Chile overwhelmed by influx of Venezuelan migrants

Pozo Almonte (Chile)

Maria Garcia puts down her stuff in the shade of a faded advertising billboard, along Route 5. The fifty-year-old stands up, out of breath, her face streaked with heat and fatigue.

Her hand in a visor, she makes out in the distance an abandoned saltpeter factory, like a rusty ship stranded in the middle of the Atacama Desert.

In transit between Huara and Pozo Almonte, two Chilean villages located a hundred kilometers from the Bolivian border, a red pick-up from the mining industry stops spontaneously at its height.

The passenger hands him a lunch bag before the vehicle sets off with a bang.

The meal will be shared without a word with his two teenagers and four other companions in misfortune met on his way.

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Every day, several hundred migrants - most often from Venezuela, but also from Colombia, Cuba or Haiti - illegally cross the Bolivian border to reach Chile, their final destination.

For months, the

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