They do it on foot or by bicycle.
They travel thousands of kilometers from Lima, Quito or Bogotá, where the pandemic left them without work.
Alejandra Pataro
Ludmila Vinogradoff
11/20/2020 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/20/2020 1:16 PM
To the millions of Venezuelans who for years embarked on a path to exile, another phenomenon is added: that of those who now
have to return
because the world to which they went to seek help was filled with plague and misery.
They sought their fortune in Colombia, then in Peru, in Ecuador.
But the pandemic shattered the horizon.
Many were thrown into a life of alms.
And just as they arrived, with a bag and on foot, they retraced their way back to the place they had said goodbye to: Venezuela.
They call them
the
"walkers".
For them there seems to be no place in the world.
There are those who are fleeing their country.
And those who return escaping the ravages of the virus.
One and the other meet in the same place: the Simón Bolívar International Bridge on the border between Venezuela and Colombia.
A report that Doctors Without Borders shared with Clarín tells of the case of these migrants who travel thousands of kilometers on the same bikes with which they did delivery jobs in Bogotá or Lima to return home.
With less luck, others have to return on foot.
They walk for days, weeks, months on paths where the best and worst of humanity can be just around the corner.
They arrive at
the Simón Bolívar bridge
that connects the city of Cúcuta in Colombia with the state of Táchira, in Venezuela;
that same bridge that had led them to hope.
And now it returns them to the confinement that the pandemic forces;
a quarantine that the government of Nicolás Maduro imposes on those who enter.
All end up in
the PASI,
or Comprehensive Social Assistance Point, after a Covid detection test.
Testimonials
Douglas Pérez traveled 3,800 km by bicycle.
/ Photo Verónica Ravelo / MSF.
Douglas Pérez
traveled 3,800 km by bicycle and with the only company of a puppy.
He crossed three countries to return to Venezuela from Peru after losing his job due to the pandemic.
He had reached Ecuador, where he was assaulted.
One day he ate bread.
One day I was eating candy.
One day a helping hand was assisting him.
He went to Lima.
And from there he continued north.
It no longer stopped.
In Venezuela, he spent 22 days in one of the PASI, in Táchira.
His objective was to continue his journey back to the state of Carabobo.
And he achieve it.
When he got home on the same bicycle from his adventure, he melted into a hug with his elderly mother.
They received him like a hero.
Oswaldo Martínez
, is 31 years old, and he is another émigré who returned.
He had gone to Colombia because for him, the economic situation in Venezuela was unsustainable.
He left his job in an onion shed.
And he left.
Gone are his wife and two children, to whom he promised to send money.
But he got to Peru and it didn't go well.
Then he tried his luck in Ecuador.
And
the pandemic landed
.
He endured six months in an unequal fight against unemployment.
Lost.
And it came back.
He walked
for weeks
and lived on the solidarity and goodwill of the people he encountered.
When he arrived in Cúcuta, he had to wait a few days until he finally managed to cross the bridge.
And from there to PASI.
"I came back for my children. Six months without a family and without work is too much," he says.
Jefferson Hernández
, a 23-year-old hairdresser, is another case.
He spent
two months walking
from Lima, along with his wife and their one year and five month old son.
He has two other children, but they managed to cross the border two days earlier and had to quarantine in two different places.
Cristian, who is 22 years old and worked as a food delivery man, returned to Venezuela
pedaling from Bogotá
when he lost his job.
Daniela (a fictitious name because for safety reasons she asked to remain anonymous), at the age of 14, started her
two-month
journey
on foot
.
Deyanina, 26, was left without her manicure job in Cúcuta, on the Colombian side, and also crossed back to her country.
The three crossed the Colombian-Venezuelan border
on the same day
and, after passing epidemiological checks on the Venezuelan side, they were taken to PASI Fútbol Sala, formerly a sports complex located in San Cristóbal.
There they met and decided to spend their quarantines together.
The cases multiply.
Reina Cumares
and her three children
walked for 21 days
from Bogotá to the border city of San Antonio del Táchira.
When they arrived, they were tested, tested positive, and taken to PASI.
To this date, thousands of Venezuelans have decided to cross the border back.
Already in July, more than 90,000 had returned to their country through Colombia, according to a Migration report from that country.
But it is estimated that there are already
130 thousand
who returned.
“When in the framework of the pandemic and the global economic crisis, hundreds of Venezuelans decided to return to their homes, the Venezuelan authorities established a system that indicates that once people enter the country, they must undergo a rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19, to determine their health status as part of a system to prevent the spread of the disease ”, explains to
Clarín
Gabriele Ganci, General Coordinator for the projects in Sucre, Delta Amacuro, Amazonas and Táchira, of MSF in Venezuela.
"Then," he continues, "according to the results of their tests, they are placed in centers for positive patients or negative patients, to comply with their respective quarantines or even treatment, if necessary."
In what conditions do they arrive?
Asked
Clarín
.
-A good part of the Venezuelans that we see who are returning to their country, in the framework of a global pandemic with economic consequences, report to us that they have lost their jobs or financial support and walk thousands of kilometers to return to their homes.
The vast majority come on foot from countries like Ecuador, Peru or Colombia.
Some of these people tell us that they suffer from
chronic diseases such
as high blood pressure and, due to their immigration status and economic condition, they have had difficulties accessing the necessary treatment to keep their underlying disease under control.
MSF supports local authorities to improve living conditions in quarantine centers, mainly in the area of water and sanitation.
Photo: Verónica Ravelo / MSF.
One of the most frequent pathologies that the MSF medical team found in PASI
was diarrhea
, which was key to improving hygiene conditions through access to drinking water.
Humans Right Watch takes a more critical look at PASIs.
The NGO that defends Human Rights has denounced in a report the
inhumane conditions
to which the authorities of the Maduro regime subject the returnees.
Confinement sites with bad food, without water or electricity, resemble assembly centers for those who cannot pay $ 50 or $ 100 in large hotels.
Humans Right Watch has denounced in a report the inhumane conditions to which the Venezuelan authorities subject the returnees.
Photo: Verónica Ravelo / MSF.
Escaping the pandemic, these thousands of walkers return to
a swamp
: a country where the minimum wage has fallen to
0.80 cents on the dollar
, with an inflation of 1,500% so far this year, child malnutrition that has grown by 74 %, and with a poverty that covers 96% of the population.
The returnees carry the covid-19 test in hand and return with their lives stored in bags.
Nicolás Maduro has described them as a
"biological weapon"
because they would carry the virus to Venezuelan soil with the mission of "ending Venezuela."
Strange conspiracy theory.
Those who leave
To those who return, the drama of
those who still leave is added
.
"We would rather die of the coronavirus than of hunger," say those who manage to reach both regular and clandestine border posts.
Venezuelans walk across the blocked Simón Bolívar Bridge in a desperate attempt to cross it.
/ Photo by Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
The walkers who leave also walk
hundreds of kilometers
between 3 and 6 days from all corners of Venezuela until they reach the border state of Táchira.
They go
in groups
of 10 and 15 adults and children.
They carry light luggage that consists of a tricolor backpack with the national flag and are subjected to mistreatment, theft of their belongings and sexual abuse.
At checkpoints, the police and the military
ask them for 1 dollar
to pass and if they do not have money they will have to pay with their body, according to the NGO Fundaredes.
Of the 5.5 million Venezuelans in the diaspora, (the largest exodus in the recent history of the region), around 1.5 million people have taken refuge in Colombia.
Some 300,000 new refugees have passed through the green or clandestine roads, paths during the pandemic of these months, challenging the official closure of the border to Colombia.
A member of the Venezuelan National Guard holds a woman who fainted on the Simón Bolívar International Bridge.
Photo: Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
Die on the road
A 48-year-old woman, identified as Maite Coromoto Hidalgo La Cruz,
died of a heart attack in
the early morning of October 22, in the town of Punta de Piedras, Ezequiel Zamora municipality of Barinas state, while sleeping on the porch of a house, in company of a granddaughter and other people who were walking from different states of the country, heading to the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Maite Hidalgo could not resist
the harshness of the route.
He had been walking for 10 days from Barquisimeto, Lara state.
His companions had no way to cover his funeral.
It is the first case of death in the middle of the new migratory wave.
Javier Tarazona, director of Fundaredes, told
Clarín
that the severe Venezuelan crisis separates families and affects the pockets of Venezuelans.
The exodus has increased.
"We have received complaints that the uniformed men have abused women and girls to let them pass at the checkpoints."
Simón Bolívar International Bridge, in Cúcuta, the main land route that connects Colombia with Venezuela.
Photo: Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
The clandestine crossings
Joselyn García, a 32-year-old cook, walked to the border state of Táchira to cross to the city of Cúcuta in Colombia, but the bridge was closed due to the pandemic.
After walking for about six days with three friends of hers from her native Barinas, where she left her two young children in the care of her elderly and sick parents, Joselyn told herself that she would cross the closed border anyway: “I'm going along the trails (roads illegal) to work even selling cigarettes in Cúcuta.
I will return later to bring my children. "
The only thing that scares him, he confesses, is sleeping in the street in the open because of the danger of rapists and thieves.
A Colombian Army sniper watches over the "trails" or illegal trails on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, near the International Bridge.
Photo: Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
As Joselyn, some 200,000 walkers between
returnees and new immigrants
, as told
Clarin
, Javier Tarazona, director of Fundaredes, have crossed the border on foot this year.
With no more than an identity card, many cross the clandestine roads of the 53 trails,
controlled by armed
paramilitary
groups
and criminals, that exist along the 2,219 kilometers that separate Colombia from Venezuela.
Jocelyn is somewhat afraid to cross the border by the clandestine trail, paying the paramilitaries 5 dollars, to travel a dangerous road full of stones and flooding rivers.
“More dangerous are the tolls and checkpoints of the Venezuelan military on the roads where they take money from us and what little we carry.
And if you don't give them the 5 dollars to let
us in,
then they
take away our identity cards
or they abuse us sexually, ”he says.
He holds back his tears.
A Venezuelan feeds her son at the Divina Providencia migrant shelter on the border with Venezuela Photo: Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
Boys die too
The nun Rosalía Peralta Rivas, coordinator of the Santa Mariana de Jesús school in Capacho, Táchira state, explains that the road
is full of thorns.
The nun told journalist Sebastiana Barraez that “
children have died
on the way
, from hunger, from thirst and they are left on the road.
Here, in Capacho, parents who get up early and
leave their children
have asked for lodging in some family houses
”.
It narrates the case of two couples.
“A lady from the community, whose children were married and left the country a long time ago, lives alone and hosted a couple who arrived with two girls, one six and one eight;
Early dad and mom
they were
leaving the sleeping girls. "
The nun assures that she has spoken with people who come from Cojedes, from Barquisimeto, from Valencia, from the east of the country.
“See them, my God!
How they carry only one bag on their shoulders, a mat and their children in their arms ”.
Queuing to cross the Simón Bolívar International Bridge from San Antonio del Táchira in Venezuela to Cúcuta in Colombia.
Photo: Schneyder Mendoza / AFP
A business
Further south, in the border state of Bolívar with Brazil, the same abuse occurs with walkers.
Barraez, denounced, through his Twitter account, that the Venezuelan military charge up to
$ 200
to allow passage to Brazil.
He also denounced that there are citizens who have been
waiting for
more than
20 days to cross
into Brazil.
"Even if you have a residence card, proof of Covid and safe conduct, the military will not make way if you do not pay.
They are returned to those who do not pay.
There are those who have 20 days there.
From Km 88 in Bolívar state they don't let cars pass if they don't pay. "
When they cross there is not too much.
Paradise in the end is a miserable place.
The pandemic swept everything away.
The director of Migration Colombia, Juan Francisco Espinosa, explained to the media that many of the emigrants survive in cities such as Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Barranquilla.
They sell sweets or beg on the street.
Others work in construction, restaurants or delivering food at home.
In Colombia, they estimate that
80% of the Venezuelans
who left will return, by bike or on foot, the same way they left.