Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle del Hudson
Angie Rivas
“I wanted my daughter to be born in a country of freedom.”
Angie Rivas crossed the jungle to achieve a dream
Por Andrés Pérez Rangel
October 2024 Accompanied by her husband and brother and five months pregnant at the time, former Venezuelan councilwoman Angie Rivas recounted the extreme conditions of her journey through the Darien jungle, on the border between Colombia and Panama, in her quest to reach the United States to escape repression, poverty and insecurity in her country so that her daughter could grow up in a free country.
After graduating from Simón Rodríguez University, Angie Rivas began her political career in an unstable Venezuela under a totalitarian Chavista regime. As a Caracas councilwoman for the opposition Podemos party, she faced extreme limitations in functions and salaries. After Podemos was absorbed by Avanzada, a party controlled by the Venezuelan government, she was left without any kind of authority. Political repression increased during national protests, with violence, arrests and fatalities.
Angie described the government as a “modern dictatorship” with controlled voting and brutal repression. Amid the tension and uncertainty, options were scarce. “With the repression, the mistreatment, the persecution, it got to a point where they not only suffocated me politically, but economically. I had to make the decision to go to a nearby country, while hoping that the government would fall...” said Angie in an interview on La Voz with Mariel Fiori on Radio Kingston.
In 2017 she wanted to go as far as Chile, but due to lack of resources she settled in Ecuador. She dedicated herself to domestic cleaning services, with which she stabilized financially and reunited with her brother and husband. But “Ecuador also had a huge economic problem. There weren't many opportunities for growth and when I got pregnant it gave me time to reflect. I wanted my daughter to be born in a country of freedom, of democracy where she could achieve what she wanted and I knew that neither Ecuador nor Venezuela had that... The best inheritance I can give my daughter is that she be born in a country where she can be free. I traveled to many countries because of political issues, the United States made me reflect a lot because at least here social security works, here when people are left without jobs, there is a way to access something. It's not perfect, but it has security.
In the company of her younger brother and her husband, and five months pregnant, Angie arrived in June 2022 at the border between Colombia and Panama. The rainy season at that time, with most of the rivers more plentiful, made the trip more difficult and increasingly heavy and dangerous. After walking for days through mud and streams, not knowing how far they had traveled or how far they still had to go, they had to leave their belongings on the road to alleviate the weight. They hydrated themselves from the water sources that surrounded them and the little canned food they brought with them was insufficient to cover the entire journey. The road slowed down, the breaks to rest their legs became longer and more frequent.
Angie especially remembers the moment they arrived at the Panamanian Red Cross camp on the ninth day of their journey. They had detected a lack of activity in the fetus and tried to convince her to go to a hospital, but they did not have enough resources. Angie recalls: “ What am I going to do, I need to continue my journey, I couldn't go. They told me to have a Coke or a chocolate to see if the baby would move. The girl started to recover, I was very sad because my daughter was not born yet and she was already in need. It broke my heart.
After going through land transportation throughout Central America, with authorities either refusing to transport immigrants or asking for unofficial costs, Angie finally arrived in the United States. On the fourth day of pre-immigration confinement for political asylum seekers, she was released and picked up by a friend who took her to a church that supported immigrants. A week before her husband and brother were released from confinement and after selling the rest of their belongings to pay for transportation, they arrived in New York, where their daughter was born on December 25, as a Christmas present. They finally settled in the Hudson Valley in November 2023.
The Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that a record 520,085 migrants crossed the Panamanian Darien jungle in 2023 to continue their route to the United States. Thousands of Venezuelans and other migrants make this journey every day for the same dream of living and having a future in a safe place. COPYRIGHT 2024
La Voz, Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle de Hudson
Angie described the government as a “modern dictatorship” with controlled voting and brutal repression. Amid the tension and uncertainty, options were scarce. “With the repression, the mistreatment, the persecution, it got to a point where they not only suffocated me politically, but economically. I had to make the decision to go to a nearby country, while hoping that the government would fall...” said Angie in an interview on La Voz with Mariel Fiori on Radio Kingston.
In 2017 she wanted to go as far as Chile, but due to lack of resources she settled in Ecuador. She dedicated herself to domestic cleaning services, with which she stabilized financially and reunited with her brother and husband. But “Ecuador also had a huge economic problem. There weren't many opportunities for growth and when I got pregnant it gave me time to reflect. I wanted my daughter to be born in a country of freedom, of democracy where she could achieve what she wanted and I knew that neither Ecuador nor Venezuela had that... The best inheritance I can give my daughter is that she be born in a country where she can be free. I traveled to many countries because of political issues, the United States made me reflect a lot because at least here social security works, here when people are left without jobs, there is a way to access something. It's not perfect, but it has security.
In the company of her younger brother and her husband, and five months pregnant, Angie arrived in June 2022 at the border between Colombia and Panama. The rainy season at that time, with most of the rivers more plentiful, made the trip more difficult and increasingly heavy and dangerous. After walking for days through mud and streams, not knowing how far they had traveled or how far they still had to go, they had to leave their belongings on the road to alleviate the weight. They hydrated themselves from the water sources that surrounded them and the little canned food they brought with them was insufficient to cover the entire journey. The road slowed down, the breaks to rest their legs became longer and more frequent.
Angie especially remembers the moment they arrived at the Panamanian Red Cross camp on the ninth day of their journey. They had detected a lack of activity in the fetus and tried to convince her to go to a hospital, but they did not have enough resources. Angie recalls: “ What am I going to do, I need to continue my journey, I couldn't go. They told me to have a Coke or a chocolate to see if the baby would move. The girl started to recover, I was very sad because my daughter was not born yet and she was already in need. It broke my heart.
After going through land transportation throughout Central America, with authorities either refusing to transport immigrants or asking for unofficial costs, Angie finally arrived in the United States. On the fourth day of pre-immigration confinement for political asylum seekers, she was released and picked up by a friend who took her to a church that supported immigrants. A week before her husband and brother were released from confinement and after selling the rest of their belongings to pay for transportation, they arrived in New York, where their daughter was born on December 25, as a Christmas present. They finally settled in the Hudson Valley in November 2023.
The Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that a record 520,085 migrants crossed the Panamanian Darien jungle in 2023 to continue their route to the United States. Thousands of Venezuelans and other migrants make this journey every day for the same dream of living and having a future in a safe place. COPYRIGHT 2024
La Voz, Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle de Hudson
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