Backlash Against Venezuelan Refugees Grows Across South America

Sympathy gives way to resentment over the estimated 2.3 million Venezuelans who have fled to neighboring countries since 2014

Paulo Trevisani and

Samantha Pearson | Photographs by

AndrÃ© Liohn for The Wall Street Journal

Aug. 24, 2018 1:44 p.m. ET

PACARAIMA, Brazilâ€”Arriving home from work last Friday in this sweltering Amazonian town along Venezuelaâ€™s border, a shopkeeper was beaten by a group of four men who tied him and his wife up before taking $5,600 he had stuffed in his pocket to buy supplies the next day.

The attack proved to be a tipping point for this impoverished town of 10,000 people, whereâ€”like across swaths of South Americaâ€”sympathy is beginning to give way to resentment over the 2.3 million Venezuelans the U.N. estimates have fled to neighboring countries...