Moncho Torres | Bajo Chiquito (Panama), (EFE).- They have just left the Darién jungle, they advance exhausted, dragging their feet, sweaty, without water. “Awful, awful, it’s been the worst.” They are migrants who do not believe that after several days of walking they have managed to overcome a nightmare of death, robbery and rape.
Venezuelan Diana Medina, 20, collapses on the ground. She has reached what is known as Quebrada del León, the first point behind the jungle during the dry season that can be accessed by the indigenous canoes, which will take them along the Tuquesa River to the town of Bajo Chiquito, in southern Panama. .
“Horrible, horrible, it has been the worst. I had to throw myself into a river (…) I didn’t feel the bottom, that’s why I despaired, the current almost took me, it was horrible, it was horrible”, this young woman, who is traveling with two cousins, explains to EFE.
Three days walking twelve hours a day in which they saw “ugly, very ugly things.” “We saw a (corpse) that had a shot here (in the forehead), face down, there was another in a tent and there was a man, a girl and… I imagine it was a family,” recalls Diana, who tries not to lose the smile, relieved.
The trickle of migrants arriving is constant, entire families, children in their arms, on their shoulders, groups of young people. They all repeat the same experiences in the jungle, with the descent of cliffs, the thirst without being able to drink the river water contaminated by excrement and corpses, and the continuous robberies.
“The threats they use, the weapons, it scares you. One says ‘I lose the money and I’ll see’. You try to hide it, as much as you can, but they intimidate you”, reveals the Venezuelan Jonathan, 32, to EFE.
night nightmares
When camping at night, someone from the group stands guard, but few sleep. “The noises”, they repeat. Most of them are from animals, “but one also knows when it is a human noise”, and also “they lit you up in the jungle to see if you were awake”, says Jonathan.
“It is extremely difficult, a lot of insecurity. You camp and listen to noise, they have stolen, they have raped, and there in those areas we do not know who they are. For me it was very hard. Wherever you seek to enter, you will find danger. It is that no, not even the food is enough for you. We were left there without food practically two nights ago. It’s your turn and they rob you, with weapons and everything in the middle of the road, ”he says.
Many try to go back, they cry, but there is no way. “It’s like an axe, like a guillotine, if you go through, it’s closed, if you go back you’re going to cut yourself, there’s no way to go back, there’s no way.”
But despite the difficulties, the flood of migrants crossing the Darien jungle on their way to the United States continues, does not stop, and is even increasing.
A tsunami of migrants
So far this year alone, more than 70,000 people have crossed the Darién Gap, according to official data from the National Migration Service of Panama, a figure five times higher than that registered in 2022 during the same period.
This disproportionate increase is surprising because it was precisely last year that a historical record of migrants was recorded on their route through the Darién, with more than 248,000 people, which in turn had represented almost double those identified in 2021.
After leaving the jungle and arriving by canoe at the Emberá community of Bajo Chiquito, where the migrants still have to pay all the expenses, they are transferred to one of the reception centers of the Panamanian authorities, where they are given shelter and help before sending them north by bus.
There, at these Migration Reception Stations (ERM), they are also received by humanitarian organizations such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), where they treat migrants badly affected by their passage through the jungle, with sores, insect bites, diarrhea, and vomiting.
“And then it is also very psychologically traumatic to go through the jungle, due to the demands of the terrain, due to the geographical and climatic conditions, because they are not routes, but rather mud trails, with different heights, where you have to climb , where one slips, where one can fall down cliffs,” MSF Land Coordinator Tamara Guillermo told EFE.
Violence and sexual violence on the road
In addition, he adds, they are affected “by having been victims, or also witnesses of violence and sexual violence, and also by the large number of corpses that they see along the route.”
The victims of rape, explains the Argentine aid worker, have narrated similar events in recent weeks, which always begins with a robbery.
Then “they take the entire group up a mountain, strip them all naked, men and women, make them lie face down, check all their belongings, then the search for objects inside the anatomical cavities begins, also the threat and the perpetration of violations”, he details.
MSF has requested a permit to have an emergency post as close as possible to the jungle, in order to attend to these victims as soon as possible, who in the case of sexual violence have a narrow window of time to avoid pregnancy.
Corpses and smell of death
In Bajo Chiquito, after dark, the stories of abuse in the jungle are repeated. Everyone talks, they vent to each other. It is enough to approach a group to hear new stories, and there are many. That day, a thousand new migrants arrived in the small town.
“When I saw the first body, we all saw it, that it was in a tent by some stones, there I did say, ‘the worst is coming.’ After that we found another body, a foot in decomposition (…) Around the third day of the trip there was a body in a tree, it was just there, it would have been about five days. And in front of that tree, at a waterfall, was another one,” he says.
“And we smelled several, but we didn’t see them.”