Photo: Galo Pagay
(Quito, February 16, 2023, npla).- Currently, more Ecuadorians* are leaving the country than at any time since the turn of the millennium. Some are already talking about an exodus. Some try to deal creatively with the effects, the feeling of abandonment. Anything is better than resignation in the face of an economic crisis in which people are literally starving.
The fact that people from Quisapincha are migrating to the USA is not new
Hugo says: “I sat at home in despair, like everyone else. And while we were locked up at home, the thought came to me: As soon as the pandemic calms down a bit, everyone will emigrate to the USA. There is nothing here, there is hardly any work right after the pandemic.” Hugo Chaumana is 24 years old and lives in the community of Quisapincha in the central Andes of Ecuador. The fact that people from Quisapincha are migrating to the USA is not new. On the contrary, most people in the Ecuadorian Andes have at least one family member or friend in the United States. Nevertheless, Hugo was right in his premonition. Hugo himself has a sister and a brother who have been living in the USA for almost ten years, and a niece who only left a few weeks ago. She was at the US-Mexico border when we spoke to him: “So I was thinking about the fact that more and more Ecuadorians are going to migrate to the US and I had an idea: I wanted to do a music video with my band film in which we play songs about migration, about what the migrants suffer on the way. A tribute to the migrants.”
“Children are literally dying of hunger”
Marcelo Manotoa, one of the community leaders, tells us that around 17000 people live in Quisapincha. Down in the village, many people work in commerce, and up in the highlands, most devote themselves to agriculture. Marcelo Manotoa says that it is mainly the people from the highlands who are emigrating because in recent years it has become increasingly difficult to sell agricultural products at prices that you can live on. That is why Cristina Burneo, activist and author from Quito, describes the current migration movements as flight from hunger. She is particularly worried about the Andean province of Chimborazo: “Most of the children with chronic malnutrition live in Chimborazo today,” she says. “Children are literally dying of hunger and nobody associates that with migration. The province is becoming increasingly empty, and the reason is hunger: people don’t have three meals a day. It is an exodus for survival.” The situation is similar in Quisapincha, 74-year-old María Carmen Casicama tells us: “We have nothing. We sell our hay and potatoes far too cheaply. And things aren’t growing well, we have little to sell. That’s why people are leaving, everyone is leaving, from all villages.” María Carmen has six children: three in Quisapincha and three in Brooklyn, New York. All three arrived in the USA with a coyote. Coyotes are people who smuggle migrants across the border, often for horrendous sums of $10-15,000, for which people go into deep debt. At times, María Carmen didn’t know where her children were and suffered a lot because of it. Back when her children left Ecuador, one of the most common routes was to fly directly to Mexico and from there to the United States. In September 2021, the United States strongly recommended that Mexico enact visa regulations for Ecuadorian citizens.
The pressure on migrants creates ever more dangerous escape routes
Since then, this path has become more difficult. But where there is need, people have always become creative, finding new ways, even if they are uncomfortable – or deadly. Nobody knows that better than Jorge Lucena. The music teacher from Venezuela migrated to Ecuador six years ago. Since then he has been collecting stories: of people who come, go, stay and return. “In September 2022, about 21,000 Ecuadorians made their way to the USA,” Jorge recalls. “There was an interesting phenomenon to observe: people set out in caravans. Venezuelans, Colombians and Ecuadorians. First we went to Colombia: those who had money took the bus, those who didn’t walked. There were thousands. In October I was invited to one of these caravans myself.” First Mexico introduced visa requirements for Ecuadorians, then Guatemala. Jorge says the US is moving its border further and further south. Many make the dangerous journey through the Darién Strait today. That means up to six days of walking through the jungle between Colombia and Peru, with no protection from criminal gangs and dangerous animals, and no access to basic infrastructure. Jorge knows how worrying this development is: “Every day you hear: the neighbor has left, so-and-so’s child has disappeared. A tragedy every day.”
Securing livelihoods in one’s own country would be a way out of the dilemma
What is missing are political measures to deal with the situation. Cristina Burneo believes that economic measures are actually needed to enable people in Ecuador to live a decent life. Currently, however, the remittances from Ecuadorians abroad play an important role in the crisis-ridden Ecuadorian economy. According to the World Bank, it was more than four billion dollars in 2021 alone, a record sum. There are also no programs for the thousands of returnees. Under US President Biden, the discourse may be less overtly racist than it was during the Trump era, but that doesn’t mean that US politics has fundamentally changed. On the contrary, last December there were record numbers of migrants arrested and deported. According to figures from the US immigration authorities, there were over 200,000. When people return involuntarily, it’s not just a financial disaster, explains Cristina Burneo: “It’s a shame. Your family may have paid $10,000 for the Coyote, and young men in particular are penalized if they don’t make it. It’s like this: You train, go to the gym, jog, strengthen your body to push the limit. You are young, you are a man, you must be strong. It’s humiliating not making it across the border.”
What to do against the stigmatization, the farewells, the despair when politics remains inactive? Some make music, others write. Just like Jorge Lucena, the story collector:
You are no longer a resident
And soon not even citizens
It’s time to leave
you have to go
Even if you don’t want to
Leave everything behind, and then a little more
So much fits in a backpack
Without money, without a compass
You take what’s possible
Anything that fits in your head
Anything your heart creates
Everything that encompasses your soul.
You can find an exciting audio contribution here (German) and here (Spanish).
Hunger and a lack of prospects – migration is constantly increasing by News Pool Latin America is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 international.