During 2022, Guatemala has blocked the entry of 9,366 Venezuelans at the border with Honduras in Agua Caliente, in the northwest of the country, according to data from the Guatemalan Migration Institute. It is the nationality that has been most prevented from passing, followed by Cubans
Almost 10,000 Venezuelans have unsuccessfully tried to enter Guatemala during 2022 as part of their journey to the United States, on a route plagued by theft and pain, but which is transcendental to reach the “American dream.”
Marjorie Vásquez, a 36-year-old Venezuelan who crossed the border from Guatemala to Mexico this week with her husband and three children, is one of those cases.
“We have been traveling for a month. It was five and a half days in the jungle (of the Darién),” Marjorie told EFE on the border of Tecún Umán in the municipality of Ayutla, in the department of San Marcos, some 250 kilometers west of Guatemala City.
Vásquez and his family have traveled 4,000 kilometers in 30 days starting from Iquique, the Chilean city where they lived for five years since they left Venezuela due to its economic instability.
The five have crossed almost all of America, including a week in the Darién jungle in Panama, where they slept outdoors for two nights and survived despite food shortages.
In addition, in Guatemala they had to deal with carriers who increased the prices of transport tickets when they learned that they were foreigners.
Vasquez’s family, like thousands of Venezuelan migrants, are hopeful in the words of US President Joe Biden, who said earlier this month that Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans will likely not be deported to their native countries.
*Read also Biden assures that “it is not rational” to return Venezuelan migrants to the country
obstacles along the way
Several Venezuelan migrants who pass through Ayutla, before entering Mexico, agreed that the hardest part of the road was crossing the Darién region.
Others claimed that the Guatemalan security forces stripped them of their cash to let them continue their route and some were attacked by assailants on their way through the capital of the Central American country.
*Read also The dangers of the Darién do not seem to scare Venezuelans: the figure grows month by month
“The Guatemalan police stopped us twice and they turned us back, but on the third attempt at dawn we managed to get through,” Edgar, a 32-year-old Venezuelan soldier who was resting in Ayutla this week while collecting money to cross into Mexico, told EFE. continue the path.
Just last weekend almost a thousand people, many of them Venezuelans, tried to enter Guatemala from Honduras without success, but the Guatemalan immigration authorities stopped their passage.
Venezuelans who do make it to Ayutla beg for money on the streets or wait for a bank transfer from their families so they can pay for a raft and cross to the Mexican side of the Suchiate River.
In the meantime, they take refuge in the “Casa Sin Fronteras”, a hostel run by Scalabrinian Catholic missionaries who for three months they receive an average of 120 migrants each night, most of them Venezuelans.
“Migrants expose themselves to so many risks out of necessity and not for pleasure. They are forced to risk their lives and those of their children, even if they are children in their arms,” priest Percy Cervera, director of the shelter, told Efe in Ayutla.
Cervera explained that in 2021 they received 5,000 migrants, while during the first nine months of this year they have already served more than 9,000 people and at least 40% of them are Venezuelans.
The “Migrant’s House”, as the shelter managed by Cervera is also called, has the capacity to serve 80 people every night, but for about three months the figure has sometimes risen to 150 or 200 per day, which has caused a strong demand for food and personal hygiene products.
According to estimates by US authorities, some 6.8 million Venezuelans have migrated to the North American nation since 2014, most of them fleeing the economic situation in the South American country.
During 2022, Guatemala has blocked the entry of 9,366 Venezuelans at the border with Honduras in Agua Caliente, in the northwest of the country, according to data from the Guatemalan Institute of Migration.
In September alone, 2,240 Venezuelans were detained at the border. It is also the nationality that has been stopped the most, ahead of Cuban citizens (692), this year, according to the same source.
With information from EFE
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