Donmatías is a Colombian town with a very unusual migratory behavior. A 2005 census found that around 5,000 Donmatieños had left their town and traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, a city 2,500 miles away. When the census was completed Donmatías had a population of 15,000. One in every three residents had moved to Boston. Ten years later, that number may be higher.
“It became a tradition to leave the town, it’s part of our culture,” says Jairo Macías, a councilor in Donmatías. “Some of the Donmatieños have traveled to the United States with a visa, but others have traveled without documents, willing to pay $10,000 or $15,000 for a trip via Mexico.” This extraordinary migration started in the seventies, became massive in the late eighties and nineties, and has remained steady over the past decade.