Mes: diciembre 2024

Venezuelan migrants keep arriving in Colombia. These faith leaders offer them a home away from home

Mariana Ariza, of Venezuela, straightens a compatriot’s hair at the Pope Francis Migrant Shelter in Palmira, Colombia, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Diaz)

Published by The Associated Press, December 2024 (link aquí)

Spanish story language here

PALMIRA, Colombia (AP) – It’s been three years since Douarleyka Velásquez abandoned her career in human resources. Her new job is not what she had planned for, but still feels rewarding. As a cleaning supervisor at a migrant shelter in Colombia, she gets to comfort Venezuelans who, just like herself, fled their homes hoping for a better life.

“I feel that in here I can help my brothers, my countrymen who come and go,” said Velásquez, 47, from Pope Francis Migrant Shelter in Palmira, a city in southwestern Colombia.

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history, with most settling in the Americas, from neighboring Colombia and Brazil to more distant Argentina and Canada.

According to the International Organization for Migration, Colombia hosts the highest population of migrants from Venezuela. Colombian records show that as of mid-2024, more than 2.8 million Venezuelans were in the country.

Pope Francis Migrant Shelter was founded in 2020 to address this phenomena, said the Rev. Arturo Arrieta, who oversees human rights initiatives in the Catholic Diocese of Palmira.

The city is mostly a transit point, Arrieta said. Migrants pass through on their way to the Darien Gap, a treacherous route to reach North America. A few others, who found it impossible to keep migrating or yearned for their past life, make a stop before heading back home. 

“It’s one of the few shelters en route,” Arrieta said. “The international community has stopped financing places like this, thinking that it would discourage immigration, but that will never happen. On the contrary, this leaves migrants unprotected.”

People reaching the shelter can stay up to five days, though exceptions can be made. Velásquez was welcomed to the team when she settled in Palmira, which was also the case of Karla Méndez, who works in the kitchen and said that cooking traditional Venezuelan meals for her compatriots brings her joy.

According to Arrieta, the shelter is mostly sought out by families, women traveling alone and the LGBTQ+ population. Food, clothing and spiritual counsel are provided to those in need; facilities include showers, a playground for children, and cages for pets.

Aside from this, the team provides information on human trafficking and support to women who have been abused and to children who travel unaccompanied.

“We have also encountered Venezuelan mothers who are looking for their relatives and are coming from or towards the Darien Gap in a never-ending search,” Arrieta said. “Families are searching for loved ones who disappeared while migrating.”

While no official records track the number of migrants who have vanished – in part because some of them traveled illegally – their disappearances have been acknowledged by human rights organizations and Colombian institutions.

“In recent years, we have found unidentified bodies whose clothing or belongings indicate that they are migrants,” said Marcela Rodriguez, who works at a local missing-persons search unit.

Arrieta knows he can’t protect every migrant from stepping into territories controlled by illegal armed groups. But he does his best to comfort migrants at the shelter. 

“Our motto is that we are a caress from God,” he said. “We want them to find an oasis here.”

Velásquez, whose husband, two children and a grandson left Venezuela with her, said that leaving everything behind was tough, but her family now feels at home.

“I feel very proud of what I do,” she said. “I always try to provide encouragement and tell people that all will work out wherever they go.”

One floor up, 20-year-old Mariana Ariza faces a dilemma that many migrants share: Where to go next?

After leaving Venezuela in 2020, she arrived in Bogotá with her 2-year-old and became a sex worker to support her child.

“It’s really hard to migrate and not being able to get a job,” said Ariza, now a mother of two. “I would do anything for my children. I would never let them starve.”

She’s undecided about going back to Venezuela to reunite with her family or heading to Ecuador, to look for better opportunities.

“Some people tell me, ‘You have that job because you don’t know how to do anything,’ but that’s not true,” Ariza said. “I learned a lot of things, but I haven’t had the money or the opportunity to move ahead.”

In Bogotá, where she initially arrived, the Rev. René Rey has spent decades supporting Colombian sex workers and LGBTQ+ people with HIV. In recent years his work has broadened to aid Venezuelan migrants.

He noticed an increased influx starting in 2017, when protests flared in Venezuela in reaction to an attempt by the government to strip the National Assembly of its powers. 

“It was a strong wave,” Rey said. “Many of them, who were sexually abused or were victims of human and labor trafficking, got here.”

According to Rey, about half of the sex workers in Santa Fe – the neighborhood where he works in Colombia’s capital – are Venezuelan, most of them between 21 and 24 years old. 

The building where he teams up with a Catholic organization called Eudes Foundation to provide information on HIV and cook lunches for homeless people is known as “The Refuge.” It’s also a place of prayer, where locals and migrants converge and a few transgender Venezuelan sex workers have found a safe space to practice their faith. 

“We just tell them: ‘God is around here, how are you? We would like to be friends’,” Rey said. “I think these honest encounters provoke something new, where the Holy Spirit really is.”

Out of the three prayer groups that he oversees at The Refuge, one is led by Lía Roa, a Colombian transgender woman who became a seminarian before her transition and later struggled for acceptance within the Catholic Church. 

Rey initially invited her to participate in activities inclusive of transgender people during Holy Week but later thought: What if she could have a bigger role in our community? So he took his proposal to the cardinal, and he enthusiastically supported it.

The group of half a dozen transgender sex workers – most of them from Venezuela – meet at The Refuge most Saturdays. First, they share a meal. Afterwards, they pray, meditate and talk.

“It’s been a challenge because Santa Fe is like Mecca for trans women,” Roa said. “They carry a rough past that has made them become invisible to the point that they lose their dignity as humans and daughters of God.”

Members of her prayer group often recount that they migrated because they could not find safes spaces for them as trans women in Venezuela. And even if many of them are just passing through Bogotá before heading back home or toward the Darien Gap, Roa feels that their meetings at The Refuge are meaningful and build loving, truthful friendships.

“In their own words, this process becomes spiritual nourishment for their way forward,” Roa said. 

“They leave with a new vision, because once you’ve been told that God hates you because you are trans, hearing a priest and another trans telling you that God loves you just the way you are definitely makes a difference.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

These Peruvian women left the Amazon, but their homeland still inspires their songs and crafts

Sadith Silvano, de los Paoyhan, una comunidad indígena Shipibo-Konibo en la Amazonía, se pone aretes en su vivienda y taller de arte en Lima, Perú, el 19 de octubre del 2024. (Foto AP/Guadalupe Pardo)

Published by The Associated Press, November 2024 (link aquí)

Spanish story language here

LIMA (AP) – Sadith Silvano’s crafts are born from ancient songs. Brush in hand, eyes on the cloth, the Peruvian woman paints as she sings. And through her voice, her ancestors speak.

“When we paint, we listen to the inspiration that comes from the music and connect to nature, to our elders,” said Silvano, 36, from her home and workshop in Lima, Peru, where she moved two decades ago from Paoyhan, a Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous community nestled in the Amazon.

“These pieces are sacred,” she added. “We bless our work with the energy of our songs.”

According to official figures, close to 33,000 Shipibo-Konibo people inhabit Peru.

Settled in the surroundings of the Uyacali river, many relocated to urban areas like Cantagallo, the Lima neighborhood where Silvano lives.

Handpainted textiles like the ones she crafts have slowly gained recognition. Known as “kené,” they were declared part of the “Cultural Heritage of the Nation” by the Peruvian government in 2008.

Each kené is unique, Shipibo craftswomen say. Every pattern speaks of a woman’s community, her worldview and beliefs.

“Every design tells a story,” said Silvano, dressed in traditional clothing, her head crowned by a beaded garment. “It is a way in which a Shipibo woman distinguishes herself.”

Her craft is transmitted from one generation to another. As wisdom is rooted in nature, the knowledge bequeathed by the elders connects younger generations to their land. 

Paoyhan, where Silvano was born, is a flight and a 12-hour boat trip away from Lima.

In her hometown, locals rarely speak languages other than Shipibo. Doors and windows have no locks and people eat from Mother Nature.

Adela Sampayo, a 48-year-old healer who was born in Masisea, not too far from Paoyhan, moved to Cantagallo in the year 2000, but says that all her skills come from the Amazon. 

“Since I was a little girl, my mom treated me with traditional medicine,” said Sampayo, seated in the lotus position inside the home where she provides ayahuasca and other remedies for those ailing with a wounded body or soul.

“She gave me plants to become stronger, to avoid getting sick, to be courageous,” said Sampayo. “That’s how the energy of the plants started growing inside me.”

She, too, conveys her worldview through her textiles. Though she does not paint, she embroiders, and each thread tells a tale from home.

“Each plant has a spirit,” said the healer, pointing to the leaves embroidered in the cloth. “And medicinal plants come from God.”

The plants painted by Silvano also bear meaning. One of them represents pure love. Another symbolizes a wise man. One more, a serpent.

“The anaconda is special for us,” Silvano said. “It’s our protector, like a god that cares for us and provides food and water.”

In ancient times, she said, her people believed that the sun was their father and the anacondas were their guardians. Colonization brought a new religion — Catholicism — and their Indigenous worldview was diluted.

“Nowadays we have different religions,” Silvano said. “Catholic, evangelical, but we respect our other beliefs too.”

For many years, after her father took her to Lima hoping for a better future, she yearned for her mountains, her clear sky and her time alone in the jungle. Life in Paoyhan was not precisely easy, but from a young age she learned how to stay strong.

Back in the 1990s, Amazonian communities were affected by violence from the Shining Path insurgency and illegal logging. Poverty and sexism were also common, which is why many Shibipo women taught themselves how to navigate their anguish through the heartfelt music they sing.

“When we encounter difficult times, we overcome them with our therapy: designing, painting, singing,” Silvano said. “We have a song that is melodic and heals our soul, and another one that is inspiring and brings us joy.”

Few Shipibo girls are encouraged to study or make a living of their own, Silvano said. Instead, they are taught to wait for a husband. And once married, to endure any abuse, cheating or discomfort they may encounter.

“Even though we suffer, people tell us: Take it, he’s the father of your children. Take it, he is your husband,” Silvano said. “But deep inside, we are wounded. So what do we do? We sing.” 

The lesson is taught from mothers to daughters: If you hurt at home, grab your cloth, your brush and leave. Go far away, alone, and sit. Connect with your kené and paint. And while you paint, sing.

“That’s our healing,” Silvano said. “Through our songs, our kenés, we are free.”

In the workshop where she now works and raises her two children on her own, Delia Pizarro crafts jewelry. She, too, sings as she creates birds out of colorful beads.

“I didn’t use to sing,” Pizarro said. “I was very submissive and I didn’t like to speak, but Olin, Sadith’s sister, told me, ‘You can do this.’ So now I’m a single mother, but I can go wherever I want. I know how to defend myself and fight. I feel valued.”

The figures in the products they craft for sale are varied. Aside from anacondas, they like to depict jaguars, which represent women, and herons, which were treasured by the elders.

A Shipibo textile can take up to a month and a half to be completed. Materials required to craft it — the cloth, the natural pigments — are brought from the Amazon.

The black color used by Silvano is extracted from a bark tree that grows in Paoyhan. The cloth is made of local cotton. The mud used to set the colors comes from the Uyacali river.

“I like it when a foreigner comes and leaves with something from my community,” said Silvano, touching one of her freshly painted textiles to bless it for a quick sale. 

She said that her people’s crafts were barely known when she and her father first arrived in Lima 20 years ago. But in her view, things have now changed.

In Cantagallo, where around 500 Shipibo families have settled, many make a living selling their crafts.

“My art has empowered me and is my loyal companion,” Silvano said. “Thanks to my mother, my grandmother and my sisters, I have a knowledge that has allowed me to open doors.”

“Here’s the energy of our children, our ancestral world and our community,” she added, her textiles still between her hands. “Here’s the inspiration from our songs.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.