Reporting from San Gabriel, Ecuador — For Mari, a 30-year-old Colombian mother of two small children, the choice was life or death: either flee to neighboring Ecuador or be killed by paramilitaries who were trying to extort $3,000 from her and her husband.
So in October, she and her family fled their small farm in southern Colombia and became part of a rising tide of refugees streaming into Ecuador. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said last month that the number of Colombian refugees tripled in the last six months of 2009, compared with the same period the previous year.
More than 80,000 Colombians are registered refugees in Ecuador and as many as 200,000 more are thought to be undocumented.
The higher volume of people fleeing Colombia is largely due to increased levels of drug-fueled violence in the border state of Narino. Rival guerrilla, paramilitary and narco gangs are vying for control of the state's cocaine traffic as well as cultivation and processing of coca, whose leaves are used to produce the drug.
Caught in the middle are poor rural residents such as Mari and her family, from the town of Catambuco near Pasto, Narino's capital. Armed groups often force rural people to join their ranks, pay huge "vaccinations," as extortion payments are called, or flee.
"There is no end to the violence. We thought it was better to come here, where it is peaceful, to try to start a new life," said Mari, who would not give her last name for fear of reprisal.
Even before the recent uptick in the number of migrants, the United Nations had declared the Ecuadorean-Colombian border region to be the Western Hemisphere's leading focal point of displaced people. The Colombian government and international aid groups estimated that before the increase in 2009, roughly 15,000 citizens were immigrating to Ecuador each year to escape an armed conflict that is now in its fifth decade.
The issue of refugees is a source of strain in binational relations, with Ecuador saying Colombia makes too little effort to stem the flow and accepts little responsibility for the cost of humanitarian aid. Colombia has accused Ecuador of allowing rebel groups to find a haven in its territory.
In November, the two nations restored diplomatic ties cut since the Colombian military's March 2008 incursion into Ecuador to kill rebel leader Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
