'It's Russian roulette': migrants describe nightmarish route across Florida Straits | A... - 0 views
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Those who survive the perilous sea crossing between the Bahamas and the US describe a nightmarish odyssey of vomit, sweat and fear.“It’s suicide – Russian roulette,” one Brazilian migrant recalled in a 2017 interview after at least a dozen fellow countrymen vanished while attempting the same illegal voyage across the Florida Straits.
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The Florida shipwreck is the latest humanitarian drama to expose the Covid-fuelled migration crisis gripping Latin America and the Caribbean, where the pandemic has killed more than 1.5 million people and wreaked economic havoc.
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Last year more than 125,000, mostly Haitian migrants – among them elderly women and children - hiked through the Darién Gap, a snake-ridden jungle between Colombia and Panama, to reach the US after abandoning their homes in South America.
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“God got us out of there,” said Edner Michel, a 38-year-old Haitian who recently braved the Darién with his wife and newborn child after leaving Brazil because of the crunch. “The feeling I had was that 95% of people who went in there would die.”
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Meghan López, the International Rescue Committee’s vice-president for Latin America, predicted the exodus would continue in 2022 as families sought to escape pre-existing crises such as poverty, hunger, violence and political turmoil that had often been exacerbated by Covid-19.
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“These are crazy choices and yet they are not made by crazy people,” López said of their treacherous journeys. “They are made by desperate people making the very best decision that they can make in what are impossible conditions.”