Ruth E. Hernandez Beltran
New York, October 14 From a public shelter room with two beds, a cradle and a chest of drawers, the five members of the Venezuelan Bonilla-Medina family begin a new life in New York, where they flee from misery in their homeland and from discrimination in other countries in the region.
Thousands of Venezuelans have come to the Big Apple like this family, drawn to its reputation as a land of opportunity. Most of them “encouraged” by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who for two months has been filling buses with immigrants on the border with Mexico and sending them to various cities, from where they end up in New York, even if the Bonillas arrived from ‘Arizona.
IN escape from xenophobia
Aurimar Medina, 38, remembers the very day his family’s life took a 180 degree turn: “It was July 16 at 11 am. We crossed (the border) and surrendered” to the US authorities. after a trip lasting one month and four days after leaving Ecuador.
The couple and their three children – aged 14 and 13, plus an 11-month-old – now live cramped in a room in a municipal shelter, but she doesn’t complain: her husband Andrews has already found a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant and adolescents are already schooled; Her daughter has even won two swimming competitions in these few weeks.
The family left Venezuela in 2016 and settled in Ecuador for the first time, but over the next six years the situation became very difficult.
“We left Ecuador because the xenophobia was very big. You go to rent an apartment and you come across a very big sign: ‘No Venezuelans’ and when you go looking for work they tell you ‘we don’t want anything with Venezuelans.’ return to my country, “Medina told Efe.
So Aurimar and his offspring decided to tempt fate and cross Colombia, Central America and Mexico: they sold everything they had and on June 12 they left Ecuador, holding their seven-month-old baby in their arms.
To avoid encounters with the police of all those countries, they traveled by bus, “from city to city”. To choose the best route, he consulted via WhatsApp with other emigrants who had already made the journey.
“We made the journey from Ecuador to Colombia, then through the jungle of Darién, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico, until we crossed the border with the United States”, in Yuma County (in the extreme southwestern Arizona), “where there was a space without bars,” he says.
“We were very scared, but we always moved on with God,” he says. After several days in shelters in Arizona and feeling exhausted, they asked their relatives (residents of the United States) for help to purchase airline tickets and travel to New York, where they were placed in a municipal shelter in Queens County.
DON’T DEPEND ON ANYONE
Aurimar, the driving force of the family, has managed to get his teenage children into a public school with a bilingual program, where they learn English without missing school.
While her 30-year-old husband works and the children go to school, she takes the opportunity to run various errands, such as going to a nearby laundromat.
“I went to the driver’s license today. We want to buy a car because I want to work,” he says. In Venezuela, Aurimar owned a pizzeria and a radio station, and later worked as a television producer. In Ecuador he adapted to the market and worked as a kitchen assistant.
He says he doesn’t want to depend on anyone: “I don’t have a job but I can sell anything, I’m looking for options. We are in the land of opportunities.”
“I am very opposed to all immigrants who, after going through everything we have been through, stand in a corner asking for money. I have studied the situation. If I have no money, I take a garbage bag and collect the bottles (to recycle them). ).) and so I have some money, “he says firmly.
“It is very difficult because I have a small child who needs fresh food and those here are frozen, you have to heat them in the microwave, so for breakfast, lunch and dinner”, besides the fact that they cannot receive visitors and there are very strict rules, the Venezuelan pointed out
However, despite the difficulties, she says she is grateful “for the help they are giving us in this chaos” such as the municipal identity card, medical insurance for children and education, and because they have been allowed to enter. in the country “where there are better opportunities for both work and a better life”.
He recalled that they went from Venezuela to Ecuador because their children’s school was kidnapping children. “I ran away from all of this. I feel a little safer here knowing that my children will be in a much better place, with more vision of the future,” she says and says she is already preparing for the first winter for the family. .
Medina dreams of having a home. In the meantime, they are “gradually collecting” money to move.
“I close my eyes and visualize myself in a house with my children, stable, with my husband and me at work. It is possible to have a dignified and more peaceful life,” she says hopefully. EFE
right / fjo
