5 - Cash Rules Everything: Money and Migration in the Colombian-Venezuelan Borderlands

Summary

Since 2015, over five million Venezuelans have fled their country in an attempt to survive the near collapse of the country’s economy. A majority of these migrants have relocated to geographically proximate countries in Latin America, and as such, millions have been forced to transit through the Colombian–Venezuelan borderlands in order to arrive at their final destination. Extending from the Amazon to the Caribbean, this vast binational region plays host to a myriad of state and armed non-state actors who compete and collaborate for control of resources, people, and territory. Money plays an important role for Venezuelan migrants who transit through or settle in the borderlands. Their access to money, or lack thereof, dictates how and where they enter, transit through, and ultimately settle in Colombia or beyond. Even for those migrants lacking financial any meaningful resources, both Colombian and Venezuelan authorities and other armed non-state actors in the borderlands have found a variety of ways to regulate, victimize, and profit from their entry, settlement, and incorporation into local informal economies.