Franklin Hernández, 23, was saved by his lucky stars. After weeks of traveling to the Rio Bravo, the young Venezuelan did not want to wait any longer and launched last Wednesday, together with his brother, into the deceptive waters that separate Mexico and the US, while another person recorded him on video from the shore. They were both holding on to some kind of float, but Franklin was swept away by the current. They left him for dead, like so many, even the audiovisual document, accompanied by mournful music, was taken over the social networks of San Joaquín, a municipality in Carabobeño near the capital. The Venezuelan reappeared days later in a migration center, where at that moment he started rolling the wheel of fortune.
Thousands of their compatriots have managed to cross the border and already work in New York, Dallas or Miami, where they earn more money in a single day than in a whole month in their country. Social networks have multiplied the call effect in a society eager for a better life. The American dream, and not only for Venezuelans, is more valid than ever in Latin America and the Caribbean, which have become the largest social powder keg on the planet.
Unfortunately for all of them, the reality is very different from that reflected by TikTok, Facebook and Instagram: the strict closure of the border since last year has made it extremely difficult to follow the desired path, not only for Venezuelans, but also to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Mexicans and Ecuadorians, among others. The drama has spread throughout the northern border of Mexico, where emigrants subsist in miserable camps or in shelters while the Joe Biden government finalizes its new immigration plan in the face of the imminent elimination of the controversial title 42.
The mafias are also deployed to take advantage of so much vulnerability: Mexican authorities this week released 63 migrants, including 13 children, who were being held hostage in Sonora, near the border with Arizona. The majority were Ecuadorians, who have emigrated again to flee the violence unleashed in their country by organized crime.
All this in the midst of a human tide that flees with the dream of the promised land between their eyebrows. The date marked in red is May 11, when many believe the border will part like the Red Sea for Moses' people fleeing another tyranny. And what will happen is the opposite.
"This border is not going to be open on May 11," insisted Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, fearing that the call effect will generate a new wave of immigration, as happened last year with the judicial decisions against Title 42. and as already intuited in recent weeks. The US plans how to curb illegal emigration, avoid the dangers of exodus and the cruelty of the mafias and thus bet on the so-called immigration "parole", which encourages the planned entry of Venezuelans, Cubans and Central Americans.
With or without appeals, despair and misinformation are conjured up so that emigrants seek salvation far from their countries. In Venezuela, from where 7.5 million people have already fled, the migratory flow does not stop growing. Through the Darién jungle, the dangerous natural buffer that separates Colombia from Panama, 38,000 walkers passed through the jungle alone in March, of which almost 21,000 were Venezuelans and 7,000 Haitians.
The new economic recession that is already looming in Caracas and the bursting of the false bubble of prosperity invented by Chavismo has once again opened the floodgates wide, together with the disaster that has taken over the Caribbean country, subjugated by criminal gangs.
Washington's commitment to legal emigration is decided, in fact 32,000 Venezuelans, out of a total of almost 80,000, have entered the US legally so far this year thanks to humanitarian visas. Title 8, which will replace Title 42, allows Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians not only to be immediately deported to Mexico, but also to be prohibited from traveling to the US for up to five years.
One of the plans proposed by the Biden Administration is the opening of emigrant processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala, managed by UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where their reception would be valued within the different parole programs, shelter or job.
Washington counts on Canada and Spain to welcome emigrants. "It is an opportunity to reinforce Spain's historic alliances with Central and South America," the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Responsibility and Migration responded in Madrid.
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