5,000 kilometers of route and a ditch: the last dangerous barriers faced by Venezuelans who migrate to Chile

Soreimi Morán takes a deep breath and resists crying. She's exhausted and afraid. His 5,000-kilometer journey has already taken a week, but he knows that the finish line is near. Tomorrow, a human trafficker will sneak across this Venezuelan and her four children through the ditch that separates Bolivia from Chile.

“The cold is too cold,” says the 24-year-old migrant, in charge of her two daughters and two younger brothers. Her grandmother and uncle also travel with her.

“We want to get to Chile to give children a better future,” she says, fatigued by the 3,700 meters above sea level.

At least 20 people died in 2021 trying what Soreimi and his family will do: crossing the Pisiga-Colchane border, 460 kilometers from La Paz and 2,000 from Santiago.

Five people have died on that trip so far this year, according to local authorities, including a boy and an elderly woman whose bodies were found on the Chilean side over the weekend.

One step away

“As they are already one step away (...), despite everything we tell them, that others also come back and tell them the reality they have lived; despite that, they want to take risks”, says the nun Elizabeth Ortega.

Sister Eli, as she calls herself, runs a free accommodation for passing migrants.

The shelter was created on the initiative of the nuns themselves when they saw “the suffering of migrants” and receives about 150 people a month.

More than six million people have left Venezuela in recent years, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and more than half a million are in Chile.

They escape violence and scarcity in their country, sometimes on foot, and star in one of the most serious migration crises in history.

But where they arrive they sometimes encounter discrimination and even xenophobic attacks, such as in Chile, where they burned a camp.

A study by the organization R4V revealed that up to 600 Venezuelans enter that country clandestinely every day from Bolivia and Peru, a figure that skyrocketed in the last two years.

One of the main entrances is Pisiga-Colchane, despite being closed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soreimi and her family knocked on Sister Eli's door around eight o'clock in the evening.

They decided to wait the next day to start the hike that lasts from two to six hours depending on the route. This way they will avoid freezing temperatures and the darkness that hides wells, floods and thieves.

In addition, there is the ditch: a pit about a meter and a half on the side that separates the two countries.

Chilean military custody: The government of leftist Gabriel Boric, in power since March 11, maintained a state of emergency in northern Chile for police to receive military support in border control.

But those uniformed men cannot cover the 861 kilometers of border and there are almost no troops on the Bolivian side.

Human traffickers, coyotes or “chamberos” are everywhere and they know where to cross the ditch without being seen, a service for which they charge about 100 dollars per migrant. Although sometimes they leave them on the way.

They also help to carry children. “They're like baggage,” says Sister Eli, because they can't walk across the route.

The crossing

The most daredevils do it at night: they go deep into the desert and their silhouettes are lost on the horizon.

Others prefer sunrise or afternoon, like a group waiting next to the village restaurant.

One of its members talks to a certain Don Ramiro and they agree to meet at a nearby point where he will make them cross.

“We are going to pass illegals. (...) We are going to Chile because many of our relatives are there,” said Manuel Henríquez, a 26-year-old Venezuelan, before leaving.

The Bolivian police don't arrest anyone, but the situation weighs them down.

“Chile commits many violations of the human rights of foreigners,” warns a Bolivian agent. “With children, seniors... It's very sad,” he regrets.

In February, the foreign ministries of both countries - without diplomatic ties since 1978 - agreed on a working table on migration, but there is still no progress.

Meanwhile, Soreimi's family is approaching border control to try to cross legally, without success. They resolve to try tomorrow, with a coyote.

(By Martin Silva - AFP)

KEEP READING: