Joagnys up and left, ran away, and left behind everything and left behind fragile stability. Also, she left her mother, Agny.
She left with nothing, only with the company of her couple and the baby she was carrying in her belly. Was the baby the motivation to escape from her home in Maracay, a city located in central Venezuela.
In Maracay, she suffered hunger, and problems kept piling up within the four walls of her dwelling: an annex lent to her janitor grandparents by the school where they work.
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The first of four siblings, Joagnys saw, during her 15 years of life so far, how her mother Agny, endured hardship to raise her children in adverse conditions. Without being able to give them what they needed and, on many occasions, putting them to bed without supper due to lack of money.
She did not want to live the same.
That is why she left Venezuela, and went to Ecuador, as part of the exodus when some 5.5 million Venezuelans, who have left their country since 2013, the year Nicolas Maduro first took over.
Agny’s granddaughter, the baby of Joagnys, was born in the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia, on April 25, 2019. In that area, according to figures from Migration Colombia of February 2020, there are 85,780 Venezuelans, making that department the seventh with the most Venezuelan migrants and where 40% of the pregnant women attended to are also from the neighboring country.
Colombia, as a whole, reported Tuesday 1.7 million Venezuelans now living there, making the neighboring country the recipient of the largest contingent of such migrants, by far.
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In that context, the baby was born. And, when they barely had the strength, Joagnys continued on his way to Ecuador. The girl was only 15 days old when one of Agny’s sisters received a call from Ecuador to inform that the newborn girl was very sick and that they needed the presence of some representative of the underage mother.
While Agny was figuring out what to do, another call came in announcing that if Joagnys’ mother did not show up in Ecuador, authorities would take the newborn away from her.
To read the outcome of this story, we invite you to visit the site proyectocruzar.com, a transmedia and immersive journalism project in an alliance between Imán Transmedia, Ecuador Chequea, and El Pitazo and with the support of Acnur.
