Bangladeshis in Latin America!
“Mi sobrina acaso con um hombre de Bangladesh (My niece married a man from Bangladesh),” said a Brazilian taxi driver in the sleepy south Brazilian city of Foz Do Iguacu. Taken aback, I asked him repeatedly, in my broken Spanish, if he was talking about Bangladesh or some other country.
As he kept telling the story of how they had met, and how they were now living across the border in Paraguay, I kept questioning whether I had heard him right, whether my poor Spanish was understanding it wrong or if his Spanish is wrong as well!
Foz Do Iguacu is a small town in the southern end of Brazil. It is famous simply because it is by the famous Iguazu Waterfalls that lie on the border between Argentina and Brazil. In fact, the area is one of the few tri-border regions in the world, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect.
Having seen the waterfalls, I was in the taxi on my way to visit Mezquita Omar ibn al-Khattab, a significantly big mosque in town. A mosque in this part of the world has turned into a tourist attraction on its own. But I had lost all focus. The taxi driver’s mention of Bangladeshis in the area got me quite elated and excited. Bengalis in Latin America? How did they get here? What do they do? Are they doing well? How is the Bangladeshi Spanish accent?
As all these thoughts crossed my mind, I ended up in the mosque. The building was gigantic and impeccably decorated. It was nearly the end of the day, and I decided that I’d stay for the Maghrib prayers.
As I sat waiting for the Azaan, I heard a voice behind me that I had never heard before, but had a familiar language. “Bhai, bhalo asen?” I heard. Turning my head back I saw two men greet two others, speaking the language which is my mother tongue – Bangla. I got up and walked towards them, introducing myself to them.
Immediately, I got talking to them. There were a couple of them who lived in Foz Do Iguacu, and a couple who lived across the border in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. I gathered that about 250 Bangladeshis live altogether around the border. Most people were doing very well,
Rahul (name changed) tells me the story. They have a small, tight-knit community and also their own mosque in Ciudad del Este, which functions like a community centre. They go to picnics together and most of them there are businesspeople, with a few of them also holding jobs in various shops and industries.
True to Bengali hospitality, I was taken for a cup of tea with two of them and we chatted a lot about different things. I was invited to visit Paraguay the following day by Rahul. I duly obliged. I wasn’t actually planning to visit Paraguay, but hey another country ticked off the list!
Fast-forward 24 hours and I had visited Paraguay and seen a manic city. The whole city was like Banga Bazar in Dhaka, and it was an easy and cheap shopping destinations for Brazilians and Argentines hopping across the border. We were sat at a table and having lunch. The food was fish eggs and chicken, cooked Bangladeshi style. The house belonged to Rumen, a “dalal”. Rahul said Rumen was a very “honest dalal” and that over 70 people had come to Brazil and Paraguay via his services.
“No one wants to come to Brazil,” Rumen told me, “since their aim is America.” How was that possible? We were about 13,000 kilometres off the southern American border. “When people leave their homes, and have nothing to lose, they get very brave,” Rahul said. Rumen told me that as we were speaking, some Bengalis had arrived in Peru and were making their way to Brazil - thousands of kilometres, through unsafe territory illegally. The route is even crazier.
From Foz Do Iguacu, people take multiple buses to the north Brazilian border with Colombia, a distance of nearly 6,000 km (Bangladesh to Greece!) Once near the border, they pay locals to smuggle them across the border into Colombia. Once inside Colombia, they make their way through thick jungle towards the highway. Buses will be taken towards the northern Colombian city of Cali (made famous in the hit-series Narcos). From Cali, a boat is used to reach Guatemala, from where it is again treacherous bus rides towards Mexico and all the way up to the border of Texas.
Rumen, however, stated that people are blinded by the American dream. Most people are struggling once they get into the state, working illegal jobs. On the flipside, he argued, Brazil never refuses a refugee application. Most Bangladeshis claim to be political refugees and seek protection from the Brazilian government.
Rumen, being fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese, earns a good amount by helping others complete their necessary documentation. At least 20 Bangladeshi passports lie in the corner of the living room we sat in and chat.
Rumen said even he wanted to go to Canada. But, having started an electronics business in Paraguay, it boomed. Soon, he had moved onto other businesses and was now making almost a million dollars a year. He bought a house, drives quite an expensive car and his wife has moved to Brazil from Bangladesh and lives with him.
Rahul, on the other hand, hasn’t had that good of a fortune. He is a middleman for a lot of different shops, getting them supplies from wholesalers. He has a steady stream of income, and he is able to live comfortably, but as of now he isn’t able to bring his wife and son from Bangladesh. He is trying to apply for a legal trade licence in Brazil, so that he can expand his business.
He has a plan B too, to go to Uruguay if things don’t work out in Brazil. Uruguay happens to have one of the easiest citizenship programmes in the world, with a passport that is incredibly strong (130+ visa-free countries).
During further travels I also met two Bangladeshis who live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They both own electronics shops and said they are making an incredibly decent income.
However, due to inflation and a weakening currency, Argentina doesn’t allow them to send enough money back home. They are earning upwards of US$50,000 a month, but unable to send much back home.
One of them even confided to me that he had tried the Texas route. He was caught by US officials while trying to enter Texas via Mexico. He got deported back to Argentina as he still had a valid Argentine permit.
“Whatever Allah does is good,” he says now, “I’d never have made this much money in America.” Both of them are now planning a world tour to visit multiple countries around the world and then spend a long holiday in Bangladesh. I am told that about 200 Bengalis live in Argentina, and they are living quite comfortably.
To the west in Chile, I ran across a man doing a Master’s degree in Santiago. He reported that about 40 Bengalis live in Chile. None of them was doing as well as those in Argentina or Brazil, but are still living their life through. I also met a man who lives in Peru, and he mentioned he knows 30 Bengalis in Lima. Most of them are having comfortable lives.
UNHCR says that the highest number of illegal migrants in the world come from Bangladesh. A lot of them live in horrid conditions in various countries in the world. The ones I met in Latin America are among those who have the most comfortable of lives.
I hope to recount further encounters with Bangladeshis in other parts the world, in a future article.
*Raiiq Ridwan lives and works in the UK