‘I’ll walk in my broken shoes’
About 1.9 million Venezuelans have fled their collapsing nation since 2015 in one of the largest migrations in the world in recent years. The most desperate cannot afford a bus or plane ticket, and so they risk their lives to escape on foot. For nine days, a team of Associated Press journalists followed a Venezuelan mother and daughter as they crossed three borders and nearly 4345km — a little less than three times the length of New Zealand. Christine Armario tells the story of the people, places and dangers migrants encounter along the way.
Athemselves stranded at a gas station in a remote area known only as “Kilometer 17”.
“We’re trapped,” Cadiz told her son in a WhatsApp voice message. But she had no cell signal, so the cry for help didn’t go through.
They spent that night on the floor beneath a mechanic’s tin roof. Exhausted, mother and daughter wept.
The next day, Cadiz decided to switch her strategy: She had collected 250,000 pesos — about $123 — from generous Colombians and would use the money to bargain for seats on buses. That day they finally made their way to Cali and then bought two bus tickets to Ecuador.
At the border, a man told Cadiz he’d buy any Venezuelan bolivars she might have. Cadiz took out all that was left of her life savings.
The man offered her fifty cents.
After more than four hours in lines, Cadiz finally reached a migration agent. She stared at Angelis’ national identification card and let them through. Cadiz’s relief was visible as she smiled for a photo beneath a “Thanks for Visiting Ecuador” sign.
Once across the border, they got on a bus to Peru — provided for free by the Ecuadorean government. Twenty hours later, they emerged hungry and suffering from nausea and indigestion.
Eight days after fleeing Caracas, Angelis and her mother had reached their final border. The next day, Cadiz pulled her documents out of a crinkled Hello Kitty folder one last time. After reviewing them carefully, a migration agent asked Angelis to step in front of a camera. She grinned ear to ear.
“Calm down,” the agent told her coldly. “Don’t smile.”
By the time they reached Lima, they didn’t have a cent in their pockets. But they had made it.
“I arrived by a miracle,” Cadiz said. A month after arriving in Peru, Angelis and her mother are back on the move. The landlord kicked them out of the tiny room where Cadiz’s son lives when they couldn’t pay more rent.
In one desperate moment, Cadiz considered going back to Venezuela, but relatives there told her things had only gotten worse.
They live in a shelter and walk the streets each day, selling knickknacks. There have been glimmers of the life they hoped for in Peru. Angelis has gained 5kg.