Desperate Venezuelan migrants who made it across the border in time were breathing a sigh of relief hours before Peru's tightened controls came into effect today, preventing those not carrying passports from entering.
"We have been on the road for five days. We travelled by bus and saw people, Venezuelans, walking along the road," Jonathan Zambrano, 18, told AFP.
Thousands of migrants fleeing the crippling economic crisis in their homeland had faced a race against time to cross into Peru from either Ecuador or Colombia after last week's announcement from Lima that they had one week to enter before a passport would be required.
Until today, a simple identity card was enough for Venezuelans heading south to escape food and medicine shortages, hyperinflation and failing public services back home.
At one border crossing, Peruvian officers handed out balloons to exhausted children, but many Venezuelans feared it would be a different story once the new rules come into force.
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"People arrive with very few resources and after having travelled, five or six days being the shortest. There are people who've been travelling for months," Regine de la Portilla of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR told AFP.
Ecuador opened a "humanitarian corridor" yesterday and lifted its own entry restrictions to facilitate the Venzuelans' travels to Peru, one of the region's fastest growing economies with 4.7 per cent growth projected for next year.
Ecuadoran Interior Minister Mauro Toscanini said yesterday that 35 busloads of migrants were on the move along the route authorities had opened to Peru. "We are going to continue as long as we can," said the minister, whose country is being crossed by tens of thousands of Venezuelans seeking to join relatives and take up work opportunities in Peru, Chile and beyond.
Colombia had criticised its two southern neighbours for implementing travel restrictions, warning it wouldn't stop migration. Ecuador -- where close to half a million people have fled this year alone -- heeded the warning and lifted its week-long requirement for Venezuelans to produce a passport, all the while helping those migrants reach Peru.
Peru's citizens largely supported the move, though, worried about the impact that the 400,000 Venezuelans already in the country would have.
"On the one hand, we're sorry for the Venezuelan people, but they are taking a job away from a Peruvian," said Giannella Jaramillo, who runs a clothes stall in Aguas Verdes, practically on the border with Ecuador. "It's hard to help more people."
More than 2,500 migrants swamped the small crossing yesterday -- 10 times the usual daily traffic. Colombia has pleaded with its southern neighbours to agree to a combined migration strategy, while Ecuador has called a meeting of 13 Latin American countries next month to discuss the crisis.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will set up a special UN team to ensure a coordinated regional response, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Venezuelans are rushing out of the oil-rich country to join those who have already fled a deepening political and economic crisis, as regional governments struggle to cope with one of the biggest exoduses in Latin American history.
Of the 2.3 million Venezuelans living abroad, more than 1.6 million have fled the country since the crisis began in 2015, according to the UN. The pace of departures has accelerated in recent days, sparking a warning from the UN.
"It remains critical that any new measures continue to allow those in need of international protection to access safety and seek asylum," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Thursday.
The UN said up to 4,000 people were arriving daily in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Brazil, where migrants have been violently turned back by locals concerned by increasing crime.
Colombia says it has already given temporary residence to 870,000 Venezuelans but it can barely cope. It's the same for Peru, where earlier this month, a record 5,100 people entered the country in a single day.
Peru's migration superintendent, Eduardo Sevilla, said that if Venezuelans continue arriving at the same rate, there will be "half a million by the beginning of November".
Many queuing at the border in Peru left Venezuela on foot weeks ago. They've already travelled 2,000 kilometres, but those who get through face another 1,200-kilometre journey to the Peruvian capital Lima.
Local churches have been handing out food to the weary and hungry migrants as they wait. "The children are tired and dizzy because the trip has been quite complicated," Carolina Velandria, a 36-year-old supermarket manager told AFP yesterday after crossing into Peru.
Venezuela is in a fourth straight year of recession, with double-digit declines in its gross domestic product. The inflation rate is expected to reach a mind-boggling one million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Under President Nicolas Maduro's leadership, industry is operating at only 30 percent, hit hard by the crash in oil prices since 2014 in a country that earns 96 per cent of its revenue from crude.
In efforts to boost the economy, Maduro and his government have implemented measures including a re-denomination of the bolivar, a loosening of foreign capital rules and a massive increase in the minimum wage. But critics and analysts say those moves will likely be counterproductive.
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