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Le Calle

Bogota, Colombia welcomes Venezuelans

Immigration3 min read30 Aug 2023

ByJaime Rodríguez Oviedo and Laura Piraján Forero

Colombia is proving fertile ground for migrants from other Latin American countries to start a new life. Betsy, a Venezuelan woman who moved to Bogota to improve her quality of life, told Colombian street paper La Calle more.

Five years ago, Betsy* made the decision to leave her home city of Merida in north-west Venezuela for Bogota, Columbia. “When I realised that my wage would not even cover two dozen or so eggs, I told my mother that I could not do this anymore and I left,” she says.

She now works with her husband in a bakery that she co-owns with her brother-in-law. “I had come to Bogota on a trip because I had been told it was a very beautiful city, but I never imagined that I would end up living here. I believe that fate had been preparing me to arrive in the place where I would later make my new home.”

Le Calle is a street paper based in Bogota, Colombia, sold by people who have limited other ways of earning an income.

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