Dug into rock at the back of a small house in the Colombian city of Pamplona is a modest wood-burning stove. On it sit large pots, brimming with soup, potatoes, white rice and chicken. Here, Doña Marta Duque is preparing food for between 50 and 100 Venezuelan migrants. Her cooking is famous along the migrant route.
From this house on the town’s outskirts, beside a bridge, Marta has provided food and shelter for years to often-desperate migrants, who have travelled the steep 75-kilometre road from the Venezuelan border. Many will have come through the illegal trails that run near the Simón Bolívar International Bridge, the main official crossing point between the two countries. Some will have crossed over the bridge itself. Either way, the migrants end up in the Colombian border town of Cúcuta.
There, they often encounter human and goods smugglers. Both categories have been very active since 2015, when economic hardship began leading Venezuelans to leave their country in their millions to resettle across Latin America. In Cúcuta, the migrants decide whether to settle somewhere around the border city, whether to buy goods and return to Venezuela in the hope of selling them at a profit, or whether to venture into the cold Colombian mountains in search of the opportunity that Venezuela denies them. If they choose the latter, it means heading to Bucaramanga, the nearest ‘big’ Colombian city, where they may find the opportunity they seek.
