After six years of economic crisis in their neighboring country, Brazilian officials say more and more unaccompanied minors are arriving

‘They wanted a better life’: the young Venezuelans escaping into Brazil alone

Jesús Pérez was 16 when he crossed into Brazil in June, fleeing a life of hunger on the streets of his disintegrating homeland.

In Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town that is the main entry point for fleeing Venezuelans, he told social workers he hoped for a fresh start.

Those dreams were short-lived. Less than four months later, on 7 October, Jesús’sdisfigured corpse was found dumped in a wheelbarrow near an army-run shelter for refugees in the Amazon city of Boa Vista.

Police have yet to catch his killers but suspect he was murdered by members of Brazil’s biggest drug faction, the First Capital Command (PCC), after racking up a debt of just over £50 ($65).

Nonato Souza, who runs the government refuge where Jesús had lived, said the murder was an extreme example of the dangers facing young Venezuelans escaping into Brazil.

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But after six years of economic meltdown in Venezuela, Brazilian authorities say they are witnessing the arrival of more and more unaccompanied minors such as Jesús.

Between July and December last year, at least 422 Venezuelan children and teenagers entered Brazil through its northern border without their parents or guardians, according to the public defender’s office. Some were as young as 11.

A recent report by the Venezuelan investigative news website Armando.info said 25,000 unaccompanied minors had left since 2015, mostly for Colombia and Brazil.

The surge in arrivals has been such that the UN’s agency for children, Unicef, recently opened two homes in Boa Vista, the nearest major city to the border, to cater specifically to young migrants.

“They come to Brazil hoping to find some kind of work, to survive and to help their families back in Venezuela,” said Ligia Prado da Rocha, a public defender who monitors incoming minors at the Brazilian border.

Rocha said most of the underage and unaccompanied arrivals were – like Jesús – boys aged 15 to 17 who often ended up being exploited on the streets of Boa Vista.

But younger children were also coming as Venezuela’s economic implosion intensified.

“In December, an 11-year-old boy and his 14-year-old cousin came over on their own to Pacaraima,” Rocha said. “They said they’d been living on the streets in Venezuela for a while and wanted a better life in Brazil.”

Venezuela’s teenage refugees are impossible to miss on the streets of Boa Vista, a small city in Brazil’s Roraima state that has borne the brunt of the worst migration crisis in modern South American history.

Officials say a total of 60,000 Venezuelans have arrived here since the global collapse in oil prices in 2013 sent their country into an economic nose-dive.

On a recent evening half a dozen teenage boys battled for the attention – and charity – of drivers near the city’s bus station, their nationality betrayed by their Spanish pleas for help: “Una ayuda, patrón!”

“Today I got three reais [about 50p or 70 cents],” said Luis, a 17-year-old from Venezuela’s Guárico state, after a day begging on Boa Vista’s streets.

Luis said he had abandoned Venezuela last October, leaving his 11-month-old son, Esdras, at home with his mother in order to seek food and work in Brazil.

These days he sleeps on a sliver of cardboard on a wasteland by the bus station. “What’s my biggest dream? I’d never thought about it,” he said. “Probably to see my son and my mom doing OK.”

Daniel, 16, arrived at the Brazilian border last August, penniless and starving, having been robbed of what few possessions he had while hitchhiking there on a truck.

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He grew up in the city of San Félix, but was forced on to the streets at the age of 12 by the collapse of both his family and his country.

After three years of living on the streets, he headed for the lawless gold mines of south Venezuela, where he spent six months before deciding it was too dangerous.

In January, with the help of social workers, he managed to enroll himself in a Brazilian primary school where he, too, is hoping for a new start.

“The thing I most want to do now is study,” Daniel said. “I want to make up for all the time I have lost.”