More than 5 million Venezuelans have fled their country in recent years. They’ve done so to escape violence, economic turmoil, political unrest and more. The crisis is the worst of its kind Latin America has ever experienced, former Mexico foreign minister Jorge Castañeda wrote earlier this year.
Almost 2 million Venezuelan migrants have crossed the border into neighboring Colombia — more than any other country.
In this episode of IJNotes, we speak with Jesús Mesa, a current ICFJ fellow and an international reporter with one of Colombia’s leading newspapers, El Espectador. In 2018, Mesa and his colleague, Angelica Lagos, received a fellowship from the Carter Center to report on mental health challenges facing Venezuelan migrants in Colombia today.
Listen below as Mesa shares candidly about his experience reporting on this less visible side of the Venezuelan migration crisis:
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David Maas is the manager of IJNet.