The miserable life of a migrant

Last year, Angelys Marelys Boada Munoz left behind her children in the failing city of Cumana, Venezuela, and joined the exodus.
She travelled across the peninsula to the mainland’s Gulf of Paria coast and paid her way to Trinidad, following the uncounted thousands who came to the island by boat, driven by hunger and hopelessness.
Angelys found work, hawking vegetables for a vendor in Freeport, her salary paying for a bare apartment near the Solomon Hochoy Highway, the rest sent home to the children, aged nine and 11.
She was a ghost when she got here, undocumented and, like so many others, trying every day to earn money by whatever means —sales, skills, sex—while trying to avoid police attention, detention, and deportation.
Her lifeline came in May of 2019, when the State called on Venezuelans, here legally and illegally, to register for the card that would allow them to stay and work for a year, for at least the minimum wage.
Angelys received her registration card months later. 
Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and the world’s reaction to the virus with a 99 per cent survival rate, destroyed the lives of countless.
The lockdowns, regulations and restrictions in Trinidad and Tobago disproportionately affected the working class, and many of the lowest wage earners ended up jobless and desperate.
Angelys was among the migrants left on the fringes, people who could not leave, had nothing to go home to, and no opportunities here. The vendor could not afford to keep her.
Downward spiral
Six months ago, Angelys began a downward spiral.
This 32-year-old single mother, who worked at a horse riding school in that other life, ended up dead on the fast lane of the Solomon Hochoy highway last week Monday.
Police were told she walked into the path of a pick-up truck heading north at daybreak, and then was run over by a second vehicle.
Before the highway was blocked and her body covered, the Facebook videographers captured close-ups of what remained of her partially unclothed, broken body.
The traffic and inconvenience her body caused became the topic of discussion for those caught up in it.
“Lovely way to kick off your morning,” commented one.
Angelys had no relatives in Trinidad.
But the Express found a girlfriend who led us to the dead woman’s brother and sister in Venezuela.
As of Saturday, six days later, they had not told Angelys’ children that she was dead. How could they? It’s Christmas all over the world.
This woman was loved.
“Here she was very dear, because she was a very humble and hard-working girl. She helped those who needed…because she offered everything to those who didn’t have. Good sister, good daughter and good mother. Friend of the whole world,” her sister communicated with the Express using an online translation tool.
“She had two children, one 11 and nine years old. Her life plans were to give them a decent home,” said her brother, who added he was told of what had happened to her in her final months in Trinidad.
“She was not working there because of the pandemic. And some evil men took away her desire to continue living. They kidnapped her, they mistreated her, they did much, much damage and then they left her abandoned and she went mad, on her way to places that led her to her death,” he said.
Mental health issues
Those who remember seeing Angelys in Freeport said she appeared to have mental health issues over the past few months, seen on the streets shabbily dressed, late into the night, blocking cars, and walking into properties.
The police were called at least once and she was taken to the Couva Hospital, then transferred to the San Fernando Hospital.
Those holding registration cards are entitled to emergency medical services. A mental health evaluation is not considered an emergency. In any event, her torment would have been lost in translation.
The Express was told that she fled the hospital, and would stay at random places, just trying to stay alive, the Express was told.
The night before her death, she stayed late at a back road “party’’, then stumbled away, people in the area said. What she did in those final hours, however, no one could say.
Her body is now on a slab at the Forensic Science Centre in Federation Park. The girlfriend identified her by a tattoo.
The autopsy result will be a formality.
What happens next with Angelys’ body, no one can say.
Her siblings are asking authorities in Trinidad and Tobago for information on how the body of their sister can be returned to Venezuela for a funeral.
Whether this is possible is unlikely.


Bureacracy maze
Co-founder/coordinator of the La Romaine Migrants Support (LARMS) Angie Ramnarine told the Express the family could expect a maze of bureaucracy made more complicated by the pandemic restrictions, and that fact that Angelys had no relatives in Trinidad.
The most likely outcome would be that Angelys Marelys Boada Munoz’s “unclaimed” body would be the State’s responsibility, and taken away to a crematorium for disposal.
Ramnarine says there have been instances where deceased Venezuelans caught in the document/illegal mess in Trinidad and Tobago got a more dignified end, when friends paid a funeral agency.
This was bound to happen “in the absence of a clear policy framework of what to do and now (migrants) are to be handled. There were never clear parameters laid out,” said Ramnarine.
Angelys’ siblings just want to know what to do. They have to tell her children what happened to Mama.

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