National Contexts
This is not a project about vague concepts like “migrants” or “migration” and I want to stay away from generalised statistics and numbers and especially country politics. I’m interested in the individual’s unique and personal story and their own journey. However I consider it to be useful to give some context to the situations of the places where I met and recorded the participants to understand the wider backdrop in which their flights are taking place.
Mexico
According to the Mexican Office for Statistics the first quarter of 2019 were relatively slow and quiet months in terms of people seeking asylum in the country (1). I suspect that was due to border control being tightened after the large and widely reported caravan had passed through the south of Mexico at the end of 2018. I am also aware that the numbers only count people who claimed asylum, and most people do not. Based on anecdotal evidence the caravan had heightened the awareness of people on the move in Mexico which led to more overt xenophobia.
Mexico is still largely a transitory country. Something reflected in the people I talked to. Most participants are on their way. Most trying to get to “el Norte” (the USA). Nevertheless some people fleeing the situations in Central America are starting to see Mexico as a destination.
According to asylumaccess.org as well as my personal experience the vast majority of people involved in forced migration in the early months of 2019 in Mexico are from Honduras. Other nationalities are El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Venezuela - all of which I came across.
Colombia
Colombia is new to hosting refugees. It has been a country from which many people fled in the last 50 years (and continue to do so). It’s also a country with a devastating and still growing amount of internal displacement due to ongoing conflict. However, in the last five years Colombia has become a host to the largest population of fleeing Venezuelans in the region. Colombia shares over 2000km of border with Venezuela and has numerous crossing points. The Colombian Interior Ministry published that in 2019 up to 1.6m Venezuelans had arrived in the country (2). In opposition to this José Luís, a participant and leader of ASO URAVENCOL, an organisation who helps Venezuelans to settle in Apartadó, calculates that there must be over six million Venezuelans in the country. A calculation based on the discrepancy between official counts and his own reliable counts of Venezuelans in his city transferred onto a national scale.
I have come across stories of certain levels of xenophobia and animosity about the influx of so many foreigners, especially since numbers started to increase. Nevertheless the more prevalent attitude is a sense of hospitality or at least a reluctant willingness to help.
The deep political divides have shattered Venezuela into pieces and made way to a humanitarian disaster. Nevertheless none of the conversations ever veered into politics. Something I encouraged as the goal is to talk about personal experience, not political shifts and beliefs.
Another difference I noticed between Mexico and Colombia is that the Venezuelans I met who have crossed the border ended up staying. A lot of the participants I met in Colombia have been in the same place for a while, if not years then months. People are building new lives and new homes. Some people also travel back and forth taking food, money and medicine back to Venezuela.
Poster found in the bus station in Medellín: "Advice for migrating people"
Moreover there are recurrent cases of second generation Colombians returning; like Yuliana and Ruben. Both their parents fled conflict in Colombia a generation ago to Venezuela. Now their children return, this time fleeing Venezuela to end up back where their parents fled from.
Currently the narrative of internationally displaced people in Colombia mainly centres around Venezuelans. But there is another, less covered equally as important aspect to undocumented international migration in Colombia. One that bottle-necks at the Darién Gap in the northwest of the country along the Panamanian border. A complex and multifaceted and global issue in the the region around the golf of Urabá, split between the departments of Chocó and Antioquia. The Darién Gap is possibly the most super charged region in America. The only gap in the Pan-American highway connecting the continent from Fairbanks to Ushuaia and a hotspot for every type of imaginable illicit activity like smuggling of drugs, contraband and of course, people. According to the local priest and a local community leader I spoke to, the entire region is in the hands of organised crime and paramilitary groups with unlimited regional powers. The whole area has been a key player in the many decades long Colombian conflict falling into hands of different factions and groups resulting in a large exodus of people who were forced to settle elsewhere in the country.
There are books written about this region and its part in the Colombian conflict. Nevertheless, what interested me in the context of this project is that this area is a crucial link in a global migration path. Around the gulf of Urabá you’ll find groups from all around the world who are on their way north into Central America, generally heading to the USA. The Darién Gap is a funnel where people converge from everywhere. From the south; usually Ecuador, where you can fly in visa-free from many African countries, the Indian subcontinent or China (3). From the north, the Caribbean: Haiti and Cuba mainly. From the east, from Venezuela. I met people from Angola, Ghana, India, Nepal, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti. It’s a very complex situation and I would like to dedicate another whole project to this region. This time around I recorded two conversations and did some important groundwork for further development.