On a sunny day in Little Village in September, Jackson Pedron and his wife, Carolina Hidalgo, stood next to each other and prayed, as they have done thousands of times before.
They raised up their hands. Under a large white tent in a parking lot, heat radiated from the concrete. A pastor for New Life Centers stood at the front of the church gathering and reminded people in the crowd to treasure where they came from. “Your culture is a gift from God,” he said.
Pedron and his wife have known each other for 24 years but didn’t get married until they walked to Chicago from Venezuela with their four children in the fall of last year. They had planned to for years, but never actually went through with it until they made it here safely.
Pedron lost his leg a quarter century ago in Caracas when a group of men shot him. Unable to get proper treatment, about a week later, he had to have it amputated. Without the right medical equipment and therapy, walking has been a struggle his whole life.
Hidalgo, 49, stayed with him immediately after he lost his leg, and he helped her after the government sent her death threats for taking medical leave from work — and their relationship has just become stronger.
“She’s my life. My everything,” Pedron, 41, said.
The ability to safely flee violence to reach the U.S. is the first step to claiming asylum, a form of protection granted to those who can’t return to their home country for fear of persecution. But it is difficult — especially for someone with a disability — to make a migratory journey.
It takes bravery to move to and navigate a new country with a disability, especially for those who have experienced significant hardship like Pedron, said Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the Disability Justice Initiative at American Progress.
“Disabled migrants traveling thousands of miles might not have access to resources, crutches or other tools that can make things more accessible,” Ives-Rublee said.
1999
On Sept. 19, 1999, Pedron was walking in his neighborhood in Caracas when he was shot in the leg, which irrevocably altered his life. A group of men was trying to rob him of his shoes when they shot him, he said.
Former military officer Hugo Chávez was president at the time, and a workers’ strike had shut down the hospitals. The gunshot wound on his leg was made worse by the lack of available medical resources.
He met his life partner, Carolina, at a neighborhood gathering a few months later. She helped him painfully put his life back together. His dad bought him a prosthetic leg, but it was still difficult for him. He was still uncomfortable. He had trouble walking.
Pedron said Hidalgo made life easier.
“She was with me through everything,” he said.
They moved into his mother’s house in Caracas almost immediately after they met, and had three children together. He sold candy on the street for work. She got a job as a secretary for a branch of the government under the country’s new president, Nicolás Maduro. Nearly two decades passed.
Then, in 2018, Hidalgo was carrying their fourth child and had to take several months off work because their unborn daughter had hydrocephalus. When Hidalgo notified the country’s Ministry of Labor that she had a high-risk pregnancy and needed to take leave, government officials retaliated against her.
The retaliation quickly went a step further when government officials forged Hidalgo’s signature on a letter of dismissal. Soon, she was out of work and caring for their newborn baby. She left her job but continued receiving threats, which is common in Venezuela after people leave governmental positions, according to global experts.
She had only taken leave, not gone into opposition to the government, but the threats continued, Pedron said.
“They sent her a message that they were going to harm my children. They threatened me because of my disability,” he said.
With four children and no stable income, the two worked hard to scrape together what money he could. The family decided to leave together for Colombia, where their situation remained dangerous as they continued to receive death threats.
In 2023, they left again, this time for the U.S., a journey that took months.
Being an amputee exacerbated the risks of the journey for Pedron. Many disabled people cannot access assistance during humanitarian evacuations and are left behind, according to disability experts.
But Pedron risked his life for his family’s safety, praying the whole way that they’d remain by his side.
Tens of thousands displaced
Considered the largest displacement crisis in the world, 7.7 million Venezuelans have migrated and are currently living outside their country. It amounts to over 25% of the total population of Venezuela.
The border has seen a slowdown of crossings in recent months due to a June executive order by President Joe Biden.
Under the June restrictions, when southern border encounters with migrants reach an average of 2,500 per day over a week, most migrants entering between ports of entry are ineligible for asylum.
Yet a turbulent political situation in Venezuela will keep migrants like Pedron and his family moving north, predicts David Smolansky, former special envoy of the Organization of American States for the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis.
“People in Venezuela are desperate to have a democratic solution,” Smolansky said in a recent interview with the Tribune.
Maduro, who has been in office since 2013, won a contested election in late July that several countries, including the U.S., decried.
Since the disputed election, there have been forced disappearances, torture, intimidation, threats and harassment from the government in Venezuela, Smolansky said. Migrants in Chicago have watched videos, sent from relatives who remain in the country, of anti-government demonstrations that have elicited strong police responses — including the use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.
Tens of thousands have made the difficult decision to walk over seven countries to reach the U.S., and more continue to do so every day. And Pedron did it with one leg, something many people could never fathom.
He hiked for two and a half months up from Columbia, using crutches and his old prosthetic leg, worrying about keeping himself and his kids and wife alive.
In the Darien Gap, a notoriously dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama, he remembers barely being able to walk through the jungles scattered with human remains.
He remembers how his little girls lifted him onto La Bestia, also known as the “Death Train” for the lengths people take to ride the treacherous long string of cargo trains that go through remote Mexico. Many lose limbs, break bones or die. He said it felt “like a horror movie, but in real life.”
Along the way, Pedron, like many others, lost all of his family’s belongings, swept up by the forces of nature: their identification papers, their cellphones, their money. The miles of walking left him completely exhausted physically and mentally, he said. There were days when he didn’t want to continue.
“Going through that is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he said.
But last winter, after months of walking, his family crossed the border into El Paso, Texas, by turning themselves into immigration authorities. They got to Chicago in mid-December 2023 on a chartered flight from Texas paid for by a charity.
Pedron said he believed making it to the city was part of a “divine plan.”
A new prosthetic
Pedron’s family currently lives in a shelter run by the state in Little Village. They are hoping to stay here by pleading asylum, and haven’t received permission to work legally yet.
They’ve received some housing benefits from the state, but Pedron worries because he and his wife don’t have stable jobs. They need to find something affordable for their family of six.
He glowed when he talked about the new prosthetic leg paid for with state health benefits he got a month and a half ago. He never thought he would be able to afford one.
He’s learning how to walk with just his cane. He can hold his littlest daughter’s hand on the way to school, something he couldn’t do as easily with his older children because he had to use crutches to support himself.
Pedron has hope. Except for sometimes, when he thinks about his older daughter sleeping on a cot in a shelter with hundreds of other people. She’s told him that she wants to sleep in a bed.
“I promised (my daughter) a room,” he said.
And sometimes, he said, people tell him the “government is paying him” for being a disabled Venezuelan. He wishes everyone would treat each other with kindness.
“I don’t understand why people — migrants and others — act poorly in the U.S., when so many of us come from so much suffering,” he said.
A wedding
Pedron twisted a ring on his ring finger and smiled when he talked about his wife. About two months ago, more than 24 years after meeting Hidalgo in Venezuela, they went to the Cook County courthouse and officially tied the knot.
Finally, they just decided the time had come, he said. They wanted to move forward.
She wore a white dress and held a bouquet of flowers. They posed for a photo with pink balloons in front of their children.
Thousands of miles from their families, Pedron and his wife hope they will never have to fear for their lives in the same way. They hope they will find community in Chicago. They hope the years will pass without incident.
Soon, he hopes, he’ll grow steadier on his new prosthetic leg. He hopes they’ll move out of the shelter. He hopes that as his children grow up, they’ll learn some English. They’re already doing better at school.
All the while, more people fleeing violence will likely come here from other countries. People like him, who face immeasurable risks on the journey, will also likely be forced to leave.
In that Little Village parking lot, surrounded by tables with food and flags from Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Pedron’s 6-year-old daughter held onto his arm for comfort. Brass trumpet notes and different dialects of Spanish drifted in the air.
He stood next to his wife and they raised their hands, as they have done thousands of times before, and prayed for the future.
