Brazil was unprepared for its neighbor’s crisis
For many Venezuelans, migration is the only way to survive. But their arrival hasn’t always been welcome.
Paolo Cravero is the Communications Officer of Franciscans International, a human rights NGO based in New York and Geneva. Join their newsletter.
On the morning of Dec. 9, Roberta Alvim was sitting in her office when she received a call from a friend, João Carlos Jarochinski Silva.
She had met him a few months before at a conference on human trafficking at the University of Roraima, in Boa Vista, Brazil. As a federal public defender, Alvim had just been posted to Boa Vista, the capital of the state of Roraima. Jarochinski Silva, a professor of international relations with extensive experience researching migrations in the Amazon, was teaching at the university. Their fields of interest overlapped. As they left the conference they exchanged cards and proposed to keep in touch.
“Roberta,” he said urgently over the phone, “I am at the Federal Police station. They have rounded up hundreds of people, women and children. A lot of them are indigenous. I think they speak Warao. They are going to deport them all.”
