Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

January 25, 2021 7:32 AM

With Europe and the United States taking strict measures to keep out migrants and asylum-seekers, finding safety abroad had become more difficult. But a few South American countries had relatively lax entry requirements, busting open a route through the Americas. Unlike the passage across the Mediterranean, few images existed on the internet of migrants who had drowned or been murdered crossing the Darién Gap. Benita decided to fly to Ecuador. On a layover in the Istanbul Airport, she found some Cameroonians who told her that after Ecuador, they were planning to go to the U.S. “I asked them, ‘Can you walk there?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Huh? So after Ecuador is the United States?’ They said, ‘Yes, you will just walk. You pass through the river, you enter the United States.’”

Whether fleeing war, persecution, poverty or the effects of climate change, migrants and refugees worldwide routinely find themselves in great danger. Perhaps the most hazardous migrant trail of all is the Darien Gap, a wild, lawless stretch straddling Colombia and Panama. Before the pandemic, special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico reported from this perilous path.

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“Every day they come,” said Emelides Muñoz Meza, a local official who has found himself consulting maps of the world to understand where some of the thousands of foreigners making their way through his city have journeyed from.

“Eritrea? I didn’t even know this country existed,” Muñoz said.

They are part of an unprecedented wave of global migration that has seen millions of refugees descend on Europe, fleeing poverty, persecution and war. Now, with migrant ships sinking in the Mediterranean and violent attacks in Europe, a rapidly growing number of migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Asia, Africa and the Middle East are making journeys of unimaginable difficulty up through South and Central America — dreaming of setting foot one day in the United States.

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Villages like Bajo Chiquito have been overwhelmed by the estimated 22,000 migrants who endured the Darién Gap in 2019, according to SENAFRONT, Panama’s border patrol agency. Bajo Chiquito’s infrastructure is equipped to serve up to 100 individuals at a time, although more than six times as many migrants flooded the camp in March 2020.

Migrant campsites are nestled between weathered homes and rooftops studded with satellite dishes. Without running water or toilets, migrants are forced to relieve themselves in the Tuquesa River – the only source of drinking water for those who cannot afford otherwise.

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Along with Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, Mexico itself was supposed to be a waypoint on Valentin’s journey to the United States or Canada, where he planned to claim asylum, as per international law. As per Mexican law, he expected to be issued a humanitarian visa and sent on his way north. But recent wrangling between the Trump administration and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has kept thousands of refugees like Valentin trapped in Tapachula for months. In response to ongoing pressure from Trump to stem migration north, Lopez Obrador’s administration has tightened passage through Mexico’s southern border. In January, the Mexican president announced the formation of a new police force, the National Guard, which was deployed to Chiapas in July. Whereas people could once relatively freely pass between the Mexican-Guatemalan border, the National Guard is now stopping travelers, asking for their documentation, and detaining those without.

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The Biden administration announced that, starting Thursday [January 21, 2021], it will no longer enroll asylum seekers newly arriving on the southern border in a Trump-era program that has forced tens of thousands to wait in Mexico for a chance to obtain protection in the United States. The Homeland Security Department urged anyone currently enrolled in the program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or colloquially as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, to “remain where they are, pending further official information from U.S. government officials.”

posted by ChuraChura (16 comments total)

Original link via this thread from reporter Nadja Drost, which includes links to some more of her reporting, a few personal stories, and links to organizations supporting migrants at the Mexican border and in the US.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:36 AM on January 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

Thanks so much for this round up! Another metalink to add to the pile: the podcast Outside/In on different media narratives about the Darién Gap (there is a transcript link there as well), ending with some discussion of indigenous land rights.
posted by damayanti at 7:52 AM on January 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

If 22,000 made it through the gap I'm wondering how many started.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:42 AM on January 25, 2021

The Gap was famously hard to cross by Spaniards carrying conquistador armor, arquebuses, and a whole lot of arrogance. But if you're a young refugee with just some food, a towel and smartphone, and you just want to cross and move on, the Gap is doable. It's a frivolous and inappropriate thing to do for your average privileged backpacker when you know the Natives will ask you nicely not to do it. But if you're in dire straits, they know, and they have no desire to make things worse for you. So I don't think the Gap is really that much of a charnel house.
posted by ocschwar at 8:57 AM on January 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

The pictures are haunting. The peoples faces. What an impossible thing we do to each other.
posted by zenon at 9:03 AM on January 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

er, did you read the articles?
posted by ChuraChura at 9:12 AM on January 25, 2021 [13 favorites]

unlike migrants, casual backpackers keep the bulk of their financial assets registered with institutions, not on their persons.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:13 AM on January 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

the war on immigration is like the war on drugs: inhumane, pointless, impossible to win & ultimately self-defeating.

NO BORDERS!

or maybe we need to update the old rallying cry to: ¡Pasaran!
posted by chavenet at 9:20 AM on January 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

like the war on drugs...pointless...self-defeating

Uh, cui bono, maybe? There are significant benefits to a number of intermediaries in these two things. The above articles have a bunch of examples.

Sometimes there is cruelty without wealth, but usually you just have to look for the wealth.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:40 AM on January 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

The Gap was famously hard to cross by Spaniards carrying conquistador armor, arquebuses, and a whole lot of arrogance. But if you're a young refugee with just some food, a towel and smartphone, and you just want to cross and move on, the Gap is doable.

I'd suggest reading the article until you reach the part about Gedeao, his wife, and their two surviving children.
posted by ZaphodB at 9:47 AM on January 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

I grew up two blocks from one the big railroad that connects Guatemala to the US on the California side. Not as popular as the one that connects to the Texas side. As a kid on would see the occasional train surfer going north, usually young men, and I assumed they represented the migrant demographic.

Later on I started hitchhiking all over Mexico and hopping trains when possible. That is when I started meeting women, children and older men trying to make it to the USA on the railroads. These were people who had already survived the Darien Gap, the police, military and paramilitary in southern Mexico, and common crime all along the way. Their stories were harrowing, but never talked about in mainstream media.

Most of the people I met were from Central and South America, with a few from other continents. I met people from northern and eastern Africa, and a few Arabic speaking people, a family from China that thought they could walk from Acapulco to Tijuana in one day.

Almost everyone had been robbed at some point, beaten, raped. One of the first dead bodies I saw was by the side of the tracks in central Mexico. Railroad guards would be waiting with big slingshots to shoot ballast rocks at the train surfers, they had hit this guy and he fell off the train.

I witnessed the men at a paramilitary checkpoint in Chiapas separate all the young women from a group and take them into their camp. I had a big gun pointed at my head, was not sure if I was going to make it or not, but my Mexican passport saved me. I only got robbed, not beaten.

With the latest reforms the news travelled South that refugees were being detained and returned to Mexico at the US border. Conditions are better in the cities along the route than close to the US border, and people started setting up camps.

In my city there is a camp that stretches almost 10 kilometers along the railroad. Some NGOs are offering services, food, medicine education. The government has mostly responded by increasing police presence. Migrant panhandlers show their immigration documents and their US asylum petitions when asking for money or food.

Racism against migrants is increasing, fueled by right wing radio and politicians looking for a scapegoat. A crossing that goes through the camp became notorious for bicycle theft and robbery. Of course the media and politicians blamed the migrants, there were calls to 'get rid of them by any means necessary'. This quieted down after videos started circulating of the robbers escaping in late model pick-up trucks... You know, the poor migrants who drive Tacomas.

A small saving grace is that for decades we have fostered an idea of Latin American brotherhood (easy to do when you have the USA at your doorstep), so at least some percentage of the population is primed to be compassionate and antiracist, but the changes I am seeing worry me.

So much unnecessary cruelty.
posted by Dr. Curare at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2021 [54 favorites]

A movie that has stuck with me since I saw it is La jaula de oro (The Golden Dream). It's not a documentary but everything that happens in it comes from real stories. It's the story of Guatemalan teens going through Mexico to the US. Obviously, it does not include The Gap and doesn't cover nearly as much terrain as detailed in this excellent FPP but I wanted to mention this movie to anyone who might find it interesting. Much of what Dr. Curare covered in their comment above about traveling through Mexico is represented in the movie.
posted by NotTheRedBaron at 11:52 AM on January 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Same racist/xenophobic impulse, different consequences.
posted by aniola at 5:10 PM on January 25, 2021

So amazing that her neighbor’s food delivery guy in Brooklyn turned out to be one of the Bangladeshis she met on the trail when this story was filmed in 2019. A hopeful ending for some.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 8:01 PM on January 25, 2021

This week's episode of Latino USA, In the Mouth of the Wolf, explores the impact of US asylum policies on Mexico and migrant seekers there.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:59 AM on January 26, 2021

This was really interesting and important, and I knew little of it before reading this post. My thanks for posting it.
posted by ElasticParrot at 9:38 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]