VICE NEWS: Millions of Venezuelan Migrants Are Trapped Between COVID and a Hostile Homeland →

Jose Manuel Lovera is sleeping rough on the streets of the small town of Huaquillas in Ecuador. He didn’t envision his migration would end like this.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic for Venezuelan migrants in the region has been devastating. Many who left their troubled homeland now feel that they have nowhere to go, and face hostility both at home and abroad.

Lovera,  who decided to return to Venezuela after leaving, soon regretted it.

Jose Manuel Lovera sent this photo of himself to VICE News, for Steven Grattan.

AL JAZEERA: Amnesty: Killing of Colombia activists result of failed policies →

For years, Danelly Estupinan has received threats for her work as a human rights defender in the Pacific coastal city of Buenaventura.

In November 2015, she received a text message that read, “Danelly, you’re going to meet your end.” The same evening, while she was on a phone call with a United Nations official, a second voice intercepted with “now we know where you are.”

Danelly Estupinan of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras in Buenaventura, Colombia [Duncan Tucker/Amnesty International]

THE WASHINGTON POST: In Colombia, a death in police custody follows a history of brutality →

For years, Jeimmy Tique Medina, a high school security guard, held fast to her belief that the Colombian police existed to protect and serve.

Then they shot her 19-year-old son.

Now she has joined the critics of police brutality in this South American nation. Colombia is having its own version of a George Floyd moment, an eruption of anti-police sentiment in response to the deadly beating last month of a 46-year-old father of two during an altercation with officers in Bogotá.

A riot police officer holds a shield during a demonstration in Bogotá. (Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images)

VICE NEWS: The End of Colombia's Civil War Had an Unintended Effect: Deforestation →

From the indigenous Awa community deep inside the Amazon, David Taicus, 40, a spokesman for his people, says the government does nothing to help them and accused the administration of Jair Bolsonaro of  letting multinational corporations and other exploitative interests take over their land.

He spoke to VICE News in a video interview, wearing red and black face paint and traditional dress made of animal’s teeth, bones and feathers.

David Taicus, from the Amazon's Awa indigenous community, is pictured on the grounds of Colombia's National University in Bogota in December 2019 attending the national strike. Photo: Steven Grattan

THE WASHINGTON POST: Latin America, unable to flatten its curve, struggles to cope with pandemic →

“Here, in the area where I live, there are huge families living all together, some in houses, and others just share rooms,” said Daniela Fonseca, 21, a public administration student in Colombia.

Fonseca, her mother, brother, sister and 2-year-old son all were infected in the rundown colonial-era home they share near downtown Bogota. They lost her 44-year-old father to the virus in July.

AL JAZEERA: Police killing sparks riots across Colombia that leave seven dead →

The death of a Colombian man after being repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by police who restrained him has sparked riots and protests throughout the Andean nation. The protests continued into Thursday morning and killed at least seven and wounded more than 150, the country’s defence minister said.

People walking near a burned Transmilenio bus after protests against police brutality in Bogota, Colombia [Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters]

AL JAZEERA: Dozens of young people killed in Colombia, perpetrators unknown →

Alvaro Caicedo recalled finding his 15-year-old son's body on August 12, tortured and lying beside four other lifeless Afro-Colombian teenagers.

His son, Jose, was killed in the impoverished Llano Verde neighbourhood in the western Colombian city of Cali.

A policeman plays a trumpet next to a set of coffins placed as part of a protests in Medellin against the violence in Colombia, where several massacres have happened during the past days [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP]

AL JAZEERA: Colombians revel, protest over order to detain ex-President Uribe →

Colombians took to the streets on Tuesday evening to celebrate and also protest against the Supreme Court order to detain ex-President Alvaro Uribe while investigations against him for witness tampering and fraud continue. 

The decision left many citizens shocked. Some pleased, others angered.

Opponents of Alvaro Uribe, former president and legislator of Colombia, protest in favor of the house arrest measure ordered by the Supreme Court of Justice, in Bogota, Colombia [Nathalia Angarita/Reuters]

THE NEW HUMANITARIAN: Conflict, displacement fears rise in Colombia →

Erika Gonzalez recalled hundreds arriving by wooden canoes.

The elderly were shaking in fear as they disembarked their slender boats, having escaped the violence that has plagued villages in Colombia’s southwestern department of Nariño for decades. Many, including Gonzalez’s nephews, uncles, and aunts, were from her own village of Palambi, on the banks of the River Chagüi, near Tumaco.

Nury Cabezas shows cell phone photos of displaced people from communities on the River Chagüi arriving to Tumaco city by canoe. (Steven Grattan/TNH)

THE WASHINGTON POST: Officials in Colombia evicting poor families during coronavirus outbreak →

Lucía Cupitra stood on a patch of turned earth in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods and spoke of the day last month the government came.

Cupitra, 33, a single mother of five from the Pijao indigenous people, had fled her small town in west-central Colombia after refusing to pay protection money to a local guerrilla group. Here in a tin shack on a hillside in Bogotá’s sprawling Ciudad Bolívar, her family had found a measure of safety — and, if not comfort, at least running water, electricity and a working toilet.

Lucia Cupitra stands in the mud and rubble where her home stood. It was razed by government authorities on May 2. (Nadège Mazars/for The Washington Post)