December 30, 2025 • 40 mins
In part three of his series on the Darién Gap, James talks about what drives Venezuelan and African migrants to make the journey through the Darién Gap.
Original Air Date: 10.30.24
Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAaDkSwh1Jk/?igsh=bmgyanBteW10czd5
https://www.themanual.com/outdoors/darien-gap-feature/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/18/panama-darien-gap-jose-raul-mulino
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/27/the-darien-gap-a-deadly-extension-of-the-us-border
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/jmhs.pdf
https://www.strausscenter.org/publications/asylum-processing-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-august-2024/
https://www.msf.org/lack-action-sees-sharp-rise-sexual-violence-people-transiting-darien-gap-panama
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
I just did want to make you a way that
I conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish,
and then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing
is a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
I hope you enjoyed the episode, s l P G awesome.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, the journey is dangerous, but what can we do.
We can't stay in a country where the economy is
getting worse and worse. With a salary of three dollars
a month, you can't survive. Like my friend said, if
you have a job in other countries, maybe you can
invest some money. But where are you going to get
the money to invest If before you had a salary
(00:52):
that fed you paid for your car, your house and
your children to enjoy it all with, and now you
can't even afford to put gas in the car. So
it's true. Yeah, the darien is dangerous, but nothing is impossible.
We walk hand in hand with God and with the
faith that we will get there. But that doesn't mean
it isn't difficult. But I'll say it again, it's not impossible.
(01:14):
You suffer, you cry, you go hungry cold, but thank
God we made it through.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Bored around the Touquesa River, the jungle rumbles quiet as
you pass by on your boat. Insects, frogs, and birds
all combined to make a sort of deep throbbing that
emanates from the darkness between the trees. It seems at
wants to be calling you in and warning you to
stay away. I've been in the jungle before, in the
Rwanda Congo borderlands and in Venezuela, but I've never really
(01:50):
felt the sense of foreboding I did as we rode
down the river, protected only by our hollow log, looking
into the triple canopy forest, and knowing that if I
walk long enough in the shadows, I'd be confronted the
remains of people I might have interviewed if it hadn't
been for a rolld ankle, a slippery rock, or a
desperate sip of water. To understand what drives people to
enter the jungle with their children and their dreams, I
(02:12):
think we also have to understand what drives them to
leave where they're living. And that's what I want to
talk about today, the story of migrants crossing the daddy
and gap is an American one. It's impossible to disentangle
the people making this dangerous journey from the history of
support for dictatorship, sanctions, and imperial plunder that ties to the
United States to its American brothers and sisters in the South.
(02:32):
Sometimes I play a game with myself at the border
where I try and meet people from all the countries
named in Washington bullets in a single day. Since Biden
bungled the Afghanistan withdraw, it's become a lot easier, but
Tibet can be hard. For two hundred years, since President
Monroe gave his State of the Union address in December
eighteen twenty three, the US has seen the Western hemisphere
is its sphere of influence. While its opposed old fashioned colonialism,
(02:56):
it has used less avert methods of control as well
as overt military across the hemisphere. For much of the
last century, it supported and installed dictators who would prevent
what it saw as a threat of state socialism in
its sphere of influence, and allowed them to create economic
and political climates that were unsurvivable for the majority and
extremely profitable for US based corporations. The direct result of
(03:18):
this policy has been economic insecurity, political instability, and state
violence across South and Central America, resulting in people making
the very natural humor decision to flee to somewhere safer.
As in so many other empires, they've made the choice
to lead a destabilized colonial periphery and seek safety instability
in the metropol. For more than a century, money and
(03:39):
good have been able to travel seamlessly up and down
the continent, but people have not. The bananaread for breakfast
this morning made the journey in a few days, but
people take months, if not years, pay thousands of dollars,
climb mountains, forded rivers, and risk their lives on trains
and buses that cost a lot more than the flights
I took to Panama, but offer considerably less comfort and safety.
(04:01):
As climate change has have greater impacts, more and more
people are forced to leave their homes as their livelihoods
become less sustainable. The Guna, the indigenous people of the
Panamanian coast in an area called Guna Yala, are having
to withdraw from some of their islands because of sea
level rise. Right now, agriculture across the world is increasingly
threatened by extreme weather and rising temperatures, and our oceans
(04:23):
are less they're able to sustain life than they once
were due to pollution and overfishing. Forced to leave their
homes as people have been for millennia by weather patterns changing,
people head to places that have once caused much of
the issue and tried to insulate themselves from its consequences.
Their American dreams are modest. To overcome the crippling low
pay they received, a home, to bring their children up
(04:45):
in a place where they have a good chance of
surviving their twenties, to work and get paid enough to
get by. They want to be able to protest and
not get shot, and to look forward to the future
not feared. These aren't guaranteed in the USA, and as
many of you listening will know, it can be hard
for us to make ends meet here as well. But
despite what you see on social and legacy media, things
(05:05):
are unlikely to become as bad here as they are
in Venezuela, Cameroon or Iran anytime soon. I've lived in Venezuela,
specifically in the formerly jab eastern neighborhood of La Pastora
in Caracas, and I've seen how hard it is for
my friends who still live there. Even for people with
no other disadvantages, making rent and feeding your family can
be a challenge. That's part of why Venezuelan people make
(05:27):
up the majority of the folks I met me Dadian,
so much so that I'd slipped back into using Venezuelan
slang in Spanish, and after a few days of seeing
the same people engaging in the kind of friendly mockery
and banter that I remember well from Caracas, mostly the
super form of asking them why they crossed a Daddian
gap in Man United shirts or worse yet, in a
Chelsea shit. It's important to steal moments of humor in
(05:48):
these difficult times, to laugh a little among all the suffering,
and that's something people in Venezuela have done very well
for a very long time. But despite their humor, I
could tell the journey had a serious impact on the
people I spoke to.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You have to go through a lot, a lot of jungle,
a lot of hills. There are people, there are dead
people on the road, So it's it's something you cannot
really explain. It's complicated because everything can be explained in
a fashion, but it's it's not the same as living it.
It's insanity, three four days with that food and nothing.
One thing is to live it. Explaining it, talking about it,
(06:26):
that's different. It's hard to put into words.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
This interview is when I conducted with one group of
Venezuelan migrants with my voice recorder in the chest pocket
of my shirt and whatever bags it let me carry
in my hands. We walked along the last part of
the trail, discussing what they'd seen. For a while, we
joked a little. One guy had crossed it a man
united ship. I talked him about the team and the
universe was dislike non Menu fans have for Menu fans.
(06:50):
Then after a while they opened up more about their experiences.
They had, they said, seen their bodies and they couldn't
stop thinking about what happened if they'd fallen, and they
wanted to know how, when or if the dead people's
family would ever find out.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
The family waits for that person to come out to
hear that they made it, because if not, who's going
to let you know? There's no signal and nobody's going
to grab the body, and you're not going to carry
them out. The person stays there and eventually, years and
years go by and the family won't know where they
are or how they died. Those are the sort of
things that one doesn't expect to see, and it makes
(07:28):
you just want to hurry past. Not that you wouldn't
want to get the documentation from the body and deliver
it and tell them how this person had passed away,
But how dare you just go grabbing a dead body.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Vernetuinan elections were held on the twenty eighth of July
this year. Venezueynan presidents have a six year term and
the incumbent to colas Ma Duro, has been in office
since twenty thirty. I let the Venezuelan people and that
introduce themselves and explain the result of the election. Now
there's a bit of background noise here, but that's because
we were walking on the trails and it's hard to avoid.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I am coming from Venezuela, migrating through the jungle for
a better future for me and my children. I'll tell
you it's hard, but it's not impossible. No, that was
electoral fraud. And I tell you what, one day, you
just have to leave.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Maduro was opposed by A Juardo Gonzalez, an opposite candidate
who represented a wide coalition increating groups on the left
and right. One Maduro might have support among Western socialists
and even communists. The actual Venezuelan Communist Party's youth organization
formed part of the Popular Democratic Front that opposed him.
Despite Paul Watchers tallying a massive victory for the opposition,
(08:38):
Maduro controls the National Election Council and proclaimed himself the victor.
People protested, and Maduro responded with bullets. Gonzales fled to
the Dutch and then the Spanish embassy and later claimed
asylum in Spain, where his family lived. But for regular
working class Venezuelan's there's no option to hop on a
flight to safety. Instead, they have to be getting the
(09:00):
long walk north. As many Venezuelans respect you told me.
In addition to the electoral fraud, Venezuela is undergoing an
economic collapse, at least as the Chavis they said, most
people could eat. When I lived in La Pastora, I
was able to access medical care from Cuban doctors. Now
they say things have become a survivaldo so Venezuela.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
When Venezuela well, I would say that Venezuela, you know, yeah,
you can live, but not on a minimum wage.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I would say that, for example, working independently in an
independent business, maybe you can live good. But working and
surviving for a minimum wage now, the truth is that
it doesn't work, and that's serious. Things are still bad
with the new elections and the new government. Everything is ugly.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The streets of Caracas are full of protests. Every day.
People went out to protest. Sometimes they shoot people. The
government mistreats people. But if you can live with it,
and you can live with it it's ugly. Well, that
is why we left there for a better future, and
we will keep moving onward onward.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
This group were young men traveling in advance with their families,
hoping to earn some money, save it up, and send
it home. They knew what they were getting into when
they got to the USA, that migrants were often underpaid
and might struggle to make ends meet, but they still
thought it was better than staying home and watching your
children's future disappear.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
If you don't have papers, you don't have a work permit,
you have to work for it. They want to pay you,
not for what you demand or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I met lots of Venezuela families with children who had
different illnesses or disabilities, things they couldn't obtain or afford
treatment for in Venezuela. They were traveling to the US
in the hopes of finding a better future for their kids,
or any future at all. I met young men who
left their children behind but carried the children of strangers,
even those with whom they didn't share a language. Christian,
(11:10):
who he heard from earlier, showed me how he'd carried
someone else's child on his shoulders until he fell and
hurt his knee. We all help.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I put little children up here on my shoulders to
carry them, but it isn't easy.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
In the jungle, they'd formed chains using their arms to
cross rivers and carried little children on those who couldn't swim.
In Barji Guito, I saw a group of men from
Angola receiving hugs from Venezuela and women they'd helped in
the jungle. Without the help of the Angolans, they said
their children wouldn't have made it. One slip or a
loss of grip, they told me, would be fatal, and
the remains of those who had done just that served
(11:42):
as a grisly reminder. Later, little boys, maybe eight or
ten years old, gleefully recounted seeing a dead body on
which the head had quote exploded while their parents winked
in recollection. I wanted to understand a bit more of
what they were fleeing. That made it worth going through
all this.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Venezuela.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
Well, I left Venezuela because I worked in fishing. But
right now, in Venezuela, despite the fact that it is
a country rich and oil, there's not enough gasoline for
the fishermen to go fishing. And since I did not
have the ability to even buy basic things such as food,
the situation was, well, it was a little complicated. I
had to immigrate. I had nothing else to do. They
(12:24):
didn't rob me, well, they were going to rob me
because I didn't have anything to steal. We passed by
and the group that was behind us got robbed. They
raped women in that group.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Almost every Venezuelan Migro and I spent to share a
similar story. One said he didn't store security cameras, but
nobody could afford them now, as it had to choose
between rent and groceries or medical procedures that they needed
but couldn't afford. Overwhelmingly, they said the same thing no aifuturo,
there's no future. One group said to me that they
couldn't wait for their country to become like Cuba, as
(12:57):
decades of embargos took their toll on the population. But
others reminded me in them that least of Cubans seem
to have doctors. Venezuela has an eighty percent poverty right now,
and though it sits on one of the largest oil
reserves of any country on Earth, it's been plagued by
planting oil prices in the years of hyperinflation, which got
so bad at one point the shots stopped putting price
tags on things and relied on staff to give up
(13:19):
to the minute prices. Today, alongside a regime that lacks legitimacy,
a state that readily uses horrific violence against his people,
an election that was essentially ignored, Venezuelan's must also deal
with shortages of basic goods, poverty, and malnutrition. Unlike Cubans
who have a relatively good political lobby in the USA,
Venezuelan's coming to the USA do not benefit from special laws.
(13:41):
Cubans under the Cuban Adjustment Act have a part of
the citizenship and permanence once they set foot on US soil.
Venezuelans do not. They're covered by something called a temporary
protected status, but this does not afford them much in
the way of stability, protection, or a secure future. His
Erecha Pinhidro of Alotolado and Incredible Organizations does valuable work
with migrant legal aid advocacy and humanitarian relief, explaining just
(14:04):
how temporary a TPS is.
Speaker 8 (14:06):
So temporary protected status is it's basically a form of
protecting individuals who are already in the United States when
their countries have experienced a natural disaster, if they are
in war, there's some kind of situation going on that
makes it difficult for them to return, and so temporary
(14:28):
protected status was first created in nineteen ninety and the
first individuals who receive the status were from El Salvador,
and since then, I think there's been a few dozen
countries that have been designated. But basically the way it
works is they designate a country and so if you
were in the United States before that designation date, you
(14:50):
can apply for temporary protected status within a designated time
period and you get a work permit. It's valid for six,
twelve or eighteen months and then two months before it expires,
the Secretary of the Department of holand Security has to
say whether or not they're going to reauthorize GPS. So
(15:13):
there's like eight hundred and sixty thousand people in the
US who have temporary protected status and it's not a
pathtis citizenship. So basically people are just in limbo sometimes
for decades, you know. They just have to reapply for
this permit every eighteen months. So I have quite a
(15:33):
few salvador and friends who've been in the United States
since the nineties. They have kids, some of them a
cuarrent kids or a US citizen, and they can't become
permanent residents or have a paths the citizenship unless they
leave the country and either come back with another type
of parole or you know, apply through a consulate, which
many of them are just not willing to take that risk.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, makes things even more complicated for the Venezuelans, is it.
Many of them are traveling with that document. It costs
three hundred bucks to get a passport, they told me,
and the weight's considerable. This makes their journeys even harder
as every country the enter has to approve them to
without a passport getting a visa, they said, would be
nearly impossible, and just trying might result in the government
coming after them. Such things, they said, are reserved for
(16:19):
the wealthier citizens. People like Gonzales, who's asylum claim and
stays at the Dutch and Spanish embassies and his right
to join his family in exile are all luxuries that
most of his country people can't expect. Its dead. Most
Venezuelans must ride buses through Columbia, then walk north through
the jungle, then ride buses stir away on trains, or
walk again all the way to the border. They all
(16:40):
lamented to dai and crossing, and so they wouldn't advise
it without other options.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
They all made it anyway, community see, because unfortunately we
don't have much in our country.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
You don't have another option when you're dying of hunger
and you don't have a future, you can't even study.
So yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
The economic situation is dire in Venezuela. Many families can't
make ends me their currency is almost worth US, and
the majority government seems to have successfully installed itself for
the fueseeable future. This will mean a continuation of embargos
is sanctions, which will harm the people more than the regime. Sadly, though,
economic hot kIPS is not a criteria which won't be
grounded asylum in the USA his Erica.
Speaker 8 (17:33):
Again, so severe economic deprivation can be persecution if it's
linked to one of the other projected grounds, so race, religion, nationality,
political opinion, or membership, but in a particular social group.
So for example, if someone participated in anti Moduro political
(17:54):
activity and then we're blocked from getting a job or
just denied economic opports to the point where they're starving,
the economic deprivation could count as persecution, but it's a
very difficult case to make in the United States. In Mexico,
you can get protection based on generalized conditions in your country,
(18:17):
and so you know, Venezuelans betweeing economic collapse or even
Central Americans fleeing extreme violence have a much easier time
dating protection in Mexico than they would in the United
States because of that kind of extra category of protection
in Mexico. The issue with Mexico is just the very
(18:37):
limited capacity of this islum system overall, and the very
dangerous conditions in which people are forced to wait while
their cases are judicated.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Going forward from the Dadian, they'll face an enormously difficult journey.
The US does have a program for Cubans, venezuelan Ands,
Haitians and Nicaraguans, then in theory allows them to apply,
be pre approved and flies straight to the USA, But
it's so delayed and it's just no an option for
people who barely have enough money for food, let learn
a plane ticket there.
Speaker 8 (19:05):
HMV program is for cubanations, nick Garaguins, Venezuelans who have
not crossed into Panama or Mexico in the past few years.
You did not qualify who've done that or have not
been inter died at sea. If they're Haitian or Cuban,
you have to have a sponsor in the United States
who have some kind of legal status. You have to
(19:27):
be able to pay for the flight, you have to
have a passport, and you have to be able to
wait forever long it takes for your application to be approved.
And the Department of Homeland Security just announced that they
are not renewing parole for people who are already in
the United States. So people from those four countries who
(19:48):
were in the US head up to two years of
humanitarian parole which is not being renewed, so they either
would need to apply for something else or go back
to their country, or just I guess, stay in the
Saints undocumented until their CODs.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I heard the same story hundreds of times that week,
sometimes off mike and sometimes on mike, sometimes holding my
voice recorder and notebook, sometimes just sitting on the ground
or walking on the trail or enjoying a bottle of
cold water in Bahjigito. Crippling poverty and bad governance in
their country made it difficult to see a future there.
They wanted better for their children, so they bought them
(20:56):
across the mountains and risked their lives in the jungle
to give them a chance in life life. I prepared
a lot for this trip, and I tried to search
for everything had my experience on the internet. But one
thing I really didn't expect to learn in the jungle
is just how much it's possible for parents to love
their kids. I watched exhausted mothers hoist their babies onto
their shoulders to keep walking and somehow come up with
(21:16):
a story that made the whole thing an adventure, not
a tragedy. Then did the same thing again the next day,
without sleeping or eating. I watch fathers carefully lay out
their sleeping map so their children could rest where they
tried to do the same on the dirt or hardwood
floors every day as their savings grew lower and they
outlook more bleak. I watched parents try to smile for
their kids. The sacrifices I saw them make, starving for
(21:40):
days to give their kids something to eat, or spending
their last remaining dollar on clean clothes for their kids
while they walked barefoot couldn't afford shoes really brought home
for me the desire these families had for a better
future and the sacrifices they were willing to make for
one another. A week later, it's still hard for me
to accept that I'm home safely and they're still in
as much danger, if not more.
Speaker 10 (22:03):
Our walk lasted five days. Thank god I was always
strong enough and able to get back up when I fell,
because if I fell and my children had to see
me fall and not get up, imagine how bad that
would be. My children want more in the future, but
they despaired in the jungle. They said, tell me, mommy,
when are we going to get there? Mommy? What could
(22:24):
I say to them, my dear, we have to have patience,
because we have to make the crossing. We have to
move forward. If not, we can't get out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Even among such difficult times, the Venezuelan's always greeted me
with a laugh and a smile, especially after a few
days of running into each other. When I used venezuhealen
slang or my accents slowly reverted to the Spanish I
learned in Karrakas only two decades ago, they'd laugh at me,
as they noted at that time Karakas had attracted plenty
of migrants. Recern some of them, like me, didn't stay,
(22:56):
but we came to We wanted to see a revolution
in the flesh, and they welcomed. For a while in Caracas,
I lived in a social center in La Pastora. I
didn't pay rent, but there was a small empty room
and no one seemed to mind. Every day I talked
to strangers, big friends, and try and learn something new.
The situation there was an ideal. For one thing, we
didn't really have showers, and also I got robbed at gunpoint.
(23:17):
So for most of my time in the country, I
stayed with the Chilean family i'd met. They welcomed me
a more a left total stranger into their homes and lives.
In the evenings, we spent hours talking and they'd tell
me stories about how they'd suffered under Pinochet, the hopes
they'd had for their country, and how they'd had to
flee to Caracas like tens of thousands of their fellow Chileans.
(23:37):
They introduced me to Victor Hara and Jolly Pan. I
introduced them to chumber Wamba, and we shared an affection
for George Orwell. The song you heard after the adverts
was not in fact chumber Wamba, but Chilean left his
folk musician in Victor Haa. He's playing Eldrecho de vi
Videnpaz the right to live in Peace in English, and
it's one of his most famous songs. It confronts the
(23:57):
US War in Vietnam. Later, after how I was tortured
and murdered by the Pinochet regime, it became an anthem
of protest in the country. Haarah and his friend pabul
and No Ruda were both symbols of the cultural power
of the Chilean people and the brutality of the Pinochet
regime who broke the hands he used to play his
guitar before they killed him. Haah and the Rudah both
(24:18):
moved in the same revolutionary artistic circles as my Chilean
host in Venezuela. At night, they tell me stories about
the time they spent together. We'd have to speak loudly
as a man who adopted me as a sort of
surrogate grandson and permanent hearing damage from the torture he'd
endured under the same regime. Luckily, he'd been able to
flee with his wife to Venezuela, where they were welcomed.
(24:38):
They never returned to Chile and happily lived out the
rest of their lives listening to their victor Haara records
in Caracas and living the ideals that had seen them persecuted.
Their kindness to me, a nineteen year old stranger with
terrible Spanish and nowhere to sleep at night, reflected the
kindness they'd received, and I've tried to reflect it in
turn ever since.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh, I never once heard any children crying and last
blankets or barjiquito. Well, none until the deportations took their
parents away on my last day there. Most of the
time the kids entertained themselves one day in Last Blancas,
where migrants can wait and spend weeks or months they
(25:25):
don't have the funds to move forward with their journey.
I left my picture while she made a call and
bumped in some little children playing a game where they
throw water bottle caps into half a breeze block from
various distances, each of them counting how many they could land.
I sat down next to them, put my recorder on
the ground and asked nicely if I could join it
(25:54):
like a tiny pit boss. One of the kids bought
me a pile of bottle tops. I chattered with them
as we threw a bottle cap to the broken piece
of concrete. What was it like in America?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
They asked.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
They's had a lot of questions about Africa, having probably
met African kids in the casita just across the way.
Do they have big buildings in Africa? Does it rain there?
How long does it take to get there in a bus?
Then they tested by venezuela and legitimacy by drawing me
in a ripper in my notebook, and I ask him
if I knew what it was? What I passed a test?
They asked me how to say some things in English,
(26:26):
and they showed me the toys they bought with them,
which were very few. One of them had a small
plastic cow of which he was very proud one. After
a while, they asked what I was doing, and I
showed them how I record interviews, at which point they
began recording themselves in each other, wildly stabbing at the
(26:49):
buttons on my recorder, which I will admit scared the
crap out of me, but I didn't have the heart
to take it off them. They stroked the fluffy wind
protector I use on my microphone. It told me it
was like a tiny teddy bear. Eventually I was able
to trade my recorder for several small wooden animals they
brought with me as gifts, which seemed to be a deal.
The left all of us feelings that we come out ahead.
(27:10):
They seemed to n't bothered by the suffering around them.
But Las Blancas is no place for children. They should
be in school, learning the English phrases they kept repeating
to me every time I saw them. But for a
chance to use their English, they first had to endure
a month more danger and deprivation. I gets son some
(27:32):
slightly hold. The children made the journey alone or almost alone.
They were accompanied by a spaniel called Chanel. I saw
a future while as people are carried with them through
the dry and gap. But to my analysis, is the
first spaniel that has made the treacherous Crossinguela.
Speaker 11 (27:52):
Donzuela.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Like everyone else, they had terrible memories from the jungle.
Speaker 12 (28:02):
The truth is you have to fight a lot to
be able to get out of there, because not everyone
gets out of that jungle, and it's even more difficult
with small children. There are times when one goes without
food and it's very stressful because all around us all
we saw was the jungle, and we never saw the
way out. But it is complicated. The truth is that
(28:23):
it is very hard the jungle. Well, I would really
recommend that people never go there. All our feet are hurting,
we can't walk properly. Our whole body is hurt. We
went days without eating.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
They were traveling. They said to join their parents, and
because in Venezuela they told me they were always hungry.
They saw people sleeping on the streets and worry that
would be their only option. One day they didn't leave.
Speaker 12 (28:49):
I want to see mom. I haven't seen her in
three years, and I want to have my American dream too.
Speaker 13 (28:56):
I want to see my dad and my aunt and
my uncle. I haven't seen them for three years years either.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Despite the heart yet, they didn't blame their parents for leaving.
Speaker 13 (29:05):
We know that we made it because of them. They're
the ones who sent us money for the things we need.
We were able to get a few things, not everything
we needed, but it's all thanks to them.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
The end of their interview, as I always do, I
asked them if there's anything else that they wanted to share.
Speaker 7 (29:20):
I don't know. For our parents, we love them a
lot and hope we can see them soon.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Like many of the Venezuelan's I spoke to, their American
dreams were pretty modest for most of them, though they'll
be unachievable in the current immigration system. They'll end up
stuck in Mexico, in Mexico City, perhaps for further south,
but in Tijuana or Juaro's waiting across the border. They're lucky.
But if they cried a cross between ports of entry
or get caught traveling without red string in Mexico, they
(29:58):
were being deported or relocated back to southern Mexico Hestica
explaining that process.
Speaker 8 (30:03):
The Mexican National Guard has been detaining people who are
trying to cross the US medical border, and they had
been sending them south to Mexico City and Chiapas to Tapachula.
Now there's been this huge effort to stop people from waiting,
not only at the US Mexico border, but even in
Mexico City. So we're seeing Mexican Immigration and National Guard
(30:28):
doing sweeps of migrant camps, of apartment buildings, doesn't matter
if the person has a CBP one appointment. Sometimes they'll
just send them souths to either Chiapa's an increasing lead
to Basco so viet Moosa, which is where people are
arriving in Tabasco, has one shelter and I think the
capacity is around to two hundred fifty three hundred people,
(30:50):
and earlier this year they were sending twenty thousand migrants
a month there and then they posted the military steps
so that people can't leave, and it's very dangerous there.
It's a drug tracking area, so it's you know, not
only are people sleeping in the streets, but they're sleeping
on the streets of some of the most dangerous cities
and massacre win very few services there to help them
(31:11):
even get their next meal.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
This, of course, didn't happen without the influence of the
United States. In many ways, Joe Biden has done exactly
what Donald Trump promised to do. Not only has he
built more wall, he's also forced Mexico to pay for
a significant amount of the US IS immigration enforcement. But
when people are sent back to south of Mexico, they'll
just make their way north again, only this time with
fewer resources and even greater risk. They're all proud of
(31:35):
where they're from. About half the groups I saw had
Venezuela flags and the cats or backpacks, but they're also
very aware of the betrayal they get as Venezuelan's and
the US media, and many of them made the very
valid point if American is afraid of Venezuela gangs, they
ought to consider how much more afraid people are in
a country where they actually exist.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yes, we Incelana Parazon stands and female I'm thirteen.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Please don't believe that because one person from Venezuela does crime,
that all Venezuelans do crime.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
But at least they get it portrayed in the US media.
Many African migrants don't even get that. Of course, that
doesn't mean they don't know about the USA. His powers
in her Anglophane Cameronian group again talking about their impressions
of America where they'd like to live when they arrive here.
Speaker 11 (32:22):
You know, America is a very beautiful country, and America
has human rights. They care about the citizens. In fact,
they care about humanity. See, I don't want to have
a friend that I'm gonna stay with for the meantime.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Then it gets that's great, Yeah, that helps a lot. Yeah,
do you know which city your friend lives in?
Speaker 11 (32:42):
She's in Maryland, Maryland.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Okay, yeah, So.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
If I'm asks, if you don't mind me asking, of course,
what Americans? How do they treat or how do they
say immigrants?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Oh, my friend, it's changing a lot. African migrants in
particular will struggle with their life of resources. The absence
of solidarity structures an obvious anti blackness along the journey.
Along with this, people they meet along the way simply
lack context of the journeys, why they're leaving, what they're fleeing.
Language barriers may exclude many of them from using CBP one,
which is only offered English Spanish and Haitian Creole. Less
(33:18):
than fifteen percent of asylum cases are conducted in English,
but the app ignores huge swass of the world outside
the Western Hemisphere and Bajiquito. I used French to speak
to migros you didn't speak English, and began to notice
the complete absence of signage. And I think other than
Spanish and sometimes English and Creole, this is likely an
issue throughout their long journeys. Here's one migrant from Angola,
(33:40):
and I should probably know at this point that Angolan
people tend to speak Portuguese, that's a national language, but
French with the language I shared with some of them,
as I don't speak Portuguese.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
Pretty completely.
Speaker 14 (33:53):
It was too much, very complicated. Like me, I did
a week in Brazil, out at Brazil and for Peru,
Peru to nicol Klee. Then here I did. We did
four days, four days walking. There are many mountains, many risks,
there are many animals along the route. You have to
follow the path for four days and there's no food.
(34:16):
But we are glad to arrive today. This is the
first group. There's the second, third, fourth, fifth group. They're
still on the road. I'm very proud of the fact
that we made it despite the suffering.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
But God was with us.
Speaker 14 (34:30):
That is what is important.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
There are numerous instances of French speaking migrants trying to
approach the border near me in Santy Cedra and being
turned away for not having an appointment on that it's
not available in a language they can understand. These language
barriers might stop the migrants getting information, but they don't
stop them helping one another. His powers group describing the
isolation they felt, but also the kindness they experienced. Do
(34:53):
you think people on the trip treat African people differently?
Speaker 11 (34:57):
Yes, they're living communicated, They're just by themselves. They don't associate.
They look at all differently.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
I had someone who support their tea.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah yeah, I saw.
Speaker 11 (35:14):
I saw how kind the.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Person was because of their obvious foreignness and perceived an
ability to communicate. African migrants are often targeted for crime
in Mexico. Since leaving Panama, I've heard from migrants who
are raped, kidnapped, ransomed, and I even heard about one
who was killed. Because of their difficulties accessing this CVP
one app many face longer waits in Mexico, which may
(35:38):
in turn leave them open to extortion or see them
decide to cross the border between ports of entry. I've
met hundreds of migrants, mainly Mauritanians and Geneians, who have
made this difficult choice since Biden's Asylent Bank came into force.
Due to the distance, African migrants also face a longer,
more expensive, and more dangerous journey. His premier from Zimbabwe,
(35:58):
describing her journey to get to bat the situation for.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Me it was tough. I just ran away to South
Africa and South Africa was not safe. Solophobia and they
almost kill me and my boyfriend and even my my
big father was abusive, too much aposive because of the politics,
(36:28):
opposition party. So it was now even in South Africa,
I was not safe at all. It was those people.
They were like following me and my daughter. For I
spent three months on the road coming here. I leave
South Africa, I think fourth of July till now I'm
(36:48):
in Panama. I'm still working using basses.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Jesus, how did you get away from Africa to America?
Speaker 8 (36:56):
Did you fly or take a boat?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The thing is I fly from Juannespec to Brazil. Then
I seek Asylam in Brazil. Then I wanted to stay
in Brazil, so people said, no, you in Brazil, you
can't because of language. Yeah, yeah, Portuguese. So I start
also using people's roots, like you list take this pass
(37:21):
from point A to point base. So we take a
bus from Brazil to Bolivia, then from Bolivia to Peru, Peru,
toad equad to Colombia. Then you start working with using
Darwin Cape too. I'm here in Panama.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
African migrants will end up in different shelters, little more remote,
will have less connectivity, again, making their asylum process harder.
Unlike migrants from the Western Hemisphere, they might struggle to
find solidarity networks even inside the USA without a significant diaspora.
Many of the migrants I met the jungle have struggled
to find sponsors. Los of the people I spoke to here,
(37:56):
including Primrose and her daughter, are still looking for someone
to give them a help hand as they start their
new life. We spoke a lot over the week I
is there, and we've spoken most days since. It's heartbreaking
for me to see her daughter going for months with
our education or even a safe place to sleep. I've
seen photos in them sleeping on the street. They've ridden
crowded busses north, and I've heard their frustrated attempts to
(38:18):
comply with the arcane and complicated restrictions on their right
to come here and ask for help. And it's been
really hard since I got home to reconcile this with
a national discussion that seems to see migration as a
number that we have to decrease a migrants to something
other than people who want to come here for all
the same reasons. I live happily and peaceably as our neighbors.
Now that they've come this far, magants from outside the
(38:40):
Western Hemisphere have to keep going. They cannot even file
their claims on CBP one until they make it to Tapatula,
which is hundreds of dollars and thousands of kilometers from Panama.
They'd likely don't have the funds to go back home
even if they want to, and they're far more likely
to be robbed or kidnapped along the way. However, their
story is often aren't told. Reporting on the board is
(39:01):
still largely focused on Spanish speaking migrants, with some space
of Chinese O Haitians. The migrants from Africa rarely get
much care or attention in the media. In part this
has helped them before the demonization the Venezuelan migrants'rel too
aware of, but in part it also leads to a
lack of concern for their needs. I went to end
today with Gabriel from Equatorial Guinea sharing his message for Americans. Aha.
Speaker 15 (39:29):
Know, yeah, a lot of people get this confused. Africa
is not a country. A lot of them think when
they see you and you're black person, they say, are
you African? And it's like, there are lots of countries
in Africa. Khana, Nigeria, you got, Guinea, you got the
(39:52):
more Aitanian people. There are loads of countries. I wish
people would know. How do I say this? I wish
they'd take us into a out because really they don't
consider us when they say Africa is a country. They
don't care about us the way we care about them.
And this is the way of seeing things which doesn't
(40:12):
consider us as human, not the same as them. You understand,
they see us as Africans or animals, something like that.
Speaker 12 (40:24):
It could happen.
Speaker 7 (40:25):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 12 (40:27):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
All media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
I just did want to make you a way that
I conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish,
and then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing
is a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
I hope you enjoyed the episode, s l P G awesome.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, the journey is dangerous, but what can we do.
We can't stay in a country where the economy is
getting worse and worse. With a salary of three dollars
a month, you can't survive. Like my friend said, if
you have a job in other countries, maybe you can
invest some money. But where are you going to get
the money to invest If before you had a salary
(00:52):
that fed you paid for your car, your house and
your children to enjoy it all with, and now you
can't even afford to put gas in the car. So
it's true. Yeah, the darien is dangerous, but nothing is impossible.
We walk hand in hand with God and with the
faith that we will get there. But that doesn't mean
it isn't difficult. But I'll say it again, it's not impossible.
(01:14):
You suffer, you cry, you go hungry cold, but thank
God we made it through.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Bored around the Touquesa River, the jungle rumbles quiet as
you pass by on your boat. Insects, frogs, and birds
all combined to make a sort of deep throbbing that
emanates from the darkness between the trees. It seems at
wants to be calling you in and warning you to
stay away. I've been in the jungle before, in the
Rwanda Congo borderlands and in Venezuela, but I've never really
(01:50):
felt the sense of foreboding I did as we rode
down the river, protected only by our hollow log, looking
into the triple canopy forest, and knowing that if I
walk long enough in the shadows, I'd be confronted the
remains of people I might have interviewed if it hadn't
been for a rolld ankle, a slippery rock, or a
desperate sip of water. To understand what drives people to
enter the jungle with their children and their dreams, I
(02:12):
think we also have to understand what drives them to
leave where they're living. And that's what I want to
talk about today, the story of migrants crossing the daddy
and gap is an American one. It's impossible to disentangle
the people making this dangerous journey from the history of
support for dictatorship, sanctions, and imperial plunder that ties to the
United States to its American brothers and sisters in the South.
(02:32):
Sometimes I play a game with myself at the border
where I try and meet people from all the countries
named in Washington bullets in a single day. Since Biden
bungled the Afghanistan withdraw, it's become a lot easier, but
Tibet can be hard. For two hundred years, since President
Monroe gave his State of the Union address in December
eighteen twenty three, the US has seen the Western hemisphere
is its sphere of influence. While its opposed old fashioned colonialism,
(02:56):
it has used less avert methods of control as well
as overt military across the hemisphere. For much of the
last century, it supported and installed dictators who would prevent
what it saw as a threat of state socialism in
its sphere of influence, and allowed them to create economic
and political climates that were unsurvivable for the majority and
extremely profitable for US based corporations. The direct result of
(03:18):
this policy has been economic insecurity, political instability, and state
violence across South and Central America, resulting in people making
the very natural humor decision to flee to somewhere safer.
As in so many other empires, they've made the choice
to lead a destabilized colonial periphery and seek safety instability
in the metropol. For more than a century, money and
(03:39):
good have been able to travel seamlessly up and down
the continent, but people have not. The bananaread for breakfast
this morning made the journey in a few days, but
people take months, if not years, pay thousands of dollars,
climb mountains, forded rivers, and risk their lives on trains
and buses that cost a lot more than the flights
I took to Panama, but offer considerably less comfort and safety.
(04:01):
As climate change has have greater impacts, more and more
people are forced to leave their homes as their livelihoods
become less sustainable. The Guna, the indigenous people of the
Panamanian coast in an area called Guna Yala, are having
to withdraw from some of their islands because of sea
level rise. Right now, agriculture across the world is increasingly
threatened by extreme weather and rising temperatures, and our oceans
(04:23):
are less they're able to sustain life than they once
were due to pollution and overfishing. Forced to leave their
homes as people have been for millennia by weather patterns changing,
people head to places that have once caused much of
the issue and tried to insulate themselves from its consequences.
Their American dreams are modest. To overcome the crippling low
pay they received, a home, to bring their children up
(04:45):
in a place where they have a good chance of
surviving their twenties, to work and get paid enough to
get by. They want to be able to protest and
not get shot, and to look forward to the future
not feared. These aren't guaranteed in the USA, and as
many of you listening will know, it can be hard
for us to make ends meet here as well. But
despite what you see on social and legacy media, things
(05:05):
are unlikely to become as bad here as they are
in Venezuela, Cameroon or Iran anytime soon. I've lived in Venezuela,
specifically in the formerly jab eastern neighborhood of La Pastora
in Caracas, and I've seen how hard it is for
my friends who still live there. Even for people with
no other disadvantages, making rent and feeding your family can
be a challenge. That's part of why Venezuelan people make
(05:27):
up the majority of the folks I met me Dadian,
so much so that I'd slipped back into using Venezuelan
slang in Spanish, and after a few days of seeing
the same people engaging in the kind of friendly mockery
and banter that I remember well from Caracas, mostly the
super form of asking them why they crossed a Daddian
gap in Man United shirts or worse yet, in a
Chelsea shit. It's important to steal moments of humor in
(05:48):
these difficult times, to laugh a little among all the suffering,
and that's something people in Venezuela have done very well
for a very long time. But despite their humor, I
could tell the journey had a serious impact on the
people I spoke to.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You have to go through a lot, a lot of jungle,
a lot of hills. There are people, there are dead
people on the road, So it's it's something you cannot
really explain. It's complicated because everything can be explained in
a fashion, but it's it's not the same as living it.
It's insanity, three four days with that food and nothing.
One thing is to live it. Explaining it, talking about it,
(06:26):
that's different. It's hard to put into words.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
This interview is when I conducted with one group of
Venezuelan migrants with my voice recorder in the chest pocket
of my shirt and whatever bags it let me carry
in my hands. We walked along the last part of
the trail, discussing what they'd seen. For a while, we
joked a little. One guy had crossed it a man
united ship. I talked him about the team and the
universe was dislike non Menu fans have for Menu fans.
(06:50):
Then after a while they opened up more about their experiences.
They had, they said, seen their bodies and they couldn't
stop thinking about what happened if they'd fallen, and they
wanted to know how, when or if the dead people's
family would ever find out.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
The family waits for that person to come out to
hear that they made it, because if not, who's going
to let you know? There's no signal and nobody's going
to grab the body, and you're not going to carry
them out. The person stays there and eventually, years and
years go by and the family won't know where they
are or how they died. Those are the sort of
things that one doesn't expect to see, and it makes
(07:28):
you just want to hurry past. Not that you wouldn't
want to get the documentation from the body and deliver
it and tell them how this person had passed away,
But how dare you just go grabbing a dead body.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Vernetuinan elections were held on the twenty eighth of July
this year. Venezueynan presidents have a six year term and
the incumbent to colas Ma Duro, has been in office
since twenty thirty. I let the Venezuelan people and that
introduce themselves and explain the result of the election. Now
there's a bit of background noise here, but that's because
we were walking on the trails and it's hard to avoid.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I am coming from Venezuela, migrating through the jungle for
a better future for me and my children. I'll tell
you it's hard, but it's not impossible. No, that was
electoral fraud. And I tell you what, one day, you
just have to leave.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Maduro was opposed by A Juardo Gonzalez, an opposite candidate
who represented a wide coalition increating groups on the left
and right. One Maduro might have support among Western socialists
and even communists. The actual Venezuelan Communist Party's youth organization
formed part of the Popular Democratic Front that opposed him.
Despite Paul Watchers tallying a massive victory for the opposition,
(08:38):
Maduro controls the National Election Council and proclaimed himself the victor.
People protested, and Maduro responded with bullets. Gonzales fled to
the Dutch and then the Spanish embassy and later claimed
asylum in Spain, where his family lived. But for regular
working class Venezuelan's there's no option to hop on a
flight to safety. Instead, they have to be getting the
(09:00):
long walk north. As many Venezuelans respect you told me.
In addition to the electoral fraud, Venezuela is undergoing an
economic collapse, at least as the Chavis they said, most
people could eat. When I lived in La Pastora, I
was able to access medical care from Cuban doctors. Now
they say things have become a survivaldo so Venezuela.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
When Venezuela well, I would say that Venezuela, you know, yeah,
you can live, but not on a minimum wage.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
I would say that, for example, working independently in an
independent business, maybe you can live good. But working and
surviving for a minimum wage now, the truth is that
it doesn't work, and that's serious. Things are still bad
with the new elections and the new government. Everything is ugly.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
The streets of Caracas are full of protests. Every day.
People went out to protest. Sometimes they shoot people. The
government mistreats people. But if you can live with it,
and you can live with it it's ugly. Well, that
is why we left there for a better future, and
we will keep moving onward onward.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
This group were young men traveling in advance with their families,
hoping to earn some money, save it up, and send
it home. They knew what they were getting into when
they got to the USA, that migrants were often underpaid
and might struggle to make ends meet, but they still
thought it was better than staying home and watching your
children's future disappear.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
If you don't have papers, you don't have a work permit,
you have to work for it. They want to pay you,
not for what you demand or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I met lots of Venezuela families with children who had
different illnesses or disabilities, things they couldn't obtain or afford
treatment for in Venezuela. They were traveling to the US
in the hopes of finding a better future for their kids,
or any future at all. I met young men who
left their children behind but carried the children of strangers,
even those with whom they didn't share a language. Christian,
(11:10):
who he heard from earlier, showed me how he'd carried
someone else's child on his shoulders until he fell and
hurt his knee. We all help.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I put little children up here on my shoulders to
carry them, but it isn't easy.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
In the jungle, they'd formed chains using their arms to
cross rivers and carried little children on those who couldn't swim.
In Barji Guito, I saw a group of men from
Angola receiving hugs from Venezuela and women they'd helped in
the jungle. Without the help of the Angolans, they said
their children wouldn't have made it. One slip or a
loss of grip, they told me, would be fatal, and
the remains of those who had done just that served
(11:42):
as a grisly reminder. Later, little boys, maybe eight or
ten years old, gleefully recounted seeing a dead body on
which the head had quote exploded while their parents winked
in recollection. I wanted to understand a bit more of
what they were fleeing. That made it worth going through
all this.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Venezuela.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
Well, I left Venezuela because I worked in fishing. But
right now, in Venezuela, despite the fact that it is
a country rich and oil, there's not enough gasoline for
the fishermen to go fishing. And since I did not
have the ability to even buy basic things such as food,
the situation was, well, it was a little complicated. I
had to immigrate. I had nothing else to do. They
(12:24):
didn't rob me, well, they were going to rob me
because I didn't have anything to steal. We passed by
and the group that was behind us got robbed. They
raped women in that group.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Almost every Venezuelan Migro and I spent to share a
similar story. One said he didn't store security cameras, but
nobody could afford them now, as it had to choose
between rent and groceries or medical procedures that they needed
but couldn't afford. Overwhelmingly, they said the same thing no aifuturo,
there's no future. One group said to me that they
couldn't wait for their country to become like Cuba, as
(12:57):
decades of embargos took their toll on the population. But
others reminded me in them that least of Cubans seem
to have doctors. Venezuela has an eighty percent poverty right now,
and though it sits on one of the largest oil
reserves of any country on Earth, it's been plagued by
planting oil prices in the years of hyperinflation, which got
so bad at one point the shots stopped putting price
tags on things and relied on staff to give up
(13:19):
to the minute prices. Today, alongside a regime that lacks legitimacy,
a state that readily uses horrific violence against his people,
an election that was essentially ignored, Venezuelan's must also deal
with shortages of basic goods, poverty, and malnutrition. Unlike Cubans
who have a relatively good political lobby in the USA,
Venezuelan's coming to the USA do not benefit from special laws.
(13:41):
Cubans under the Cuban Adjustment Act have a part of
the citizenship and permanence once they set foot on US soil.
Venezuelans do not. They're covered by something called a temporary
protected status, but this does not afford them much in
the way of stability, protection, or a secure future. His
Erecha Pinhidro of Alotolado and Incredible Organizations does valuable work
with migrant legal aid advocacy and humanitarian relief, explaining just
(14:04):
how temporary a TPS is.
Speaker 8 (14:06):
So temporary protected status is it's basically a form of
protecting individuals who are already in the United States when
their countries have experienced a natural disaster, if they are
in war, there's some kind of situation going on that
makes it difficult for them to return, and so temporary
(14:28):
protected status was first created in nineteen ninety and the
first individuals who receive the status were from El Salvador,
and since then, I think there's been a few dozen
countries that have been designated. But basically the way it
works is they designate a country and so if you
were in the United States before that designation date, you
(14:50):
can apply for temporary protected status within a designated time
period and you get a work permit. It's valid for six,
twelve or eighteen months and then two months before it expires,
the Secretary of the Department of holand Security has to
say whether or not they're going to reauthorize GPS. So
(15:13):
there's like eight hundred and sixty thousand people in the
US who have temporary protected status and it's not a
pathtis citizenship. So basically people are just in limbo sometimes
for decades, you know. They just have to reapply for
this permit every eighteen months. So I have quite a
(15:33):
few salvador and friends who've been in the United States
since the nineties. They have kids, some of them a
cuarrent kids or a US citizen, and they can't become
permanent residents or have a paths the citizenship unless they
leave the country and either come back with another type
of parole or you know, apply through a consulate, which
many of them are just not willing to take that risk.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, makes things even more complicated for the Venezuelans, is it.
Many of them are traveling with that document. It costs
three hundred bucks to get a passport, they told me,
and the weight's considerable. This makes their journeys even harder
as every country the enter has to approve them to
without a passport getting a visa, they said, would be
nearly impossible, and just trying might result in the government
coming after them. Such things, they said, are reserved for
(16:19):
the wealthier citizens. People like Gonzales, who's asylum claim and
stays at the Dutch and Spanish embassies and his right
to join his family in exile are all luxuries that
most of his country people can't expect. Its dead. Most
Venezuelans must ride buses through Columbia, then walk north through
the jungle, then ride buses stir away on trains, or
walk again all the way to the border. They all
(16:40):
lamented to dai and crossing, and so they wouldn't advise
it without other options.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
They all made it anyway, community see, because unfortunately we
don't have much in our country.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
You don't have another option when you're dying of hunger
and you don't have a future, you can't even study.
So yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
The economic situation is dire in Venezuela. Many families can't
make ends me their currency is almost worth US, and
the majority government seems to have successfully installed itself for
the fueseeable future. This will mean a continuation of embargos
is sanctions, which will harm the people more than the regime. Sadly, though,
economic hot kIPS is not a criteria which won't be
grounded asylum in the USA his Erica.
Speaker 8 (17:33):
Again, so severe economic deprivation can be persecution if it's
linked to one of the other projected grounds, so race, religion, nationality,
political opinion, or membership, but in a particular social group.
So for example, if someone participated in anti Moduro political
(17:54):
activity and then we're blocked from getting a job or
just denied economic opports to the point where they're starving,
the economic deprivation could count as persecution, but it's a
very difficult case to make in the United States. In Mexico,
you can get protection based on generalized conditions in your country,
(18:17):
and so you know, Venezuelans betweeing economic collapse or even
Central Americans fleeing extreme violence have a much easier time
dating protection in Mexico than they would in the United
States because of that kind of extra category of protection
in Mexico. The issue with Mexico is just the very
(18:37):
limited capacity of this islum system overall, and the very
dangerous conditions in which people are forced to wait while
their cases are judicated.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Going forward from the Dadian, they'll face an enormously difficult journey.
The US does have a program for Cubans, venezuelan Ands,
Haitians and Nicaraguans, then in theory allows them to apply,
be pre approved and flies straight to the USA, But
it's so delayed and it's just no an option for
people who barely have enough money for food, let learn
a plane ticket there.
Speaker 8 (19:05):
HMV program is for cubanations, nick Garaguins, Venezuelans who have
not crossed into Panama or Mexico in the past few years.
You did not qualify who've done that or have not
been inter died at sea. If they're Haitian or Cuban,
you have to have a sponsor in the United States
who have some kind of legal status. You have to
(19:27):
be able to pay for the flight, you have to
have a passport, and you have to be able to
wait forever long it takes for your application to be approved.
And the Department of Homeland Security just announced that they
are not renewing parole for people who are already in
the United States. So people from those four countries who
(19:48):
were in the US head up to two years of
humanitarian parole which is not being renewed, so they either
would need to apply for something else or go back
to their country, or just I guess, stay in the
Saints undocumented until their CODs.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
I heard the same story hundreds of times that week,
sometimes off mike and sometimes on mike, sometimes holding my
voice recorder and notebook, sometimes just sitting on the ground
or walking on the trail or enjoying a bottle of
cold water in Bahjigito. Crippling poverty and bad governance in
their country made it difficult to see a future there.
They wanted better for their children, so they bought them
(20:56):
across the mountains and risked their lives in the jungle
to give them a chance in life life. I prepared
a lot for this trip, and I tried to search
for everything had my experience on the internet. But one
thing I really didn't expect to learn in the jungle
is just how much it's possible for parents to love
their kids. I watched exhausted mothers hoist their babies onto
their shoulders to keep walking and somehow come up with
(21:16):
a story that made the whole thing an adventure, not
a tragedy. Then did the same thing again the next day,
without sleeping or eating. I watch fathers carefully lay out
their sleeping map so their children could rest where they
tried to do the same on the dirt or hardwood
floors every day as their savings grew lower and they
outlook more bleak. I watched parents try to smile for
their kids. The sacrifices I saw them make, starving for
(21:40):
days to give their kids something to eat, or spending
their last remaining dollar on clean clothes for their kids
while they walked barefoot couldn't afford shoes really brought home
for me the desire these families had for a better
future and the sacrifices they were willing to make for
one another. A week later, it's still hard for me
to accept that I'm home safely and they're still in
as much danger, if not more.
Speaker 10 (22:03):
Our walk lasted five days. Thank god I was always
strong enough and able to get back up when I fell,
because if I fell and my children had to see
me fall and not get up, imagine how bad that
would be. My children want more in the future, but
they despaired in the jungle. They said, tell me, mommy,
when are we going to get there? Mommy? What could
(22:24):
I say to them, my dear, we have to have patience,
because we have to make the crossing. We have to
move forward. If not, we can't get out of here.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Even among such difficult times, the Venezuelan's always greeted me
with a laugh and a smile, especially after a few
days of running into each other. When I used venezuhealen
slang or my accents slowly reverted to the Spanish I
learned in Karrakas only two decades ago, they'd laugh at me,
as they noted at that time Karakas had attracted plenty
of migrants. Recern some of them, like me, didn't stay,
(22:56):
but we came to We wanted to see a revolution
in the flesh, and they welcomed. For a while in Caracas,
I lived in a social center in La Pastora. I
didn't pay rent, but there was a small empty room
and no one seemed to mind. Every day I talked
to strangers, big friends, and try and learn something new.
The situation there was an ideal. For one thing, we
didn't really have showers, and also I got robbed at gunpoint.
(23:17):
So for most of my time in the country, I
stayed with the Chilean family i'd met. They welcomed me
a more a left total stranger into their homes and lives.
In the evenings, we spent hours talking and they'd tell
me stories about how they'd suffered under Pinochet, the hopes
they'd had for their country, and how they'd had to
flee to Caracas like tens of thousands of their fellow Chileans.
(23:37):
They introduced me to Victor Hara and Jolly Pan. I
introduced them to chumber Wamba, and we shared an affection
for George Orwell. The song you heard after the adverts
was not in fact chumber Wamba, but Chilean left his
folk musician in Victor Haa. He's playing Eldrecho de vi
Videnpaz the right to live in Peace in English, and
it's one of his most famous songs. It confronts the
(23:57):
US War in Vietnam. Later, after how I was tortured
and murdered by the Pinochet regime, it became an anthem
of protest in the country. Haarah and his friend pabul
and No Ruda were both symbols of the cultural power
of the Chilean people and the brutality of the Pinochet
regime who broke the hands he used to play his
guitar before they killed him. Haah and the Rudah both
(24:18):
moved in the same revolutionary artistic circles as my Chilean
host in Venezuela. At night, they tell me stories about
the time they spent together. We'd have to speak loudly
as a man who adopted me as a sort of
surrogate grandson and permanent hearing damage from the torture he'd
endured under the same regime. Luckily, he'd been able to
flee with his wife to Venezuela, where they were welcomed.
(24:38):
They never returned to Chile and happily lived out the
rest of their lives listening to their victor Haara records
in Caracas and living the ideals that had seen them persecuted.
Their kindness to me, a nineteen year old stranger with
terrible Spanish and nowhere to sleep at night, reflected the
kindness they'd received, and I've tried to reflect it in
turn ever since.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh, I never once heard any children crying and last
blankets or barjiquito. Well, none until the deportations took their
parents away on my last day there. Most of the
time the kids entertained themselves one day in Last Blancas,
where migrants can wait and spend weeks or months they
(25:25):
don't have the funds to move forward with their journey.
I left my picture while she made a call and
bumped in some little children playing a game where they
throw water bottle caps into half a breeze block from
various distances, each of them counting how many they could land.
I sat down next to them, put my recorder on
the ground and asked nicely if I could join it
(25:54):
like a tiny pit boss. One of the kids bought
me a pile of bottle tops. I chattered with them
as we threw a bottle cap to the broken piece
of concrete. What was it like in America?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
They asked.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
They's had a lot of questions about Africa, having probably
met African kids in the casita just across the way.
Do they have big buildings in Africa? Does it rain there?
How long does it take to get there in a bus?
Then they tested by venezuela and legitimacy by drawing me
in a ripper in my notebook, and I ask him
if I knew what it was? What I passed a test?
They asked me how to say some things in English,
(26:26):
and they showed me the toys they bought with them,
which were very few. One of them had a small
plastic cow of which he was very proud one. After
a while, they asked what I was doing, and I
showed them how I record interviews, at which point they
began recording themselves in each other, wildly stabbing at the
(26:49):
buttons on my recorder, which I will admit scared the
crap out of me, but I didn't have the heart
to take it off them. They stroked the fluffy wind
protector I use on my microphone. It told me it
was like a tiny teddy bear. Eventually I was able
to trade my recorder for several small wooden animals they
brought with me as gifts, which seemed to be a deal.
The left all of us feelings that we come out ahead.
(27:10):
They seemed to n't bothered by the suffering around them.
But Las Blancas is no place for children. They should
be in school, learning the English phrases they kept repeating
to me every time I saw them. But for a
chance to use their English, they first had to endure
a month more danger and deprivation. I gets son some
(27:32):
slightly hold. The children made the journey alone or almost alone.
They were accompanied by a spaniel called Chanel. I saw
a future while as people are carried with them through
the dry and gap. But to my analysis, is the
first spaniel that has made the treacherous Crossinguela.
Speaker 11 (27:52):
Donzuela.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Like everyone else, they had terrible memories from the jungle.
Speaker 12 (28:02):
The truth is you have to fight a lot to
be able to get out of there, because not everyone
gets out of that jungle, and it's even more difficult
with small children. There are times when one goes without
food and it's very stressful because all around us all
we saw was the jungle, and we never saw the
way out. But it is complicated. The truth is that
(28:23):
it is very hard the jungle. Well, I would really
recommend that people never go there. All our feet are hurting,
we can't walk properly. Our whole body is hurt. We
went days without eating.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
They were traveling. They said to join their parents, and
because in Venezuela they told me they were always hungry.
They saw people sleeping on the streets and worry that
would be their only option. One day they didn't leave.
Speaker 12 (28:49):
I want to see mom. I haven't seen her in
three years, and I want to have my American dream too.
Speaker 13 (28:56):
I want to see my dad and my aunt and
my uncle. I haven't seen them for three years years either.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Despite the heart yet, they didn't blame their parents for leaving.
Speaker 13 (29:05):
We know that we made it because of them. They're
the ones who sent us money for the things we need.
We were able to get a few things, not everything
we needed, but it's all thanks to them.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
The end of their interview, as I always do, I
asked them if there's anything else that they wanted to share.
Speaker 7 (29:20):
I don't know. For our parents, we love them a
lot and hope we can see them soon.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Like many of the Venezuelan's I spoke to, their American
dreams were pretty modest for most of them, though they'll
be unachievable in the current immigration system. They'll end up
stuck in Mexico, in Mexico City, perhaps for further south,
but in Tijuana or Juaro's waiting across the border. They're lucky.
But if they cried a cross between ports of entry
or get caught traveling without red string in Mexico, they
(29:58):
were being deported or relocated back to southern Mexico Hestica
explaining that process.
Speaker 8 (30:03):
The Mexican National Guard has been detaining people who are
trying to cross the US medical border, and they had
been sending them south to Mexico City and Chiapas to Tapachula.
Now there's been this huge effort to stop people from waiting,
not only at the US Mexico border, but even in
Mexico City. So we're seeing Mexican Immigration and National Guard
(30:28):
doing sweeps of migrant camps, of apartment buildings, doesn't matter
if the person has a CBP one appointment. Sometimes they'll
just send them souths to either Chiapa's an increasing lead
to Basco so viet Moosa, which is where people are
arriving in Tabasco, has one shelter and I think the
capacity is around to two hundred fifty three hundred people,
(30:50):
and earlier this year they were sending twenty thousand migrants
a month there and then they posted the military steps
so that people can't leave, and it's very dangerous there.
It's a drug tracking area, so it's you know, not
only are people sleeping in the streets, but they're sleeping
on the streets of some of the most dangerous cities
and massacre win very few services there to help them
(31:11):
even get their next meal.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
This, of course, didn't happen without the influence of the
United States. In many ways, Joe Biden has done exactly
what Donald Trump promised to do. Not only has he
built more wall, he's also forced Mexico to pay for
a significant amount of the US IS immigration enforcement. But
when people are sent back to south of Mexico, they'll
just make their way north again, only this time with
fewer resources and even greater risk. They're all proud of
(31:35):
where they're from. About half the groups I saw had
Venezuela flags and the cats or backpacks, but they're also
very aware of the betrayal they get as Venezuelan's and
the US media, and many of them made the very
valid point if American is afraid of Venezuela gangs, they
ought to consider how much more afraid people are in
a country where they actually exist.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yes, we Incelana Parazon stands and female I'm thirteen.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Please don't believe that because one person from Venezuela does crime,
that all Venezuelans do crime.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
But at least they get it portrayed in the US media.
Many African migrants don't even get that. Of course, that
doesn't mean they don't know about the USA. His powers
in her Anglophane Cameronian group again talking about their impressions
of America where they'd like to live when they arrive here.
Speaker 11 (32:22):
You know, America is a very beautiful country, and America
has human rights. They care about the citizens. In fact,
they care about humanity. See, I don't want to have
a friend that I'm gonna stay with for the meantime.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Then it gets that's great, Yeah, that helps a lot. Yeah,
do you know which city your friend lives in?
Speaker 11 (32:42):
She's in Maryland, Maryland.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Okay, yeah, So.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
If I'm asks, if you don't mind me asking, of course,
what Americans? How do they treat or how do they
say immigrants?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Oh, my friend, it's changing a lot. African migrants in
particular will struggle with their life of resources. The absence
of solidarity structures an obvious anti blackness along the journey.
Along with this, people they meet along the way simply
lack context of the journeys, why they're leaving, what they're fleeing.
Language barriers may exclude many of them from using CBP one,
which is only offered English Spanish and Haitian Creole. Less
(33:18):
than fifteen percent of asylum cases are conducted in English,
but the app ignores huge swass of the world outside
the Western Hemisphere and Bajiquito. I used French to speak
to migros you didn't speak English, and began to notice
the complete absence of signage. And I think other than
Spanish and sometimes English and Creole, this is likely an
issue throughout their long journeys. Here's one migrant from Angola,
(33:40):
and I should probably know at this point that Angolan
people tend to speak Portuguese, that's a national language, but
French with the language I shared with some of them,
as I don't speak Portuguese.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
Pretty completely.
Speaker 14 (33:53):
It was too much, very complicated. Like me, I did
a week in Brazil, out at Brazil and for Peru,
Peru to nicol Klee. Then here I did. We did
four days, four days walking. There are many mountains, many risks,
there are many animals along the route. You have to
follow the path for four days and there's no food.
(34:16):
But we are glad to arrive today. This is the
first group. There's the second, third, fourth, fifth group. They're
still on the road. I'm very proud of the fact
that we made it despite the suffering.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
But God was with us.
Speaker 14 (34:30):
That is what is important.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
There are numerous instances of French speaking migrants trying to
approach the border near me in Santy Cedra and being
turned away for not having an appointment on that it's
not available in a language they can understand. These language
barriers might stop the migrants getting information, but they don't
stop them helping one another. His powers group describing the
isolation they felt, but also the kindness they experienced. Do
(34:53):
you think people on the trip treat African people differently?
Speaker 11 (34:57):
Yes, they're living communicated, They're just by themselves. They don't associate.
They look at all differently.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
I had someone who support their tea.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah yeah, I saw.
Speaker 11 (35:14):
I saw how kind the.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Person was because of their obvious foreignness and perceived an
ability to communicate. African migrants are often targeted for crime
in Mexico. Since leaving Panama, I've heard from migrants who
are raped, kidnapped, ransomed, and I even heard about one
who was killed. Because of their difficulties accessing this CVP
one app many face longer waits in Mexico, which may
(35:38):
in turn leave them open to extortion or see them
decide to cross the border between ports of entry. I've
met hundreds of migrants, mainly Mauritanians and Geneians, who have
made this difficult choice since Biden's Asylent Bank came into force.
Due to the distance, African migrants also face a longer,
more expensive, and more dangerous journey. His premier from Zimbabwe,
(35:58):
describing her journey to get to bat the situation for.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Me it was tough. I just ran away to South
Africa and South Africa was not safe. Solophobia and they
almost kill me and my boyfriend and even my my
big father was abusive, too much aposive because of the politics,
(36:28):
opposition party. So it was now even in South Africa,
I was not safe at all. It was those people.
They were like following me and my daughter. For I
spent three months on the road coming here. I leave
South Africa, I think fourth of July till now I'm
(36:48):
in Panama. I'm still working using basses.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Jesus, how did you get away from Africa to America?
Speaker 8 (36:56):
Did you fly or take a boat?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The thing is I fly from Juannespec to Brazil. Then
I seek Asylam in Brazil. Then I wanted to stay
in Brazil, so people said, no, you in Brazil, you
can't because of language. Yeah, yeah, Portuguese. So I start
also using people's roots, like you list take this pass
(37:21):
from point A to point base. So we take a
bus from Brazil to Bolivia, then from Bolivia to Peru, Peru,
toad equad to Colombia. Then you start working with using
Darwin Cape too. I'm here in Panama.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
African migrants will end up in different shelters, little more remote,
will have less connectivity, again, making their asylum process harder.
Unlike migrants from the Western Hemisphere, they might struggle to
find solidarity networks even inside the USA without a significant diaspora.
Many of the migrants I met the jungle have struggled
to find sponsors. Los of the people I spoke to here,
(37:56):
including Primrose and her daughter, are still looking for someone
to give them a help hand as they start their
new life. We spoke a lot over the week I
is there, and we've spoken most days since. It's heartbreaking
for me to see her daughter going for months with
our education or even a safe place to sleep. I've
seen photos in them sleeping on the street. They've ridden
crowded busses north, and I've heard their frustrated attempts to
(38:18):
comply with the arcane and complicated restrictions on their right
to come here and ask for help. And it's been
really hard since I got home to reconcile this with
a national discussion that seems to see migration as a
number that we have to decrease a migrants to something
other than people who want to come here for all
the same reasons. I live happily and peaceably as our neighbors.
Now that they've come this far, magants from outside the
(38:40):
Western Hemisphere have to keep going. They cannot even file
their claims on CBP one until they make it to Tapatula,
which is hundreds of dollars and thousands of kilometers from Panama.
They'd likely don't have the funds to go back home
even if they want to, and they're far more likely
to be robbed or kidnapped along the way. However, their
story is often aren't told. Reporting on the board is
(39:01):
still largely focused on Spanish speaking migrants, with some space
of Chinese O Haitians. The migrants from Africa rarely get
much care or attention in the media. In part this
has helped them before the demonization the Venezuelan migrants'rel too
aware of, but in part it also leads to a
lack of concern for their needs. I went to end
today with Gabriel from Equatorial Guinea sharing his message for Americans. Aha.
Speaker 15 (39:29):
Know, yeah, a lot of people get this confused. Africa
is not a country. A lot of them think when
they see you and you're black person, they say, are
you African? And it's like, there are lots of countries
in Africa. Khana, Nigeria, you got, Guinea, you got the
(39:52):
more Aitanian people. There are loads of countries. I wish
people would know. How do I say this? I wish
they'd take us into a out because really they don't
consider us when they say Africa is a country. They
don't care about us the way we care about them.
And this is the way of seeing things which doesn't
(40:12):
consider us as human, not the same as them. You understand,
they see us as Africans or animals, something like that.
Speaker 12 (40:24):
It could happen.
Speaker 7 (40:25):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 12 (40:27):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.