NewsLatin AmericaThe Africans who look to the Central American step as an alternative to Europe

The Africans who look to the Central American step as an alternative to Europe

Kedr Abreha remembers with anguish his crossing of the Darien Gap: “I was very scared, I had never seen the jungle! It didn’t stop raining and you couldn’t see the sky. As he tried to make his way through the lush vegetation, he could not help but compare that wild nature, which blinded his eyes, with the arid landscape of his land, of dry forests, where the gaze was lost in infinity when he pointed at the darling.

Abreha, recently arrived in Danli, a Honduran city on the border with Nicaragua, fled two months ago from Tigray, the northernmost of the ten ethnic regions of Ethiopia, a region submerged since the end of 2020 in a war that has claimed thousands of lives. and caused the exile of hundreds of thousands. “First I arrived in Addis Ababa (the capital of the country) and paid more than 3,000 dollars to get a false passport to fly to Bolivia. It took me 60 days to get to Honduras,” says the Ethiopian who, like so many Africans, decided to cross Central America to get a better life, or save it.

Kedr Abreha headed for the United States from Tigray, Ethiopia. He escaped to Kenya and from there managed to fly to Bolivia. For the next 60 days he has been walking all the way to Honduras. He doesn’t know anything about his family, he doesn’t even know if they are alive or dead. He only has one goal, to get to the US. In the image, he poses in the center where he will spend the night in the town of Danli, a few kilometers from the border with Nicaragua, the last one he has just crossed.Gonzalo Hohr

“Since 2000 there has been an increase in African migrants who choose to flee through Latin America,” explains Ariel Ruiz, public policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). The increasingly strict controls that Europe is establishing and the tragic deaths of those who travel in small boats that are shipwrecked in the Mediterranean –and which are spread through dramatic news and rumours– are changing the traditional destinies of Africans (Spain, Germany , Italy) on the American continent. As the expert explains, “this alternative is being carried out, above all, by those who have resources and have more information about the opportunity to reach South America and, from there, to the United States.” It is a process that lasts months, and even years. “And that it is very dangerous,” remarks Ruiz.

Although the number of sub-Saharans traveling through the regions of the Americas is still small when compared to the large-scale movements of Venezuelans and migrants from certain Central American countries, “the rates are rising,” says the MPI analyst.

In the first six months of this year, Mexico detained 2,000 foreigners from Africa, when only from January to March 2022 it intercepted 7,600 migrants of all nationalities. “But until 2020, the Africans who crossed were between 100 and 200, which shows a significant increase,” Ruiz calculates. In the United States, the irregular passage of some 70,000 people of African and Asian origin has been registered. “Now they have more information, they guide them on the routes, they transmit the data to them through WhatsApp and other platforms, which is facilitating the rebound,” says the migration policy expert.

In the town of Danli, in the south of Honduras, a few kilometers from the border with Nicaragua, hundreds of migrants crowd every morning at the doors of the Attention Center of the National Migration Institute.  Coming from southern countries and African countries, they are looking for the papers that will allow them to continue traveling through the country and continue their route to Guatemala, Mexico and, finally, the United States.  / Danli, Honduras.
In the town of Danli, in the south of Honduras, a few kilometers from the border with Nicaragua, hundreds of migrants crowd every morning at the doors of the Attention Center of the National Migration Institute. Coming from southern countries and African countries, they are looking for the papers that will allow them to continue traveling through the country and continue their route to Guatemala, Mexico and, finally, the United States. / Danli, Honduras.Gonzalo Hohr

The new migratory alternative followed by Africans is the same as those who flee from the Latin American region itself. When they arrive in Colombia and want to continue through Panama, they find themselves in the Darien jungle, the natural barrier where Abreha thought he would die, where the worst infections and viper bites lurk, where you have to dodge human corpses on the ground to move forward. where the tropical humidity is suffocating. A place, as Abreha recounted, on certain paths the vegetation does not allow seeing the sky.

“She had a particularly bad time there, she got very tired and had unbearable pain,” testifies Ben Oumou, an Ivorian traveling with his pregnant sister. They left Brazil together a month ago and did not stop until they arrived in Honduras. The next trip will be to get to Guatemala and cross into Mexico, to Tapachula. In this border city, two alternative routes arise: go up the Gulf of Mexico to Texas or cross, from the center of Mexico, to Tijuana. But “the African population does not usually take it, according to the movements that we have followed,” says Ruiz. “Another recent observation is how the number of Africans who decide to stay in Mexico is increasing,” he adds.

Cultural, linguistic and legal barriers

“I want to get to the United States and have a life in peace, where they don’t kill me,” says Abreha. She has been traveling for more than two months and five in a shelter in Danli. She came to this city from the border town of Trojes, a dirt road between mountains flanked by coffee plantations and cattle. Along the precarious road, many days collapsed by the mud dragged by torrential waters and the passage of overflowing rivers, isolated communities appear wrapped in the spectacular green landscape that colors the eucalyptus forests and that in this season masks the fog: from time to time, a very poor house, a small grocery store, a rural school, more than one church with a cement facade… And the buses, full of foreigners fleeing poverty, lack of opportunities, political persecution and conflicts.

“I left to escape the war, they were killing us all,” says the Ethiopian. His nationality does not match the ones Latin American immigration authorities usually deal with. “This year about 200 Ethiopians have registered. Although there are various countries in Africa, the majority are from Senegal, Angola and Ghana”, Ruiz points out.

Africans are the most discriminated population in transit and encounter the most obstacles on the roads. “Since they don’t speak Spanish and don’t know the region, they are the ones they try to extort the most,” says Alice Shackelford, UN resident coordinator in Honduras, who has been denouncing for months the xenophobia that is being created in the border area of ​​the Central American country.

The integrity of any migrant is susceptible to being violated, but for Africans it is even more so due to the cultural contrast. “Especially when we talk about those who want to arrive legally in Mexico and the United States,” says Ruiz.

At the Attention Center of the National Migration Institute, a few kilometers from the Honduran border with Nicaragua, displaced persons must sign up on a list and follow a slow administrative process.  In the case of African migrants, the process is much more difficult due to linguistic and cultural barriers.
At the Attention Center of the National Migration Institute, a few kilometers from the Honduran border with Nicaragua, displaced persons must sign up on a list and follow a slow administrative process. In the case of African migrants, the process is much more difficult due to linguistic and cultural barriers.Gonzalo Hohr

“What further complicates the situation is that neither the receiving nor the transit countries have the experience or resources to provide the support they require. The integration of these people is very hard. They cannot opt ​​for access to services for migrants because neither Mexico nor the United States have personnel who speak their languages ​​to serve them,” the analyst highlights. In order to process the permit at the Danli migration office, Abreha translates from English with a mobile application what he wants to say. “We communicate like this, although it is very difficult and desperate,” confesses the Ethiopian.

Legal limbos and unsolicited political asylum

The other side of the coin of the African migratory flow that reaches Latin America, a relatively new phenomenon, favors another of the many legal limbos of the complex panorama: they cannot be deported. “The United States, Mexico and any country in Central America lack the capacity to validate documents from African countries. There are no efficient repatriation agreements that allow them to return to their countries, as there are in Europe. So almost all African citizens are held for a few days and, since they cannot verify the identity, they let them go, “says the analyst.

Although, as the humanitarian treaties explain, this type of population could apply for political asylum, only a few do, unlike the international protection that Venezuelans, Cubans or Nicaraguans are receiving.

“We escaped from the Ivory Coast because they were killing our family. The last one was my brother-in-law, the father of my future nephew,” says Ben Oumou, looking at his sister’s six-month-old belly. Although because of their physical features, migration technicians sometimes confuse them with Haitians, not many African women are seen in the area.

The profile of the African migrant is generally that of a man traveling alone. “But we know that more and more families will arrive. Although there are no unaccompanied minors,” Ruiz points out, expressing a difference with the Central American migration that irregularly crosses the region: so many adolescents, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, who have not turned 18 and travel alone.

“African migration reflects a panorama very similar to that of Mexico in the 1990s: men, fathers of families, who traveled alone to settle in the United States in search of work and who, when they had the money, brought their families” , clarifies the analyst.

This is not the case of Abreha, 28 years old. “I don’t have children and I lost contact with my family a long time ago; I don’t know if they managed to escape, if they are dead or alive”, admits the Ethiopian, who at first thought of seeking refuge in Europe, until they told him it was better to go to the United States. Like him, more and more Africans are deciding to replace traditional routes with the Latin American corridor. And, as the data shows, the number of this new flow through the region will begin to grow at a faster rate, marking a new chapter in the complex panorama of the migratory phenomenon worldwide.

“The new route that is being consolidated from Africa to the Americas is going to greatly complicate the situation and create even greater challenges. It is urgently required that the rulers and political decision makers are prepared to deal with this phenomenon that will generate so much need and humanitarian aid”, concludes the analyst.

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Source: EL PAIS

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