A walk of Venezuelan migrants crosses the Andes at 3,600 meters of altitude

The walk started before dawn: before the clouds burst against the mountains, before the trucks invaded the highway, even before someone from the city got off the road. wakes up and examines the vacant lot where dozens of Venezuelan refugees spent the night. stacked.

Children, grandmothers, teachers, nurses, tankers and the unemployed were all together. They were united by the collective desire to separate as much as possible from the country that was falling apart and was left behind..

All but Yoxalida Pimentel. She could not take another step.

"After so many hours of walking, days and nights, with the sun, the cold and the rain, I lost my baby," she said in tears the day after her fake layer.

The economic crisis in which Venezuela is plunged with President Nicolás Maduro triggered an exodus. Researchers say the collapse of the economy is one of the worst in the history of Latin Americaand more than three million people have left the country in recent years. The vast majority did it on foot.

They flee the dangerous shortage of food, water, electricity and medicine, as well as the political repression exerted by the government that has only killed in recent weeks. more than 40 people.

Many Venezuelans, whose wages have been decimated by hyperinflation, can not afford to pay for bus tickets and are walking along the roads with their suitcases fired. Others hitchhike several kilometers for miles to reach Ecuador or Peru.

But whatever the destination, the vast majority goes through these dangerous roads of Colombia: a journey of 201 kilometers through a pbadage of the Andes at 3,600 meters of altitude.

"It's the coldest place I've ever met in my life"said Fredy Rondón, who left Caracas with only a bag of things and was out of breath at 3,200 meters before reaching a demolished steppe.

"I thought I was going to stand the cold, but that's too much, too"

His desire to travel this mountainous road is a testament to the despair in Venezuela. The country is going through the worst political situation for decades. Two men are asking for the presidency at the same time.

Here, in the Colombian mountains, Venezuelan refugees murmur Juan GuaidóThe leader of the opposition, who took the oath of office at the end of January, urged many Venezuelans to take to the streets and support him. Opposition and Maduro are now facing because of the routing of humanitarian aid that the Maduro government has blocked the border with Colombia, very close to the starting point of many emigrants.

"We are all afraid that it will become ugly between Maduro and Guaidó"said Norma López, who made the trip with her five children and six-day-old baby." My neighbors say that they will take the teenagers to defend Maduro. "

This rumor was what motivated Lopez to speed up his plans to leave the country.

For the majority of Venezuelans, the exodus leads them to Cúcuta first, the Colombian border city where thousands of Venezuelans arrive each day by a pedestrian crossing.

On the outskirts of Cucuta there is a car park in which a group of volunteers meets from 6 am offer migrants a bathing place, an oat plate and coats for minors who do not have one.

"I am lost, disoriented," said Edwin Villareal, 25, who planned to travel to Medellín with his wife and three children, one of whom was asthmatic. Of the five family members, they had 10,000 Colombian pesos, about $ 3.

"Maybe someone takes us in the car," he said. "We do not have money for the bus.

Few motorists offered badistance on this route along Highway 55, a two-lane highway that crosses the Eastern Cordillera. Dozens of Venezuelans stepped on foot with a turtle step.

At approximately 2,350 meters above sea level, Martha Socorro Duque spent months observing migrants pbading her salon in Pamplona, ​​Colombia. They are looking for food and shelter in a city where there is little to offer.

"People arrive with shoes all broken and destroyed"Duque said:" But the most difficult thing is not to see the shoes, but their feet: lacerated, with blisters full of blood ".

The woman decided to create a makeshift shelter. He opened the field in front of his house so that people could rest there and got donations from neighbors to offer them food. In an average night sixty people camp there; men with blankets on the ground, on the outside, and women and children on cots and on bedding in a shed near a creek.

The Duke offered Pimentel a place to stay before the woman gave birth to a stillborn child.

Devastated, Pimentel explained that her mother had already left Venezuela; He walked and hitchhiked to get to Chile, waiting to send money home. But when her mother could not find a job, Pimentel decided to cross the border in the hope of getting money for the three children who stayed at home and could not feed themselves.

"It's in desperation that I decided to walk"He said"take care of my children who are still alive"

On the road that continues Pamplona is an abandoned house whose roof was sunk. At more than 3,000 meters above sea level, Alexis Ron and his brother-in-law traveled with backpacks on their shoulders.; They were almost two kilometers ahead of their wives, who carried more suitcases and supplies. They all left Venezuela months ago, but they said that they had decided to keep walking because their lives in Colombia were miserable.

Ron, 40, explained that he was repairing luxury cars in Caracas. "I could disarm a car back and forth," he said. "And return it badembled without missing a single screw."

But most of these cars stopped roaming the streets of Venezuela years ago. Now it is difficult to find even tires, so he decided to leave. In Cucuta, Ron washed the vehicles instead of repairing them and got a few dollars a day.

His boss, he says, did not pay him what was due him. He said that the Colombians spit at him and other people in the street and accused the Venezuelans of stealing their jobs. But the breaking point was when a man offered to pay him to have bad with his wife and she, in desperation, wrote the phone to coordinate.

"I was going to give him 20,000 pesos," Ron said; about 6 dollars.

He decided that it was time to leave.

When Ron's wife joined him on the way, an hour later, he confirmed the story, staring at the ground. Her brother hugged her and no one said a word for a moment.

Further, at 3,300 meters altitude, the road reached a high plateau on which only reeds grow. Genesis Zambrano, 20 years old and eight months pregnant, stopped with her baby girl in her arms to catch her breath.

"My back," he said, indicating where it hurt.

He wanted to rest in Cúcuta before settling in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, to meet his father. But she spent all her time there waiting for her baby, Yeanis, who was fading: in Colombia, there was food to buy, but there was no money to give to his daughter more than a bottle of water with rice.

"The baby was crying, but she did not cry," she said.

Yeanis spent nine days in a hospital in Cucuta to receive treatment for anemia and a respiratory infection. When vital signs of her baby were restored, Zambrano thought that it was time to go to Bogotá and walked away.

The road did not seem to end. Although near the summit there was a miracle: a giant, empty truck was parked.

"When there are no fees, you must take them"said the driver, who asked to remain anonymous." The truth is that you also risk your livelihood, if the company finds out or if the police stop you.

With a whistle, the speed of the truck increased and the tundra landscape, to which the trotter felt as if it were still, became a landscape of pastures, streams and traffic lights.

Inside the truck, people huddled to warm themselves up. There was Marian Jiménez, who had twisted his foot, and Jeremy Hidalgo, who had been walking for four days.

Roberto Javier Tovar, whose wife and son were still in Venezuela, clutched his coat and thanked the driver at full volume, although no one knew where he was taking them.

"Almost no one has helped us more than this man," said Tovar.

The sun began to fall and the truck's platform began to fill up more and more as the driver stopped to climb dozens of additional migrants..

In the afternoon, there were close to a hundred adults and children on board and the road behind it seemed empty and silent.

"We must thank Almighty God for this blessing," shouted someone when the vehicle stopped.

Night fell and the stars shone. The temperature also dropped, but at least the truck kept its pace and the lights of Bucaramanga, still thousands of meters away, were still visible.

Daniel Bermúdez, who left his family and had been walking for five days, returned to see the unknown city below.

"My 6 year old son saw with his suitcase and said: 'You will not come back,' said Bermúdez, who put in to cry, feeling the breath of the icy wind.

Bermudez, after a pause, added, "Yes, I'm going back, but look at me, I'm so far from home."

Copyright: The New York Times 2019 Press Office.