events, for example, in 2011, at the World Meeting of Hungarians I organised the Ibero-American tent.
I was also very active in other areas. For the first four years I served as president of the Burg Kastl Alumni Association, and with the great help of Sándor Lezsák we organised a beautiful celebration in the Hungarian Parliament. The Burg Kastl high school had already closed in 2006, so in 2008 we organised a large farewell event for the school; I attended that event from Venezuela. We partied for three days, with five hundred former students gathering from all over the world. Every guesthouse in the area was full of us; one of my classmates became head chef at one of the largest German companies and organised the catering. When I became president of the Alumni, we decided not to let the legacy be lost. The books of the enormous library and most of the furniture – the numerous wood carvings, class photos, and school desks – were transported to Hungarian schools in the Carpathian Basin. The intellectual legacy was harder to deal with: we organised a worldwide fundraising campaign among former students and distributed the several thousand euros raised to a Hungarian school in each of the four detached territories of Hungary. In the end we brought home the school flag and held the mentioned celebration in the Parliament, with traditional hussars present. I hadn’t yet been living here for a year at the time… It was an honour to sit in the Parliament alongside Sándor Lezsák on the podium in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament, with the Alumni Vice-President on my other side, and to see former Kastl students who had come from all over the world… At that time, we had been living in Hungary for less than a year. That day was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us.
What about Venezuelan-Hungarian matters? How large is the community in Hungary and what are you doing?
In 2014–15, Venezuelan refugees with Hungarian origin began arriving in Hungary in larger numbers. As soon as my term as Kastl Alumni president ended, I approached the next challenge wholeheartedly. Together with four young Venezuelans with whom I had been in contact for years, we gathered 600 kilograms of winter clothing in a month for the refugees from Venezuela. Although they received vouchers from the Malteser Charity Service, those only covered a coat, a jumper and winter shoes… When we realised that without an organisational framework we couldn’t request support from any local council or the government, we founded the Civil Association Venezuelans in Hungarian (VEHU) in 2019. The four young people asked me to be president, because of my language skills and my somewhat established network. After the expiration of our mandate, we handed over leadership to another well-prepared team in May 2025. Over six years, we created a thriving community out of nothing.
As for numbers, we can only estimate just as we once did with Hungarians living in Venezuela. Because of GDPR regulations, despite pleading with the embassy in Quito or the Maltese Charity Service – just as in Venezuela they didn’t know how many Hungarians lived there, since many lived in rural areas unknown to us – we don’t know exact numbers in current day Hungary either. Once someone searched on Facebook for those who consider themselves Venezuelan-Hungarian: there may be appr. 3-4,000 people. The association officially has 180 members.
We have our own premises in the 12th district, at 4 Böszörményi Rd, at a very good location. It is small, but it is ours. We took it over in a completely dilapidated state. We rent it from the local council at a favourable rate. We applied for renovation funding, which took almost a year, with many Venezuelan volunteers working on it. Later we also won operational funding. We have a very rich cultural life. Our Spanish-language Orinoco scout troop is an accredited member of the Hungarian Scout Association (abbreviated MCSSZ in Hungarian). I lovingly nurtured it at the beginning, and I’ll never forget when we went to the leadership of the MCSSZ somewhat anxiously, the president opened his arms and said: ‘Welcome – you will be the association’s special splash of colour.’ And so they are… Since then the troop has developed beautifully; about 40 children attend now. We have, however, no kindergarten or school. Years ago, before Venezuelans began arriving in Hungary in larger numbers, we tried to found a Spanish-language kindergarten with an Argentine teacher, but back then the Ibero-American community lacked the financial means to maintain a private kindergarten. We don’t have a weekend school either, but within the association we offer free Hungarian and English lessons.
On the other hand, our girls’ folk-dance group, Roraima, are also very talented. We also have two bands: the Catatumbo Band, which plays classical folk music – not only Venezuelan, but South American as well – and includes two professional musicians who are singers, school music teachers, vocal and choir leaders. The Jazz Band also has a professional conductor, singer and saxophonists. Our basketball team, Los Husares, are accredited members of the Hungarian Basketball Federation. Recently the first Spanish-language theatre company in Hungary was founded; they’ll perform works by Hungarian playwrights and writers translated into Spanish. At Christmas we hold a large celebration in the main hall of the Károlyi Secondary School in Kispest, where as many as 250 people usually attend. We celebrate the Hungarian national holidays, so that people learn as much as possible about Hungary and strengthen their Hungarian identities and support integration. We also celebrate the two most important Venezuelan national holidays: 19 April and 5 July.
What identity do your community members consider themselves to have?
When we speak of Venezuelan Hungarians living in Hungary, we don’t distinguish between Hungary-born or Venezuelan-born people – the key point is that they fled from or were repatriated from Venezuela to Hungary. Many young Venezuelans have no Hungarian ancestry – they didn’t come to Hungary through the repatriation programme, but via AIESEC (Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales), and those who wish to stay after the one-year programme can easily find work in multinational companies, as they prove to be good employees. Some already have local Hungarian spouses or partners, and Hungarian-Venezuelan babies are being born one after another. We believe strongly in integration, because we are convinced that these people will be good Hungarian citizens who enrich Hungarian society culturally. As regards the repatriation programme, one of its mottos is: ‘families shouldn’t be torn apart’. If we’ve already scattered across the world, at least families should remain together. If a Hungarian-born woman wants to bring her Venezuelan husband’s parents here as well, let grandmother and grandfather come too, as they represent enormous value for the family – the young parents can work peacefully, as the grandparents look after the children.
As for national identity: my parents mourned Hungary all their lives. At the end of every church service, when the national anthem was sung, my mother’s tears would fall, which at nine years old I didn’t understand. We developed multiple national identities, and so did our children, but above all people are attached to where they grow up. The same thing is happening in Hungary now as happened earlier in Venezuela: Venezuelan grandparents surely feel the same as my children’s generation’s grandparents once did, who always mourned their homeland. The working generation has found its place; they will always have (at least) dual identities, just as we had. They will claim: ‘I’m a Venezuelan living in Hungary’, just as I always claimed: ‘I’m a Hungarian living in Venezuela’. As for children, the most important thing is that they integrate without forgetting where they come from – which is why it’s so important to be bilingual, ideally from birth. Most people living here already speak Hungarian beautifully. Scouting is conducted in Spanish, and just as our elders requested us in the Hungarian House to speak Hungarian, here we ask them: speak Spanish.
When we launched the association, guests came from the Bethlen Gábor Foundation and the Friends of Hungary Foundation; the scouts marched in full uniform, formed an honour guard and held the Venezuelan and Hungarian flags. When Daniel Contreras Horváth – who had been living here for only four years and belongs to the large Horváth family of some fifty very close-knit members – stepped forward and began to recite in Hungarian the Ady poem: ‘I am the son of Góg and Magóg…’, several distinguished guests were moved to tears…
Do you see a communal future in Venezuela in light of the most recent public developments?
Some Venezuelans will certainly return home to rebuild the country, but there will be no mass re-migration, because those living here greatly value what they have received from the Hungarian government: they have found their place, and for their children’s sake alone they will not leave the country. Moreover, everything in Venezuela is currently quite chaotic and contradictory. María Corina Machado was received yesterday by President Trump in Washington, D.C.; negotiations are under way, elections will take place – so an exciting period is coming from the perspective of international politics, but what does all this mean for the Venezuelan people? In my view, not much for now. The other day, at a public lecture, someone asked the Venezuelan–Hungarian young VEHU member sitting next to me whether he would return to Venezuela, to which he replied: no, he is staying in Hungary, as he owes this to Grandpa Antal. These are all legitimate personal decisions. Those who stay will build the country and the community here; those who return will be useful citizens there, will carry the good reputation of Hungarians and a wealth of cultural influence, and hopefully will join Hungarian community life there – if there will be any.