Good morning friends!
I’m writing to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I have been participating in a conference on Human Mobility, Human Rights, and Theology for the last couple of days. Last night the second part of the conference began that will focus on a JustPeace and training on the practice of peace circles.
Let me say that the journey of de-centering the US in my worldview and my discipleship is a process that is honestly quite painful (and very humbling) -- it’s removing a kind of pride, nationalism (though I would really like to claim otherwise), ethnocentrism, and just general thinking of feeling special walking into a room as a person from the United States where you expect that everyone around you will accommodate themselves to you and your needs. It’s a journey I’ve been on now since beginning college, unraveling a lot of unhelpful narratives that were embedded in prior seasons of life. It’s been vital to my journey of faith because I believe I’ve come to see a truer version of Christ -- the Christ who was Palestinian, a refugee, marginalized, and despised.
I’m at a conference with leaders and faithful disciples of Christ from all around Latin America. It is through their eyes, their experiences, their identities, and their stories of working with marginalized populations in their respective countries that have invited me into this process of de-centering the US in my worldview and discipleship. The reality is that the US government has carried out so many policies that have been incredibly harmful to this region, creating or perpetuating cycles of violence that I often still have a hard time grasping. I’m always struck by how much people in Latin America know about US politics -- past and present -- and it’s because Latin America directly feels the impacts of what goes on inside the US. Politics always show up on human bodies. And maybe it hasn’t been mine, but our politics are showing up on the bodies of these brothers and sisters in Latin America in violent and dehumanizing ways.
Arriving at the end of this month, I’m reflecting on the three weeks that I’ve now lived in Los Chiles. I often have found myself thinking, “how in the world can people overcome such immense levels of traumas?” I write traumas because the traumas of being a migrant are layered and interconnected. At each moment, people are vulnerable -- violence, exploitation in travel, dehumanization by systems designed to ‘help,’ labor exploitation, food insecurity, shelter insecurity, etc. The list goes on and on. These are just some of the factors that I’ve begun to learn about, but I know there are so many more than what meets the eye.
There are so many opportunities along the way for people to take advantage of those who are migrating. Their stories are marked by exploitation, and I mean this in the full sense of the word. I’m still having a hard time grasping the levels of exploitation that correspond to the levels of vulnerability that accompany being a person who is migrating, being a woman who is migrating, being a child who is migrating, being a woman who is pregnant who is migrating, being a person of the LGBTQ+ community who is migrating, being a person with a disability who is migrating. All these things make someone increasingly vulnerable to harm and exploitation.
Since Sunday, I find myself worrying much about the political situation in Venezuela. About 70% of the people who I am meeting in Los Chiles are fleeing Venezuela due to economic instability, political persecution, violence, lack of access to basic resources (medicine, electricity, water, food). I expect that the “re-election” (though the international community has made clear that it has many concerns about the legitimacy of the results) of Maduro, who is now entering his third term as president, will send a new wave of Venezuelans through the Darién and through Los Chiles. There have been protests and violence in the streets following Election Day last Sunday.
Those are some current thoughts, but now I will turn to Yohairo’s story. June 16, 2024.
Today… duro (hard). I am left with a mixture of deep gratitude and a sense of the sacredness that was today. And also a sense of numbness… wondering when the rest of it will hit me.
Yohairo. Jefferson. Colombianos. Una historia de amistad y acompañamiento tan poderoso (a story of friendship and companionship that is powerful).
Uyyyy. Pero la cosa es que no hay palabras humanas que pueden expresar el horror que los dos han enfrentado. Dios mio. Ten misericordia sobre nosotros (the thing is that there are not human words to express the horror that these two have faced).
I cannot even begin…I don’t know where to begin. It’s truly because I can’t seem to find the words to express… the horrific reality that is the “normal” for each hermano y hermana that I am meeting here. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
Yohairo. I look into his eyes, and I see a deep pain… levels of trauma that I don’t know that I will ever be able to understand. The words that were shared by one of the younger teenage girls… part of the group of primos that left a couple of days ago… “y eso es lo que me tiene traumatizada…” (that’s what has be traumatized).
Yohairo’s story es así también. Every new thing that surfaced today, it was like he was saying “and this, and this, and this, and this… these are the things that have left me traumatized.” Things that he says he will never in his life be able to unsee.
O God, I hope that is not true… but I fear he is right. How can one supersede a trauma as deep as this? Or I should perhaps say traumas.
He began by telling me about what it was like to cross into Nicaragua… antes de que se los devolvieran las policías… (before the police returned them (to Costa Rica)).
I was wondering what it was like for people to cross into Nicaragua… well here it is.
If you do it legally, you must pay $150 per person to the border authorities… who has money for this? People are leaving their homes because there is no work. There is no money. So the little money that people take with them as they leave their homes… it is robbed from them (in such violent and horrific ways) in the selva.
I’ve heard so many parents this week talk about how relieved they feel that their children are not here with them. And that makes me look to all the children who are here… O Lord, what have they had to face?
Yohairo and Jefferson left to cross the frontera (border) in the cover of night… saliendo de Los Chiles como a las 5 de la tarde (leaving Los Chiles around 5pm). Because they couldn’t pay to pass legally, where a bus picks you up at the Southern border and drives you directly to the Northern border, they had to ir a pie (go by foot).
Yohairo has a serious knee injury. The doctor in Panama and the doctor here in Los Chiles have both told him that the liquid that surrounds his knee — hay que sacarlo porque si no, él podría perder a su extremidad, o sea, su pierna izquierda (it has to be drained, because if not, he could potentially loose his left leg).
Por lo menos, según Natalia y otros, Colombia tiene un buen sistema médico (at least, according to Natalia and others, Colombia has a good medical system). So Yohairo is currently trying to figure out a way that his family or HIAS can help him to get money so that he can purchase a flight back to Colombia.
I could purchase him a flight back to Colombia. But we are told not to give ni dinero ni nuestros datos a ninguna persona (we are told not to give money nor our personal information to anybody). Así que… lucho con la pregunta: que significa estar en solidaridad? (so I wrestle with the question: what does it mean to be in solidarity?)
He doesn’t want to leave Jefferson though… these two have been through hell and back together. They left Colombia as a group of 6, but the other ones who had more plata (money), they were able to continue on.
Jefferson comes from a very poor town… They’re from towns that are about 1.5 hours apart. Jefferson’s mom left him when he was young and his dad “doesn’t love him”… he grew up with his grandmother in a kind of poverty where the only meal you might eat in a day is a pedacito de yucca (a small piece of yucca).
The two are working with HIAS to see if they can head to San José to be able to find work or sell lollipops on the street corners. Yohairo can’t really work… his knee is not in good condition. He can barely walk. His only options to return to Colombia are by air… no way in hell he can atravesar la selva de nuevo (pass through the selva again).
Yohairo is so afraid of loosing his leg.
They can barely sleep at night… it’s so loud in the espacio seguro (the literal translation is ‘safe space’ but it is the community’s basketball courts/gym that is being run by the UNHCR for migrants who are arriving). People arrive in the middle of the night too… you can get clocked in the head by somebody’s bag. And people often carry things like latas (cans) of food in their bags… they’re heavy. Jefferson has had a bag dropped on his face while trying to sleep in his carpa (tent)…
In Nicaragua, it was at the mercy of a handful that they received food, potable water, a couple rides once they had been caught by la migración, threatened with a multa (ticket) and 6-8 years in preso (prison). From what I’ve heard from Isa… preso in Nicaragua is not a good place… O Lord, I cannot even imagine what the presos are like there right now.
Both were so ill during their days in Nicaragua… fiebre, escaldofrios, dolores de hambre, el ácido saliendo de sus estómagos tanto así que cuando volvieron a Los Chiles, tuvieron que tomar pastillas para calmar el estómago. Tenían ampollas en sus pies y manos, el líquido saliendo. Dying of thirst and hunger, eating mangoes that were rotting from the ground because they had no other food. No other option.
Only for the mercy of a señora and a few that gave them rides to get back to the port of entry through which they never officially entered, but close to where they crossed in the oscuridad (darkness).
When the policía migratoria caught them and threatened them… they radioed, they took their pictures, they marked down their datos to ensure that they don’t do this again. And they didn’t let them continue through, they forced them to come back to Los Chiles.
They almost died in Nicaragua… horrific.
And then Yohairo began to tell me about his 3 days in the selva… the number of bodies he saw. The violence. The machete that was poked at his chest.
People swallowed their money… and then their throats were slit open so that the money could be robbed from them… “Like a horror movie,” says Yohairo.
The number of bodies that he saw just thrown to the side… their bodies will never be returned to their families. There they rest. Can you even say rest? They are just tirados…
“Salvajes.” The prejudice against the Panamanians too… the comunidad indígena.
And he says that Venezolanos are “lazy.” “Colombianos always work hard.” All of the Venezolanos that are coming to Colombia ahorita are finding work for $10 a week and the jefes are taking advantage of this… now they don’t have to pay the $25 a week to Colombianos. So they are loosing their work there in Colombia.
“Y tú, Elena? De dónde sos?” “De los estados unidos…” I still haven’t figured out how to say this… I instantly feel the awkwardness and tension of a power dynamic and a privilege that I hold that I did nothing to get… but that I hold. The power of a US passport…
Later I thank him for sharing his story with me… that to me it is important to understand more of what’s happening right now to share with the Church and my communities in the US…
His eyes got wider. “Oh, if I would’ve known that before, we would’ve talked sooner.” He wanted me to communicate that people are leaving por necesidad… there are quite literally no other options for people in Colombia because of the violence and economic instability.
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