CITY OF PANAMA.- “If they close one side, another opens,” says Venezuelan Jeison Chacín after crossing the jungle. Darienthe dangerous route to the United States that José Raúl Mulino promises to close, who visits the area days after assuming the presidency of Panama.
Chacín, 26, like other migrants, recounts the harsh episodes experienced in the inhospitable jungle: “We saw a case where a four-year-old girl was raped and her father tried to say something and they shot him. Everything happens there.”
In search of the “American dream,” Darien “is the dream of hell,” he told AFP at the Temporary Reception Center for Migrants in Lajas Blancas, some 250 km east of Panama City.
During his election campaign, Mulino promised to “close” Darién to migration, although he later qualified this by saying that he would carry out mass deportations.
“We will begin with international help a repatriation process with all adherence to human rights. So that those who would like to come know (…) that whoever arrives here will be returned to their country of origin,” he assured, after winning the elections.
On June 11, the United States announced that it would extend a specialized unit to combat human trafficking created in 2021, which has operated in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, to that vast jungle.
Colombia says “no” to closure
But Chacín believes that migration through Darién “will never end”: “If they close one side (of the border), another side opens, and if they close the other side, another opens.”
This 575,000-hectare jungle on the border between Panama and Colombia has become a corridor for migrants from South America trying to reach the United States in search of job opportunities.
“Colombia obviously would not agree with closing borders, and especially not the Darien border, because we see that, on the contrary, what we have to offer is more humanitarian solutions for the population that crosses through that area,” Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told AFP a month ago.
In 2023, more than 520,000 people crossed this route, despite facing dangers such as rushing rivers, wild animals and criminal groups. Many die on the way.
In Lajas Blancas, the roads are dirt and migrants sleep in wooden huts on mattresses on the floor and among clothes hanging out to dry. Outside there are communal bathrooms next to a small laundry room and several improvised showers.
There, migrants receive medical care and basic services from the government and different international organizations.
They arrive there on organized canoe trips, after being detected by the Panamanian authorities as soon as they cross the Darien jungle, a journey that takes them four to six days.
“We want to get ahead”
During his odyssey, Chacín says he saw “many women crying with broken feet” from walking. He left Venezuela seven days ago, where he made a living selling and buying animals.
“One understands that as president (Mulino) he looks after his country, but it is difficult for him to close the border because we also want to move forward,” Colombian Angélica Páez tells AFP.
So far this year, 200,000 migrants – two-thirds Venezuelan, the rest Ecuadorians, Colombians, Chinese and Haitians – have crossed the jungle, a figure slightly higher than the same period last year.
In Lajas Blancas, Páez, 20, is waiting in line to collect food alongside dozens of migrants. “If they close this, people will find another way to go through. This is not going to be the end of migration,” he insisted.
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AP
Source: With information from AFP
