CARACAS, May 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A plane carrying 115 Venezuelans from Chile landed in Caracas, repatriating migrants who had been stranded for weeks in difficult conditions at the northern border with Peru.
As the group deplaned, there was applause and cries of joy and relief.
“I’ll never leave the country again,” said one passenger, Gerardo Valladares, 22.
“Abroad, we were treated almost like dogs, blocked for two weeks… and the Peruvian police gave us no information.”
Things began to change, he added, after a team of United Nations rights workers arrived on scene, around the 10th day.
The plane, belonging to a private airline, had been chartered by the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Hundreds of migrants — most of them Venezuelan, but also Haitians, Colombians and Ecuadorans — have been stranded at the border in northern Chili, blocked by Peruvian authorities from crossing on their way north toward the United States because of their alleged lack of necessary documentation.
Peru declared a 60-day state of emergency and deployed troops to border areas to reinforce checkpoints and block undocumented workers from entering.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric described the repatriation flight as “a diplomatic triumph and a triumph of dialogue.”
Venezuelan Foreign Ministry officials greeted the migrants at the Caracas airport, praising their arrival as part of a “Return to the Homeland” plan launched in 2018.
A grave political and economic crisis has sent some seven million Venezuelans abroad in recent years and seen the country’s GDP plunge by some 80 percent between 2013 and 2022. — NNN-AGENCIES
