At the recent Christmas, Yakelin Timaure did not decorate a house with lights or buy hallacas, the traditional food of his native Venezuela. He was also unable to give gifts to his two children aged 10 and 15, with whom he crossed the border with Colombia two years ago through illegal crossings and walked 500 kilometers to reach Bogota.
“I tell my kids that the important thing right now is for us to be healthy. So on the 24th and 31st we don’t have clothes or shoes, we’re together here,” Yakelin told AP.
Colombia is the country in the world that hosts more Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Official figures estimate 1,700,000 people, of whom 56% are in the country irregularly.
Yakelin, 38, is a nurse by profession. His skilled and necessary manpower in a pandemic has not been taken advantage of because he does not have a passport or permission to work in Colombia. Sometimes a week she works at a foundation doing toileting and helping children with homework.
The unemployment rate for the migrant population who have lived in Colombia for a year reached 20.8% in the period from November 2019 to October 2020, compared to 20.9% in the same period of previous year, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE.
The money doesn’t reach Yakelin: he earns $ 115 a month and has to pay 100 for a lease in La Mercè, a popular neighborhood of steep, dusty streets south of Bogota.
At home he has a four-seater dining room with only two chairs, a small stove and a fridge in which he stores ice to sell in bags as a way to get more income. There are two chambers: one for her two children and another for her and her partner, who have informal and sporadic jobs.
Yakelin belongs to a large family. She is the eldest of seven siblings and remembers that at Christmas they all met in a Venezuelan town in the state of Lara, eight hours from Caracas. They made dinner with their parents and gave cake to the children.
“I’m very attached to my mother. I always told her I was never going to leave her alone. Now she’s sick, she fractured her foot and can’t walk. I’m very worried. I’m sending her 20,000 pesos (about six dollars) “But it ‘s not the same. It’ s very difficult to raise money for tickets to Venezuela,” she said.
Even in the midst of the pandemic and with the economic constraints they have, there are Venezuelan migrants who traveled to their country to visit their families for Christmas and bring them scarce resources to their homeland, where the minimum wage is for under a dollar a month.
“Human mobility has decreased due to the pandemic but has not disappeared. It is happening in both directions,” Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuelan Observatory at the University of the Rosary, told AP. “In real terms, closing the border what it has done is increase the irregular passage of people.”
In the border town of Cúcuta, Emmy Colmenares, a Venezuelan, and her partner John Moreno, a Colombian, work transporting suitcases through the illegal passages that connect with the state of Táchira. Paradoxically, they have not been to Venezuela for two years to visit their relatives.
“On a good day we make four trips to pack our bags, each at 10 pesos (three dollars) and sometimes nothing comes out,” John, 37, told the AP,
During the quarantine, which in Colombia began on March 25 and ended in September, its economic situation worsened. They were unable to work and Emmy, 33, had to rest due to her pregnancy.
“Sometimes it’s there for a cake, but this year there won’t be custard (typical Christmas desserts),” the Colombian added.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the already precarious situation of Venezuelan migrants and refugees has been aggravated by measures that seek to curb the spread of COVID-19, such as confinements, curfews and border closures, according to the Agency. UN Refugee Plan on its 2021 Plan for Migrant and Refugee Care, presented on 10 December.