Venezuela is bleeding. A deep, dark flow from her insides pouring out over the land and into neighboring countries.
Daily she bleeds. A kind of hemorrhaging of her people that no one seems able to stop. Many complain about it. Many others mourn the loss.
Sources say that, on average, 5,000 people per day are leaving Venezuela. The country has been drained of an estimated 20% of her population. Maybe more.
For years, her people have tumbled into Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru. And now the flow is streaming farther north, to the United States.
But much of the way is clogged. And so they wait, in Ciudad Juárez, a place that’s become a stopgap. But Juarez has its own share of poor who wander the lanes of traffic that inches its way to the international bridge trying to sell their wares, candies and trinkets in hand, dirty rags to wash windshields. The Venezuelans join the locals, competing for meager coins to buy meager meals.
I pass them by when I walk over the bridge into Juarez to help serve the free meals for migrants at the cathedral. I spot the Venezuelans easily. Parents hoisting their children upon their shoulders to appeal to drivers. They speak without using words.
“See, I have a family to feed.”
“Won’t you help this child I’m carrying?”
“See, we’ve come a very long way. We are hungry.” Some carry images of the Venezuelan flag.
But they have endured much more than hunger to get here.
They’ve traveled through “the world’s deadliest jungle,” Panama’s Darien Gap. Some have stepped past dead bodies, heard the cries of others, saw images they’ll never forget along the way. Only to be halted and targeted by cartels and even police. Shaken down for the pittance they’ve earned. Or worse.
They await their fate living on the streets or in shabby shelters, migrant holding cells or hotels. The latter if they’re blessed enough to have meager funds or receive some of the limited support available for temporary shelter.
But even sturdy, hopeful people have their limits. Tensions rise. Frustration grows.
Monday night a fire broke out at one of the Mexican government-run centers for male migrants in Juarez. The cause is under investigation. Most difficult to understand, the guards did not unlock the cells for the men to flee. They left them behind. Three government migration officials and two private security guards have since been arrested.
Dozens died.
More blood flows.
The wound grows deeper.
And it becomes easier to grow numb. To desensitize, not want to feel or acknowledge the pain of others. It’s overwhelming, after all.
There’s so much bleeding.
Mexico is saturated with her own blood. Years of femicides, disappearances, slaying of journalists. The list goes on.
My country, too, has spilled much blood since its inception. The blood of innocents seeped below the earth where we try to dismiss it. Or gaslight it.
Just stop the flow north, we say. Then things will be better. I hear the angry voices. I see the twisted news stories. Slanted to instigate fearful and knee-jerk reactions.
Those of us who want to help say it’s too much. What can we do?
In her diaries, Dorothy Day laments how even good-hearted people regard the poor and down-and-out with bitterness and frustration. They ask what’s the use? What can I accomplish anyway?
I know I don’t have answers. I lack control over any of it.
But I try to live by what Dorothy advises, knowing that I often fail.
“If we start in by admitting that what we can do is very small—a drop in the bucket—and try to do that very well, it is a beginning and really a great deal.” (From The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day)
So, I pick up my bucket and begin once again. Mopping up the drops before me. Trusting that my small effort is making a difference. Even if I can’t make the bleeding stop.
A Journey of the Heart 