When José Juan told Steven that he wanted to go to the United States through the Darién, his 7-year-old son told him that it was dangerous, that it was better to go by plane. Even so, Steven now energetically leads the group of migrants that begins their journey through that inhospitable jungle that separates Colombia from Panama.
It’s like a game for him, he walks kicking the empty bottles that his companions throw along the way and climbs the slippery and steep hills as if he did it every day, but despite the fact that he has grown up in the field, in the Colombian department of Santander, is the first time something like this has happened.
José Juan Luna, who has been taking care of Steven since his mother left them alone six years ago, explained to his son that he wanted to look for a better future for him: “I’m not leaving you alone, daddy, I’m coming with you,” Steve replied.
He knew that what awaited them on the road was going to be dangerous; she had seen it on networks and on television. He hesitated, but finally the Colombian-Venezuelan father told him: “Let’s go through the jungle, that’s going to be an adventure.”
Like them, more than 150,000 people -60% of them Venezuelans, pushed by an economy that is not reviving and because they say that the United States is “letting them in”- have decided to cross so far this year through one of the migratory steps most dangerous in the world, a journey that can last a week through a mountainous jungle where there is no law.
Although it is not a new phenomenon, it has exploded in the last two years. In recent weeks, more than 3,000 people enter the Darién Gap daily.
The Darien swallows humans
The entrance to the Darién has a sign that says “Welcome to heaven” on one side, and on the other, an angel on a rock that watches over the groups of migrants that constantly pass by during the day.
They walk loaded with heavy backpacks lined with plastic bags, bottles of water, tents and luggage that on many occasions they leave discarded along the way to lighten the march.
Miralis Simota goes with the middle of her daughters by the hand, limping due to knee pain, and with her husband carrying the youngest on his shoulders, just 3 years old and whose chest is raw.
The day before, when they were preparing everything to start the most difficult part of their trip to the United States, he went to accompany one of his daughters to the bathroom and the little boy accidentally tripped over the water that was boiling in the makeshift stove.
However, this family of Venezuelans decided to continue their route to Capurganá, the last Colombian town before the jungle. Now they move slowly through the foliage along the first hills where the little girls’ rubber boots threaten to get stuck in the mud.
They still have at least five more days left -depending on the step- and the hardest part of the journey. Marlon Anaya, another Venezuelan who has just reached the United States, achieving his “American dream,” says that on that first day they realized that it was not a game.
He walked between 6 and 12 hours a day for a week, sleeping, if the rain allowed, in camps set up by the locals with plastic to protect their tents, and getting up at dawn to continue the journey.
constant risk
The worst day is the fourth. Once you pass Panama at a border without authorities or customs, you come to Banderas, a hill with a climb of more than four hours. “At the top was where we saw the first dead body,” this young professional soccer player told Efe.
From there comes the descent, also dangerous due to the slippery mud but faster, and take the river to where the Panamanian authorities and the UN have the migrant reception posts, but there are still two or three more days and the danger of let the river grow.
In fact, following walking for three hours from the top of the hill, it started to rain on his group. The river rose and the group was separated; they had to throw a rope to be able to rescue those on the other side to camp.
«A pregnant woman came, she let go of the tie already reaching my hands; If I don’t stretch out her hand, the river will take her away because the river was quite high. The rise of the river from one moment to the next was impressive,” said this 21-year-old young man. Two days later they found the body of a little girl who had been washed away by that same river.
“We are tired of the dead, the Capurganá cemetery is more full of migrant deaths than native deaths,” Darwin García, legal representative of the Capurganá Workers’ Association (Asotracap), told Efe.
An unsolicited blessing
That is why they got together to organize themselves in the association; They built a shelter in the town to house the migrants for free, with electricity, a roof and a health post, and from there they offered guides to make the way to the jungle.
They also agreed with the Kunaa indigenous people on the other side of the border so that they would guide them through the second part of the trip and thus not be accused of migrant smuggling.
For this they charge regarding 150 dollars because, following all, it is a business for this town, which does not have a hospital, nor decent roads, nor even electricity 24 hours a day.
“We charge affordable rates for them so that they don’t pass by alone and die on the way or be robbed or raped,” insisted Maradona, as they know him.
The Darien, business for many
The money from migration has not only benefited -and greatly- the residents of this town in Chocó, one of the poorest and most neglected departments in Colombia, but also the community itself, which is building roads and improving health care .
Even so, Maradona insists: “We don’t see it as a business, obviously we do benefit because we are doing a job, but we do it more for the human part than for the business.”
They make a border more humane where not only migrants pass, but which has historically been a hideout for the guerrillas, the paramilitaries and a drug trafficking and smuggling route.
Now, at least on the Colombian side, “they are not robbed or raped” by direct order of the Clan del Golfo, the paramilitaries that rule this region. They, according to García, do not want to know anything regarding the migrants, but they have enacted a law to kill anyone who robs, rapes or kills a migrant.
But on the route there are reports of violations, although everyone agrees that it is from the Panamanian side. The Panamanian authorities registered 120 cases of sexual violence, although humanitarian organizations assure that there may be an underreporting.
In the community they want the government to take action, even if it means “losing business.”
“Colombia will not build walls to contain migration and will not allow its borders to become cemeteries,” Deputy Minister for Multilateral Affairs Laura Gil said at the 52nd OAS General Assembly on Saturday.
But the reality is that despite the fact that more migrants arrive every day willing to cross the Darién jungle in search of the “American dream”, there are still no measures to make a fierce journey more humane.