when thousands of people couldn’t return home for months

The fear of a second wave, with thousands of deaths a day from Covid, is pushing the national government to take tougher measures when it enters the country. This is why many Argentines abroad are already seeing return problems. It was already lived last year with the quarantine of eight months imposed by the government. At the time, the Foreign Ministry reported that around 45,000 Argentines had asked to return to the country after the border was closed, announced on March 20, 2020. Looking for them was chaos. Can history repeat itself?

However, on July 7 of the same year, Foreign Minister Felipe Sola announced the end of the repatriation program and the rest of the operation showed that they had returned to Argentina. around 245,000 people, many at the land border of mainly Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, and about 95,000 by air.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time created a special program to deal with the cases of Argentines facing serious problems of vulnerability. $ 1.1 million was spent to serve the 5,000 people who asked for help. But there are still thousands who continue to demand financial support from the state that does not arrive.

Where did they end up? Spain, United States, France, Italy, Germany. And some 15,000 people were distributed “to the rest of the world”, as the Foreign Ministry said at the time.

Bugle at the time, he took several notes with Argentines who had spent months living in other countries not knowing when they might return. Fernanda Mangieri, stranded for months in Peru, said: “Just as we left for Arequipa, the Peruvian president has decreed that he is shutting down everything. We cannot move from town to town. You cannot or enter or exit. ”

Despair is also the one experienced by three Argentines stranded in Ecuador. Leo Celucci, Sebastián and Diego traveled to this country for professional reasons and could not return for months. “We are powerless and suffer from a situation of lack of support and total abandonment on the part of the government,” they shot almost in unison from the hotel. in the that are.

“The situation is extremely serious and critical because here there is a curfew and it is getting longer and longer. On Wednesday it started at 4:00 pm and Thursday at 2:00 pm,” Sebastian said. “The Argentinian consul, María Paula Casado, told us that she could do absolutely nothing. She doesn’t even have the slightest possibility of action and she doesn’t know how many Argentines there are in Guayaquil. need someone to manage, ”Leo asked. who admitted they were desperate.