Me (furthest right) with my family in Arica, Chile. Those beside me (from left to right) are: my younger brother, my mother, my sister, and my father.
By Lender García Páez
Given the infamy attached to my country’s name, I have neither the need nor the intention of repeating the story behind one man’s ‘revolutionary socialism’ and how it would come to devastate the lives of thirty million people. Nevertheless, and so my story may have its beginning, it would serve the reader to know that I am one of over five million Venezuelans forced to leave their home as a result of my nation’s unprecedented decline. It should also be noted that, while departures like mine continue in droves, my government is adamant that I am begging it to let me return.
With the collapse of a nation dominating the background, I will start the story of my departure.
Possibly the most pivotal moment of my life so far was disguised behind a deceptively normal day. My siblings and I had just returned home after a brief visit to my grandparents’ place, and I was ready to duck under my bedsheets for a good night’s sleep. Before this could happen, however, my mother made her way into my bedroom, which I shared with my younger brother, and asked us both to sit down. What followed was a sentence which has since engraved itself deep into my memory: “my sons, pack your things, because tomorrow we are going to Chile.”
“Mis hijos, recojan sus cosas, que mañana nos vamos a Chile.”
It is difficult to describe how such a simple sentence could cause such disbelief. I struggled to believe what had just come out of my mother’s mouth and I froze at the prospect of its consequences. The next minutes were quiet. I did not cry, nor did I ask my mother why this had all happened so suddenly; I simply stayed there, sitting on my bed, hopelessly refusing to accept the new, terrifying, reality that had just been tossed in my face.
I left a lot of things in that room. I used what was left of my time in Venezuela to process everything appropriately; and I can testify that shock, dread, and denial do not make for great allies of sleep.
Just like that, I was forced to part from eighteen years of my life; asked to say goodbye to the rest of my family – which unfortunately had to stay behind – to my home, my friends, and to any professional or academic future in Venezuela. In short, I was leaving everything that my family and I had worked so hard to build.
The journey was tough, but we were nonetheless blessed to have had sufficient funds for all five of us to take the nine-day voyage by bus. Indeed, it would be nine days before we could reward ourselves with the sight of the Chilean border. Unhappily, it should be acknowledged that many of our countrymen faced considerably more dangerous, difficult, and prolonged journeys, with some of those who I encountered forced to make their journey on foot. Their gruelling odyssey could take them up to fifty days, and the conditions of their travel led many of those I met to be interviewed by astonished television programmes who reported these stories to stunned audiences around the world.
Me (fifth from right) with my family (first, third, and fourth from right), queuing at one of the many border crossings on our journey to Chile.
The border between Colombia and Venezuela was just the beginning of our dreadful journey. On the Venezuelan side, the customs queue dragged on almost endlessly as thousands of us waited for our passports to be marked so we could be registered as having legally left our homeland. Those most desperate to flee simply crossed illegally under the bridge that separated the two countries. Frontier guards on both sides had become so accustomed to such movements that none would bother to lift a finger against them. Corruption hung in the air like a plague, targeting those unfortunate enough to have given a border guard the wrong look, or hapless enough to have left their valuables exposed. Venezuelan guards examined people’s luggage and rifled through their belongings, looking for the slightest excuse for ‘confiscation’. Laptops, phones, and even basic healthcare products – most of which had become luxuries sourced from abroad – were targeted with unparalleled zeal, as agents of the Venezuelan State bathed in their own lawlessness. Two such confiscatory confrontations hold a special place in my memory; the first involved a man begging guards not to take his laptop away as the latter demanded to see the item’s ‘proper documentation’. When such unspecified papers were inevitably not produced, the man chose to destroy his computer rather than hand it to the guards. In the second incident, a woman had re-entered Venezuela having crossed over to Colombia for basic goods. Seeing an opportunity, the border guards stopped her and demanded she hand over what she had found. As I watched, the woman unpacked the toothpaste she had travelled for and poured every drop of it onto the ground in front of her, denying the guards anything more than an empty tube. The guards looked on, indifferent to the suffering that surrounded them; their empathy had long since disappeared. Stealing and exploitation had become an unofficial pillar of their job, and a treasured source of new income. Those of us who witnessed such abuse were left with a stark reminder of what corruption can do to the human being – how it can lead someone to steal from those most vulnerable and those most hungry.
Reaching the Colombian side of the border felt like crossing into a different dimension. Immediately, we were welcomed by the Colombian Red Cross, who provided us with aid and supplies including food, water, maps, and even pillows and blankets. People here were kind and welcoming, yet receiving such sympathy and generosity allowed me to begin to comprehend the magnitude of the journey ahead of us. I felt grateful to my hosts, but terrified of what lay before me.
Most of my nine days of travel were spent sleeping, as I tried to cope with my crushing fatigue. In many cases, this condensed my experiences to short and fleeting memories, mostly from inside the bus. The journey from Colombia to Ecuador was one such fleeting memory, and I remember it passing me by quite swiftly. Throughout my voyage, sleeping was the best tool I had to avoid confronting the reality of my displacement. The only thing I wanted, I suppose, was to wake up from my interminable nightmare; and each moment of rest temporarily brought with it the hope of such salvation.
Our arrival at the Ecuadorian border was the polar opposite of salvation. People were no longer queueing at customs, they were camping; all to secure a vital passport stamp with which to show the authorities that our entry had not broken the law. The brutally cold weather and tortuously long wait turned our eight hours at the border into one of the worst moments of our journey. Looking back on this juncture, I continue to be amazed at the impact that such dire conditions ended up having on my perception of time; rarely have eight hours lasted so long and felt so insurmountable.
To cope with the sheer scale of border crossings, Ecuadorian authorities gave each migrant a number and placed it on their wrist. Here, my mother is number 345 and my father is number 346.
We were lucky to have gotten our passports stamped by the end of the day. During our wait, we had spoken with those around us, many of whom had been forced to spend the night sleeping on the street as they waited their turn. As soon as our passports were stamped, my mother ushered us onto the first bus we could find. Given the relatively small size of Ecuador, and the fact that we had travelled across it at night, we barely saw any of the country. I recall my departure from Ecuador as having happened in the blink of an eye; no sooner had I fallen asleep than I woke up at the Peruvian border.
Upon arrival, the Peruvians I encountered seemed polite and sympathetic, yet incredibly candid. It did not take long for a man to approach us and warn us to stay alert:
“Take care of your belongings and stay together because this is a dangerous area and foreigners present easy targets for thieves. The fact that there are so many children in your group creates an easy opportunity for them to rob you and run as they do not expect resistance.”
“Estén alerta. En esta área, los extranjeros son presa fácil de los ladrones, y más aún si vienen con niños.”
None of us were particularly surprised by this news. Criminality, after all, is extremely commonplace across Latin America, and tends to be even more pronounced in its border regions. Neither were we surprised that this specific area would be dangerous, given the almost complete lack of police and the proximity of a prison nearby. Nevertheless, we were forced to come to terms with our security predicament, as we had arrived too late to catch the next bus on our journey and would have to camp overnight. We spent that night at the local bus station, huddled under our Red Cross blankets. By now, I was exhausted. Forcing myself to sleep was not working, and signs of dehydration and malnourishment were starting to show in us all. At a certain point on a journey of this length, food loses its flavour and even the taste of water can lead one to feel nauseous. We had only packed the foodstuffs easiest to carry around and these mostly consisted of different types of soda crackers and plenty of tuna. Our shared budget for this trip had to last us as long as possible and money was only spent when it was needed most. Naturally, a proper meal was simply not an option.
The number of Venezuelans sharing our journey through Peru was noticeably high and trying to find enough seats on a bus towards the capital often seemed impossible. We arrived at a transit stop en route to Lima at around two o’clock in the morning, which for us meant another night on the street while we waited for the bus terminal to open. It was here, though, where we met some kind and compassionate people who offered their help to us. They opened their cars and tidied their seats so that the women in our group – my mother, my little sister, and a family friend of my mother’s – could lie down in their vehicles and get some rest. Meanwhile, the men sat down next to the cars and passed the time talking with the nearby taxi drivers and with a little boy who stood by his stall selling an array of different foods and snacks.
The next morning, the good Samaritans bought us food and warm drinks with which to start the next part of our journey. Apparently unsatisfied with the extraordinary support they had given us so far, they offered to drive us to the bus station which, although not far away, was infinitely appreciated by our baggage-laden family. Each one of us was carrying two large suitcases brimming with our belongings, and we would each take it in turns to carry the food bag – the heaviest of them all.
Me (furthest right) with my family and our travelling friends on the border with Ecuador.
No sooner had we arrived at the bus station, than the challenges of our journey returned – this time in force. The bus company taking us to Lima had oversold our tickets and space onboard was now dangerously limited. Although our seats had remained intact, they now told us there was no space for our luggage. Instead, the company employees offered a solution: the luggage would be loaded onto the next bus – but with no guarantees. My mother is a woman of strong character and the news of this oversale understandably led to fury. She argued with half the staff, chiding them for their negligence. In the end, however, we had no alternative but to leave our luggage at the station and hope for the best. We thought perhaps this was some kind of scam, some kind of swindle; could we realistically expect to see our belongings again? What little calm we could now enjoy on our way to Lima came in the form of exhaustion. Indeed, it was the bus company’s fault for overselling their tickets, but what could we do? We were foreigners, with no papers, and no energy; what else could we have done?
None of us could sleep on the ride towards Lima. Instead, we looked out of the window, seeing miles upon miles of grey sand dunes and poverty. Once we reached the Peruvian capital, our welcome party consisted of unbearable heat, dilapidated homes, and a cacophony typical of a bustling metropole. The city was huge; cars honked, people yelled, and the buses were filled with commuters packed together like sardines. In fact, for a moment, we almost felt like we were back home in Venezuela. Once we arrived at the bus terminal, the fateful countdown began: would we ever see our belongings again? As we stood there and waited, the panic set in. Nevertheless, the risk had been taken and we would simply have to live with the consequences, no matter how dire.
Fortunately, and to our complete surprise, our luggage arrived one hour later.
Suitcases in hand, we now turned our attention to the penultimate stretch of our voyage: from Lima to the Chilean border. While we made our way towards Chile, I began to experience symptoms of a strange sickness that I had never experienced before: my skin turned yellow with jaundice, with the sickly pale colour even spreading into my eyes. A series of stomach pains had become agonising to the point where sleep became impossible. I vividly remember crying through the sleeplessness and the pain. What for others could have been a few hours’ travel, had for me become an endless loop of agony. Ultimately, we were informed that I was suffering from an episode of ‘Gilbert’s Syndrome’ which, although hereditary, is primarily triggered by dehydration, malnutrition, stress, and fatigue. Clearly, after nine days of travel, the journey was beginning to leave its mark.
Poster design courtesy of Maximilian Frederik van Oordt for KCL Latin American Society and Lender García Páez.
We were not the first – nor would we be the last – to choose Chile as our destination. Queues upon queues of migrant buses decorated the highway leading to the country’s ‘Arica-Chacalluta’ border complex. The saturation of vehicles meant that travellers would have to alight early and walk the rest of the way. No sooner had I exited the bus than I was enveloped by the unforgiveable heat of the Atacama Desert. To add insult to injury, the jaundice of my Gilbert’s Syndrome led me to march across the desert in a warm winter jumper and a hat, so as not to draw attention to my illness. Nevertheless, despite the bitter cocktail of heat and sickness, my primary worry was the prospect of getting turned away at the Chilean border.
To my surprise, my entry into Chile went smoothly. Once I reached the front of the queue, the border police stamped my passport and allowed me to enter the country. Having been the first to step on Chilean soil, I sat on a nearby tract of pavement and waited for my family. For a brief moment, it seemed as though the challenges and risks of our journey so far had been rewarded with a swift, almost humane, entry into our destination.
If it seems too good to be true, however, it probably is. In stark contrast to my experience, my mother’s entry was marked by fear and frustration as the customs officer she had been assigned to had forgotten to stamp her passport. The lack of legal entry could block the path to residency and grease the avenues of deportation. Should my mother seek employment in this new country, that stamp could mean the difference between working legally or illegally – with serious consequences for her salary and protections. Throughout our voyage, those little blue marks had separated us from the status of ‘illegal immigrant’ and now, the simple inattention of one border officer could entirely overturn my mother’s migratory future. My mother requested the woman to please stamp her passport but was told that, if she persisted, she would face expulsion back to Peru. Not willing to risk such a setback, our family moved forward and made its way towards the nearby port city of Arica. There, we were taken in by distant relatives – cousins of my mother – and were able to enjoy, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, the smell of clean bedsheets and the feeling of a full stomach. The next few days were spent walking around the city and enjoying the Pacific coast as we recouped our energy for the final phase of our journey down to the Chilean capital.
Few appreciate the true dimensions of South America. My journey so far had taken me across almost five and a half thousand kilometres (over three thousand miles) – the distance between the capitals of France and Kazakhstan. What remained now was a ride across almost half of the world’s longest country and it would take twenty-five hours for our bus to cover this last, two-thousand-kilometre (over one thousand mile) voyage.
My arrival in Santiago was like nothing I had experienced so far. As I sat in the bus, I became mesmerised by the city’s infrastructure, by its cleanliness, and by its modernity. For someone who has not yet been to Europe, the Chilean capital bore the closest resemblance so far to my imagination of the developed world. I watched the urban landscape closely; this would be my new home – at least for the foreseeable future. And it is here, in Santiago de Chile, where my journey could finally end. Seven thousand four hundred kilometres (or almost five thousand miles), nine days, and five countries later, and we had ultimately arrived at our destination.
Listening to the stories of each Venezuelan émigré will undoubtedly provide you with a great library of unique, sometimes even contradictory experiences. For many, their journeys were longer, tougher, and, in some cases, fruitless. My experience is by no means universally applicable to those of other migrants, but may, hopefully, provide an insight into the world many of us had to confront.
Thank you for reading my story.
Lender García Páez is originally from Valencia, Venezuela, and now resides in Santiago, Chile. The events of this piece took place in January 2018.
Me (furthest left) with my family under the Chilean flag in the frontier province of Arica. With me in this photograph are (from left to right): my younger brother, my sister, my mother, and my father.
