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Driven by hunger and illness from their traditional homeland on the Orinoco River delta in northeastern Venezuela, more than 1,200 members of the Warao tribe migrated to northern Brazil to live and beg on the streets.
Brazilian authorities, nongovernmental organizations and churches have helped provide temporary shelter on the border, but the Warao’s future remains uncertain. The tribe insists it will not return to Venezuela, where a deep recession has led to shortages of basic goods under President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.
“The children were dying in Venezuela from illness. There was no medicine, no food, no help,” said Rita Nieves, a cacique, or chief, of the matrilineal Warao.
Members of the tribe are still making the arduous journey. Nieves was wearing her best clothes to cross back into Venezuela to bury a 3-month-old Warao baby that had just died in its mother’s arms on the 1,000-km (620-mile) bus ride to Brazil.
“We are staying here because things have not changed in Venezuela,” she said, sitting in a warehouse turned into a living space for 220 Warao in the small border town of Pacaraima.