Cross the highlands and the Atacama Desert on foot, the last frontier for Venezuelan walkers in search of a better life

The sun sets in a straight line over a shadowless plateau. With shortness of breath for the 3,700 meters high, Anyier tries to get back to her seat on the side of the road: seven hours ago, she entered Chile on foot from Bolivia, her fifth border since leaving Venezuela.

“It was the most difficult and the most horrible thing”, launches this 40-year-old former employee of Siderúrugca Nacional (Sidetur), who on January 25 began the journey of more than 5,000 km with Reinaldo, a 26-year-old barber, and her daughter Dany, 14.

They left from Guatire, a suburb of Caracas, with $ 350 and a backpack with just enough.

Like this family, severely sunburned and chapped lips, they advance along the mountain road towardsl Atacama Desert -North Chile- young people from Venezuelan cities such as Barinas, Maracaibo, Apure and Maturín. All without exception ask for water. It has been days, months or weeks since they crossed the borders of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

“They don’t even want to give us water”lamented Ramses, a man from Mérida whose goal is to join a friend in Rancagua – near Santiago – where they wait for him to work in a farm field.

Anyier and his family pulled up to the side of the road after 25 kilometers of walking with no one to offer them help in an area mostly used by freight trucks and “recently taxi drivers and people who extort money from them to take them”.

“A taxi driver stopped to ask us if we had papers and when we said we were Venezuelans he laughed at us and accelerated,” Anyier told AFP. ‘to tears.

After crossing the side of the closed border post very early, “we got into a van to be taken to Iquique or Huara, they told us no, that they were not going to reach out to VenezuelansSays Reinaldo, who claims Bolivian and Cuban migrants have been transferred.

If the sun is unbearable during the day, with gusts of wind capable of moving a truck, at night “the cold is below zero”, told AFP the mayor of Colchane, Javier García.

In this town of 1,700 inhabitants, one of the 10 poorest in Chile, they say they have been living since January “a migratory phenomenon and a humanitarian crisis never seen in the region. “They count three official deaths: a Colombian, a baby and a 69-year-old Venezuelan.” They died from the cold, from hypothermia, “said a soldier from Colchane.

“For months we have seen crude and inhuman images arriving at dawn in subzero, -8 or -10 temperatures, cry with hunger, sometimes without money ”, describes the mayor, who also evokes the culture shock of migrants with the Aymara, reserved people who feel confronted with the audacious and noisy attitudes of certain marchers.

About 40 km from Colchane, a young man of 26 is paralyzed on the road, covered with old blankets, He wears fine clothes and sandals beach with socks. He babbles that his name is Alexander and that he comes from Carúpano, a coastal town 500 km from Caracas. He cries because he can’t feel his hands.

“It’s because he can’t with the cold,” clarifies his friend before lying on his back to warm him with a hug.

“Come on kid, come on,” he said. Static, the two get excited, while two other friends, all aged 23-26, they throw their blankets and their backpack inside from a drain on the side of the road, to see if they can protect themselves to sleep.

Some believe that Santiago (more than 2000 km south of Colchane) is close to the highland border that borders the Bolivian city of Pisiga.

There, they learn that to get to the capital, one must first see how to advance to Huara, a town 170 km further on this road, with no one in sight and in bad weather. The few villages have no electricity and there is little water.

“Many come with cell phones,” I say?how don’t they check where they are going before So that the bad guys don’t mistreat them either? », Asks Ana Moscoso, owner of a store in Chusmiza.

They are quiet little towns “and we were afraid because some enter the houses without asking permission,” says Moscoso.

In these regions, there are hamlets where the rejection of Venezuelans increased in January, as in Quebec, city of Aymara alpaca shepherds. There they closed the entrance with a sign that warns: “Attention – Forbidden to enter the city – 3 pit bulls roaming free. “

“They came here, they threatened to kill me, to eat me because I took them out of my grandson’s house,” accuses Maximiliana Amaro, 82, who lives off her animals and her quinoa crops. , potatoes and corn.

Amaro is furious at the transit of Venezuelans and he complains that they go into town, enter houses while they guard the alpacas and arrogantly ask for things. “And in Colchane, they give them everything, food, but not us”.

Walkers in these parts perch on the backs of mining trucks or trucks to move forward. Others pay up to $ 100 per person to be dropped off in the port city of Iquique, but are ultimately abandoned before Huara, 78 km northeast of Iquique.

In Huara, they are already in the desert, they are seen in the streets, they sleep in the open air, and others huddle together in a shed fitted out by a local villager. Residents, police officers, soldiers all live the situation with astonishment, caution and a lot of empathy with a complex drama. No one feels safe, no one sees an easy solution, everyone is asking for help.

In Iquique, a city of nearly 200,000 inhabitants, the pandemic has hit hard.

There, health residences are always full of migrants who must quarantine themselves without being able to process immigration status or seek refuge. Some were taken from these residences in a military plane to be deported in February.

Since before December, thousands of migrants have arrived in Iquique and more than 8,000 they entered through the northern border. Some took buses to southern Chile, but during the crisis in the first week of February, many were transferred from Colchane to this station.

“We spent December 31 in this square, we have nowhere to go or money. There are people who give us tents, we cook, some go out to do odd jobs, sell candy or ask for money, ”says Anabella, 26, and with two small children surrounding him in Plaza Brasil de Iquique.

Others have reached the end of their forties in the city, such as Anyier and his family. From there, they receive money transfers from friends or family in different parts of Chile and buy the bus ticket for their new life.

“I’m nervous,” she said as she arrived at the Iquique bus terminal, full of Venezuelan, Colombian and Haitian immigrants, stranded for lack of money or papers.

Anyier and his family managed to reach Santiago on February 23, a month after leaving Guatire, and visited the home of his sister, who has lived here for three years. “Thank you my God, and I hope we are doing well”she said hugging her.

Source: AFP

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