Seeing how a batch of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump on the first day of his presidency effectively closed down the Mexican border for migrants headed to the United States, Ronald Alvarez had the sinking feeling that he and his family had just lost the race for salvation.
Weeks earlier he had crossed the treacherous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, most of the time carrying his four-year-old son on his back through the slippery hills and the narrow, muddy paths of the snake- and predator-infested jungle.
By the final day, he and his wife, Beatriz Rubino, were famished, dehydrated, and exhausted to the point of collapse, but feeling immensely relieved by the knowledge that they had just come through the hardest test of their lives. They had survived. Many others they had encountered on their six-day odyssey were badly injured — or dead.
And now, finding themselves stranded in Tapachula, Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, Alvarez is frightened by the prospect of having to cross the Darien Gap again, this time on the way back to Venezuela, from where they had started.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY Antonio Maria Delgado IN THE MIAMI HERALD
TYT Newsroom
