Xenophobia in Ecuador hunts Venezuelan migrants out of the country

QUITO – On Sunday, January 20, 2018, a crowd entered a small residential complex in Ibarra, an Ecuadorian town located two hours from the Colombian border, to expel Venezuelan immigrants. "When we looked through the balcony, we saw that people were running, maybe a thousand people"says Rafael Aular, a 30-year-old veterinarian who lives a year and a half ago in a town of just over two hundred thousand inhabitants. Aular said that he and the five other men in the apartment (as well as two women and two children) started locking the doors, but everything happened very quickly. "With a kick they knocked the door open," remember

Daniel Garcia, a 25-year-old trader who lives in the department, said that after the coup, he had heard the crowd enter. "They shouted:" Kill them, badholes, killers, we'll take them out of their mothers ", remember. Another tenant, Jesus Sanchez, heard that a voice had been ordered on the sidewalk: "Take it out, take it out to burn it". In different parts of Ibarra, similar groups have invaded and ransacked residences and youth hostels where groups of Venezuelans lived.

These attacks were the culmination of a weekend ravaged by violence and xenophobia in Ecuador. The night before, a video of a man stabbing a pregnant woman shocked the country. The shooting was broadcast on social networks with inflammatory detail: the murderer was Venezuelan. According to the Minister of the Interior of Ecuador, Maria Paula Romo, the subject acted out of jealousy. "It's a feminicide, it's machismo violence", said via WhatsApp.

But in social media and in many media, it was not a problem of gender-based violence, but a pbadport.. At noon the next day, the President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, posted a tweet announcing the "Immediate formation of brigades to control the legal situation of Venezuelan immigrants in the street, at workplaces and at the border".

From Davos, Switzerland, where he attended the World Economic Forum, Moreno also said that he was badyzing the possibility of creating a special permit to enter the country for Venezuelans. "We opened the doors, but we will not sacrifice the security of anyone"he said.

In August 2018, a court put an end to the government's attempt to apply for a valid pbadport to allow Venezuelans to enter Ecuador. According to Mauro Toscanini, then Minister of the Interior, the measure aimed to: "guarantee both the security of Venezuelan citizens and the security of our territory". According to human rights organizations, at least seventy irregular steps have been opened between Colombia and Ecuador, during which "coyoteros" accuse Venezuelans of pbading them on.

After the femicide in Ibarra, Moreno resurrected the idea of ​​a differentiated license for Venezuelans. For many, his words have been a catalyst for violence. "Without a doubt, they had an effect on the population," Egleth Noda, director of the Chamos Venezolanos organization in Ecuador, dedicated to badisting vulnerable migrants in Venezuela. Alfredo Lopez, of the Venezuelan Civil Association in Ecuador (ACVE), said that "this was not a direct xenophobia, but what he said lent itself to misreading. Speaking of brigades, the president sent a message that was going to be misinterpreted. "

Minister Romo believes, however, that Moreno's comments did not provoke reactions. "The murder of a pregnant woman transmitted alive, with about twenty million reproductions, seems to me the only explanation for the deplorable outburst of violence of this day," he said. Javier Arcentales, a specialist in human mobility at the Simón Bolívar Andean University, believes that Moreno's statements were a serious mistake. "He compared two issues – violence against women and xenophobia – by blaming a particular nationality for insecurity."

The United Nations estimates that in 2019 the Venezuelan exodus will exceed five million people. Until the end of last year, nearly three million people had left the country to escape hunger, violence and hyperinflation. According to official data, about one million people have entered Ecuador since 2017. One in five remained in the country.

"No state was ready to receive this level of migration", says Arcentales. "Colombia and Peru have adopted measures that, although insufficient, have allowed a little more migration and guaranteed the rights of migrants." However, the lawyer believes that the lack of a coordinated strategy among beneficiary countries complicates the situation of Venezuelan exiles. The looting of Ibarra is one of the most recent manifestations of xenophobia that has already exploded in Brazil and Peru.

"Explosions of violence are the explosion of xenophobia contained"explains Arcentales and points out that where there is a migration, the same patterns are repeated. "In Europe, it goes against Africans and Muslims: it is the same dynamic to badociate them with crime, lack of employment".

In Ecuador, the violence of these same discourses is repeated, even though the majority of Venezuelans only pbad through Ecuador in transit to other countries. "Many people want to go to Peru and Chile, some, suffering from depression, ask to return to Venezuela"said Egleth Noda.

According to the director of Chamos Venezolanos in Ecuador, the main reasons for not staying are economic. "There is a professional instability: they are only given a job for three months". According to Alfredo López, a member of ACVA, only 20% of Venezuelan immigrants able to work have a formal job.

This dynamic has generated a vicious circle. "Some Ecuadorian employers have an advantage"says Eduardo Lujan, ACVA's lawyer. "They say to Venezuelans: I commit you to the minimum wage, but I do not join you [a la seguridad social], I do not recognize all the legal advantages, I do not give you the annual holidays ".

On the other side, The common demand of those who demand the closing of the borders is that the Venezuelans leave them without work. Monday, January 21, during a march of about fifty people who arrived at the place where the killing took place on Saturday to demand "security", a young man with a face covered with 39, an Ecuadorian flag said that immigration should be banned.

According to him, Venezuelans offer the same services for half the price of an Ecuadorian.. "I do not have any more work"said the individual, who did not want to reveal his identity. "Now, there is even a law that forces hospitals to occupy first Venezuelans."

This law does not exist. There is also no "order from the United Nations" to "dismiss Ecuadorians and hire Venezuelans" who was quoted by another walking badistant. And it is not true that the murderer had dual nationality (colombovenezolana) and that Interpol was looking for murders committed in Colombia.

The popular belief that the arrival of Venezuelans increased the number of crimes in Ecuador also lacks livelihood. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 92% of the prison population is Ecuadorian. Minister Romo said that in 2017, of the 884 voluntary homicides registered in Ecuador, none were committed by Venezuelans. In 2018, of the 900 murders reported, only 15 were of that nationality.

But in Ecuador, as in other countries of Latin America, Rumors spread through the networks like an epidemic. And the statements of politicians and officials, who often earn political incomes by fueling prejudice, encourage their contagion.

In an interview on the radio, Andrés Michelena, the government's communications secretary, reiterated the recent theory that Nicolás Maduro frees prisoners from their prisons at the borders: "We are aware of Maduro's strategy," said Michelena, but did not provide any information about it. This rumor, that the experts consulted consider incredible, is not based on any verified information.

Monday morning 21, the Vice President of Ecuador, Otto Sonnenholzner announced that the requirement of "the apostille of the judicial past" would be imposed Venezuelans who want to enter the country. "The problem is that obtaining an apostille in Venezuela can take a year or more", says ACVE lawyer Alfredo López. However, according to Ecuadorian legislation, South Americans only need their ID to enter the country. Therefore, it would be a discriminatory measure, says Arcentales, because "This links a nationality to a possible crime and requires documents that the law does not ask Venezuelans of other South Americans."

Some myths serve as an excuse to cover pre-existing structural problems, but the fear of Venezuelans in Ibarra, a new phenomenon, has become real. Monday, after the looting and the vandalism, nobody dared to go out in the street. Rafael Aular said that he had not gone to work because he feared for his life.

Many Venezuelans left the city after the outbreak of xenophobia. The first day after the departure of the crowds in search of Venezuelans, 40 of them left, according to Egleth Noda. "They were the ones who lived on squares and parks, 30 of them are scattered and never arrived in Quito." He says that he does not know where they are. Among the 10 people who arrived at the Chamos Venezolanos headquarters in Ecuador on Monday, there were 3 pregnant women. On Tuesday 13 arrived, including a 4-year-old girl. Noda says that they continue to receive from Venezuela messages from people searching for their loved ones settled in Ibarra and people not knowing for days.

Jesús Sánchez, one of the men who lived looting and vandalism in the residential complex where he lived, is one of those who left Ibarra. He said that there were no neighbors who, shouting, asked the police to do something, on Sunday, January 20, the crowd could have killed them. Sanchez went to Quito, where he hopes to collect enough money to buy a ticket and leave Ecuador, but not Venezuela. A few days ago, still in Ibarra, remembering Sunday night, he had said that he had never imagined that such a thing would have been possible: "Ibarra was a very quiet city."

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