Escaping Venezuela
They travel—on foot—as much as 5,000 miles to flee the misery wrought by Nicolas Maduro's regime.
Richard and Hector, migrants we followed for days, attend to a fellow migrant who fainted.
Photographer: Carlos Villalon/BloombergThey’re called “los caminantes”—the walkers—the Venezuelans so poor and so desperate to flee their country’s humanitarian crisis that they set off on foot to surrounding nations in search of work. Their journey may only take them to Cucuta, the Colombian town just across the border, or as far south as Buenos Aires, some 5,000 miles from Caracas.
And while most of them manage to hitch rides for parts of the trek, they will have no choice but to hoof it for hours and, at times, days on end, through what can be brutal conditions—the bitter cold of the Andes and the searing heat of the tropical savanna. One dreaded spot alone, the Paramo de Berlin, a frigid, wind-swept highland in northern Colombia that soars some 12,000 feet into the sky, is reported to have claimed several lives.