“The Crisis at the Peru-Chile Border: Migrants Stranded and Tensions Rise”

The situation has even caused a diplomatic incident between Chile and Peru, and the Peruvian government decreed a state of emergency at the borders last week and deployed the Army to deal with irregular migration, something that Chile had also done weeks before on the other side.

BBC Mundo traveled there.

To get to the border crossing, you have to drive about 45 minutes along the Panamericana Sur highway from the city of Tacna, in Peru, a straight line that crosses the vast sandy plain.

The appearance of some small food businesses on the side of the road herald the imminent arrival at the Santa Rosa Border Complex, the office where all those entering Peru from Chile must register.

A few meters away is the epicenter of the conflict. A line of men dressed in green guard the Chilean side of the border. They are the Carabineros of Chile. In front of them, a few meters away, dressed in black and equipped with riot gear, agents of the Peruvian National Police. They are there to prevent anyone trespassing.

In the middle, the makeshift camp that the migrants have set up. A dozen tents under which they take refuge from the inclement sun that have become their home. There are belongings scattered on the floor, and flies and garbage accumulate. In the absence of beds, the children sleep on the floor and, in the absence of running water, wash little and badly with the bottled water they have received from some Chilean NGOs.

Joe Pirella, a Venezuelan from Maracaibo, has been here for days with her three young children. Years ago he left his country due to the critical economic situation, but now he has decided to complete the reverse journey and has crossed the Chilean desert with them.

“I left Venezuela due to the economic situation, but in Chile I have found that everything is so expensive that I do nothing but work, I only have enough to pay the rent, and I don’t have time to be with my children,” she says.

“I am a single mother and in Chile I don’t have any support. In Venezuela at least I have my house and my family,” she concludes.

Without papers, however, he cannot now go to Peru and continue north.

It is one of the most active in the complaints that migrants shout at the Peruvian agents who deny them passage. “Let me pass! I just want to go to my country!” he yells at them. But the authority insists that you cannot enter if you do not have valid documents.

He tells his story to questioning journalists and to staff at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) who collect data on stranded migrants.

Your insistence will be rewarded. She and her children are some of the lucky ones who are finally allowed to enter Peru.

Since he does not have a valid passport, he cannot fly, but now at least he will be able to cross Peru, Ecuador and Colombia on foot, the dangerous route that in one direction or another millions of compatriots have covered since the Venezuelan economy began its collapse in 2013 giving rise to one of the largest diasporas in recent history.

Víctor Uribe has not been so lucky so far. He left the state of Portuguesa, in the Venezuelan plains, heading for Chile, also looking for a life when he could not find a way in his land.

He worked for a time as a street vendor in the streets of Santiago de Chile, but lately things have gone wrong. “A Venezuelan killed a policeman and they began to discriminate against us, so I decided to return to Venezuela,” he says.

Víctor is referring to Daniel Palma, the agent who was shot in the head in the heart of Santiago on April 5, a crime for which two young Venezuelans were arrested and which has aggravated the feeling of insecurity in the country and the hostility against the Venezuelan community displaced to Chile.

It was the third law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty in less than a month, and national shock and opposition pressure pushed the president’s government Gabriel Boric to approve extraordinary measures against crime that include the preventive imprisonment of all foreigners detained without documents that allow them to prove their identity.

Already in February, Boric had ordered the deployment of the Army on the border with Peru and Bolivia.

The recent hardening of immigration policy, the cost of living in Chile and the difficulty of the procedures to regularize their situation are the reasons most cited by those who have now embarked on the return path.

So, like Boric two months earlier, the Peruvian president, In Boluartealso decided to mobilize the Army and last week approved an emergency decree to that end in the midst of a diplomatic escalation.

The mayor of Tacna, Pascual Güisa, called Boric “irresponsible”, the Chilean Foreign Ministry reacted by delivering a formal protest to the Peruvian ambassador and the Prime Minister of Boluarte, Alberto Otárola, demanded that President Boric “solve his problems and not throw them away to Peru”.

Those “problems” for politicians are migrants. Like Yusmari Romero, another Venezuelan mother stranded in the border desert who doesn’t know who Otárola is or understands why they won’t let her through if she doesn’t plan to stay in Peru.

“I just want to return to my country, but because of a few bad elements, all the rest of us are harmed,” she laments, bathed in sunscreen on top of a mountain of suitcases.

A short distance away, on the other side of the border that he dreams of crossing, hundreds of Peruvian soldiers sent by the government stand before the TV cameras while they listen to the harangue of General Jorge Chávez, Minister of Defense, who tells them about the important mission that they have been entrusted: “Secure the borders of Peru.”

They wear desert campaign uniforms and shout patriotic slogans before boarding the trucks that will patrol the 100 miles of dust that make up this border.

The objective is to end illegal entries, but a short walk on foot is enough to realize the difficulty of the task. Suitcases, shoes, empty cans and the remains of bonfires in the middle of nowhere reveal the audacity or desperation of those who, unable to get around the bureaucracy, ventured into the desert to continue on their way, albeit illegally.

The next day, at the bus terminal in the city of Tacna, an obligatory crossing point for migrants traveling to or from Chile, we found testimonies indicating that there are cracks in the official wall. A Haitian who prefers not to give his name tells us how he managed to outwit him after days stuck at the border. “Yesterday I paid US$100 to a Peruvian policeman and I was finally able to get through,” he says.

He waits for a bus that will take him closer to Ecuador, but the final destination he is looking for is the United States.

In Tacna, until not many years ago a quiet city of about 300,000 inhabitants that fills up on weekends with Chilean tourists attracted by lower prices than those of their country, migrants, with their heavy packages on their shoulders or installed in tents. in parks and squares, they have already become part of the landscape.

If the city was previously a transit point for those trying to reach Chile, now the growing flow of those who decided to return has joined. Faced with the blockade, both converge in Tacna waiting for their opportunity.

Like Rafael Pérez, a Venezuelan who has been living with his family for weeks in a tent next to the city’s wholesale market. He has tried three times to cross into Chile illegally to join his brother who is there “and earns his little money,” but he was intercepted three times. “I won’t do it anymore. The desert is dangerous and I don’t want to expose my children anymore.”

So, for now, he stays in Tacna, where on days when he is lucky and someone requires his services he unloads trucks that supply the wholesale market for 30 soles, about US$6, a day.

But many people from Tacna are concerned about the situation that has been created.

Mrs. Gladys Condori runs a fruit stall in the Grau Market in Tacna and says that “the city has become insecure.” “There have been many assaults and now we businessmen cannot rest easy,” she says.

However, it also calls for a solution for families blocked at the border. “I am also a mother and it hurts me to see those children abandoned in the desert. If what they want is to reach their country, they should give them a solution,” she claims.

The local authorities of Tacna have insisted since the last crisis broke out in demanding greater support from the Boluarte government.

Among them, the governor of the Tacna region, Luis Torres. He receives us in his house, which is also a winery where he produces the Pisco with which he likes to give his visitors. He can’t leave here since a judge imposed house arrest on him in a process in which he is accused of corruption.

“These days we have received support from the central government, which has sent us police reinforcements, and there is tremendous help from the Catholic Church, but this has already surpassed us,” he complains.

The governor says that in recent days the streets of Tacna have been filled with Venezuelans and other foreigners expelled from the neighboring country, and calls for an international agreement to solve the problem.

Many are well known to Brazilian priest Clailson Barp, who runs the Casa del Migrante de Tacna, an internationally-funded Catholic Church center that offers temporary housing, food and information to migrants; a respite, even if it is brief, for people embarking on a journey that is often traumatic.

“Here I hear terrible stories, especially from women, who suffer rape and other forms of violence on their way,” she explains.

Father Clailson has only been here for a few months, but he has already realized that some things are changing: “Before, Tacna was a transit point, but now with the blockade situation that has been created on the border, many people have decided to stay here waiting for the situation to clear up.

And no one knows if or when that will happen.

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