“The problem is with those cops who take our money,” Rodriguez said.
With his fuzzy black dog in tow, Gilberto Rodriguez left Venezuela two months ago on a perilous journey through eight countries, mostly on foot, dreaming of a better life in the United States.
Rodriguez leaves behind his wife and two children, ages six and eight. He slept poorly, became hungry, witnessed violence and paid bribes to the police.
But he smiles from ear to ear as he strokes his trusty two-year-old dog, whose name “negro” means “black” in Spanish.
“He has also crossed everything, just like us. He eats the same as we eat, he is also a migrant,” he told AFP in the eastern Guatemala town of Tecun Uman, the sixth country stop on his route north.
Their journey thus far has taken Rodriguez and Negro from Caracas to Colombia and through the perilous jungles of Darien to Panama.
There they encountered some criminal gangs preying on migrants fleeing poverty and political unrest in their homeland.
“We were with some women and they raped them,” recalls Rodriguez. “As far as we’re concerned, they stole our phones.”
The pair then made their way through Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras to Guatemala, where they joined hundreds of other undocumented migrants watching the Suchiate River that separates them from Mexico.
Avoid Detection
Unlike a few months ago, there is no crowds on the Guatemalan side of the river.
Police stop and board buses to verify travelers’ identity documents in an operation to prevent the formation of migrant caravans.
Since January this year, Guatemala has expelled more than 500 migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.
To evade detection, migrants have instead moved in small groups, with plans to meet again in Mexico.
There awaits the last hurdle: the Rio Grande, which separates Mexico from the United States.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has sought to end the implementation of Title 42, a public health order that allowed for the expulsion of migrants during the Covid-19 crisis.
The decision to lift the order caused a stir at home for fears it would boost the arrival of undocumented migrants, even with numbers averaging five times higher than in the years before the coronavirus outbreak.
But Rodriguez and most of the other migrants heading north say they’ve never heard of Title 42.
Police ‘take our money’
A more pressing concern is evasion from the police in Guatemala — and not just to avoid arrest.
“The problem is with those cops who take our money,” Rodriguez said.
During their long journey, the man and his best friend often depended on charity and sometimes shared their food.
When shelters didn’t allow animals, they slept on the street.
Why did he do this to himself? “We had to flee,” Rodriguez said of his life in Venezuela.
“The salary is not enough, you buy everything in dollars and what they pay you in bolivars is nothing.”
On the penultimate leg of his journey, Rodriguez climbs onto a boat made of old tires and planks, a journey for which he paid just over $1.
He holds Negro in his arms as a man pushes a long oar across the riverbed, and ten minutes later they are on the other side.
The dog, who sat quietly between his owner’s paws during the crossing, quickly jumps away and onto dry land, now in Mexico.
“We’ve crossed mountains, rivers, streams… we’re not afraid of anything anymore,” said Moises Ayerdi, a 25-year-old Nicaraguan migrant who made the same trip.
He said he had left his home, wife and three-year-old daughter because he was the target of political persecution by President Daniel Ortega’s administration.
“Our feet hurt, we arrived here sick… We are used to it. We will continue. Just as we crossed Honduras, Guatemala, we will cross Mexico,” he vowed.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
