Surrounded by boxes, a pile of rice packages and mattresses, Jose Avila Saavedra sat on the floor inside Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport, where he has lived for two weeks.
Saavedra and more than 200 other Colombians are camping out in the airport in hopes that their plight will prod Colombian authorities in Brazil to charter a humanitarian flight home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We don’t have money or anything to do in Brazil. We want to ask Colombia’s president to please help us. We’re only eating thanks to donations,” Saavedra said on Wednesday.
Photo: AP
Saavedra had sold clothes in Sao Paulo, earning enough to support his wife, nephew and two-year-old daughter. Then, Sao Paulo state officials ordered a halt to nonessential commerce as part of a lockdown to control the spread of the virus, and he lost his means to obtain and sell merchandise.
Most of the stranded Colombians lay asleep near the airport’s check-in area, a few of them on mattresses and others atop cloth sheets or flattened cardboard boxes. Some stretched out on the bare floor.
Those who were awake said that they did not have the more than US$400 for a flight to Colombia, after having lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
Retail jobs and restaurant work disappeared, they said.
In March and last month, Brazil’s economy shed more than 1 million jobs from the formal sector, according to Brazilian government data published on Wednesday.
“What money we had, we used to pay rent,” Saavedra said. “Now we’re out on the street and we want to go home to be with our families.”
The Colombian embassy in the capital, Brasilia, said in a statement that it had helped 346 Colombians get home on three commercial flights since the onset of the pandemic, but each passenger paid their own way.
It said Colombia’s migration rules prohibit the government from paying for anyone’s flight.
“Considering the risk of being in a non-controlled environment like an airport, a transfer to a municipal hostel has been offered. However, our fellow citizens have declined,” the statement said.
The airport said that it was “monitoring the situation.”
Sao Paulo is the epicenter of the novel coronavirus in Brazil.
The Colombians in the airport are in three separate areas, where they are grouped together in clear violation of social distancing recommendations.
Federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo said in a statement that their condition represents a “serious case of humanitarian vulnerability.”
Astrid Serna looked at her cellphone’s screen while watching her three-year-old daughter from the corner of her eye. The toddler was wrapped in a blanket and lying on a mattress.
Serna said that she arrived to Brazil two years ago and also made a living selling clothes informally until the pandemic pushed her into unemployment.
“The only thing we’re asking for is help from our government. We’re Colombians,” Serna said. “They need to understand that if we had money, we wouldn’t be here.”
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