“They say that Venezuela it’s being fixed, but look how it’s doing,” says José Muñoz as he points to the hundreds of his compatriots who are gathering at the Colombian-Panama border ready to begin the journey through USA through the dangerous jungle Darien.
They lie on the beach, resting and killing time as boat after boat sets sail from the town of Necoclí, on the Caribbean coast, on the other side of the Gulf of Urabá where in groups they will enter a mountainous jungle on a soulless route.
Without fear of anything
“The Darien it is not as dangerous as what we are leaving behind,” says José stubbornly, an argument that is repeated over and over again by all those who are about to cross the jungle.
They want to leave behind a “silent dictatorship” that has made a voracious path, which begins in a jungle where it is unknown how many lives fall by the wayside and it is done by letting it fall into the hands of mafias and traffickers, it becomes the most taken option.
“The Darien it is a light of hope for us; leaving our families behind is more painful,” this father of a family who crosses alone tells the EFE news agency.
For him it was decisive not having how to buy food for his children. The fear that they would get sick and not having a way to get them out of the disease. “That’s the reality we live in. Venezuelanot what they say… it’s a dictatorship,” he says.
Look To The Future
Like José, Angelismar had spent years debating when to take the plunge. I saw how prices rose, how money was not enoughbut it wasn’t until her son, Nelson Giovanny, was born less than a year ago that she didn’t dare leave Venezuela to give you a better future.
She crosses paths with the baby, who is still clinging to her breasts, her husband and part of her family. She also with her mother, Ada Yolimar, who knows very well what it is like to live in a country that excludes her for thinking differently.
He was a gas engineering student when he signed against the 2002 referendum promoted by then President Hugo Chávez and which ended, in retaliation, with the dismissal of 19,000 employees of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anónima (PDVSA) and a black list where she was included.
She saw how, from having a bright future in a country that demanded professionals for its best industry, all doors were closed to her and she spent years cleaning other people’s flats and houses. He never had the resources to migrate; Not now either, but still he launched himself.
The call effect
So far this year, more than 150,000 people have crossed this dangerous border crossing that separates Colombia from Panamawhere the rivers threaten to sweep away entire families and the hills to engulf those who step on them, and where rapes and murders go unpunished among the trees.
71% of this record number of migrants – which already exceeds the total of any other year – are Venezuelans.
They come straight from Venezuelabut also from other countries such as Peru, Chile or Colombia, the country that welcomed a large part of the immense Venezuelan exodus and which, according to the latest figures, has almost 2.5 million Venezuelans in its towns and cities.
Ismali, for example, had been in Bogotá for five years, selling sweets and other products on the Transmilenio buses, but everything became “very expensive” and necessity pushed him to look for new opportunities for Yeremias, his two-year-old baby, who cradles in his arms waiting to embark for the Darién.
“Because of the economy”, “because of poor living”, “hunger”… the answers are repeated over and over again with the same reasons. A cousin, who lives in some American city, told them that they earned well there. They have seen the neighbor build a new house thanks to the money that their father sends them by Western Union from Chicago or a distant friend told them to come, that they were received there and that it was not so difficult.
They intend to seek refuge in the United States, encouraged by the words of President Joe Biden who a few weeks ago assured that “it is not rational” to return irregular migrants to countries like VenezuelaCuba or Nicaragua.
“Last year was the time for Haitians, now it’s ours,” they say. They do it from the other side, from before entering the thicket, trusting that what is coming is better than what they leave behind, but without being fully aware of what lies ahead. EFE