Arbelys Briceño kept her eyes fixed on the bird soup in the plastic container in front of her, the first hot meal she had in days. He began to dine slowly, almost hesitantly, but then he picked up the speed and took another portion when the Soup Kitchen Workers presented seconds.
It was her eighth day between her hometown of Venezuela and Peru, a country the 14-year-old couldn’t identify on a map but her older brother had selected as her destination. Mosquitoes had marked his legs. The sun had burned his face.
“It’s like it’s a holiday but with a lot of walking,” Arbelys said with a much more positive outlook than most Venezuelan migrants seeking to escape poverty in their once-filthy wealthy country.
About 6. 8 million Venezuelans have left their country since an economic crisis erupted in 2014 for the country of some 28 million people. Most went to neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 2. 4 million are in Colombia, where Arbelys and his brother had taken a break from their journey.
This mass migration slowed as the pandemic reduced economic opportunities and confused the region and Venezuela’s socialist government followed reforms that slowed the country’s economic downturn and gave the appearance of renewal.
Around 150,000 Venezuelans returned to their home countries at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, according to United Nations estimates, with some host countries reporting a decline in the total number of Venezuelan migrants for the first time in years.
But the march out is in the back.
At least 753,000 Venezuelans have left their country for someone else in Latin America or the Caribbean since November, according to information from host countries, even as the government of President Nicolas Maduro continues to trumpet economic growth. Colombia, which has not provided updated figures since November, recorded a jump of around 635,000 between that month and August.
By the time Arbelys, his sister and brother arrived in Colombia, they had traveled about 600 kilometers (370 miles). She couldn’t sleep one night, they had stayed on a side sidewalk and she had been between noises. He slipped and fell twice as they walked along a muddy road that crossed the border.
His brother, traveling through the moment in time, knew how to let the inclement sun crunch his skin and smeared his face with sunscreen, which had formed streaks on his forehead.
Outside the soup kitchen in Los Patios, about 7. 5 kilometers inland from Colombia, migrants temporarily crowd around a table once the door to the lost mesh fence opens.
Some learned of the operation from friends or other immigrants, whose chefs prepare more than 40 gallons of soup to eat at two sites.
Jhon Alvarez, coordinator of the New Hope Foundation, said he sees more and more familiar faces in the soup kitchen.
“People are coming back from other countries — Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia — back to Venezuela, but after 15 days or a month, they can’t do it anymore and they come back,” Alvarez said.
He said he was told, “Look, I had to go back because the scenario is the same (or) it’s worse. They raised the minimum wage, they did, but there is no work.
Today, 48% of migrants surveyed through a network of aid agencies cited lack of employment and low wages as the main explanation for their departure from Venezuela, while 40% cited difficulties in obtaining food and basic services, according to the Venezuelan United Nations High Commissioner. Office of the Commissioner for Refugees.
Maduro has taken steps to halt the country’s economic decline, ending strict currency controls, leading to a de facto shift from the Venezuelan bolivar to the U. S. dollar. This broke a multi-year cycle of hyperinflation and helped alleviate chronic shortages.
Restaurants, imported goods stores, gyms and other businesses have opened in the capital, Caracas. Maduro recently said that the country’s economy grew 17. 4 in the first 3 months of 2022.
But Venezuela still has one of the highest inflation rates in the world and about three-quarters of the population lives on less than $1. 90 a day, a foreigner popular for excessive poverty. Many have no running water or electricity.
“Hope is the last thing that is lost, but right now there is none,” Frank Fernandez said as he tried to touch his circle of relatives at the soup kitchen to let them know he had arrived in Colombia with his brother. They were on their way to Chile, where Fernández had worked for 4 years before seeking his luck in Venezuela.
The 19-year-old earned about $43 a day running in structure in Chile. At home, you may only find windshield wiper paints at a fuel station. He and his brother walked up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) a day until they found one of a pile of dirt roads entering Colombia across the border.
Data collected through the Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants, which reaches some two hundred humanitarian organizations, shows that governments have recorded the arrival of 753,000 Venezuelan migrants, refugees and asylum seekers since November in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Knowledge of the platform also shows that the overall population of Venezuelans in those countries declined for some time last year, from 4,620,185 in January to 4,598,355 in July.
The platform’s figures don’t come with all migrants because some countries don’t count those that are illegal and don’t come with figures from other countries, such as the United States.
Pandemic lockdowns and border closures have also pushed migrants on riskier routes. Mexico recently imposed a visa requirement for Venezuelans, so instead of flying to a country bordering the United States, Venezuelan migrants now walk north through Central America after crossing the Darien Gap, an area without roads. Jungle that stretches on both sides of the Colombia-Panama border, where thieves, swollen rivers, rugged terrain and wildlife are common.
The Panamanian government said 45,000 Venezuelans have entered its territory in this way this year, up from just 3,000 last year.
Arbelys, the 13th of 14 siblings, said she didn’t know if she would enroll in school once she arrived in Peru. He didn’t even know where he would live in Peru.
A lifeguard at a shelter near the border had warned him of the risks he could take for the rest of the journey.
“My siblings tell me nothing is going to happen to me,” said Arbelys, whose parents stayed. “Throughout the trip I am afraid because (the aid worker) also told me about human trafficking and how they seek to lie for you. I’m very confident, so it scares me a little bit.
Venezuelans and Colombians migrate between countries depending on where the paintings are located. It’s part of their cultures according to my Colombian friends.
The totalitarian rule in Venezuela has led many other people to leave Venezuela over the past decade. The destruction of the economy has a value and the poorest will have to pay that value more than the rich.
Peru is a lovely place, I just went to the tourist spots – Lima and on the Inca Trail to Machupijchu.