MIGRATION-ECUADOR: Dreams Drown at Sea

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Aug 22 2005 (IPS) - The nearly 100 emigrants who drowned when the badly overloaded fishing boat carrying them on their journey to the United States capsized were the latest victims of the urge to escape Ecuador’s ongoing economic crisis at any cost.

Human rights groups say that more than 400,000 people left this country of 12 million in the past two years alone. And according to official statistics, over two million Ecuadorians are living abroad, mainly in the United States, Spain and Italy.

Of the more than 100 emigrants packed onto a boat meant to hold only 15 people, just nine survived when it sank. The vessel was bound for Guatemala, and from there the Ecuadorians were to continue by land to the United States.

The survivors – seven men and two women – were rescued by a fishing boat on Aug. 14, after holding onto a buoy and water tanks for 28 hours. The boat, which set out from a port in the northwestern Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas, sank off Colombia’s Pacific coast.

Segundo Morán Cabrera, one of the survivors who was brought back to Ecuador, said “A big wave hit us and the boat began to sink. Amidst the panic I got out of the hold and went up on deck, where I held onto something, but another wave knocked me overboard. Everything was dark and I heard screaming.”

Luis Tupac Yupanqui, director of the Jesuit Service for Migrants, called for indemnification for the families of the shipwreck victims.

Yupanqui said these incidents demonstrate the incapacity of the Ecuadorian state to implement urgent, effective measures to curb the exodus of people who risk life and limb in their attempt to make it to rich countries in search of a better life.

“The country’s real problems must be addressed,” said the activist. “Because the necessary measures to prevent the problems of emigration are not adopted in a timely fashion, the state, which is guilty of omission, should indemnify the victims because a solution to avoid the departure of so many Ecuadorians should have been put in place long ago.”

He also said the deaths of emigrants should weigh on the conscience of the authorities who are directly responsible for the design and implementation of migration policies.

Ecuadorians living abroad send home more than 1.4 billion dollars a year, making expatriate remittances the country’s second-largest source of foreign exchange, after oil exports.

Based on information from exchange bureaus, banks, the postal service, the immigration office and the Foreign Ministry, the Central Bank reported that remittances climbed from 73 million dollars in 1990 to 1.08 billion in 1999 and 1.4 billion in 2004.

Many Ecuadorians – like the emigrants on the boat that sank – pay people smugglers or “coyotes” between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars to take them on a boat to Central America or Mexico and from there to the United States. But some of them die en route.

Last Friday, another Ecuadorian fishing boat carrying 166 emigrants was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard off the coast of Guatemala.

According to unofficial estimates, an average of 50 Ecuadorians a month die in the attempt to make it to the United States by boat via Central America or by land.

In addition, an estimated 1,000 migrants a month are deported to Ecuador after they are seized by the U.S. Coast Guard or by authorities in Central America.

To pay the coyotes, the emigrants generally fall into debt with “chulqueros” or loan sharks, who are later paid back by the family members who stayed behind in Ecuador. Usually only the husband or wife travels abroad.

Congresswoman Myriam Garcés, a member of the legislature’s Human Rights Commission, said a new bill has been introduced that would stiffen the penalties for people smugglers.

The difficulties involved in the journey by boat to Central America and then by land to the United States have led in recent years to an increase in emigration to Spain, arranged by people trafficking businesses that pose as travel agencies, according to local press reports.

But in the past two years, the flow of migrants to the United States has risen again, and more than 15 boats a month, usually overloaded with emigrants, reportedly set off from clandestine ports in Ecuador.

Every time a tragedy occurs, the government of the moment declares that it will demand a full investigation to catch the coyotes. But they are never arrested.

President Alfredo Palacio responded in a similar vein to the latest catastrophe. “The government is determined to combat ‘coyoterismo’ (people smuggling),” said the caretaker president, who ordered an “in-depth investigation to determine who was responsible for these abominable deeds.”

In Quito, it is common to see long queues of passport applicants outside the Foreign Ministry or people seeking a visa outside the Spanish Embassy.

And every day, hundreds of people crowd outside the fence surrounding the airport in the capital to see their loved ones off.

Economic analyst Alberto Acosta pointed out that the money sent home by Ecuadorians living abroad has provided support for the national economy, which has failed to pull out of a state of continuous crisis.

Acosta noted that the remittances are playing a more important role in the reactivation of the economy than foreign direct investment. He also observed that the departure of working-age Ecuadorians has led to a drop in the unemployment rate.

In 2001, the economy received a boost from 1.43 billion dollars in remittances, which outstripped both investment and oil revenues, as well as export earnings from bananas, shrimp, coffee, cocoa and tuna combined. The money from abroad was also three times the government’s social investment and two times the development aid received by Ecuador.

Over the past two years, the amount of remittances has remained steady at around 1.4 billion dollars.

Most of the emigrants who drowned off the coast of Colombia earlier this month came from extremely poor areas in the southern provinces of Azuay, Cañar and Loja, where six out of 10 people have family members living abroad.

A majority of the able-bodied working-age men have left those provinces, which has driven up the cost of labour to nearly double that of other parts of the country.

Human rights organisations working on behalf of migrants have produced reports on the psychological problems faced by children and adolescents who are left behind when their father or mother – or both parents – leave the country.

The children and teenagers who were evaluated were found to suffer from low self-esteem and affective gaps, and many were aggressive. As a rule, the youngsters said the worst thing that had ever happened to them was the departure of their parents.

The ‘Segundo Montes Mozo’ Human Rights Documentation Centre stated that Ecuador is in need of official policies to combat illegal migration in hazardous conditions.

“The disappearance and presumed deaths of Ecuadorians is first and foremost the responsibility of the state, which has consistently failed to take a coherent stance towards this phenomenon,” said Pablo de la Vega, a spokesman for the Centre, who called for “effective efforts to combat people smuggling rings.”