In the second part of his series on the Darién Gap, James looks at the impacts of migration on the indigenous Panamanian Emberá community.
Original Air Date: 10.29.24
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):
Cozon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everyone, it's me James, and before we listen to
this episode today, I just did want to make you
aware 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. Every
(00:25):
day for the past two years, the population of Bajo
Chiquito has more than tripled. At six in the morning,
piraguas come from other Emberra villages along the river, dozens
of them, all filled with orange life jackets. Migrants form
a line so long that it stretches from the beach
north of town all the way through the village and
at the other side, and in groups of fifteen, they
(00:48):
hand over their twenty five dollars each and get onto
the piraguas. Each one puts on their bright orange life jacket,
sits with their legs around the person in front, and
they take off for the first official migrant recept center
in last blankets. As the last boat leaves, those who
can't afford the trip begin a walk, which could take
eight hours. I couldn't walk with them, but I handed
(01:10):
the group my water filter in one of those overbright
energy bars that are basically trail mix in a rectangular format,
and wish them the best of luck as they force
their tired legs and sore feet to walk again. The
population of Barjuqito dropped back to five hundred or so
indigenous people who live here, and the usual background noise
of chattering dozens of languages gave way to crowing chickens
(01:30):
and barking dogs. By the next morning, as migrants came
walking in from the south, it would grow again to
fifteen hundred. For the last ten years or so, fewer
than two thousand people crossed in a year, but numbers
have been steadily increasing, and now the residents of Bajo
Juquito see the numbers that they saw in a year.
In a single weekend. While you listen to this series,
(01:52):
thousands of people will take their lives into their hands
as they leap into mudcolored rivers, ascend towering mountains in
the pouring rain, and desperately fight the urge to drink
from a river polluted with human waste, decaying corpses. All
of those who survive will walk out of that jungle
up the river bank along a muddy path and into
Bajo Juquito. Well, they'll buy themselves a cold drink and
(02:15):
enjoy the hospitality of the locals for a night before
leaving to head north. At first, the locals told me
didn't charge people at all. They were shocked to see
the migrants and wanted to help them, But as numbers grew,
they had to start asking for money, as they couldn't
afford to feed and house all the migrants arriving. Over time,
they said, the costs rose, and now a bed costs
(02:35):
about five dollars for a night, and a meal's about
the same. As they pointed out, that's less than half
what I paid in Metaitee, the nearest town. A metaite
doesn't have to haul its supplies up the river in
a canoe using seven dollars per gallon fuel. In Baja Juguito,
I sat down with an order man whose front room
I just had luncheon. I wanted to get a scent
to the change he'd seen over his lifetime in his
(02:56):
community and how he felt about it.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
When we saw how they arrived injured, sick with vomiting diarrhea.
Then there was no healthcare here what did we do.
We had to speak for the government. It wasn't easy.
It was not easy. We told them that we needed
a doctor. And finally, now, thank god, we have doctors here.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The community, which has long been socially and economically marginalized
and acutely underprovided with government services, had built a house
themselves for the doctors and another house for migration officials.
It was the only way to help migrants access services,
which in turn allowed them to move on with their
journeys quicker, he said. However, like almost every other person
(03:48):
I spoke with, he felt that the government should be
doing more here. Even after all these years serving as
the first Panamanian village, many thousands of people enter every year.
They still don't have electric or a road that's successible
year round, both of which would make their lives and
the transit of the migrants much safer. But that doesn't
mean the state's totally absent here. It used to be
(04:10):
possible for migrants to take a paragua from come Galina
a little further south up river and avoid some of
the most dangerous river crossings. Bonio told me that authorities
in the comarca, which is like a state in the
USA have prohibited this. I wanted to see more of
what was going on further south and what made it
so dangerous, but I wasn't permitted to join a Center
Front patrol going out that way despite my request. I
(04:32):
asked Bonnio what made things more dangerous in that part
of the river. First, he explained that the wide and
low lying beaches often seen make good points for migrants
to sleep, but that any rain in the mountains above
would result in the rapid increase of the water level,
turning those beaches into rapids in minutes, he told me,
looking down at the table. Then, not so long ago,
a storm had washed away sleeping migrants, drowning them in
(04:54):
their sleep and washing their remains towards his village. But
terrible as it is, isn't the only risk.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
What they said, you know very well that there's not
a single country that does not have criminals. In every country,
there are criminals. Yeah, So what happens at that point
in the river, as I was saying, at that point,
and clearly it is not everyone, but there are some
certain young men who engage in robbery and even rape.
(05:24):
So that's why in this community, in this village, in
coordination with the community and the leaders, we well. The
leader spoke to the national government to ask for a
chance to transport people from call Gaina so that nothing
would happen to them. The government talked and talked, and
for a while it was possible, and it was safe,
(05:45):
and nobody died and nobody robbed. It was all going well.
But what happened. We have a leader at Caske. I
don't know if you've heard about it, but the regional
leader he put a barrier, he stopped it. Look to
(06:06):
be honest, these people with their degrees, this class of person,
they're not humanitarians.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Despite the struggles and the relative absence of the government overall,
he felt that the migration had been a positive for
his community. He'd learned a lot from the migrants, he said,
and enjoyed learning about their cuisines in particular. There's a
common narrative in media that mentions Barji Guito that this
village has been somehow stripped of its culture or ruined
by migration, but the locals don't seem to agree with this.
(06:41):
I also spoke to the vilities leader. She's the first
woman in the whole commarker to hold such a position, you're.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm chief of the community police and leader of the community.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
She explained to me that Barju Guito was just one
of several communities along the river, each with its own leader.
Those leaders meet in the council an answer to a
casike of the.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Mara Ganti di Yatala Inovilla.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
She also explained that as the first woman in the position,
she'd made sure to advance the cause of women in
her community.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Since they've had my administration, which has been seven months
as noca or leader, I have put some women to work.
They are waiting for the migrants.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
There After that, I asked her to explain to listeners
what exactly a migrant encounters when they first set foot
in their village and the various steps that they might
go through before leaving the next morning.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Is very.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
There is a check in at first, verification of whether
they have a crime in their country. From there they
got immigration. The documents are checked and then they are
free to choose where they're going to wait and rest
for the next part of their journey. On behalf of UNICEF,
we have free toilets from the community. We also have
a free place where they can camp or rest. That's
(08:00):
theirs now. If they want better things, better rest, they
can find accommodation available in almost every house here. The
next day we prepare everything at together with the center
front security. We go to the beach there and at
the beach we also coordinate with a coordinator from each village.
(08:20):
I also want to make it clear as well that
the boat driver must have their idea and be of
legal age.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
From there, the migrants pay twenty five dollars ahead and
take the five hour boat trip north to Lahas Blancas,
which is the UN and government run camp and the
first official migrant welcome center outside the DADDI enn Having
boat drivers who are of age is important. Migrants who
can't swim trust their lives to these boat drivers in
high water. Once they're at Last Blankers, they're close to
(08:47):
the Pan American Highway and the beginning of the rest
of their journey north. They don't have to walk any
further unless they run out of money for buses. I
asked what happened when someone couldn't afford the ride to
Last blancers Y.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What does the community do? The community takes responsibility presending them,
not the state. The state migration Cenafron. They don't pay
for the fuel or the transport of these people.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Specifically, she told me the community sends three free boats today.
Most of these are filled of women and children, and
in my time there and seeing that these people paid
whatever they could those leftover, usually men would have to
make the walk on their blistered feet and tired legs
and risk further sickness, robbery, and heat exhaustion. I also
wanted to ask a leader about the problems with theft
(09:37):
and sexual assault that the migrants encountered on their walk
into Bajo Jiguito, and she was pretty forthright this was
an issue for the state, not for her community to fix.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
But then where is Senafron. Aren't Sanafrat supposed to be
on all the banks of the river, Yes, so where
are those thefts?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Despite being able to prevent the Empire from using their
boats on their river to transport migrants them at any
level above the village isn't really present In Baigo Center
Front Panamas, combined border patrol and military received migrants and
register them there, but all the services provided to the
migrants come either from the Emberrad or from non governmental organizations.
(10:16):
This pattern of the state failing to provide basic services.
When Neil told me is one that goes back a
long time before the migrants began arriving here, or.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So now, before the migrants began arriving here, we had
a town, a town that the government is supposed to
give what it has to give us as Panamanians, but
it doesn't. It was a town without anything. All we
did was sell our products and sell stuff here for us.
We grow rice, corn plantains, everything. Well, it was a lot,
(10:52):
but products that we grow are not enough to get by.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Even today in late twenty twenty four. The village doesn't
have mains electricity or does it have a connection to
telephone networks or a road that it can take year
round to connect it to the rest of the country.
And a few clean water taps in the town come
from UNICEF, not Panama City. Doctors here come from European NGOs,
and even the policing of the community is largely done
(11:16):
by the community, by a group called the Zara. And
never to better understand that, but our communities, both with
and without migrants. I wanted to visit another Embero village
and after the break we'll hear about that.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
All right, So I'm just in my hammock now kind
of the end of the day. We we're staying in
another end our village today, just probably I mean a
better say kilometer or two kilometers away, you know, probably
decent walk, but it was pretty fast in the Perragua.
(12:09):
Just it's a little more peaceful here. And a boat
driver passed us to stay at his house, so we
said we would. You can probably hear like, I don't
know how much of this is getting picked up. It's
(12:31):
a nice little village, you know, the fucking way till
the dogs have stopped. I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
When I wasn't in Bajo, I took a boat every
evening to Maraganti. Maraganti is only a couple of kilometers
away on a different branch of the river, but the
walk might dig hours through the thick jungle. Perraguero had
invited us to stay with his family and to see
another bar our village. I'm always down to sleep outside,
so I gladly accepted his invitation and slung my hammock
(13:01):
across his front porch. After a long discussion on whether
the dynamic cordage I was using would actually hold my
weight and on my part, I probably ill advised free
solo onto the roof of his house to find a
good anchor point for my hammock. My time in Maragante,
I found myself growing fonder and fond of his little community.
Everyone's doors were open, and the village children enjoyed unsupervised
(13:22):
playtime everywhere. There was never not a pickup game going
on at the concrete football and basketball court. And despite
the fact that they were on average several feet short
than me and playing on concrete without shoes, local kids
humiliated me at a wide variety of sports with no
electricity of them generators, one Wi Fi connection in the
whole village as far as I can tell, and a
(13:42):
few hours to myself. In the evening, I happily settled
into a routine of watching in a river along with
everyone else in the hour before sunset, walking around town,
chatting with the inhabitants, who seemed surprised but happy to
see a gangly British man nambling around the neighborhood and
petting their dogs. Once it got dark, I'd spend my
evening sitting in my hammer. The grandchildren of our host
asked me how to say various things in English. I
(14:03):
played with the little toys I always bring along in
case I run into children on my work trips. Being
in Marragantine made me think a lot about my own
life and the US in general. I certainly have a
lot more possessions here, but my neighbors don't let their
kids run around in the streets, and cars would hit
them if they did. People in my community the next
door app is anything to go by, spendcing mely countless
(14:23):
hours bitching about the unhoused and other people's children. But
here everyone had a roof over their heads, and other
people's children ran in and out my host's kitchen without
anyone batting an eyelid. Aside from laughing at my paleness
when I was washing in the river, nobody here seemed
that concerned that I was different. They let me hold
their babies while they cooked. They didn't overcharge me for
the bottles of water of snacks that I bought from
their front room convenience stores, or seemed that bothered about
(14:46):
sharing their meals and their homes with me. At night,
we sat on tiny plastic chairs and talked about our
shared interest in woodwork and what they wanted for their children.
We talked about their boats and the river, and about
how terrible things must be for the migrants to risk
their lives making the journey across these mountains that the
Emberra and their Guna neighbors call home. Ever since I
left their village, I've been thinking a lot about the
(15:09):
part of The Dawn of Everything in which Grab and
Wengrove detail how many indigenous people were adopted into colonial
society but chose to return to their communities, how they
settlers in indigenous communities often chose to remain among the
indigenous communities. I don't wish to romanticize the very real
struggles yembra I have with their economic marginalization and lack
of access to basic services compared to other Panamanians. But
(15:33):
I just want to reflect on the fact that there
was something really special about the little river community, where
dogs and chickens and ducks woke me up in the morning,
little children welcomed me back every evening. They told me
what they did at school, or tossed a little ball
back and forth, and seemed entirely comfortable chatting to an
adult From across the world. The people about Jiguito have
shown that same hospitality to migrants and indeed to me.
(15:55):
And so I wanted to ask the village leader how
migration had changed her community. Some one else I spoke to.
She insisted that they had held on to important parts
of their culture, which he illustrated by giving me a
history lesson.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The town of Bajo Chiquito was founded in nineteen sixty five.
At first there were three families, the Vaparizo, the Risales,
the Chagos. They came here for education reasons. Before everyone
lived on their own. The education came, and that is
why we grew this town.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It was the education, she said, that had changed town,
not the migrants. They have night school now for adults
and a school for all the children with seven teachers.
The children speak Embaba and Spanish and have a chance
to get more education in Metaiti or even in Panama City.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
See.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yes, it's due to education, not because the migrants travel
through here. Let this be clear. That is not because
the migrants came here.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Cly though the perception of changing their community is a
concern me. They're a local woman marriages, which he called
a Latino man. They can't live together in the village,
and she wanted to make sure, I knew that the
children learning Emberra as well as Spanish, they also still
knew dances and ceremonies, Bono told me. But some of
the changes, she said were positive, including one in gender relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
That's an ongoing struggle. I'll say that to show that
we women have the same capacity for thought and creativity
as men. We are fighting every day, and as you
will see, it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
One thing that surprised me was that the Emberra would
always remind me that they themselves had been migrants. They
migrated to Panama City sometimes, they said, and they have
a little choice if they want post secondary education or
higher level medical attention. Some of their kids even make
the journey to the USA to study. What kind of
hypocrites would they be, they said, if they look down
on people making the same journey.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm going to tell you that before the immigrants arrived here,
within this community, we lived in the same way. I mean,
we came from the countryside, We worked in agriculture, and
we still continue working in the agriculture stuff, fishing, hunting,
and so on. We liked it a lot. Now after
the immigrants started to come, we are still the same
(18:15):
and it doesn't affect us having them within our community
because they are their people, They're humans. The journey that
the immigrants make is out of need. It is in need,
so really we too, for example, if we were to
deal with problems like them, since we are just like them,
(18:37):
we also have the right to emigrate as well.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
This is not the first influx of migration into Embra
Guna land. In fifteen oh one, a wave of undocumented
immigration from Spain in the form of settler colonias like
Francisco Balboa arrived in the Guna and Embera territories. Ever
since his Europeans first saw for themselves what the ember
already knew that this area was part of narrow strip
of land between two great oceans. People from around the
(19:03):
world have been coming to what is now Panama as
part of their journeys from north to south or east
to west. The thin strip of land that joins the
two American continents has been at the crossroads of the
world for half a millennium. Archaeological digs in a region
show that there were once roads and that gold and
jade came here from Afar. This ritinalization is one that
Vasco Nunes de Balboa first encountered, and it was they
(19:26):
who first told him that their land lay between two oceans.
It was somewhere just to the south of where I
was staying. That exactly five hundred eleven years ago to
the day, Barboa became the first European to set eyes
upon the Pacific. Since Barbara, many other colonizers have come
to Dabien to pit their notions of superiority against the
might of the rainforest. The Kingdom of Scotland sent a
(19:49):
group of settlers here in a seventeenth century mounted the side.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
This isn't a.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Place with any similarity to Scotland, and it's easy enough
to see why the plan failed, killed three out of
four colonists and essentially bankrupted an entire nation in two years,
forcing it into a colonial relationship with its own with
its neighbor to the south. After the Scot's left, having
failed to create what they'd hoped would be a quote
Scottish Amsterdam of the Indies, and a Spanish found a
(20:14):
flatter and easier connection between the Pacific and Caribbean. The
Dadian region returned to its indigenous people, whose hem it remains,
but over the course of several hundred years, many empires
have come to the Daddi End to die. The French
tried to build a sea level collout not so far
from here, the canal without locks, but they ultimately failed.
The US tried in the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventies
(20:36):
to forge a route to build a canal to get
east coast banks access to West coast gold, before eventually
finding an easier route further north. A century later, the
US and Panama openly discussed dropping nuclear bombs on the
jungle to make it passable and to allow the construction
of a road. The US offered to shoulder two thirds
of the cost of building such a road and hope
to have the Pan American Highway completed in time for
(20:57):
its nineteen seventy six by centennial. The GAP's hostility in
the growing environmental movement, as well as a desire to
protect US livestock from the foot of mouth disease. It's
ademic in South America one the day the gap remained
a gap latly without the influence of the state. In
the nineteen seventies, a British Army expedition traversed to Daddi
En in two range rivers. Assisted by horses, parachute drop
(21:19):
resupplies and a team of engineers, they crossed the jungle
in ninety six days. They had to make their own
bugnets for their horses out of the parachute, so we
used to drop corn cobs to the animals and rice
for the humans. Expedition leader and seasoned explorer, as well
as possibly the most British Man in history, Lieutenant Colonel
John Blashford Snell wrote, without doubt it was the hardest
(21:39):
thing I've ever done in my life. Calling the daddy
Enne a god forsaken place, but dadi Enne is one
of the wettest places on the planet, a particularly cruel
twist that it would be colonizers from Scotland. In the months
before I came here, I spent hours trying to work
out how to water prove my podcast equipment, and most
of what you're hearing is recorded on a voice recorder
that I sealed up with gasket maker, shoved inside a condom,
(22:01):
inside a dry bag, inside a pelican case. This rain
causes flash flooding, the kind which sweeps whole villages away.
The rivers in the gap On Bridge largely because they
simply wash away bridges after a storm. On our journey
to Barjigito, I saw the remains of bridges that had
dared to try. That's why my hosts built their houses
on stilts, and it's on those stilts that I slung
(22:22):
my hammock in Maraganti. Ever since the failed dalli En schime,
the Gap has been constructed in the Western imagination as
the deepest and darkest jungle. The Gap today is home
to every type of malaria and numerous others diseases. There
are deadly vipers, deadly spiders, big cats, and as if
the natural threats were not enough, the US dropped bombs
here in the Cold War to test its destructive might
(22:43):
against one of the few areas of the planet that
hadn't been made amenable to capitalism. Many of them remain
unexploded in the mountains. Certainly, the physical geography of the
dalli impost is a challenge, but I would argue that
the imaginative geography of the Gap which is a greater
impediment to travelers. In Spanish they call it the up
on the Stopper. Local legend has it that the Spanish conquistador,
(23:04):
one of the first to take his last breaths in
the waters of dalli Enn's rivers carved the phrase into
the rock, which is endured long after he expired. When
you go to the daddi Ennes and trust yourself to Mary,
for in her hands of the entrance and in God
see exit, it doesn't sound that different to the things
I heard from migrants and in the modern day, they'll
tell you about the horrific tiktoks they saw before they
(23:24):
entered the Gap and the decaying remains fellow travelers they
saw us they passed through. Media reports in the Gap
consistently referred to it as a nomad's land, but of
course it's very much someone's land, the land of the
indigenous people who have been here long before countries, borders
or reporters. While it may have remained hostiles to capitalism
and the state, and it can be deadly for unexperienced travelers,
(23:45):
it's supported life for thousands of years. And I wait
about how Jigito. I was reminded of just how comfortable
my hosts were in a place where I felt so
out of place.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
So as we were coming, we are calling a huge
range storm just absolutely bucketing it down suddenly and pulled
in to a little sort of just a flat area
of mighterily. I helped out TI out the boat, and
next thing I know, our boat guys ran into jungle,
chopped some huge palm leaves down and brought them back
to me to cover me in my bag.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, the umberd might have preserved their comfort and culture.
It's undeniable that migration should have made a huge economic impact.
Nine and fifty nine migrants left Bajo Jigito on one
of the days I was able to get numbers from Senafront.
Each of them paid twenty five dollars for piagua, about
ten bucks for food and lodging and maybe Wi Fi,
and pressed a few bucks more for clean clothes or
(24:54):
a pair of off Bran crocs to let their feet
heel from three days have been constantly wet and blistered,
and a concerned vestimate that's a little more than thirty
three thousand per day, raptly the GDP per capital of Panama.
That's a lot of money down here, especially for community
which has been alienated and exploited for solo. Using this money,
people have been closed the bottom floors of their homes
(25:15):
to provide more space to house migrants. All around the village.
They're building better homes. Some of them have satellite internet
now or Starlink or bigger and more reliable generators. This
money has been spread around the Mberaur communities in the area,
and every morning each of them send pedaguas to transport
the migrants. As almost sixty you needed every day. Rolling
out of Maragante at five in the morning, as almost
(25:36):
the entire adult male population of the village joined us
in a huge flatilla of two stroke smoke and dugout
canoes and the morning mists still sat in the river.
Was an incredible experience, and this is doubtless an industry
for the whole area.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
If Molino Majorcas ever successfully stops migration here, it will
be a massive economic detriment to the people, already marginalized
for centuries. But despite the economic benefits, the people of
Madragante doesn't seem to want to become like Baha Juquito.
On our last day there, as we set off back
towards the dirt roads the borders here, we saw that
they were building little cabins outside of town. These they
(26:11):
said were for the migrants. They wanted the migrants to
be safe and their community to stay the same. They
might not be able to sell meals to the migrants
this way, or charge them for Wi Fi or phone charging,
but they will be able to live a little more peacefully.
M But I have gone out of their way to
ensure migrant safety. They're the ones who mandate life jackets
and the ones who build a house for doctors. They're
(26:32):
the ones who send free boats for women and children.
Of course they have an economic incentive to do this,
but in nearly a week living with them, I didn't
hear them bad mouth for migrants, and nor did I
hear the migrants complain about the way they were treated
in the village of Bajo Jiquito. But before they get
to the village of Bahjuquito, migrants aren't safe, and if
you ask them, they'll tell you it's indigenous people who
are rubbing and threatening them. Deeper into the jungle, undoubtedly, robbery,
(26:55):
sexual assault and murderer not uncommon in the Daddy and Gap.
You can hear anecdotes of these on daily basis in Baujiquito,
and some of the stories I heard and things I
saw are among the most horrific experiences I've had in years.
Of reporting on pretty terrible things. I haven't included a
great many of them here because I think it's hard
for people to meaningfully consent in those kinds of circumstances.
But yesterday you heard about the human remains that almost
(27:17):
everyone featured in this series had to walk past. This
is a problem that's getting worse, not better. In just
one week in February, med santen Fontierre, the NGO that
Americans called Doctors Without Borders, treated one hundred and thirteen people,
including nine children, after they were sexually assaulted by criminal
groups in the Darienne. This number is close to one
hundred and twenty people treated during the whole of January.
(27:40):
These figures are double the monthly average treated in twenty
twenty three, when six hundred and seventy six people were
treated for the whole year. As you heard before, this
is the problem that people in the community sometimes acknowledge,
and as a village leader mentioned, it's one that could
be solved as the state would live up to its
obligation to protect migrants within its borders. The leader also
shares me that the community has its own punishment mechanisms.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
The place of punishment is the stocks three days ago,
someone behaved very badly and we had to put them
in the stocks. The man who mistreats women we also
put in the stocks. The woman who gossips, we also
put her in the stocks.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
What she's talking about here is stocks in the old
fashioned sense, not in the watery bed sense. We actually
saw someone chatting them one day with their ankles locked
in place. We didn't ask what they did to how
long they were there, as it seems difficult again to
consent to an interview when you're literally pinned in place.
But this kind of punishment comes from the community, not
the state. Aside from these punishments, the community hasn't done
(28:39):
much to stop the things happening in the jungle, and
I'm not sure if it's really able to. They're Panamanian,
they say in the state's responsible for the safety of
migrants women's borders, and while it does send center Front
patrols into jungle, the state doesn't appear to be doing
much protect migrants of sexual assault, robbery, or murder. Early
this year, the state did take decisive action to reject
Medisan sans Fontierre to not reviewing their permission to work
(29:01):
in the dari Enne. This is quite a challenging commission
to obtain, even as a solo journalist. It took months
for me to get mine, forcing me to rebook my
flight several times. I had various explanations for why MSF
were not allowed to keep working. I couldn't get an
official response, but it's probably worth noting that they published
a report headlined lack of action she's sharp rise in
sexual violence on people transiting the dari En Gap on
(29:23):
the twenty ninth of February, and they refused permission to
remain in the region in the first week of March.
MSF was allowed to return in October of this year
and wouldn't comment further than the following statement, which they
e bailed me in mid October. In October of twenty
twenty four, MSF resumed medical and humanitarian activities at Lahas
Blanca's Migration Reception Center, located at the edge of the
dai In jungle, after Panamanian authorities approved a three month
(29:46):
medical intervention. MSF welcomes its decision and advocates to collaborate
closely with Panama's Ministry of Health to provide comprehensive medical
care to migrants crossing this route, as well as to
the local population of the area. Right now now, UNICEF,
med Saint Dumont, Corpora and Espanola and the Red Cross
are helping migrants in babu Jiquito. UNICEF and salt showers
(30:07):
and toilets. Global Brigades in UNICEF provided tapped with clean
drinking water, and the medical endeos provide healthcare which is viting,
saving lives and providing survivors of sexual assault with medical
care in a seventy two hour window where it can
be most beneficial. It's worth noting that most migrants who
are sexually assaulted won't stay depressed charges. I know of
one case of sexual assault of a child while I
(30:28):
was there, but the family wanted to continue their journey
and so the charges won't be pressed. This makes it
very hard to ascertain how many cases sexual assault there
are in a daily and every year, aside from through
medical reports from NGOs, and those only include the people
who make it to bah Jiquito a Lajas Blancas. The
numbers are clearly high, and it's a fear that many
migrants are articulated to me in the jungle, they're at
(30:50):
their most vulnerable, they said. Most people robbed, they tell me,
are help by armed attackers carrying guns and machetes. But
once a migrants set foot Bario, they're momentarily safe from
rory and assault. For the first time in days. They
can sleep without worry being attacked or washed away. And
the rest of their journeys north they'll face set threat again,
(31:10):
but that's not what's on their mind. When they enter town.
All they want is a cold drink and a warm
meal and a chance to rest their aching feet. It's
a chance that they have thanks to the Ambra people
who receive them there. And I want to end with
and his reflection on the suffering people endure on their
way to eat rice and plantain in his little front
room cafe. Truly, the migrants on this route are not
(31:37):
here because they want to be. They're here because the
economy and their countries is terrible or something. Everything is
going badly on their countries. How can we mistreat them
knowing that we won't not us never. This is a
belief that we have. We are all children of God.
(32:00):
God made the world and humanity, and we are not
that different. We are all brothers.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for
it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks
for listening.
Cozon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everyone, it's me James, and before we listen to
this episode today, I just did want to make you
aware 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. Every
(00:25):
day for the past two years, the population of Bajo
Chiquito has more than tripled. At six in the morning,
piraguas come from other Emberra villages along the river, dozens
of them, all filled with orange life jackets. Migrants form
a line so long that it stretches from the beach
north of town all the way through the village and
at the other side, and in groups of fifteen, they
(00:48):
hand over their twenty five dollars each and get onto
the piraguas. Each one puts on their bright orange life jacket,
sits with their legs around the person in front, and
they take off for the first official migrant recept center
in last blankets. As the last boat leaves, those who
can't afford the trip begin a walk, which could take
eight hours. I couldn't walk with them, but I handed
(01:10):
the group my water filter in one of those overbright
energy bars that are basically trail mix in a rectangular format,
and wish them the best of luck as they force
their tired legs and sore feet to walk again. The
population of Barjuqito dropped back to five hundred or so
indigenous people who live here, and the usual background noise
of chattering dozens of languages gave way to crowing chickens
(01:30):
and barking dogs. By the next morning, as migrants came
walking in from the south, it would grow again to
fifteen hundred. For the last ten years or so, fewer
than two thousand people crossed in a year, but numbers
have been steadily increasing, and now the residents of Bajo
Juquito see the numbers that they saw in a year.
In a single weekend. While you listen to this series,
(01:52):
thousands of people will take their lives into their hands
as they leap into mudcolored rivers, ascend towering mountains in
the pouring rain, and desperately fight the urge to drink
from a river polluted with human waste, decaying corpses. All
of those who survive will walk out of that jungle
up the river bank along a muddy path and into
Bajo Juquito. Well, they'll buy themselves a cold drink and
(02:15):
enjoy the hospitality of the locals for a night before
leaving to head north. At first, the locals told me
didn't charge people at all. They were shocked to see
the migrants and wanted to help them, But as numbers grew,
they had to start asking for money, as they couldn't
afford to feed and house all the migrants arriving. Over time,
they said, the costs rose, and now a bed costs
(02:35):
about five dollars for a night, and a meal's about
the same. As they pointed out, that's less than half
what I paid in Metaitee, the nearest town. A metaite
doesn't have to haul its supplies up the river in
a canoe using seven dollars per gallon fuel. In Baja Juguito,
I sat down with an order man whose front room
I just had luncheon. I wanted to get a scent
to the change he'd seen over his lifetime in his
(02:56):
community and how he felt about it.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
When we saw how they arrived injured, sick with vomiting diarrhea.
Then there was no healthcare here what did we do.
We had to speak for the government. It wasn't easy.
It was not easy. We told them that we needed
a doctor. And finally, now, thank god, we have doctors here.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The community, which has long been socially and economically marginalized
and acutely underprovided with government services, had built a house
themselves for the doctors and another house for migration officials.
It was the only way to help migrants access services,
which in turn allowed them to move on with their
journeys quicker, he said. However, like almost every other person
(03:48):
I spoke with, he felt that the government should be
doing more here. Even after all these years serving as
the first Panamanian village, many thousands of people enter every year.
They still don't have electric or a road that's successible
year round, both of which would make their lives and
the transit of the migrants much safer. But that doesn't
mean the state's totally absent here. It used to be
(04:10):
possible for migrants to take a paragua from come Galina
a little further south up river and avoid some of
the most dangerous river crossings. Bonio told me that authorities
in the comarca, which is like a state in the
USA have prohibited this. I wanted to see more of
what was going on further south and what made it
so dangerous, but I wasn't permitted to join a Center
Front patrol going out that way despite my request. I
(04:32):
asked Bonnio what made things more dangerous in that part
of the river. First, he explained that the wide and
low lying beaches often seen make good points for migrants
to sleep, but that any rain in the mountains above
would result in the rapid increase of the water level,
turning those beaches into rapids in minutes, he told me,
looking down at the table. Then, not so long ago,
a storm had washed away sleeping migrants, drowning them in
(04:54):
their sleep and washing their remains towards his village. But
terrible as it is, isn't the only risk.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
What they said, you know very well that there's not
a single country that does not have criminals. In every country,
there are criminals. Yeah, So what happens at that point
in the river, as I was saying, at that point,
and clearly it is not everyone, but there are some
certain young men who engage in robbery and even rape.
(05:24):
So that's why in this community, in this village, in
coordination with the community and the leaders, we well. The
leader spoke to the national government to ask for a
chance to transport people from call Gaina so that nothing
would happen to them. The government talked and talked, and
for a while it was possible, and it was safe,
(05:45):
and nobody died and nobody robbed. It was all going well.
But what happened. We have a leader at Caske. I
don't know if you've heard about it, but the regional
leader he put a barrier, he stopped it. Look to
(06:06):
be honest, these people with their degrees, this class of person,
they're not humanitarians.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Despite the struggles and the relative absence of the government overall,
he felt that the migration had been a positive for
his community. He'd learned a lot from the migrants, he said,
and enjoyed learning about their cuisines in particular. There's a
common narrative in media that mentions Barji Guito that this
village has been somehow stripped of its culture or ruined
by migration, but the locals don't seem to agree with this.
(06:41):
I also spoke to the vilities leader. She's the first
woman in the whole commarker to hold such a position, you're.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm chief of the community police and leader of the community.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
She explained to me that Barju Guito was just one
of several communities along the river, each with its own leader.
Those leaders meet in the council an answer to a
casike of the.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Mara Ganti di Yatala Inovilla.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
She also explained that as the first woman in the position,
she'd made sure to advance the cause of women in
her community.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Since they've had my administration, which has been seven months
as noca or leader, I have put some women to work.
They are waiting for the migrants.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
There After that, I asked her to explain to listeners
what exactly a migrant encounters when they first set foot
in their village and the various steps that they might
go through before leaving the next morning.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Is very.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
There is a check in at first, verification of whether
they have a crime in their country. From there they
got immigration. The documents are checked and then they are
free to choose where they're going to wait and rest
for the next part of their journey. On behalf of UNICEF,
we have free toilets from the community. We also have
a free place where they can camp or rest. That's
(08:00):
theirs now. If they want better things, better rest, they
can find accommodation available in almost every house here. The
next day we prepare everything at together with the center
front security. We go to the beach there and at
the beach we also coordinate with a coordinator from each village.
(08:20):
I also want to make it clear as well that
the boat driver must have their idea and be of
legal age.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
From there, the migrants pay twenty five dollars ahead and
take the five hour boat trip north to Lahas Blancas,
which is the UN and government run camp and the
first official migrant welcome center outside the DADDI enn Having
boat drivers who are of age is important. Migrants who
can't swim trust their lives to these boat drivers in
high water. Once they're at Last Blankers, they're close to
(08:47):
the Pan American Highway and the beginning of the rest
of their journey north. They don't have to walk any
further unless they run out of money for buses. I
asked what happened when someone couldn't afford the ride to
Last blancers Y.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What does the community do? The community takes responsibility presending them,
not the state. The state migration Cenafron. They don't pay
for the fuel or the transport of these people.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Specifically, she told me the community sends three free boats today.
Most of these are filled of women and children, and
in my time there and seeing that these people paid
whatever they could those leftover, usually men would have to
make the walk on their blistered feet and tired legs
and risk further sickness, robbery, and heat exhaustion. I also
wanted to ask a leader about the problems with theft
(09:37):
and sexual assault that the migrants encountered on their walk
into Bajo Jiguito, and she was pretty forthright this was
an issue for the state, not for her community to fix.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
But then where is Senafron. Aren't Sanafrat supposed to be
on all the banks of the river, Yes, so where
are those thefts?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Despite being able to prevent the Empire from using their
boats on their river to transport migrants them at any
level above the village isn't really present In Baigo Center
Front Panamas, combined border patrol and military received migrants and
register them there, but all the services provided to the
migrants come either from the Emberrad or from non governmental organizations.
(10:16):
This pattern of the state failing to provide basic services.
When Neil told me is one that goes back a
long time before the migrants began arriving here, or.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
So now, before the migrants began arriving here, we had
a town, a town that the government is supposed to
give what it has to give us as Panamanians, but
it doesn't. It was a town without anything. All we
did was sell our products and sell stuff here for us.
We grow rice, corn plantains, everything. Well, it was a lot,
(10:52):
but products that we grow are not enough to get by.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Even today in late twenty twenty four. The village doesn't
have mains electricity or does it have a connection to
telephone networks or a road that it can take year
round to connect it to the rest of the country.
And a few clean water taps in the town come
from UNICEF, not Panama City. Doctors here come from European NGOs,
and even the policing of the community is largely done
(11:16):
by the community, by a group called the Zara. And
never to better understand that, but our communities, both with
and without migrants. I wanted to visit another Embero village
and after the break we'll hear about that.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
All right, So I'm just in my hammock now kind
of the end of the day. We we're staying in
another end our village today, just probably I mean a
better say kilometer or two kilometers away, you know, probably
decent walk, but it was pretty fast in the Perragua.
(12:09):
Just it's a little more peaceful here. And a boat
driver passed us to stay at his house, so we
said we would. You can probably hear like, I don't
know how much of this is getting picked up. It's
(12:31):
a nice little village, you know, the fucking way till
the dogs have stopped. I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
When I wasn't in Bajo, I took a boat every
evening to Maraganti. Maraganti is only a couple of kilometers
away on a different branch of the river, but the
walk might dig hours through the thick jungle. Perraguero had
invited us to stay with his family and to see
another bar our village. I'm always down to sleep outside,
so I gladly accepted his invitation and slung my hammock
(13:01):
across his front porch. After a long discussion on whether
the dynamic cordage I was using would actually hold my
weight and on my part, I probably ill advised free
solo onto the roof of his house to find a
good anchor point for my hammock. My time in Maragante,
I found myself growing fonder and fond of his little community.
Everyone's doors were open, and the village children enjoyed unsupervised
(13:22):
playtime everywhere. There was never not a pickup game going
on at the concrete football and basketball court. And despite
the fact that they were on average several feet short
than me and playing on concrete without shoes, local kids
humiliated me at a wide variety of sports with no
electricity of them generators, one Wi Fi connection in the
whole village as far as I can tell, and a
(13:42):
few hours to myself. In the evening, I happily settled
into a routine of watching in a river along with
everyone else in the hour before sunset, walking around town,
chatting with the inhabitants, who seemed surprised but happy to
see a gangly British man nambling around the neighborhood and
petting their dogs. Once it got dark, I'd spend my
evening sitting in my hammer. The grandchildren of our host
asked me how to say various things in English. I
(14:03):
played with the little toys I always bring along in
case I run into children on my work trips. Being
in Marragantine made me think a lot about my own
life and the US in general. I certainly have a
lot more possessions here, but my neighbors don't let their
kids run around in the streets, and cars would hit
them if they did. People in my community the next
door app is anything to go by, spendcing mely countless
(14:23):
hours bitching about the unhoused and other people's children. But
here everyone had a roof over their heads, and other
people's children ran in and out my host's kitchen without
anyone batting an eyelid. Aside from laughing at my paleness
when I was washing in the river, nobody here seemed
that concerned that I was different. They let me hold
their babies while they cooked. They didn't overcharge me for
the bottles of water of snacks that I bought from
their front room convenience stores, or seemed that bothered about
(14:46):
sharing their meals and their homes with me. At night,
we sat on tiny plastic chairs and talked about our
shared interest in woodwork and what they wanted for their children.
We talked about their boats and the river, and about
how terrible things must be for the migrants to risk
their lives making the journey across these mountains that the
Emberra and their Guna neighbors call home. Ever since I
left their village, I've been thinking a lot about the
(15:09):
part of The Dawn of Everything in which Grab and
Wengrove detail how many indigenous people were adopted into colonial
society but chose to return to their communities, how they
settlers in indigenous communities often chose to remain among the
indigenous communities. I don't wish to romanticize the very real
struggles yembra I have with their economic marginalization and lack
of access to basic services compared to other Panamanians. But
(15:33):
I just want to reflect on the fact that there
was something really special about the little river community, where
dogs and chickens and ducks woke me up in the morning,
little children welcomed me back every evening. They told me
what they did at school, or tossed a little ball
back and forth, and seemed entirely comfortable chatting to an
adult From across the world. The people about Jiguito have
shown that same hospitality to migrants and indeed to me.
(15:55):
And so I wanted to ask the village leader how
migration had changed her community. Some one else I spoke to.
She insisted that they had held on to important parts
of their culture, which he illustrated by giving me a
history lesson.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The town of Bajo Chiquito was founded in nineteen sixty five.
At first there were three families, the Vaparizo, the Risales,
the Chagos. They came here for education reasons. Before everyone
lived on their own. The education came, and that is
why we grew this town.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It was the education, she said, that had changed town,
not the migrants. They have night school now for adults
and a school for all the children with seven teachers.
The children speak Embaba and Spanish and have a chance
to get more education in Metaiti or even in Panama City.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
See.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yes, it's due to education, not because the migrants travel
through here. Let this be clear. That is not because
the migrants came here.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Cly though the perception of changing their community is a
concern me. They're a local woman marriages, which he called
a Latino man. They can't live together in the village,
and she wanted to make sure, I knew that the
children learning Emberra as well as Spanish, they also still
knew dances and ceremonies, Bono told me. But some of
the changes, she said were positive, including one in gender relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
That's an ongoing struggle. I'll say that to show that
we women have the same capacity for thought and creativity
as men. We are fighting every day, and as you
will see, it's not easy.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
One thing that surprised me was that the Emberra would
always remind me that they themselves had been migrants. They
migrated to Panama City sometimes, they said, and they have
a little choice if they want post secondary education or
higher level medical attention. Some of their kids even make
the journey to the USA to study. What kind of
hypocrites would they be, they said, if they look down
on people making the same journey.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm going to tell you that before the immigrants arrived here,
within this community, we lived in the same way. I mean,
we came from the countryside, We worked in agriculture, and
we still continue working in the agriculture stuff, fishing, hunting,
and so on. We liked it a lot. Now after
the immigrants started to come, we are still the same
(18:15):
and it doesn't affect us having them within our community
because they are their people, They're humans. The journey that
the immigrants make is out of need. It is in need,
so really we too, for example, if we were to
deal with problems like them, since we are just like them,
(18:37):
we also have the right to emigrate as well.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
This is not the first influx of migration into Embra
Guna land. In fifteen oh one, a wave of undocumented
immigration from Spain in the form of settler colonias like
Francisco Balboa arrived in the Guna and Embera territories. Ever
since his Europeans first saw for themselves what the ember
already knew that this area was part of narrow strip
of land between two great oceans. People from around the
(19:03):
world have been coming to what is now Panama as
part of their journeys from north to south or east
to west. The thin strip of land that joins the
two American continents has been at the crossroads of the
world for half a millennium. Archaeological digs in a region
show that there were once roads and that gold and
jade came here from Afar. This ritinalization is one that
Vasco Nunes de Balboa first encountered, and it was they
(19:26):
who first told him that their land lay between two oceans.
It was somewhere just to the south of where I
was staying. That exactly five hundred eleven years ago to
the day, Barboa became the first European to set eyes
upon the Pacific. Since Barbara, many other colonizers have come
to Dabien to pit their notions of superiority against the
might of the rainforest. The Kingdom of Scotland sent a
(19:49):
group of settlers here in a seventeenth century mounted the side.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
This isn't a.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Place with any similarity to Scotland, and it's easy enough
to see why the plan failed, killed three out of
four colonists and essentially bankrupted an entire nation in two years,
forcing it into a colonial relationship with its own with
its neighbor to the south. After the Scot's left, having
failed to create what they'd hoped would be a quote
Scottish Amsterdam of the Indies, and a Spanish found a
(20:14):
flatter and easier connection between the Pacific and Caribbean. The
Dadian region returned to its indigenous people, whose hem it remains,
but over the course of several hundred years, many empires
have come to the Daddi End to die. The French
tried to build a sea level collout not so far
from here, the canal without locks, but they ultimately failed.
The US tried in the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventies
(20:36):
to forge a route to build a canal to get
east coast banks access to West coast gold, before eventually
finding an easier route further north. A century later, the
US and Panama openly discussed dropping nuclear bombs on the
jungle to make it passable and to allow the construction
of a road. The US offered to shoulder two thirds
of the cost of building such a road and hope
to have the Pan American Highway completed in time for
(20:57):
its nineteen seventy six by centennial. The GAP's hostility in
the growing environmental movement, as well as a desire to
protect US livestock from the foot of mouth disease. It's
ademic in South America one the day the gap remained
a gap latly without the influence of the state. In
the nineteen seventies, a British Army expedition traversed to Daddi
En in two range rivers. Assisted by horses, parachute drop
(21:19):
resupplies and a team of engineers, they crossed the jungle
in ninety six days. They had to make their own
bugnets for their horses out of the parachute, so we
used to drop corn cobs to the animals and rice
for the humans. Expedition leader and seasoned explorer, as well
as possibly the most British Man in history, Lieutenant Colonel
John Blashford Snell wrote, without doubt it was the hardest
(21:39):
thing I've ever done in my life. Calling the daddy
Enne a god forsaken place, but dadi Enne is one
of the wettest places on the planet, a particularly cruel
twist that it would be colonizers from Scotland. In the months
before I came here, I spent hours trying to work
out how to water prove my podcast equipment, and most
of what you're hearing is recorded on a voice recorder
that I sealed up with gasket maker, shoved inside a condom,
(22:01):
inside a dry bag, inside a pelican case. This rain
causes flash flooding, the kind which sweeps whole villages away.
The rivers in the gap On Bridge largely because they
simply wash away bridges after a storm. On our journey
to Barjigito, I saw the remains of bridges that had
dared to try. That's why my hosts built their houses
on stilts, and it's on those stilts that I slung
(22:22):
my hammock in Maraganti. Ever since the failed dalli En schime,
the Gap has been constructed in the Western imagination as
the deepest and darkest jungle. The Gap today is home
to every type of malaria and numerous others diseases. There
are deadly vipers, deadly spiders, big cats, and as if
the natural threats were not enough, the US dropped bombs
here in the Cold War to test its destructive might
(22:43):
against one of the few areas of the planet that
hadn't been made amenable to capitalism. Many of them remain
unexploded in the mountains. Certainly, the physical geography of the
dalli impost is a challenge, but I would argue that
the imaginative geography of the Gap which is a greater
impediment to travelers. In Spanish they call it the up
on the Stopper. Local legend has it that the Spanish conquistador,
(23:04):
one of the first to take his last breaths in
the waters of dalli Enn's rivers carved the phrase into
the rock, which is endured long after he expired. When
you go to the daddi Ennes and trust yourself to Mary,
for in her hands of the entrance and in God
see exit, it doesn't sound that different to the things
I heard from migrants and in the modern day, they'll
tell you about the horrific tiktoks they saw before they
(23:24):
entered the Gap and the decaying remains fellow travelers they
saw us they passed through. Media reports in the Gap
consistently referred to it as a nomad's land, but of
course it's very much someone's land, the land of the
indigenous people who have been here long before countries, borders
or reporters. While it may have remained hostiles to capitalism
and the state, and it can be deadly for unexperienced travelers,
(23:45):
it's supported life for thousands of years. And I wait
about how Jigito. I was reminded of just how comfortable
my hosts were in a place where I felt so
out of place.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
So as we were coming, we are calling a huge
range storm just absolutely bucketing it down suddenly and pulled
in to a little sort of just a flat area
of mighterily. I helped out TI out the boat, and
next thing I know, our boat guys ran into jungle,
chopped some huge palm leaves down and brought them back
to me to cover me in my bag.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, the umberd might have preserved their comfort and culture.
It's undeniable that migration should have made a huge economic impact.
Nine and fifty nine migrants left Bajo Jigito on one
of the days I was able to get numbers from Senafront.
Each of them paid twenty five dollars for piagua, about
ten bucks for food and lodging and maybe Wi Fi,
and pressed a few bucks more for clean clothes or
(24:54):
a pair of off Bran crocs to let their feet
heel from three days have been constantly wet and blistered,
and a concerned vestimate that's a little more than thirty
three thousand per day, raptly the GDP per capital of Panama.
That's a lot of money down here, especially for community
which has been alienated and exploited for solo. Using this money,
people have been closed the bottom floors of their homes
(25:15):
to provide more space to house migrants. All around the village.
They're building better homes. Some of them have satellite internet
now or Starlink or bigger and more reliable generators. This
money has been spread around the Mberaur communities in the area,
and every morning each of them send pedaguas to transport
the migrants. As almost sixty you needed every day. Rolling
out of Maragante at five in the morning, as almost
(25:36):
the entire adult male population of the village joined us
in a huge flatilla of two stroke smoke and dugout
canoes and the morning mists still sat in the river.
Was an incredible experience, and this is doubtless an industry
for the whole area.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
If Molino Majorcas ever successfully stops migration here, it will
be a massive economic detriment to the people, already marginalized
for centuries. But despite the economic benefits, the people of
Madragante doesn't seem to want to become like Baha Juquito.
On our last day there, as we set off back
towards the dirt roads the borders here, we saw that
they were building little cabins outside of town. These they
(26:11):
said were for the migrants. They wanted the migrants to
be safe and their community to stay the same. They
might not be able to sell meals to the migrants
this way, or charge them for Wi Fi or phone charging,
but they will be able to live a little more peacefully.
M But I have gone out of their way to
ensure migrant safety. They're the ones who mandate life jackets
and the ones who build a house for doctors. They're
(26:32):
the ones who send free boats for women and children.
Of course they have an economic incentive to do this,
but in nearly a week living with them, I didn't
hear them bad mouth for migrants, and nor did I
hear the migrants complain about the way they were treated
in the village of Bajo Jiquito. But before they get
to the village of Bahjuquito, migrants aren't safe, and if
you ask them, they'll tell you it's indigenous people who
are rubbing and threatening them. Deeper into the jungle, undoubtedly, robbery,
(26:55):
sexual assault and murderer not uncommon in the Daddy and Gap.
You can hear anecdotes of these on daily basis in Baujiquito,
and some of the stories I heard and things I
saw are among the most horrific experiences I've had in years.
Of reporting on pretty terrible things. I haven't included a
great many of them here because I think it's hard
for people to meaningfully consent in those kinds of circumstances.
But yesterday you heard about the human remains that almost
(27:17):
everyone featured in this series had to walk past. This
is a problem that's getting worse, not better. In just
one week in February, med santen Fontierre, the NGO that
Americans called Doctors Without Borders, treated one hundred and thirteen people,
including nine children, after they were sexually assaulted by criminal
groups in the Darienne. This number is close to one
hundred and twenty people treated during the whole of January.
(27:40):
These figures are double the monthly average treated in twenty
twenty three, when six hundred and seventy six people were
treated for the whole year. As you heard before, this
is the problem that people in the community sometimes acknowledge,
and as a village leader mentioned, it's one that could
be solved as the state would live up to its
obligation to protect migrants within its borders. The leader also
shares me that the community has its own punishment mechanisms.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
The place of punishment is the stocks three days ago,
someone behaved very badly and we had to put them
in the stocks. The man who mistreats women we also
put in the stocks. The woman who gossips, we also
put her in the stocks.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
What she's talking about here is stocks in the old
fashioned sense, not in the watery bed sense. We actually
saw someone chatting them one day with their ankles locked
in place. We didn't ask what they did to how
long they were there, as it seems difficult again to
consent to an interview when you're literally pinned in place.
But this kind of punishment comes from the community, not
the state. Aside from these punishments, the community hasn't done
(28:39):
much to stop the things happening in the jungle, and
I'm not sure if it's really able to. They're Panamanian,
they say in the state's responsible for the safety of
migrants women's borders, and while it does send center Front
patrols into jungle, the state doesn't appear to be doing
much protect migrants of sexual assault, robbery, or murder. Early
this year, the state did take decisive action to reject
Medisan sans Fontierre to not reviewing their permission to work
(29:01):
in the dari Enne. This is quite a challenging commission
to obtain, even as a solo journalist. It took months
for me to get mine, forcing me to rebook my
flight several times. I had various explanations for why MSF
were not allowed to keep working. I couldn't get an
official response, but it's probably worth noting that they published
a report headlined lack of action she's sharp rise in
sexual violence on people transiting the dari En Gap on
(29:23):
the twenty ninth of February, and they refused permission to
remain in the region in the first week of March.
MSF was allowed to return in October of this year
and wouldn't comment further than the following statement, which they
e bailed me in mid October. In October of twenty
twenty four, MSF resumed medical and humanitarian activities at Lahas
Blanca's Migration Reception Center, located at the edge of the
dai In jungle, after Panamanian authorities approved a three month
(29:46):
medical intervention. MSF welcomes its decision and advocates to collaborate
closely with Panama's Ministry of Health to provide comprehensive medical
care to migrants crossing this route, as well as to
the local population of the area. Right now now, UNICEF,
med Saint Dumont, Corpora and Espanola and the Red Cross
are helping migrants in babu Jiquito. UNICEF and salt showers
(30:07):
and toilets. Global Brigades in UNICEF provided tapped with clean
drinking water, and the medical endeos provide healthcare which is viting,
saving lives and providing survivors of sexual assault with medical
care in a seventy two hour window where it can
be most beneficial. It's worth noting that most migrants who
are sexually assaulted won't stay depressed charges. I know of
one case of sexual assault of a child while I
(30:28):
was there, but the family wanted to continue their journey
and so the charges won't be pressed. This makes it
very hard to ascertain how many cases sexual assault there
are in a daily and every year, aside from through
medical reports from NGOs, and those only include the people
who make it to bah Jiquito a Lajas Blancas. The
numbers are clearly high, and it's a fear that many
migrants are articulated to me in the jungle, they're at
(30:50):
their most vulnerable, they said. Most people robbed, they tell me,
are help by armed attackers carrying guns and machetes. But
once a migrants set foot Bario, they're momentarily safe from
rory and assault. For the first time in days. They
can sleep without worry being attacked or washed away. And
the rest of their journeys north they'll face set threat again,
(31:10):
but that's not what's on their mind. When they enter town.
All they want is a cold drink and a warm
meal and a chance to rest their aching feet. It's
a chance that they have thanks to the Ambra people
who receive them there. And I want to end with
and his reflection on the suffering people endure on their
way to eat rice and plantain in his little front
room cafe. Truly, the migrants on this route are not
(31:37):
here because they want to be. They're here because the
economy and their countries is terrible or something. Everything is
going badly on their countries. How can we mistreat them
knowing that we won't not us never. This is a
belief that we have. We are all children of God.
(32:00):
God made the world and humanity, and we are not
that different. We are all brothers.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
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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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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