LEA TAMBIÉN

LEA TAMBIÉN

Ecuador ya no participará en la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba), impulsada por el fallecido expresidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.



El anuncio lo hizo ayer el canciller José Valencia, quien manifestó que de este modo el país busca “ratificar” los principios de autonomía frente a las decisiones de este grupo.



Valencia manifestó que el Gobierno está “frustrado” por la falta de voluntad política por parte del régimen de Nicolás Maduro, para solucionar la crisis económica y política que atraviesa ese país y que ha originado “el mayor éxodo de la historia reciente” en el continente.



Ecuador se adhirió a la Alba en el 2009, cinco años después de que fuera fundada en La Habana (Cuba), con la participación de Bolivia y Nicaragua, entre otros países.



Para mediados de septiembre, Ecuador convocó a una reu­nión de cancilleres de la región, para encontrar una respuesta a la masiva migración venezolana. Brasil y Chile ya confirmaron su participación.



La crítica situación que viven los inmigrantes en el país impulsó a más organismos a sumar esfuerzos para dar hospedaje temporal y movilización gratuita a quienes quieran llegar a territorio peruano, antes de la aplicación de la exigencia del pasaporte.



En Imbabura, Carmen Carcelén dejó de recibir a los turistas en su casa para acoger temporalmente a los migrantes de Venezuela. Por eso, los extranjeros que llegan a su hogar, ubicado en la comuna El Juncal, la llaman “madre”. El inmueble, con capacidad para alojar a 10 personas, es parte del proyecto comunitario Aroma Caliente, integrado por 13 socios del valle del Chota.



Del lado gubernamental, el Ministerio de Inclusión Económica y Social (MIES) informó que en 10 puntos del país se ha dado atención diaria a cerca de 250 extranjeros.



La mayoría está en Pichincha; desde ayer se atiende a quienes llegaron a Huaquillas (El Oro) por el corredor humanitario impulsado por la Prefectura de Pichincha, el Gobierno y con colaboración de otros organismos, como la Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Transporte Público Interprovincial (Fenacotip).



En el primer viaje arribaron 252 personas. El trayecto empezó en Mascarilla (Carchi), con seis buses de la operadora Pullman. La caravana hizo una parada en Quito, donde se sumaron dos buses.



Abel Gómez, presidente de la Fenacotip, comentó que el viaje fue gratuito. El pasaje de cada viajero cuesta USD 20, aseguró el dirigente, valores que fueron asumidos por la operadora y la Fenacotip.



El prefecto de Pichincha, Gustavo Baroja, confirmó que este primer grupo ya cruzó la frontera hacia Perú sin inconvenientes. “Este corredor era para garantizar que mientras Perú no solicite pasaporte, ellos podrían ingresar”. Por ello, este plan se realiza hasta hoy. “El sábado ya no podemos hacer nada, porque sería trasladar un problema de un sitio a otro, y no lo vamos a hacer”.



El Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (Acnur) y el Organismo de las Naciones Unidas para la Migración piden más apoyo a la comunidad internacional ante la oleada migratoria.



Las autoridades peruanas aguardan la llegada de más de 20 000 venezolanos a su frontera norte, antes de que mañana entre en vigor la exigencia del pasaporte.



Esta exigencia fue anunciada la semana pasada por el primer ministro de Perú, César Villanueva, quien arguyó que se lo hace por motivos de seguridad. Esa medida se aplica en Ecuador desde el 18 de agosto.



Precisamente, para hoy está prevista la audiencia de solicitud de medidas cautelares en contra de la aplicación de este requisito para los inmigrantes venezolanos.



Este fue un pedido de la defensora del Pueblo, Gina Benavides, del defensor Público, Ernesto Pazmiño, y de organizaciones de la sociedad civil. A esta solicitud se unió ayer la Iglesia Católica.



El presidente de la Conferencia Episcopal, monseñor Eugenio Arellano, solicitó al presidente Lenín Moreno que “encargue a la Cancillería la pronta solución de todas aquellas leyes y normas que están represando a los inmigrantes en las fronteras”.



Durante la rueda de prensa, las autoridades del clero y de las instituciones públicas lanzaron un mensaje para que la sociedad ecuatoriana no sea contaminada con posiciones, ideas o gestos xenofóbicos.



En Quito, la declaratoria de emergencia de movilidad humana estará vigente hasta finales de este mes, según el secretario de Inclusión, César Mantilla. El funcionario explicó que la medida podría ampliarse si el Viceministerio de Movilidad Humana también hace una prórroga y si el Comité de Operaciones de Emergencias (COE) metropolitano decide hacerlo también.



La declaratoria sirvió para habilitar cinco centros temporales de tránsito, de los ocho que tiene Quito, y para coordinar con el Albergue San Juan de Dios el refugio por cinco días a los viajeros venezolanos.



Los extranjeros que siguen en el campamento frente a la terminal de Carcelén están preocupados por la finalización de las jornadas de difusión sobre los nuevos sitios, a cargo de la Secretaría de Inclusión de la Alcaldía y del Acnur.



Los funcionarios insistieron en que no pueden seguir allí y que deben pasar a los centros temporales de tránsito que habilitó el Cabildo o al Albergue San Juan de Dios, para pernoctar en condiciones más dignas.</s>QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador has withdrawn from a regional bloc led by Venezuela in a bid to further distance itself from that country’s socialist government.

Foreign minister Jose Valencia said on Thursday that Ecuador has decided to abandon the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, immediately because Ecuador wants to be “independent” of organizations that are trying to impose “specific views” on Latin America’s social and political issues.

ALBA was created in 2004 by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in a bid to counter U.S. influence in the region. It currently has 12 members that include Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and several small Caribbean islands.

Ecuador was once a close ally of Venezuela but relations have soured since Lenin Moreno, a centrist, replaced leftist President Rafael Correa.</s>The democratic challenge to dictatorships and xenophobia in Latin America

During the conference entitled The democratic challenge to the autocracies of the 21st century in Latin America, organized by the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL) on Tuesday at the Senate of Uruguay, the Government of Venezuela was described as a dictatorship and it was exhorted that the democratic governments of the region, especially the Uruguayan government, not be indifferent or accomplices against today’s Latin America’s autocratic governments.

The panel, made up of Uruguayan and Venezuelan parliamentarians and regional authorities, debated the democratic clauses of the different institutional organisms in the continent in the face of the erosion of the rule of law and the autocratic governments of Latin America at present. Special emphasis was placed on the cases of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Venezuela is a country that is beginning to be closed from outside; the region begins to close the doors, says Jorge Gandini, president of the lower house of the Congress of Uruguay during the conference in reference to the new migration rules adopted by the governments of Peru and Ecuador and the tensions with the northern border state of Roraima, in Brazil.

Gandini explains that, unlike the Government of Cuba, which closed its doors from within decades ago, Venezuela is beginning to isolate itself in the region as there is the possibility that millions of people, seeking to flee from the deep economic crisis, will cause problems to the fragile socioeconomic stability in nearby countries.

According to the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM), around 2.3 million Venezuelans have emigrated due to the economic crisis the country is experiencing.

At least a million of them have passed through Colombian territory since the beginning of 2017, of which more than half million have traveled by land to Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina after extensive bus trips or even on foot.

Peru has become one of the main destinations for this migratory movement due to the migratory facilities that have occurred with the last governments. According to the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) only in 2018 the Peruvian government has already received 90,000 asylum applications from Venezuelans.

However, in recent months there have been outbreaks of xenophobia among some sectors of societies in certain recipient countries.

During the conference both Gandini and Uruguayan deputy Rodrigo Goñi, both from the National Party (Uruguay), expressed their concern regarding the position of the Uruguayan Government against that of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Unfortunately, we have a government that has been indifferent against Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, Goñi said, pointing out that the Uruguayan government has become equally an accomplice of governments that are responsible for deaths and violations of Human Rights.

The government of Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez has been characterized by not defining a strong position in the face of the democratic crises that Venezuela and Nicaragua are going through. The Uruguayan chancellery has repeatedly expressed that it opposes any illegal act of violence with political ends in Venezuela. However, the chancellery has not spoken out about the investigation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating the use of excessive force by the State security forces and the use of violent means to repress the protesters, according to the announcement of the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda in February.

The political position that Uruguay has taken in the face of the political crisis in Nicaragua, which has left between 317 and 448 people killed since April according to humanitarian organizations, is somewhat different from the one it has taken against the former President Hugo Chávez’s country. The Uruguayan government has adhered to the positions of the countries of the region that condemn the government of Daniel Ortega, urging his government to stop the attacks against the demonstrators.

However, regarding the migratory aspect, Uruguay has been characterized as a friendly recipient of the Venezuelan migratory flow, despite the fact that the number of Venezuelan residents on Uruguayan soil did not exceed 13,000 at the beginning of 2018. On July 26, The International Labor Organization (ILO) stressed that the Uruguayan legislation on immigration is a model to replicate in other countries.

Diego Cabrita, representative of the civil society of help to the immigrant in Uruguay Veneguayos, indicates that the number of cases of Venezuelans with problems of paperwork has diminished since the migratory norms have become more flexible.

For PARLASUR parliamentarian for Venezuela, William Dávila, it is necessary to be forceful against Maduro's government, which cares little that migrants cause problems of instability in the countries of the region. However, it is unconstitutional to limit the circulating right in the region to Venezuelans, demanding documents that are difficult to access in Venezuela such as the passport.

Dávila indicates that the PARLASUR should urge the governments of the region to respect the treaties that gave rise to Mercosur, respecting the fact that the Identity Card is a legal document to move from one country to another in the continent.

However, the migration issue thanks to the Venezuelan exodus has not stopped becoming a political, boiling issue in the region.

After the riots in which locals burned the belongings of 1,200 Venezuelans in the border town of Pacaraima, between Venezuela and Brazil; and where 25% of the inhabitants are Venezuelans and live in tents between bus stations and abandoned houses in the area, Brazilian politicians from the state of Roraima have once again called for the closure of the federal government's borders with the support of communities driven by a wave migration that has oversaturated the health system and the services of a state with little infrastructure. Turning, for the first time in history, Venezuelan migrants into political material which can be attacked with the support of the nascent xenophobia in the region.</s>On an international scale, here is what generosity looks like – and what it can potentially do.

Just before he stepped down as Colombia’s president on Aug. 7, Juan Manuel Santos granted temporary residency permits to 440,000 refugees from Venezuela, doubling the number given in recent years. It was an act of solidarity with innocent people fleeing starvation, violence, and hyperinflation in their country. Since 2015, Colombia has been the largest receiver of Venezuelan refugees – more than 1 million.

The move sparked Mark Green, the head of foreign aid for the United States, to tweet: “The world owes Colombia a debt of gratitude for welcoming Venezuelans fleeing [the] Maduro regime.” Similar statements have come from United Nations officials. A few days later, the US, which itself is the largest humanitarian donor to the refugee crisis, decided to send a Navy hospital ship to Colombia to provide medical aid to the Venezuelans.

Yet the biggest impact of Colombia’s open-arms policy may be in Venezuela, where an estimated 7 to 12 percent of the population has so far left the country, a migration approaching the flows in Syria.

Perhaps embarrassed that neighboring Colombia was widening its welcome mat, President Nicolás Maduro announced Aug. 17 that he would try to solve the country’s economic crisis. He introduced a new currency that knocked five zeros off the value of the old one, hoping to curb an annual inflation rate estimated at 1 million percent. And he also promised to raise the minimum wage – by 34 times.

Venezuela used to be Latin America’s richest country. It also holds the world’s largest known petroleum reserves. Yet years of mismanagement, corruption, and clampdowns on dissent have left it a failed state. The country’s decline, especially in its democracy, really began to impact its neighbors this year with the flow of refugees. “The capacity of the region is overwhelmed,” says one UN official. Ecuador and Peru have started to restrict the entry of Venezuelans. Last week, Brazil sent its military to the border to quell local violence against the refugees.

Colombia’s generous response could be a result of the lessons it learned during its own crisis. During a half-century of civil war that ended in 2016, millions of Colombians were displaced. Part of the peace process includes generous compensation to the war’s victims. Helping Venezuelans may now seem like a natural extension of the compassion shown to its own people.

Efforts to help the refugees can be one way to encourage stronger international action toward restoring democracy in Venezuela. In particular, Colombia’s generosity will create hope for Venezuelans that they are not alone. It lays a moral groundwork for an eventual solution to the biggest crisis in Latin America.
Ecuador leaves the Bolivarian alliance of nations run in Latin America, citing the behaviour of the Venezuelan government in several areas including attempting to impose Chavism in America, creating major crises, and ineffectual control of migration.