Venezuelan migrant Marcel Maldonado has finally crossed the Tuquesa River. He breaks down and bursts into tears. He has just crossed on foot, with a prosthetic leg, the terrible jungle of Darién, on the border between Colombia and Panama.
On one of the banks is Bajo Chiquito, the first Panamanian village where some three thousand migrants arrive every day, in pursuit of the American dream, mainly Venezuelans, often accompanied by children.
After three to five days of an exhausting walk, they finally found in this heat-crushed village a hot meal and a safe place to sleep, even if it was in the open air.
They have overcome the natural obstacles of the jungle, such as rivers and cliffs, but also survived raids by criminal gangs who often rob, kidnap or rape them.
Marcel Maldonado lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident ten years ago, but his disability did not discourage him.
“The only thing I want is to allow my parents to spend their last years with at least something to eat. That’s my dream,” the thirty-year-old Venezuelan told AFP. “Without that, I wouldn’t be here. Because it’s terrible.”
The Darién jungle, 266 km long and covering 575,000 hectares, has become a necessary passage for thousands of migrants who, from South America, try to reach the United States via Central America and Mexico.
– “Realize his dream”
Most are Venezuelans, but there are also Ecuadorians, Haitians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Afghans and Africans from Cameroon or Burkina Faso.
“It’s very dangerous. There are rapes, and everything else,” assures AFP Reina Torres, 77, a Venezuelan who crossed the jungle with twelve members of her family.
The journey is “very dangerous, risky, but necessary,” adds Mechu Falceinord, a 28-year-old Haitian from French Guiana. “My dream is to work, to have money, to be independent, to have a house, a dog, a child.”
In Bajo Chiquito, police search migrants’ luggage and confiscate any items that could be used as weapons, while immigration officials record names.
Nearly 390,000 migrants have entered Panama through Darien since the start of the year, a sharp increase compared to 2022 when there were 248,000, according to official Panamanian figures. In 2008, the first year they were counted, there were only 28.
From Bajo Chiquito, migrants board canoes that, for $25 per person, will take them three hours up the Tuquesa River to Lajas Blancas.
From there, they will continue their journey by bus to the Costa Rican border.
Members of UN humanitarian agencies or NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the Red Cross are also present in this village to help them.
Upon leaving the jungle, many people say they have lost everything in attacks.
– Garbage trail
“We were held hostage from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They put their fingers in my vagina and in my anus to see if I had money hidden,” Nazaret Puerta, a Venezuelan from 28 years old.
“The forest was dangerous, we spent four days there, we didn’t drink water, there was no food, (?) we threw our things here, we didn’t even business” adds, in French, a migrant from Burkina Faso who identified himself only as Utsman.
Migrants leave a trail of trash in the jungle: boots, socks, plastic bottles, pants, bras, cups, toothbrushes and diapers. Garbage also litters the banks of the Tuquesa River.
In Bajo Chiquito, residents have opened food stands, rent hammocks and campsites, and offer cell phone charging and internet access.
For Panama, this flow of migrants has become a security problem.
“We are talking about around 390,000 migrants since the beginning of the year,” says the region’s police chief, Deputy Commissioner Edgar Pitti Valdés. “This massive influx of migrants has disrupted the normal coexistence of populations.”
09/24/2023 18:10:57 – Bajo Chiquito (Panama) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
