“We have never experienced something so difficult,” say Latinos camping on the street in Paris

“We have never experienced something so difficult.” Under tarpaulins, dozens of tents have been huddled for almost a month in front of the Saint-Ouen town hall, at the gates of Paris France)where a hundred Latin Americans sleep outdoors after being evicted from a place they occupied.

“The situation is really very hard,” Elva Villera, a 53-year-old Colombian who lives in this makeshift camp with her 22-year-old son, tells AFP. “I haven’t bathed for three or four days,” she adds, her face scarred. due to exhaustion and with a broken voice.

“We left my country because of the violence, but never in my life had we experienced a situation as difficult as the one we are experiencing here in France“, assures this woman who says that she fled Colombia five years ago “after the murder of her husband” and that, as her papers attest, she has political asylum.

The figures differ, but according to AFP, a hundred people, including pregnant women and about 20 children, continue to live under tents.

Most are Colombians, but there are also Cubans, Bolivians, Dominicans and Peruvians. Some, like Elva, are political refugees or await a response to their asylum application, others are undocumented.

They were all expelled on July 30 from a disused factory, owned by the municipality of Saint-Ouen, which they had illegally occupied since the beginning of the year and where the authorities plan to build a school in 2022.

Not knowing where to go, they decided to settle in front of the town hall of this town, located in one of the poorest departments of France, waiting for a relocation solution. But since then, the situation has been at an impasse.

– Uncertainty and anguish – ​ In the camp, where there is anguish due to uncertainty, the days are basically summed up in waiting and managing the day to day. While some cook, others are responsible for keeping the place clean and taking care of the little ones. At night, they take turns standing guard.

At two in the afternoon, hunger begins to be felt. In a makeshift kitchen under a gray awning, one woman scrambles to chop a kilo of onions, while another shreds chicken breasts with her fingers, amid scampering children.

“We cook on small stoves with little gas bottles that last about 1 or 2 hours. It’s a very complicated situation, but we have no other choice,” says Esther, a 34-year-old Dominican mother of two children, ages 14 and 4, among the few minors in the camp to be in school.

The camp essentially survives thanks to donations from associations and neighbors. “Up to 20 people come a day,” says Chanel Marté Castillo, another Dominican, as she welcomes two men who arrive in a car loaded with bottles of water, and boxes of milk, cookies and “chocolates for the children.”

“It is inadmissible to see children and pregnant women sleeping under tents,” says Salim Khelifi, as he hands over the supplies to one of those responsible. “It’s been more than three weeks here, the authorities must find a solution,” he adds.

For everyone, the priority is to find housing before winter arrives. “The nights are getting colder and colder and the children are getting sick,” says Joan Domínguez, a Colombian who claims to have fled his country because of “threats from paramilitary groups.”

But finding an affordable place to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world is almost mission impossible for these migrants, many of whom work in the black in construction or cleaning houses. “They ask us for 2 or 3 months of guarantee and documents that we don’t have,” laments Joan.

In a statement sent to AFP in the middle of the month, the Saint-Ouen city council considered that “it cannot be held responsible for the situation.” “Although solutions have to be found for these people, it is up exclusively to the State to provide them,” said the mayor’s office.