View article

I met Angela, a 27-year-old Dominican migrant, in November 2015 in Quito. We used to get together to have coffee and talk about life at a bakery located a couple of blocks from her job. 6 months after we met, via WhatsApp, she extended this invitation:“Let’s have coffee at my place. My address: three blocks south from the Santa Clara Market you will find a tall wine-coloured building, third floor, apartment 301. If you get lost just ask for the Edificio de los Migrantes [the Migrant Building]. Anyone will guide you.” The encounter was exceptional. We met at her place in a seven-story building where South American, Caribbean, African, and Asian migrants shared flats, hence its colloquial name. Angela’s flatmates—Tania from the Dominican Republic, Rosa and Amelia from Cuba—joined us. I not only witnessed the bonds of solidarity and community they had woven as an essential living strategy, but also how the four of them were planning their departures. On the table, our coffees were lost amid scribbled papers containing routes with towns to be crossed, bus fares, names and rates of hotels, and even telephone numbers of the “guides” to be counted for border crossings. In those pages, Angela and her Caribbean flatmates had organized their transit from Ecuador southwards.