San Jose Costa Rica –
Hours before crossing the Rio Grande, Nicaraguan Gabriela Tatiana Espinoza Pérez called her mother, María Mercedes Pérez, to ask for her blessing.
Ever since he decided to leave the city of Masaya, south of the Nicaraguan capital, for the United States, he had everything planned. Everything went well. All the young woman had to do was make a final call to her mother. This time it would tell him that he had turned himself in to US authorities to seek refuge.
The call never came.
Through the national television María Mercedes Pérez, she learned that her daughter had died. “It was great suffering, crying, fear. I saw my daughter drown, to see how they got her out of me shocked me,” the moved mother told local media.
“What happened to my little girl?” he asks.
“They didn’t help me,” he replies inconsolably.
Espinoza Pérez was just 32 years old when he decided to emigrate. Her family says she tried to improve her and her mother’s economic situation.
“Seeing my little girl drown breaks my heart. She was looking for a better future, I told her no, but what should she do, to an American dream that found death,” the 71-year-old mother said through tears.
The remains of Nicaraguan Gabriela Tatiana Espinoza Pérez, 33, died March 21 trying to cross the Rio Grande. VOA
In recent years of political crisis, the number of migrants in Nicaragua has increased exponentially. According to official figures, more than 100,000 people fled the country in 2018, a high figure for a country of just 6 million people.
In March and April alone, about 14 people died trying to enter the United States. Among them is Clorinda Alarcón, a pregnant woman who died in Mexico after being locked with about 250 migrants in a container abandoned by “coyotes,” as traffickers are called.
Alarcón, originally from a remote community in the country’s northern Caribbean, had sold everything she owned to emigrate to the United States.
“I asked her if she wasn’t afraid to leave and she said no, she was doing it to give her daughter and the baby she was expecting a better life. She told me that she believed she would arrive safely because she had seen how many people had managed to arrive,” her sister Cenia Alarcón told local media.
Political or economic migration?
Experts consulted by Voice of America They warn that the increase in Nicaraguan migrants is due to economic reasons caused by the political crisis that began four years ago and for which there is still no obvious solution.
In fact, the Nicaraguan base basket, which ranges between 17,200 cordobas (about $941), is currently insufficient to cover even half of a worker earning the minimum wage of 4,980 cordobas (about $142).
According to official information from the central bank, families are sometimes dependent on a sharp increase in transfers. For example, in the first quarter of 2022, Nicaraguans received more than 26% of remittances compared to the same period in 2021.
The main countries of origin of remittances are the United States with 70%, followed by Spain, Costa Rica, Panama and Canada.
But the trend goes back a long way. For example, in 2020, Nicaragua captured 10% more than in 2019, according to the same official data.
The migration police in Costa Rica monitor the border with Nicaragua. Photo courtesy of Current Nicaragua
Will Nicaragua reach the migration levels of the Northern Triangle countries?
Alberto Brunori, OHCHR representative for Central America, judges in an interview with the VOA that although Nicaragua is not yet among the first countries from which migrants come, as is the case with the “Northern Triangle” nations [de Honduras, Guatemala y El Salvador]if it continues at the current rate, it could achieve similar statistics in terms of migration flow.
“Nicaragua has increased in this migration list. Certainly we have information from many civil society people who have had to leave and this has increased, it is worrying that Nicaragua is exporting part of the best minds, intellectuals and civil society for reasons of repression,” Brunori says via Skype to das VOA.
The sociologist and economist Oscar René Vargas explains that the cost of the basic basket would lead to a process of malnutrition and impoverishment. “It’s a combination of factors that make this an urgent problem.”
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