When the extortionists arrived at the small food store in Elena and Ramiro, in the center of Guayaquil, they knew that their dream of being entrepreneurs had come to an end. The business, which was just running for five months, worked better than expected. They served breakfast and lunches to the workers of the sector, and although the margins were tight, the hope of a prosperous future kept them afloat. But that morning, when two Moto men broke into the premises, which promised to be another day of work became a nightmare. They were made clear how the rules would be thereafter: $ 3,000 each month as vaccine, as extortion is known here. An unpayable amount for entrepreneurs whose only capital was the sweat of his forehead.
When Elena listened to the criminals saying where she lived, details of her house, of what she and her family did, she knew she would not wait for her to fulfill her business of the business, she understood that there was no going back, they had to leave the country. Two weeks later, with a debt of $ 17,000, she, her boyfriend Ramiro and three relatives of him, took a flight to El Salvador. It was the first step towards flight.
On December 9 he began his journey through Central America, with the ultimate goal of arriving in Ciudad Juárez and crossing to the United States. Ten days later, his group reached the last point of the journey, where a coyote promised to help them cross the border, under the earth, under the wall more than eight meters high. Just a few hours later, the immigration authorities captured them. Elena remembers with pain the blow of one of the officers: “He pushed me, and there everything is over,” he says, while waiting for someone to pick it up at the Guayaquil airport, where he has arrived deported by the massive expulsions that are applied by Donald Trump’s policy. She is dressed in a gray heater and coat, shoes without laces, just the night he learned that she would be deported. He traveled on a charter flight, next to a hundred Ecuadorian migrants who did not make mocking the migratory patrols.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 1,900 Ecuadorians have been deported from the United States, a number that adds to the 43,000 that have returned to the country in the last four years, within an agreement of returnees that both countries have maintained since 2005. Deportations, far from being an isolated event, are part of a routine: two or three weekly flights, according to the Ecuadorian Chancellery.
On the plane, Elena met Jennifer, a 25 -year -old girl. Both had been in the same detention center in Louisiana, but the strict rules of confinement and total isolation prevented them from being or could speak. It was only at that time, sitting at the airport waiting for someone to pick them up, when they discovered that they shared a similar reality. Both migrated for fear of violence, both came from the same neighborhood, the South Guasmo. The connection was immediate, but Jennifer’s route had been even more brutal. She had spent five days kidnapped by one of the criminal gangs in Oaxaca. “I spent silent every day, with baggy clothes, with fear of seeing how they took the girls to rape them,” says the young woman. After being released, he managed to cross the border and surrender to the migration agents, who put a shackle and left her free in San Diego for three weeks. At the last audience they decided to send it to the “Heller”, the Detention Center in Texas, and then transferred to Louisiana, from where the flight that would bring it back.
He doesn’t have a penny. Jennifer, visibly worried, has just received the news that her two and a half year old is sick. All it has is a card with 50 dollars that the World Food Program delivered to each of the migrants upon reaching the terminal. They also told him about a website where he can register to receive $ 470 for three months, as part of the aid that the Ecuadorian government offers to deported migrants. However, that possibility seems an uncertain promise.
Upon arrival at the Guayaquil airport, the deportees stand out among the crowd. Their pale faces, marked by fatigue and confinement, reflect the frustration of those who did not find what they were looking for in the north. However, many try to hide the pain and the first contact with their family, they show a smile despite the tragedy: “Guess where I am!”, They say, just to confirm what you already know: he has returned to Ecuador. But there is no one waiting for them. Neither friends nor family have learned about their return. They are alone, worried, indebted …
Elena had not reviewed her phone since December 19, the day she was arrested.
She has been incommunicado with her family and her boyfriend Ramiro, who was deported in January. He doesn’t know what is happening in the country. “I guess everything is worse,” he assumes with bitter certainty.
Ignore the shooting in its neighborhood, the South Guasmo, or that in the cemetery of their neighborhood, buried the four children who were disappeared by a military patrol and then their bodies were found incinerated in the middle of a swampy area.
He does not know about the new violent deaths that have shaken the city or the massacre of 22 people in the socio -housing neighborhood 2. nor that extortion, far from Cesar, continue to increase, fed by the fear and impotence of those who cannot pay.
Since Elena left the country, violence has been increasing. The same violence that forced her to flee has now taken over the streets, turning Guayaquil into a besieged city. The economy, meanwhile, has not improved. Employment is still stagnant and the basic salary has only increased by ten dollars. Elena returns to an overflowing Ecuador, a country on fire.
“Now we must start from scratch, we sold how little we had, plus the $ 17,000 that each one owes,” says the 20 -year -old and her face changes, disappointed. “I planned to have protection in the United States, but they didn’t believe me. I had to say that they had violated me, that they had shot me, but I preferred not to lie, ”she narrates worried about the debt she must pay. At that time, Ramiro comes to his side. Without words, they merge into a long hug. Both have something clear: there is no option to stay. Ecuador is no longer a country to live. Although the future is uncertain, both know that the only way is to leave. They will start again, anywhere else, but far from here.
