Three days after he was unable to prevent the death of his wife and 14-year-old daughter and seeing his brother-in-law, niece and seven-month-pregnant sister being dragged by the waters of the river they crossed, Angolan Nicolau, 37, cried far away of the three children he managed to save: a daughter, a son and a nephew.
It was very hot, and the stench was leaking from the chemical toilets located in the lower part of the San Vicente migrant reception center, on the Panama-Colombia border. Nicholas had no strength. Her body hunched for support in her knees. He spoke in a low voice, using short sentences.
He would be there alone if it weren’t for a woman he didn’t know beside him, also crying. Both were sitting on the same dirty folding bed where many other people had already cried.
The place receives migrants from all continents, races and religions. The only common traits are poverty and the desire to leave this condition. The 10,000 square meter area delineated by an iron fence and gates is 10 km north of Meteti, the main city in Panama’s Darién region.
The center is capable of housing up to 3,000 people. Those who, in addition to family and friends, also lost the money they had to thieves, remain imprisoned there until they get the US$40 (R$223) needed to continue the journey to Costa Rica, just over 1,000 km to the north.
The Strait of Darién consists of a large watershed between the province of the same name in Panama and the northern portion of the Department of Chocó in Colombia. The region is inhospitable and frequently used by paramilitaries and drug traffickers, as well as gangs that tend to abandon, rob and sexually abuse thousands of migrants who try to cross a distance of approximately 50 km inside the virgin forest that separates the villages of Acandí, in Colombia, and Bajo Chiquito, Panama.
According to the Panamanian National Migration Service, from January to October more than 121,000 migrants entered Panama through the Darién forest. The year 2021 marks the largest migration flow ever seen by Panama in its history. Although the illegal transit of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean to North America is not a new phenomenon, an increase in this type of migration has been identified in recent months, mainly from Asians, Africans and the Caribbean.
According to the Panamanian government, the pattern and number of migrants passing through the country trying to reach the US began to change between 2014 and 2015. Since then, the increase in the flow of migrants has surpassed the Panamanian government’s capacity to receive them. In 2018, 9,222 migrants entered Panama illegally crossing the forest. By 2019, that figure had risen to around 22,000, an increase particularly noticeable among minors (3,956) and pregnant women (411).
In 2020, UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) reported that more than 20,000 children and 3,000 pregnant women crossed the Darién jungle.
Currently, 65% of migrants are Haitians, who emigrate due to the serious political and economic crisis faced in their home country. Thousands more, also Haitians, depart from countries like Brazil and Chile.
Bajo Chiquito, an indigenous village inhabited by the Embera people, is the first Panamanian community that migrants encounter after crossing the Darién forest. There is also the first contact with the authorities of the country’s migration department, who register them. Afterwards, if they can afford transportation, migrants can continue their journey to the next reception centre, in Lajas Blancas or San Vicente. The cost charged by the indigenous people to take them is US$ 25 (R$ 140) per person, and the trip takes six hours, with the motorized canoes sailing down the river.
Immigrants arrive in Bajo Chiquito in dirty, wet clothes. After days in the forest, they are also hungry, penniless and often sick. In addition to the state of health, there is trauma after having found bodies on the banks of the river, on cliffs, buried under rocks or just lying down, alone or in groups, inside camping tents or plastic sheeting.
The accommodation system is precarious and insufficient to receive the hundreds of people who arrive every day. There are no proper facilities in which these migrants can be accommodated, just a small metal structure without walls, into which those who bring their own camping tents can set them up. The ground is muddy, full of food scraps and faeces.
Through the border police unit, the Panamanian government provides daily 500 grams of noodles, one can of sardines, salt and cookies per family. Food is often not enough, and migrants need money to buy their own food in the village’s small markets.
This flow has boosted Bajo Chiquito’s economy. In addition to transport with canoes, which, with maximum capacity, yield US$ 500 per trip, there is food trade, such as canned meat and flour biscuits, bought in the city and sold in the village with a large profit margin.
There are also those who specialize in extorting money from migrants, with the unwitting help of the police. A few meters from the security post, indigenous people use satellite internet which, in theory, should only be for agents. With connection access, they negotiate the receipt of money via international transfer networks. From the minimum value of US$ 200, US$ 40 stays with intermediaries.
Nicolau Auzinho, who opens this report, left Angola in October 2020 with his wife, two daughters and a son to try life in Brazil. He tried to work at Brás as a marketer and only accumulated losses.
His sister, brother-in-law and nephews had arrived a few years earlier, but they were also going through difficulties. She, who already had two children, was six months pregnant, and her husband did not earn enough to pay the most basic family bills, such as rent and food.
With no alternatives in Brazil and in the country of origin, they decided that they would migrate to the US by land.
The four adults and six children then took a bus from São Paulo to Colombia. Upon reaching the coastal town of Acandí, they hired a guide who was to accompany them until the end of the journey, but who abandoned them two days after entering the forest. After six days in the woods, with little food, sick children and a pregnant woman weakened by the continuous effort, the family tried to cross a river at a point where the current was strong after days of intense rain.
The Angolan’s sister was the first to be taken by the waters, with the two children she was carrying, one in her womb and the other in her arms. Terrified, she clung to her sister-in-law, who hugged her daughter, brother-in-law and niece.
Nicolau still managed to rescue the woman and tried to revive her with lung massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and prayers. Frightened by the screams of what the immigrant’s 10-year-old daughter called lions — probably wild monkeys — the family left the body on the rock where she had been placed.
Despite facing great difficulties, Venezuelan migrants José Andrade, 42, and Eluz Andrade, 34, had a different fate. Obese and diabetic, they did not imagine having the physical and mental requirements to cross a forest. On the fourth day of the crossing, while trying to cross a river, Eluz got her foot caught between rocks and, when trying to free herself, already suffocated by the water, she suffered a fractured ankle.
Unable to walk, in pain and an infection that was beginning to form, she decided with her husband to send their son, Jesus, along with Venezuelan migrants to seek help. Days passed, the infection worsened, and José and Eluz stayed in a remote area for two weeks, until Senegalese helped them build a raft, with which they reached a point where Panamanian police rescued them by helicopter.
Reports like this are common. Abandoned at the San Vicente reception center, Hélia Pinto, 45, born in Guinea-Bissau, was lost for more than ten days before receiving help from other migrants to cross the forest. In Brazil, she gave birth to Iama, who was born with liver problems. At 45 days old, the child had to undergo surgery and, a year later, he received the organ from a donor.
Despite her daughter’s weakness, Hélia, abandoned by her ex-husband, unemployed and suffering from the decline of the Brazilian economy, decided to take a risk and migrate to the United States, crossing the Darién forest.
Diabetic, she had complications that forced doctors to amputate two of her fingers. Little Iama, now five years old, was sent to a children’s hospital in the Panamanian capital.
After days in hospital, the Guinean was sent back to the center of San Vicente. The daughter, on the other hand, remained hospitalized, and as the months went by and the medical and security teams changed, their documents were lost. So, the girl practically lived in the hospital.
After intervention by the Brazilian embassy, mother and daughter were reunited, and they returned to Brazil.
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