By Oliver Griffin
BOGOTA (Reuters) – A large crowd of Venezuelan migrants held up traffic on a Bogota highway on Wednesday, demanding to be allowed to leave Colombia and return to Venezuela.
Altogether, some 500 migrants arrived near the toll booths that mark the northern border of Bogota on Tuesday afternoon.
Some of these migrants said Colombian authorities were preventing the group of about 12 buses in which they were traveling from making their way to the border.
Colombia’s migration agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but police at the site said Venezuela limits the number of migrants who can return each day. Venezuela has said the number of those returning is limited to 600, to allow for testing and organizing the necessary quarantines.
The mass movement of thousands of Venezuelans back to their economically devastated country has been triggered by a coronavirus lockdown in Colombia, which has made it impossible for them to earn a living.
Now in its sixth week, the suspension of Colombian businesses has decimated the informal economy in which many of these Venezuelan migrants work, plunging them deeper into poverty and triggering a reversal in migration flows.
Colombia is the top destination for Venezuelans who have fled their country’s crisis, and some 1.8 million migrants have arrived here in recent years.
Now, a reverse migration has begun. Around 12,000 Venezuelans have returned to their home country as of Monday, according to Colombia’s government.
“There are children here and we have no food to give them, we have no water, no resources, nor anywhere to stay. We are living on the street,” said Jesus Bolivar, 34, a Venezuelan doctor who has been in Colombia for over a year.
Weary from travel, the returning migrants – including the elderly, diabetes patients and pregnant women – said Colombia’s migration agency would not allow the buses to leave until Friday.
“We’re in a bad way,” said Dubraska Dubian, 26, who was trying to get back to Venezuela with her husband and their three young daughters.
“How are we going to manage here until Friday? We can’t even wash our hands. We’re sleeping in the buses, we don’t have food,” Dubian added. “They have to let us leave.”
At least 300 migrants were unable to cross the border in the city of Cucuta over the weekend.
“What we want is to travel, to go back to our country,” Bolivar said.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin, Herbert Villarrage and Camilo Cohecha in Bogota, additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Caracas; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
