Darién Gap: Where hundreds of thousands flee through the jungle

The Darién jungle is considered one of the most dangerous escape routes in the world. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands cross it every year. The neighbors look the other way, organized crime also makes money.

“Good morning!” shouts a man with a megaphone in the “Las Tecas” camp near Colombia’s Caribbean coast to around 2,000 people who are crowding in front of a still closed wooden gate in the dark. Most of them are heavily laden with backpacks, water canisters and small children. They all have the same goal: the USA.

Juan Araya, his wife Natalie and three sons flee hunger and hopelessness. “It’s not about us,” says the father of the family, who has already been to the USA once and was deported. “We’re doing this for our children!” Next to him are Ecuadorians and Haitians fleeing gang violence, Angolans, Congolese, even Chinese.

And Mohammed Azeem from Afghanistan – he is fleeing persecution by the Taliban. He first went to Iran with 13 compatriots, then got a humanitarian visa for Brazil, and now they are in the Colombian jungle. “Why doesn’t the USA help us?” they ask themselves. Many of them once worked for the US armed forces but are now being persecuted. “We want to go to a country where we are safe,” says Azeem.

But in order to get to the USA, they first have to go through the jungle of the Darién, which rises in front of them like a large, green wall. A blank space on the map with no road leading through it – full of mountains, swamps, raging rivers and wild animals. Nevertheless, the Darién has become the main route of global migration to the USA. More than half a million people crossed it last year, including tens of thousands of children. There are always crisis meetings between Colombia, Panama and the USA, but little happens.

The business with migrants

As long as states do not act together, others will organize migration: “The problem, as some call it, is an opportunity for us,” explains Darwin Garcia, better known as Maradona. He runs the local foundation “New Light of Darién,” which takes migrants to the borders of Panama for $300 to $500. A worthwhile business that has brought progress to a region that has been neglected by the state for decades and left alone to cope with the massive influx of migrants. “Migration is our most important business today,” says Garcia, “there are now more than 2,000 or 3,000 people who make their living from it.”

People smuggling, some say. Thanks to us, the route has become safer, says the foundation. It manages camps, health stations and provides guides and porters. A million-dollar business that not only benefits local politicians and entrepreneurs, but also Colombia’s most powerful criminal group: The Gaitanistas, better known as the Clan del Golfo drug cartel, confirms Bram Ebus from the International Crisis Group: “They are the criminal government of the region. ” They launder the illegal profits in legal companies, corrupt local politics, parts of the police and the army, and have influence on local councils: “This is their territory, nothing happens here without their permission or a payment to them.”

Garbage lines the path

Before sunrise, the group of migrants sets off through the wooden gate. “I’ve done it before, I know what I’m putting my children through,” says Juan Araya, “jaguars, caimans, it’s tiring, but it’s not impossible.” She is afraid, says 15-year-old Daleska. She learned a lot of bad things about the jungle on social media: “We trust in God, what else can we do?”

It goes through raging rivers, over slippery rocks, swamps, then steeply uphill, over muddy slopes and mountain ridges. The group becomes a long chain that drifts further and further apart and leaves more and more behind: blankets, broken shoes, plastic bags – huge amounts of rubbish have long since marked the way through the jungle. Most people need a little more than a day to get to the border with Panama. There the guides turn around and the migrants are on their own.

Assaults and sexual violence

Those who made it through the jungle arrive at a reception camp in Lajas Blancas on the Panamanian side of the border. Motorized canoes dock on the banks of the Rio Tuqueza every minute. There are around twelve migrants in orange vests on board per boat. They have trouble getting out of the boats. Some are wearing tattered sneakers, others are barefoot.

It took Dhiannyzs Franco five days to make his way through the Darién jungle. She has lost several kilos. She saw corpses on the side of the road, people who didn’t make it, we hear about it again and again. Like so many others, Franco and her family were attacked, she says: It was by indigenous groups – masked, with hunting rifles and pistols. “They wanted our money. And when we said we didn’t have any, they started searching us. We had to take off our clothes,” she says. The bandits started touching her and taking photos. “We just stood there in our underwear, grabbed our things and ran down the mountain.” There were reports from many sources that day that another young woman was even taken away.

No medical care

In January and February of this year alone, MSF recorded 328 reports of sexual violence, compared to 676 for the whole of last year. But the humanitarian aid organization had to suspend its medical care in early March because its permit was not renewed. According to the government, they did not meet various requirements.

This means that urgently needed care for victims of sexual violence is no longer available: psychological help, the morning-after pill, tablets to prevent HIV transmission, treatment of injuries.

The government in Panama has no interest in dealing with this, criticizes expert Ebus: It is a matter of structural violence. But talking about indigenous communities in this way is very sensitive and won’t win any popularity prizes – there will be elections in Panama at the beginning of May. In addition, the security forces were complicit in failing to provide assistance, and in some cases they were even accomplices, says Ebus.

None of this is stopping people from continuing to venture out: authorities estimate that up to a million people will set out this year.