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VENEZUELA: Colombian Refugees in Undocumented Limbo

Humberto Márquez

EL NULA, Venezuela, Dec 17 2009 (IPS) - Peasants fleeing Colombia’s armed conflict are still trickling into Venezuela, joining the multitude who in the last seven years have requested refugee status and an identity document to help them rebuild their lives in their new country.

One problem is that “we are not out of reach here of the forces fighting in Colombia,” Laura (not her real name), a candy seller at a spot between Guasdualito and El Nula, two settlements in the border zone with Colombia in southwestern Venezuela about 650 km from Caracas, told IPS.

In 2005, Laura and the father of her third daughter, now five years old, managed a small restaurant in Vichada, a province in eastern Colombia near the Orinoco river, which was then controlled by the leftwing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), when suddenly the area was overrun by far-right paramilitary militias.

“Neither side tolerates people having any connection with the other. That time about 15 people were killed. I came to Venezuela with my three children, my partner fled and joined the FARC. We split up. Now he wants to take our little girl to Colombia: I won’t have it but he’s making death threats, calling me up from a telephone inside Venezuela,” said Laura.

At times when she has gone out to sell candy, Laura has been accosted by messengers from the guerrillas and the paramilitaries. “You never know where the bullet that will kill you will come from,” she says in distress. She wants to leave the border zone and go to Portuguesa, 250 km to the north, to be close to relatives who have lived there for years.

But she cannot travel. When IPS interviewed her, permission for herself and her two younger daughters to go north had been denied. In contrast, her 18-year-old son, who wants to study at university, was granted refugee status. Laura plans to appeal her case.

Since 2001 when a law on refugees was passed, until September this year, Venezuela has granted refugee status to 1,327 people, who can then get identity documents as “transient foreigners,” said Ricardo Rincón, the head of the Foreign Ministry’s National Refugee Commission.

There is a backlog of 14,000 pending applications for refugee status, and over the first nine months of this year another 2,351 were added. The Commission rules on an average of 40 cases a month, and between January and September it approved 183 applications and rejected 221.

The Caracas office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are over 200,000 displaced Colombians in Venezuela who would qualify as refugee applicants. In the southeastern plains where Guasdualito and El Nula are located, there are probably more than 20,000.

In the past 20 years, out of over four decades of armed conflict in Colombia between the army, leftwing guerrillas like the FARC and rightwing paramilitary groups, some three million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

“The UNHCR and (National Refugee) Commission take in those who really qualify as refugees, but our country cannot accept people who are evading justice or who could cause trouble,” Rincón said.

Angélica Barrera, the Commission’s representative in Guasdualito-El Nula, told IPS that her office tries to substantiate applications with detailed statements from the applicants, but the cases are not decided locally. Decisions are taken in Caracas after the government has carried out further investigations.

Manuel takes a calm attitude toward the whole procedure. He arrived in El Nula two years ago. “I raised cattle on a small scale in Arauca (in northeast Colombia) until the FARC came and ate all my animals, all of them! Then they wanted me to wear a uniform, carry a rifle and join them, but I didn’t want to. So they gave me 12 hours to leave the area,” he told IPS.

When he reached Venezuela he got a job milking cows. A few months later he brought over his wife and three children to join him. “They’re still small, they don’t go to school yet. I want get my papers sorted out so they can study without any problems.

“Here we can eat and live. I’m raising plantains and cassava on a plot of land. The soldiers and guards don’t bother me, they can see from my clothes and boots that I’m a working man,” he said.

The case of Pedro, a 57-year-old divorced man, is quite different. He arrived by motorbike at the El Nula school, where officials from the Commission, the UNHCR and the Jesuit Refugee Service (SJR) are assisting refugee applicants. They are working overtime to reach applicants where they live and make it easier for them to start the paperwork.

“‘Identity document or passport!’ they demand at the checkpoints. I have neither: I can’t get an identity document because all I have is a paper saying I’m applying for refugee status, and the consulate won’t give me another passport unless I have a bank account in Colombia, and how can I open one there, when I had to flee the country?” Pedro told IPS.

A small landowner, Pedro had a farm, cattle, a vehicle and a bank account in Colombia. The area between Arauca and Casanare, where he lived, was taken over by the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles), a mutation of the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC). “In their book, we were all guerrillas, and we had to flee,” he said.

He came to an area close to El Nula and started to do what he knew best: organise a farm, raise cattle, market it, sow crops and sell produce. He got a house, deposited money in a bank account, and bought a motorbike.

“But none of this is in my name; it’s all under the names of friends, Colombians or Venezuelans, whose good faith I am trusting. I don’t even have a driver’s licence for the motorbike, because I need an identity document to get one. And if I ever have to leave, for instance because of more trouble between Colombia and Venezuela, then I’ll lose everything all over again,” he complained.

Tension has frequently arisen between Colombia and Venezuela as a result of ideological and political differences, and in Venezuela this recently led to troop deployment and restrictions on trade and civilian movements in border areas.

At army, national guard or police control points, “they sometimes stop me and ask for my motorbike documents, and ask me for a cash ‘contribution’ in order to let me through,” said Santiago, a Venezuelan who makes his living from small-scale retailing. “If that’s what they do to a Venezuelan with his papers in order, imagine what happens to us,” Pedro remarked.

The countryside around El Nula is criss-crossed with rivers and is rich land for agriculture, livestock and forestry. The town itself consists of a few hundred houses and shops on a handful of streets that soon peter out into empty fields. There are no drains, electricity is intermittent and there are no parks or other places for family recreation.

A couple of years ago both El Nula and Guasdualito were frequently the scene of murders attributed to the opposing sides in the Colombian conflict. Now and again a suspicious case still crops up. The Bolivarian Liberation Forces (FBL), a Venezuelan guerrilla movement claiming to support President Hugo Chávez, has also been active in the area.

“Some young people from this area, out of immaturity, lack of prospects and tempting but deceitful offers, have been recruited by armed Colombian organisations,” José Luis, a community activist, told IPS. “They are won over by the violence of these groups because it seems to effectively solve things from one day to the next.”

“Local people in general are welcoming and tolerant” of the Colombians who arrive here. “There are no expressions of xenophobia, on the contrary, they see them as good working people. The complaints we hear are about red tape or the authorities, not about the neighbours,” Juan Andrés Quintero, a Jesuit Refugees Service lawyer, told IPS.

“Also, for years, perhaps for generations, family ties and bonds of friendship and trade have been established across the border rivers, and a shared culture has grown up based on working the land, and even the food that is eaten and the music that is played,” Quintero added.

This is the positive side of asylum, as well as the existence of a law giving refugees formal protection and participation in social programmes, such as access to microcredit from the state People’s Bank, or to make purchases at government subsidised food markets.

Refugees also have the permanent support of specialist organisations like the UNHCR, the Catholic agencies Cáritas and Jesuit Refugee Service and, most recently, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).