This 35-year-old former veterinary student was a farmer, gardener and carpenter but, like thousands of Nicaraguans, he chose to take the road to the North: “Here there is little work, and we are paid little. We don’t ‘has no opportunities,” he laments to AFP.
The number of Nicaraguan migrants has exploded over the past twelve months in a country hit by inflation, unemployment and the closure of all political space.
Copper-colored and short, José takes to the road with one of his brothers and two cousins. “We leave with the hope of arriving (in the United States) and finding work,” he explains in the modest house where he lives in Managua. He leaves behind a daughter, his mother and his grandmother.
– “I’m afraid” –
“We took out a loan, we mortgaged the land, the house, and we are leaving with that (…) I have never left for such a long trip, and of course I am afraid”, confides- he.
His dream: to return with enough money to open a bakery in Managua.
In the house, relatives and friends weeping embrace the departing travellers.
Everyone has in mind the dangers that await them: the local media have counted since the beginning of the year at least 40 Nicaraguan migrants who have died of suffocation, drowned or victims of road accidents.
Several hundred — men, women and children — gather to get on the buses that supposedly leave for tourist “excursions” in Guatemala… This is actually the first stage of a trip that will cost between 2,000 and 5,000 dollars “fees” for the “coyote”, a smuggler who must lead them to the crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States.
This year alone, around 60 residents of the José neighborhood have left.
– “Only old people stay” –
“They keep on leaving. Only us old people are left. Nicaragua will remain without anyone,” laments Roger Sanchez, a 60-year-old farmer: three of his sons have left for the United States. United and a girl also wants to leave the country.
According to a recent survey by the Costa Rican Cid Gallup Institute published by the opposition internet media Confidencial, in exile in Costa Rica, 57% of Nicaraguans would be ready to emigrate, especially to go to the United States.
The top three reasons cited by respondents are “unemployment”, “high cost of living” and “government corruption”.
Eager to join the exodus, thousands of people from all over the country crowd around the offices of the capital’s migration services. To obtain the precious passport, the candidates for departure do not hesitate to camp on the sidewalk, on mattresses, boxes or in hammocks.
The authorities do not provide statistics, but the migration services indicated on their website that they had issued 20,192 passports, including 2,000 for minors, in just three weeks, between September 17 and October 7.
President Daniel Ortega, in power since 2007, last week acknowledged the mass departures, attributing them to US sanctions imposed on the country.
– Political and social crisis –
Since the bloody repression in 2018 (more than 350 dead) of the demonstrations demanding the resignation of Mr. Ortega and his wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo, the United States has imposed sanctions on more than thirty relatives of the Head of State, as well as to companies linked to the government.
“Keep taking sanctions and more migrants will leave for the United States, even if you want to close the door to them,” Ortega warned.
In fiscal year 2022, 164,600 undocumented Nicaraguan migrants were intercepted by US border guards, three times more than the previous year.
In Nicaragua, 24% of the 6.5 million inhabitants live below the poverty line, according to official statistics.
For the Nicaraguan Manuel Orozco, director of the migration program of the Inter-American Dialogue analysis center based in Washington, the causes of migration are not only economic but also political, as power becomes more and more authoritarian.
“The repression is so brutal in Nicaragua that (the inhabitants) prefer to leave with all the risks that entails, rather than staying,” he says.
More than 200 opponents are currently imprisoned and around 2,000 NGOs or associations have been dissolved by the authorities.
