January 8, 2025 • 45 mins
This week we are sharing a dope episode from James Stout over at It Could Happen Here, focusing on migrants trying to make their way to the US.
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In the first of 5 episodes, James describes his journey to the Darién Gap in Southern Panama, and the journeys that thousands of migrants take each week on one of the most dangerous land migration routes on earth.
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/
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Calls media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, so look, contractually I'm allowed one more rerun. So
the one I want to run though, is something from
the It Can Happen Here series of shows that my
man James did on the Darien Pass down at the
(00:31):
Mexico border outside of San Diego. I got to go
down there with him and meet up with some of
those folks out there doing mutual aid and meeting people
at the border, providing these vast buckets of like beans
and rice and like wasted charge their phones and warm clothes.
(00:53):
It's it's the realist. It's like simultaneously the most beautifl
full and tragic thing you'll see. I mean, every language
was spoken there.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
They're just.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
It ain't it's just a whole in defense and people
just walked in. There's no this no man's land of
asylum seeking and James, James lived down there, and James
pulls up on him people and is really about that life.
(01:31):
It was so inspiring to me. It reminded me of
this story. It's all just intro. When I was in Cameroon,
performed at this maximum security prison. Believe it or not,
but maximum security prison for you know, developing country Africa
(01:54):
means there is no security. It's just overwhelmed with the inmates.
I mean it's just people sitting in the office just
like on the floor and I'm like, yo, are these
people just sitting there or they're prisoners. There's just no
space for them. Some of them but ass naked, And
part of it was you'll learn why later. And then
(02:16):
the people that was escorting me and the homies to
the stage to perform, then no uniforms and nothing. It
was like it is volunteers. So we performed. It was great,
the most amazing experience. And then after it was over,
just like commotion started happening. And I mean, like, I
(02:42):
don't know if you ever how terrifying it is to
like have a crowd press on you. But that crowd
ain't even speaking your language. And our prisoners and how
the people were we had to get rushed out. How
the people were rushing us out. They just had like
tire shreds and coaxo cables and we're whipping dudes back
to like get get back for us to get out.
(03:06):
We won't even know why they doing this, right, So
the guy tells us why they're doing this. He was like, well, y'all,
didn't bring no like food or clothes. They was like,
we can't eat these songs. I was like, yo, we're
supposed to. You ain't tell us we were supposed to
(03:26):
bring food and why didn't we bring food and clothes?
I I don't understand why. They was like, so they
thought you just came to perform, but you didn't bring
no food. They was like, yeah, the the prison system
in Cameroon, they don't provide anything the families provided. They
don't provide clothes, they don't provide food, and don't provide
(03:48):
none of that. So if your family don't bring nothing,
you don't get nothing. So us as as a community,
you know, it was a church community, a hip hop community, whatever,
we're the ones that like bring the stuff. And I
was like, dang, man, that's crazy, as it's riot ever
happened before. He was like, yeah, man, it happened last week.
I was like, Waitchall was here last week. He was like,
(04:10):
we come every week. I thought we were special. I
thought coming in here and performing this thing was my duty.
That I could pat myself on the back for the
rest of my life and say that I did. They
come every week. They usually bring food and clothes, but
(04:31):
they come every week. So that moment down there where
I was really feeling myself about doing something great for
the border crisis was like, oh, we get up and
do this tomorrow. Here's episode one of that series.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
The most difficult part of the journey is when you
are taking and you'll meet dead bodies on the road.
It makes you weep, it makes you cry, but there's
only one focus in the forest ahead. You'll have to
(05:21):
keep going. You'll see mothers, children, They are crying just
to have a sip of water. It is not easy.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting beside the
Tuquesa River on a warm afternoon in late September, making
silly faces at the two minths old baby as we
both marveled at the cloud yellow butterflies. Anywhere else on earth,
it could be in a delict summer day, but in
these final steps of the journey across the da it's
hard to open up your mind to experience joy. I'd
(06:05):
only been in the tiny Emberra village of Bajo Jiquito
a couple of days, and I had already seen the
lifeless body of a little girl. And so the migrants
carried her into town. The river I was sleeping around
him with this group of migrants resting here in the
shade had swept sleeping children to their deaths earlier this year.
An up tostream of me, there were at least three
people's remains here. It was shin deep. The crossing up
(06:27):
stream where it's above head height and rages down out
of the mountains in steep ravines was the migrants I
walked back to town with told me the stuff of nightmares.
The voice you just heard was a migrant from Cameroon
who called himself James. That's not his real name, and
astute listeners would have noticed that it is my real name,
but for the protection of James and his family, it's
(06:48):
a name we'll be using. When I met James. We're
in a migrant reception center called Las Blancas, to the
north of.
Speaker 6 (06:55):
The Dayan Gap.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
To get there, one has to take a dugout canoe
called a pira were from Bajo Jiquito. The voyage takes
five hours, and for that five hours, migrants are packed
fifteen to a boat wearing bright orange life jackets. They
share the boat with Nembra Piraguero, who sits at the
back driving the boat with a tooth stroke motor, and
a guide who sits on the front, using a pole
(07:17):
when necessary to push the boat through shallow sections. The
Umbrada people are indigenous to the area that's commonly known
as a Dalian Gap, or at least to this part
of it, and a tiny Embrea village of Bajo Jiquito.
It's a first settlement migrants encounter is they emerge from
the perilous crossing of the jungle that divides Central America
from South America and thousands of people from a better future.
(07:39):
There's a morale patch that the Panamanian Border patrol and
military wear on their uniforms. There reflects a slogan in
a government messaging campaign, d esna Jungla. It says the
campaign was launched in August, and it translates to the
Darien isn't a route or maybe a road to a
better translation, it's a jungle. Obviously it's actually both, but
(08:03):
this is like no route. Most of us will be
familiar with. The dark and foreboding jungle I saw in
Bahajiguito is one of the most impenetrable on Earth, and
the crossing of it is among the most dangerous land
migration routes. In the nineteen seventies, the British Army set
its most experienced explorers to find a way through the gap.
Speaker 7 (08:20):
Their commander called the gap a.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Gold forsaken place.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Today, migrants have their own names for it, Ruta del
morte or sometimes the green Hell. Here's a group from
Cameroon explaining why they didn't see a future there and
they decided to take this dangerous route.
Speaker 8 (08:37):
We are coming from Cameroon. My name is Powers. There's
a lot of crisis in our country. That's the civil
war going on in Cameroon right now because of our president.
President Pombia has been in power over forty two years.
So all the anglophone we set a revolting for him
to step down because he doesn't develop the Southern American Sorry,
the English section of Cameroon angler. Yeah, the anglophone revert
(09:03):
ins that you was set in the military and what's
killing the citizens of our country. There's a lot of harseship,
a lot of dead eye For one, I've lost everybody.
I lost four of my family, my mom, my dad,
my two brothers, and I'm the only one left. So
thanks no, there's no job. I've completed a school, but
there's nothing for me to do, so that's why it
decided to migrate.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
To get to baho Jiquito from Columbia with James and
other migrants did. There's no road you can take. You
can't even take a boat or a train. Instead, you
have to walk the Dairying Gap, an area of rainforested mountains,
so it's one of the most dangerous migration routes in
the world. For anywhere between two and fifteen days, migrants
(09:44):
trek through waste time, mud and rivers deeper than they
are tall. They must climb giant boulders, cross perilous ravines,
and traverse sheer cliff faces, all of this with barely
any water than what they can carry, little to no food,
inadequate clothing, a terrible footwear, and no medical attention. They
must walk past dead bodies and past people who might
(10:07):
soon become dead bodies. As they beg for help. They
carry their children, their dreams, and sometimes each other, across
mountains and rivers, and in bou Jiqito they take what
for many of them will be the final steps of
this part of their journey. It's a journey that few
of us can imagine, and they were lucky to be
able to avoid. My own migration to the US sixteen
(10:29):
years ago was much simpler and safer. But for migrants
like James, the journey's worth it because what they're leaving
behind is worse. Here's James describing the situation in the
stative Cameroon.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
The situation in Cameroon is, how can I put it,
very very.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Very very difficult, especially in the anglophone part of the country. Yeah,
because for about five to six years there's a world
the ongoing war in the angry phone crisis. We also
have been there has been fighting, has been shooting, killings.
(11:15):
I'm myself speaking to you. Yeah, I've been targeted. My
cousin was shot and with his husband were shot together.
Speaker 7 (11:31):
Both of them were Nessis and they were shot by
the army that were.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
There to protect the people. So the situation back at home,
it's very very tense. Yeah, it's very very tense. When
you see most of Camaronians traveling taking the Rik's part
from Columbia brazy right up to where I am.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It is not because they like it. It is because
of the situation back.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
At home and most of it, and most of the
time it is the anglophone population that is suffering most
of them. They choose this part because they will not
have a direct result to America.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
Yeah, it's very hard to get one.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yes, it's very very difficult, so they have to use
the hard way, which is the only way.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
The truth is dead bodies, terrible stories and families celebrating
the end of their work is nothing out of the ordinary.
And Bahajiqito, the Enbarra town with the population of just
five hundred and ninety's a place I've been trying to
come to for almost as long as I've been writing
about migration. There are a few stories in my time
as a journalist that I've been pitching for close to
a decade. Most of the time I give up if
(12:45):
there are no bites after a few months. And that's
why you won't see me write about the people who
try to hire mercenaries to intimidate voters in twenty twenty,
or the Burmese rebels w if I did their revolution
with co op produced tea, or a surfing team in
the Gaza strip and on reflect and you probably won't
hear about that last one anywhere now the media cycle
has a way of coming around to these stories eventually, sure,
(13:07):
but I not really want to go back to what
it is you didn't give a shit about people before
and only care about their stories now because they get
more traffic. But there's one story I've never given up on.
That's the story of the Daddy En Gap and the
people who risk their lives crossing it for a shot
at the American dream. And at this point I do
want to ignolige. I'm incredibly grateful to the people I
work with for trusting me when I asked them to
(13:29):
pay for me to disappear in a dugout canoe into
the jungle and come back two weeks later with a
story the Daddy and looms in the stories of migrants
I meet in the US border as a sort of
heart of darkness on what is a very difficult and
dangerous journey. It's worse than the freight trains they hop
on in Mexico, worse than the crowded buses, worse even
(13:50):
than the months of waiting for an asylum appointment. I
firly believe that you can't really understand and write about
things you haven't seen, smelt, and heard. So for years
I've been asking, yet it is to send me to
the tiny ember our community on the banks of the river,
so that I could share the final steps of this
horrific journey with the people who see little option but
(14:11):
to risk their lives for a better future for their children.
Because the US refuses to create more legal pathways, people
instead take the sudden pathway straight up and down the
mountains to the Darian rainforest. The journey will take them
past the corpse into people who never left. The terrain
is too fierce for anyone to carry their remains out,
(14:31):
so they must simply rut there as a reminder to migrants,
so they must keep going. It's a sort of deterrent
through death that has been the unofficial and official US
border policy for decades.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
To turn or not.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Once you're in the Daryan, there's no turning back, and
the lack of escape routes has made the gap popular
among criminals, who commit untold numbers of sexual assaults, murders,
and armed robberies every year in the jungle. Despite this,
more than half a million migrants made a perilous journey
last year, and if many you have not, more will
do so.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
This year.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Do you understand that, Daddy, And you have to first
understand US immigration policy, which is something I talk about
a lot on this podcast. I want to include here
a clip from Amos am I going from North Africa
who met my friends and helped them build shelters in
the Cumba last year, explaining his journey to the United States.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
So another route right now, which is a difficult route,
is through Brazil because Brazil has a I don't know
if you guys know, and I think they do that
for Americans too. Yeah, so Brazil has sort of I
don't know the word, but the equivalent to them is
if you impose a visa on Brazil, Brazilians will imposed
(15:42):
his own news. They do that to Americans too, So
so you know where I'm from, they don't have a
visa to as far as for Brazilians, so we don't.
So a lot of Africans can go to Brazil and
from Brazil take the route all the way.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
They Camos James couldn't fly here directly that he was
able to get a little bit closer to the US
by flying to Columbia. I'll let him explain how he
pulled that off.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
For me, to have a pass to Colombia. It was
not easy, so we have we had to There was
a female female on that twenty World Cup that was
that was taking place in Colombia, so we had to
go to Columbia as football fans. That's why they had
(16:32):
They had to give us our bizare yes all right?
From Colombia, we'll find our way out of the airport to.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
Where we are.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
Today, both from a continental America. We'll have to travel
to Brazil. Just like Amos he's won a cap. I'll
let the speakers introduce himselves.
Speaker 9 (16:54):
My name is Tomayer, I'm from i Don.
Speaker 10 (16:58):
My name is Mohad for my name is Ali, and
I'm Promiraan.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
They told me why they left around, but I'm sure
manage you could wear that went out of yourself, so
we won't included here. How did you come from Iran
to here?
Speaker 7 (17:11):
You go for a Turkey?
Speaker 10 (17:13):
It was so difficult, and we came from Iran, Tehran
to Dubai, after that south all of Brazil and after
that believe Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Akokley and Jungle Panama
here Panama, and it was so difficult for us because
(17:36):
we're young. We just leave our family, my sister, my mother, father.
It was so emotional and it was so hard for us.
But because of the freedom, because we can't speak in
our country. You know, if you speak in your in
the street, something like it, they will arrest you. Yeah, ja,
(17:59):
when you are not Muslim, when you really like something
like a Christian or something else, they verity, yes it.
It was so so, so, so difficult living in Iran,
but it's a wonderful country, but not government.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
When I talk to migrants, I always want to offer
them the chance to share their stories in ways that
they want to share them. And I asked them what
they would want to say if they could talk directly
to Americans. It's a question I ask a lot, because
in all the coverage of migration I've seen in this country,
I rarely see migrants' voices. I'm very familiar with being
the only journalist in a place, and I'd be lying
(18:38):
if I said I didn't prefer it that way. But
I do always feel obliged to use the platform I
have here to give people a chance to share their stories,
their voices, and their struggles. So here's their message to you.
Speaker 10 (18:50):
We love you, hope too, you love is it's hard
to share.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's very good.
Speaker 11 (18:59):
All right, be our next home and we should be
proud of that, We should be bored for that. We
should be be a real American for the concert.
Speaker 9 (19:10):
Yeah, they know women are very bad situations, have a
bad situation in Iran. Yeah, for all people, that is saying,
but for women is very very, very hard. I think
American people know about Massa Amini. Yeah, and they really
(19:36):
they chill us, really, they chill women for simple things.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I heard hundreds of stories like this in my time
in Bajo Jiquito and the last Blancast migrant reception center
that migrants travel to after they arrive in Baja Chiquito.
People left horrific things behind them and saw horrific things
on their journey, but they all remained hopeful for a
better future in America. These journeys, in some cases.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Can take a year or more.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
One napoorly Man I met in Bajojuquito, I'd spent thirty
months just to get that far, and among his group,
his journey had been the fastest. As long as these
journeys are that Darien often stems out as the hardest
part do understand why I want to take you back
to that shady spot by the river, just a few
minutes south of Bajo Juquito. So what I'm doing right now,
(20:35):
you can hear from my foot depths, is I'm doing
what it told me not to do. I'm walking along
the migrant trail. Lots of like vines and creepers and
oh fucking hell, that's me ely eating shit. There's little
bits of tape marking a trail. I think they just
come down the river here, and some local guys are
(20:57):
pushing out wheelbarrows on the trail to dump trash. There's
trash everywhere to fucking mess. Uh the little wood arrows
that they've carved just outside town to direct people into town,
and if I heard, I can see migrants making what's
probably hopefully their final crossing of the river here. One
thing I noticed was that as soon as I got
(21:17):
out of sight in near shot of the town, the
jungle seemed a lot more intimidating. I'm somebod who spends
a lot of time in the mountains, and I grew
up playing in the woods. I'm comfortable outdoors, and I
frequently camp and hike for days on my own.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
I like it better that way, and I might.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
See more comfortable forty feet under the sea free diving,
or three hours from the nearest road. Then I'm in
a busy city sometimes, but in the jungle, after all
the stories I'd heard that week.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
I was afraid. I get scary. I don't know why.
I mean, everything's new to me. I'm, you know, relatively
comfortable in the outdoors.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But fucking there's new animals, there's new plants. I don't
know what's poisonous, what's going to kill me, and who's
going to try and hurt me?
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Got another fucking horse, Jesus wept. I'm jumping out my skin. Everything.
Now it's funny.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I'm in a place that's beautiful, you know, like these
better paradise plants are just just growing. Here's gorgeousness. Horses
along to people of the black community. I suppose it's
having snacks, you know, eating jungle horse food. And here
here I'm at the river.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
It's wide.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Here, it's sort of shallow, and it's been dammed up
a little bit with rubbish, just like flocks and and
jets some kind of stuff.
Speaker 12 (22:44):
And then.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
This is where people cross because of that little dam,
but it's still got some force to it, like you
wouldn't want to fall and crack your head or you know,
a lot of these folks.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
You can't swim even without the fear.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
It's hard going because you've only hiked on trails, so
I have don't realize how much work goes into making
that surface possible. There are no trail crews in the Darien,
and as a result, every step has the potential to
results in a sprained ankle or another injury, which might
sound trivial but can be faithal in such a remote
and challenging place. Trail is all rocks, like maybe rocks
(23:18):
the side of a fist by that way now, and
then there are sort of in this area we only
have the lower canopy, so we have ferns, we have reeds,
bamboo plants growing really tall and straight, that's what they
use for the poles that the pit I was, and then.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Sort of low grassy kind of plants.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
And then where the migrant to walk is just this
muddy trail that every time it range just turns into
like ankle to.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
Knee deep mud.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
And I could see them making pretty slow progress along
the trail towards me. At the end of the day,
as I took a piaguard back to Madagante, where I
would be staying the night, I reflected again on this
and the incredible tenacity it took for people with little
outdoor experience some terrible equipment to pass through the jungle.
You know, I'm a fit person. I run ultramarathons. I
(24:05):
used to be exercised for a living. And it's fucking hard.
It's wet, everything's wet all the time. If you're wet
from the rain, then you're wet. If you're wet from
the sweat and you're wet. If you cross rivers, you
get wet. You just can't stay dry. And everyone's feet
are just fucked when they get into town, like the
(24:26):
size of the blisters I've seen, And like one lady
had a cramp today where like it just locked up
a whole that she like I grabbed her or she
was falling down and I was able to hold her up.
But people are really pushing themselves physically as well as psychologically.
That river crossing south of Bachigito was as far south
(24:48):
as I was going to be able to get without
being forced tobly abjected from Panama, and my request to
take a boat or walk further south was denied by
the Panamanian Ministry of Security. So the only part of
the migrants journey I would share with them with their
last kilometer or so of their walk. Even then, I
wasn't really supposed to be leaving town at all, So
several times over the days I spent in Bajajiquito, I
(25:10):
would look over my shoulder, hop down the river bank,
jump across the stream, and lightly jog out of town.
Once on the trail, I'd started to walk slowly and
try and waive a groups of outcoming migrants. I didn't
want to scare them.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
I offered to.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Carry their bags and gant any help I could, supporting
them as they walked towards their first meal and clean
drink of water. In up to a week, just getting
(25:52):
to bajaji Gito was a journey in itself for me.
I took two flights a five hour drive, which was
equally split between paved roads, roads that aspired to pavement,
and dirt roads. At the end of our road journey,
the Pan American Highway, the links Alaska to Argentina, seems
to give up on fighting the jungle and Peter's out.
Asphalt turned to worse asphalt, which turned to dirt, which
(26:15):
turned to mud, which led us to a river. A driver, however,
was prepared for this.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
The drive here was mad, like that road was fucked.
We're in this tiny little card.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
The driver took off his shoes and socks to conduct
the more technical section of the drive, which I thought
was quite amusing. And yeah, really steep, lots of holes,
lots of potholes, you know, just really rutted out a
kind of dirt road.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
And then we got here and took.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Some guys, negotiated a price and told them where we
wanted to go, and they said, yeah, sure, buy some water,
you know, snow water on the way about three hours
and so we bought some water right there, and yeah,
here we are on the boat now, as you can hear.
I recorded this on a piragua. It's a kind of
dugout canoe with the hole made out of a single
(27:05):
tree and a tooth stroke motor bolted on the back.
It's the only way to travel here other than on
your feet, and it's the only way the Embarra can
get the produced cigaret to market. The skill of the Piragueros,
the people who drive the piraguas, is incredible. They navigate
parts of the river so shallow that they have to
pull up the tooth stroke motor, and I noticed all
(27:26):
the motors have propellers that are covered in chips and
bashes from smacking into the rocks at the bottom. In
the bow of the boat, I sat on top of
my giant rucksack, marveling at the birds, insects, and foliage
of the jungle, and occasionally I jumped up to make
fairly useless contributions with the boat's bamboo pole under the
close supervision of Marcellino, our driver, and a soon to
(27:49):
be host for mostly just laughed at me as I
leaned my whole way into the pole, which nosably slipped,
and I tried to avoid falling face first into the
chocolate brown water. On the way to Baajiki, we passed
several small lumber our villages. Little children waved at us
from the banks or from the shallows of the river
where they washed and played. Adults looked on and doubtless
(28:09):
why there One nurse's Exct. Three white dude was going
the wrong way on the river for a migrant but
they smiled and waved back anyway. After an overnight flight,
a five hour drive, and three hours in a dugout canoe,
we rounded a corner in the river. Bao Jigito came
into view. Over the last few years, it three oorientated
itself from a tiny indigenous village to an unofficial reception
(28:32):
center for migrants. On my hopelessly outdated topo map, the
area has nothing but contours and green shading, no roads,
no trails, no markets of human existence at all, And
perhaps that's how the state sees this place. The Daddy
n is as real to most Panamanians a Sesame street
or Jurassic park, But for them this has been their
(28:54):
home since long before Panama and Columbia and even maps existed.
A few dozen houses in the village, mostly built on
stilts to avoid the seasonal floods, now, offer up their
rooms as hostels for the migrants. Some of them have
enclosed at bottom floor using plywood or cinder blocks. Others
have strung hammocks from their support posts. For four or
(29:15):
five bugs, migrants can get their first good night's sleep
since they left Neck or Clee in Columbia as much
as a week before. Along the main street, which is
really just to raise concrete footpath about a meter across,
you can buy a meal any of half a dozen
places for five bucks. You can get an hour of
Wi Fi for a dollar, or charge your phone for
at the same price. Cold drinks for a dollar as well.
(29:36):
Are one of the many front rooms that have turned
into small kiosks. And that's where the migrants I have
been sitting down with at the river went. When they're
arrived into town, I let them be for a while
I went off to interview more migrants. About a thousand
of them arrive in this village every day. Each year
since a pandemic has seen record numbers arrived, and the
little village on the side of a hill, surrounded by
(29:58):
palm trees and full of smiling children in their traditional
brightly colored pollumers chasing chickens and dogs, has welcomed every
single one of them. About a thousand of them arrive
in this town every day.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
To get here.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
They also take a boat from necko'clee across the golf
of the Dabienne. They crossed on small motor boats to
Kapolgana or Kandel. Those are both towns on the western
side of the Gulf of the Darienne. From there they
begin their walk. Even though they're now north of the Dolf,
they're still in Colombia and on the Colombian.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
Side of the border.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
They're guided by guides, to whom they pay several hundred
dollars and in return received protection and a wristband that
ensures they can walk without being robbed. Nobody I spoke
to had made it this far without paying a guide.
The area is largely under the control of the Golf Cartel,
several members of which were sanctioned by the USA.
Speaker 6 (30:48):
While I was in the jungle.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
The markers I spoke to didn't really have much bad
to say about this part of their experience, but universally
acknowledged that the next part was where they really confronted
their fears and nightmares about the Daddy inne Here's one
Venezuelan migrant sharing his experience.
Speaker 13 (31:05):
That's nothing compared to what comes from the border. To hear, Yes,
the road is better, and I say that the danger
is less too, and they have everything you need there.
You come prepared, you have, you come with water, and
there are also many ravines where you can drink water well.
There are springs that come from the mountain, but from
the border on it's pretty ugly.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
It's a stretch from the Colombian Panamanian border at a
place that they call Las Banderas, which means to flags,
to Bajo Chiquito, where migrants suffer the most. There they
can't drink from the river because a human waste and
human remains that constantly fill it like the water deadly.
They must walk on unmaintained trails. It often turns in
(31:47):
deep mud. They only have the supplies they carry, which
often run out, or they jettison to stave weight on
the incredibly steep mountain path. They climb and descend those
mountains across rivers, often without eating or drinking for days
at a time. On the trail, they passed by the
bodies of their fellow travelers as a constant reminder of
(32:07):
the risk they're taking. If you ask people in Panama City,
they'll tell you that Dalian is closed now. Your president,
Nose Raoul Molino was elected on a promise to shut
down the gap, end the humanitarian crisis, and deport more
migrants with US funding, and that funding has certainly arrived,
with more than six million already spent since he took
(32:28):
office in July. Since then, Panama has deported more than
eleven hundred people to Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
And India.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Each of these has been funded by US taxpayers. Obviously,
the jungle isn't closed, and it can't really be closed,
but in an interview before he was elected, Molino said
that the border of the United States, instead of being
in Texas, has moved to Panama, and that is something
he can do with US support. I spoke to us
(32:57):
in venezuel And ladies to help them carry their bags.
It's a steep hill, and they were saying that no
one had seen any barriers. I don't know when to
think about any barriers or any fences in a Darian
and that like they hadn't heard it was closed. Evidently
it's not. I'm standing in front of one hundred people
who just got off a boat from.
Speaker 6 (33:13):
The Darienn.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Hubris Aside, the rhetoric of closing the Dadi m signals
are turn not just in Panamanian politics, but in the
way the world sees and handles migration. The US has
always sought to externalize its borders from US train border
patrol officers and Dominican Republic along the border is Haiti
to DHS agents deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. As migration
(33:37):
has become more politicized, the US has sought to move
its enforcement away from prying eyes and from compassion, and
instead brought more trauma to a place that is already
so hard. I've spent much of the last decade of
my life watching the state try to bring the mountains
and desert close to where I live under its control.
I've stood with Kumia people as the government dynamited their graveyards.
(34:00):
I found border wal contractors lost deep in the mountains.
I've driven the impossibly steep concrete roads that they built,
worried about my truck turning end on end. I've seen
billions of dollars thrown at these mountains, and I've seen
people with twenty dollars angle grinders or ladders made of
old palettes defeat the wall in moments. Trying to close
borders doesn't work at home, and it won't work in
(34:22):
the Daddy and Gap either. Just building the roads to
get the construction equipment into the gap is a gargantuan
task in any attempt to create a barrier across the
sixty kilometer wide wilderness area, or simply push migrants onto
other more dangerous routes, into places where you can't build
and the places where nobody can rescue you if you
fall down or break your leg. That doesn't mean there's
(34:44):
nothing the US can do. I saw first hand the
impact of Americans spending here as migrants had a reception
center called Lajas Blancas, had their families torn apart, and men,
women and children cried as their parents and partners were
taken away for a flight back to columb be A, Cuba,
or Venezuela that my taxes helped to pay for. I
consoled the children with toys and stickers and something to
(35:07):
eat as their dads were loaded into a flatbed truck.
A government didn't send money to feed these children, but
it seemed to have the funds to fund their parents' deportation.
By deporting people from Panama, the US effectively deprives them
of much of the due process they should, in theory,
have the right to in the United States, and the
US can easily deport them back to places like Cuba
(35:28):
and Venezuela, which he considers to be dictatorial regimes. The
US does not and cannot stop migration. People have always moved,
and people will always want a better future for their children.
What it can do is make it as painful and
dangerous as possible. But the rais of word barriers in
the Daddy and Gap which I've seen person on social
(35:49):
media didn't exist for the hundreds of migrants I spoke to.
No one I asked had even seen them, but what
they had seen was far worse.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
There are many rivers that you're forced into all the time.
You're putting your life and everything else on the line there.
I was worried that the indigenous people would come out
and do something to us. In the nights. I was
worried that any of the children, god forbid, would have
an accident. The same for me. It's horrible to think
about it now.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
This mother hood cross with a five, six, and sixteen
year old child, the baby of six months. They'd all
made it in one piece, but the journey clearly had
its impact on the children.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There are many people who are left out there without
food and do not have anything to give to their children.
We had food until last night, nothing left now, and
we had to each one had to just eat a
little bit because we had nothing else to give them.
You can't find anything there. It's in the middle of nowhere.
People died right now along with those who came with
(36:53):
us yesterday. How many died yesterday?
Speaker 6 (36:56):
Three?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think three died yesterday. One drowned in the river. Yeah,
it's really tough.
Speaker 14 (37:02):
This.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
No, no, nobody should do this. Nobody. We do this
out of pure physical necessity to look for a better
future for our kids. We can't stay in our country.
We couldn't stay any longer.
Speaker 6 (37:14):
There.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
Here are a couple of the kids I spoke to,
or in some cases the kids who took my regorda
and conducted interviews with each other.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The mountains, I was so tired and I couldn't climb anymore,
And when I fell on the river, I was really scared.
Speaker 12 (37:33):
Anymore.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
Apparently the whole thing was like an adventure she'd seen
Pepper Pig having, which at once made me giggle and
also one reflection, It's one of the saddest things I've
ever had to record. I'm sure her mum told her
that to make it easier for her to pass through
a terrible place. They're really sure to be at home
washing Pepper pig and playing with her friends. No walking
past three dead bodies which are currently decomposing on the trail.
(37:58):
She seemed remarkably resilly. She said the long bust ride
she'd taken to get there one boring because she enjoyed
looking out the window and the whole journey was.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Well, I'll let her say, Mamma, I'm not buying.
Speaker 14 (38:11):
Her.
Speaker 6 (38:12):
Mum gave us a different account.
Speaker 14 (38:14):
Raho.
Speaker 15 (38:18):
I didn't want to cry because I didn't want her
to see me crying. But sometimes I would explode because
it's hard for your child to ask you for water,
to ask you for food, and you don't have any
to be in a place where you walk. You walk
from five in the morning, it's five in the afternoon.
You're walking, you don't know what to do, going through
more than one hundred rivers and asking God not to
(38:38):
rain and not wanting it to get worse. It rained,
and the girl got a fever.
Speaker 6 (38:43):
She got a fever.
Speaker 15 (38:45):
But well, God is good that we pray a lot.
I say that we don't know God so much in
the church from the process and the process that we
are in, and we don't know we can be so
strong until we go through that storm and we see
that he protect us. He knows that he was always
there watching over us, taking care of us at all times.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Parents being amazed at their children and drawing shrink from
them and their faith was a common message I heard
from migrants. He's a migrant from Zimbabwe telling me how
her daughter inspired her to keep going, but she felt
like she couldn't walk anymore.
Speaker 14 (39:19):
My daughter, she was strong, she was strong, but she
was crying also, but she has got wound all over
the body. Even me, I was crying myself. I was like,
I want to just put myself in the water, then
I can just go both. The gene was tough, really
really tough. The mountain, the stones, the river. It's not
(39:40):
easy at all. It's not very I don't even recommended
someone to say you use daddy and gave no. And
even myself, I did know about it. I was regretting myself.
Speaker 10 (39:52):
I was crying.
Speaker 14 (39:53):
I was like, God, I don't know my family and
my family they don't know where I am right now.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
But like so many other migrants, when the government of
the world abandoned her, she found strength in the strangers
along the road, who wouldn't abandon her.
Speaker 14 (40:09):
We didn't even eat anything. We just asked and people,
can I have a piece of biscuit?
Speaker 10 (40:14):
They just help us.
Speaker 7 (40:15):
That's nice.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
The other migrants helped you.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Yeah, the others.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (40:19):
Do you think that they treat African people differently?
Speaker 14 (40:23):
Very nice, especially these Spanish people, they are very nice.
I don't want to lie because if you need help,
you for call them for your The other ones they
might run away, but the other ones they just come
for help. They even give us tablets on the road,
give us energy drinks, give my daughter a sweets for energe.
(40:45):
They push us like, let's go, guys, let's call, let's go.
You make it, and we really make it.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
The journey over the mountains to Banama has become more
and more popular in recent years as other routes have
become more dangerous or closed themselves off to migrants entirely.
It's a route the Embira tell me that started with
people leaving India and then Haiti. It grew as conditions
in Venezuela became more unsustainable and people found themselves too
poor to stay home and too poor to travel north
(41:40):
by any other means, and so they chose a deadly
jungle over a future in a country where their votes
don't matter. Last year, as many as half a million
people cross the jungle. This year we might see more
migrants arriving about Jiguito spend the day in the village
before taking off in a piagua of their own up
to Lahas Blancas the micro reception center I mentioned earlier.
(42:02):
They register with Panamanian Board Patrol known by the acronym
Cena Front, and they call their families to say they survived.
Then they dry out their blistered feet, enjoy the cooking
of several of the families who have turned their homes
into sort of ersad's restaurants. They sleep on the floors
of the houses or underneath them, wardge their phones for
a dollar a time. Certainly, migration has changed this town,
(42:25):
and I want to talk about that more in tomorrow's episode.
But despite more than a million people passing through this route,
you don't find anti migrant sentiment here right now, Despite
the gap being a deadly de terrent, numbers are expected
to reach a record again this year, maybe seven hundred
thousand people will walk the gap. But despite these numbers,
(42:46):
which may seem high for a small country. I didn't
really find much anti migrant sentiment in Panama as a whole.
There's plenty of it in the US, though, And as
the United States winds down its war and terror, it
needs a new nebulous enemy to fight its military spending
and to keep the security into veillance companies donat into
politicians in their millions. In part, it is found that
(43:08):
by simply opening a floodgate of weapons and funding, they
can spew forth genocide and death in Palestine and keep
some of its income streams.
Speaker 6 (43:18):
But it needs a more long term solution.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
There are only so many Palestinian babies that can bomb,
and we'll run out of Palestinians long before we run
out of bombs. The USA is new enemy when it
must seek out all over the world. It's a migrant.
It's a woman I met carrying her child across the mountains.
The little Venezuelan girl throwing bottle caps into a cinderblock
with me to pass the time as she asked me
(43:41):
questions about America. It's a twenty one year old man
whose remains my friends found in the border on a
hot day this September. The US will stop at nothing
and fining and destroying the migrant, and just as it
did in the War on Terror, it will find fast
friends in states desperate to avail themselves to a seemingly
unlimited flow of resources. US dedicates to keeping its conflicts
(44:02):
out of the sights and the minds of its citizens.
The USA's open hostility to migrants isn't something that's unknown here.
Everyone I met knew about it. Several of them had
watched with horror as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued
(44:25):
not about how to treat migrants but about who could
turn more of them away. In a recent presidential debate,
Every migrant I met had questioned about CBP one, about
US asylum policy, and about how they could get to
the US before a second Trump administration. Despite this, they
all clung to their versions of the American dream. They
wanted to work and be paid a fair wage, to
(44:47):
send their kids to school and maybe to college, to
feel safe in their homes, and to be able to
speak and dress as they wished without fearing consequences. All
of those things are imperiling this country too, and they
know that, but they still feel their dreams are worth
the journey. For Noemi, little girl who took the daddy
in a astride, The American dream was pretty simple. She
(45:09):
wanted two things, to see Minnie Mouse and to see
her around.
Speaker 12 (45:14):
Why am I miss a studio app?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Not yet?
Speaker 12 (45:22):
An amimia a dia amida, It could happen.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 15 (45:38):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Calls media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey, so look, contractually I'm allowed one more rerun. So
the one I want to run though, is something from
the It Can Happen Here series of shows that my
man James did on the Darien Pass down at the
(00:31):
Mexico border outside of San Diego. I got to go
down there with him and meet up with some of
those folks out there doing mutual aid and meeting people
at the border, providing these vast buckets of like beans
and rice and like wasted charge their phones and warm clothes.
(00:53):
It's it's the realist. It's like simultaneously the most beautifl
full and tragic thing you'll see. I mean, every language
was spoken there.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
They're just.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
It ain't it's just a whole in defense and people
just walked in. There's no this no man's land of
asylum seeking and James, James lived down there, and James
pulls up on him people and is really about that life.
(01:31):
It was so inspiring to me. It reminded me of
this story. It's all just intro. When I was in Cameroon,
performed at this maximum security prison. Believe it or not,
but maximum security prison for you know, developing country Africa
(01:54):
means there is no security. It's just overwhelmed with the inmates.
I mean it's just people sitting in the office just
like on the floor and I'm like, yo, are these
people just sitting there or they're prisoners. There's just no
space for them. Some of them but ass naked, And
part of it was you'll learn why later. And then
(02:16):
the people that was escorting me and the homies to
the stage to perform, then no uniforms and nothing. It
was like it is volunteers. So we performed. It was great,
the most amazing experience. And then after it was over,
just like commotion started happening. And I mean, like, I
(02:42):
don't know if you ever how terrifying it is to
like have a crowd press on you. But that crowd
ain't even speaking your language. And our prisoners and how
the people were we had to get rushed out. How
the people were rushing us out. They just had like
tire shreds and coaxo cables and we're whipping dudes back
to like get get back for us to get out.
(03:06):
We won't even know why they doing this, right, So
the guy tells us why they're doing this. He was like, well, y'all,
didn't bring no like food or clothes. They was like,
we can't eat these songs. I was like, yo, we're
supposed to. You ain't tell us we were supposed to
(03:26):
bring food and why didn't we bring food and clothes?
I I don't understand why. They was like, so they
thought you just came to perform, but you didn't bring
no food. They was like, yeah, the the prison system
in Cameroon, they don't provide anything the families provided. They
don't provide clothes, they don't provide food, and don't provide
(03:48):
none of that. So if your family don't bring nothing,
you don't get nothing. So us as as a community,
you know, it was a church community, a hip hop community, whatever,
we're the ones that like bring the stuff. And I
was like, dang, man, that's crazy, as it's riot ever
happened before. He was like, yeah, man, it happened last week.
I was like, Waitchall was here last week. He was like,
(04:10):
we come every week. I thought we were special. I
thought coming in here and performing this thing was my duty.
That I could pat myself on the back for the
rest of my life and say that I did. They
come every week. They usually bring food and clothes, but
(04:31):
they come every week. So that moment down there where
I was really feeling myself about doing something great for
the border crisis was like, oh, we get up and
do this tomorrow. Here's episode one of that series.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
The most difficult part of the journey is when you
are taking and you'll meet dead bodies on the road.
It makes you weep, it makes you cry, but there's
only one focus in the forest ahead. You'll have to
(05:21):
keep going. You'll see mothers, children, They are crying just
to have a sip of water. It is not easy.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting beside the
Tuquesa River on a warm afternoon in late September, making
silly faces at the two minths old baby as we
both marveled at the cloud yellow butterflies. Anywhere else on earth,
it could be in a delict summer day, but in
these final steps of the journey across the da it's
hard to open up your mind to experience joy. I'd
(06:05):
only been in the tiny Emberra village of Bajo Jiquito
a couple of days, and I had already seen the
lifeless body of a little girl. And so the migrants
carried her into town. The river I was sleeping around
him with this group of migrants resting here in the
shade had swept sleeping children to their deaths earlier this year.
An up tostream of me, there were at least three
people's remains here. It was shin deep. The crossing up
(06:27):
stream where it's above head height and rages down out
of the mountains in steep ravines was the migrants I
walked back to town with told me the stuff of nightmares.
The voice you just heard was a migrant from Cameroon
who called himself James. That's not his real name, and
astute listeners would have noticed that it is my real name,
but for the protection of James and his family, it's
(06:48):
a name we'll be using. When I met James. We're
in a migrant reception center called Las Blancas, to the
north of.
Speaker 6 (06:55):
The Dayan Gap.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
To get there, one has to take a dugout canoe
called a pira were from Bajo Jiquito. The voyage takes
five hours, and for that five hours, migrants are packed
fifteen to a boat wearing bright orange life jackets. They
share the boat with Nembra Piraguero, who sits at the
back driving the boat with a tooth stroke motor, and
a guide who sits on the front, using a pole
(07:17):
when necessary to push the boat through shallow sections. The
Umbrada people are indigenous to the area that's commonly known
as a Dalian Gap, or at least to this part
of it, and a tiny Embrea village of Bajo Jiquito.
It's a first settlement migrants encounter is they emerge from
the perilous crossing of the jungle that divides Central America
from South America and thousands of people from a better future.
(07:39):
There's a morale patch that the Panamanian Border patrol and
military wear on their uniforms. There reflects a slogan in
a government messaging campaign, d esna Jungla. It says the
campaign was launched in August, and it translates to the
Darien isn't a route or maybe a road to a
better translation, it's a jungle. Obviously it's actually both, but
(08:03):
this is like no route. Most of us will be
familiar with. The dark and foreboding jungle I saw in
Bahajiguito is one of the most impenetrable on Earth, and
the crossing of it is among the most dangerous land
migration routes. In the nineteen seventies, the British Army set
its most experienced explorers to find a way through the gap.
Speaker 7 (08:20):
Their commander called the gap a.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Gold forsaken place.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Today, migrants have their own names for it, Ruta del
morte or sometimes the green Hell. Here's a group from
Cameroon explaining why they didn't see a future there and
they decided to take this dangerous route.
Speaker 8 (08:37):
We are coming from Cameroon. My name is Powers. There's
a lot of crisis in our country. That's the civil
war going on in Cameroon right now because of our president.
President Pombia has been in power over forty two years.
So all the anglophone we set a revolting for him
to step down because he doesn't develop the Southern American Sorry,
the English section of Cameroon angler. Yeah, the anglophone revert
(09:03):
ins that you was set in the military and what's
killing the citizens of our country. There's a lot of harseship,
a lot of dead eye For one, I've lost everybody.
I lost four of my family, my mom, my dad,
my two brothers, and I'm the only one left. So
thanks no, there's no job. I've completed a school, but
there's nothing for me to do, so that's why it
decided to migrate.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
To get to baho Jiquito from Columbia with James and
other migrants did. There's no road you can take. You
can't even take a boat or a train. Instead, you
have to walk the Dairying Gap, an area of rainforested mountains,
so it's one of the most dangerous migration routes in
the world. For anywhere between two and fifteen days, migrants
(09:44):
trek through waste time, mud and rivers deeper than they
are tall. They must climb giant boulders, cross perilous ravines,
and traverse sheer cliff faces, all of this with barely
any water than what they can carry, little to no food,
inadequate clothing, a terrible footwear, and no medical attention. They
must walk past dead bodies and past people who might
(10:07):
soon become dead bodies. As they beg for help. They
carry their children, their dreams, and sometimes each other, across
mountains and rivers, and in bou Jiqito they take what
for many of them will be the final steps of
this part of their journey. It's a journey that few
of us can imagine, and they were lucky to be
able to avoid. My own migration to the US sixteen
(10:29):
years ago was much simpler and safer. But for migrants
like James, the journey's worth it because what they're leaving
behind is worse. Here's James describing the situation in the
stative Cameroon.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
The situation in Cameroon is, how can I put it,
very very.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Very very difficult, especially in the anglophone part of the country. Yeah,
because for about five to six years there's a world
the ongoing war in the angry phone crisis. We also
have been there has been fighting, has been shooting, killings.
(11:15):
I'm myself speaking to you. Yeah, I've been targeted. My
cousin was shot and with his husband were shot together.
Speaker 7 (11:31):
Both of them were Nessis and they were shot by
the army that were.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
There to protect the people. So the situation back at home,
it's very very tense. Yeah, it's very very tense. When
you see most of Camaronians traveling taking the Rik's part
from Columbia brazy right up to where I am.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It is not because they like it. It is because
of the situation back.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
At home and most of it, and most of the
time it is the anglophone population that is suffering most
of them. They choose this part because they will not
have a direct result to America.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
Yeah, it's very hard to get one.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yes, it's very very difficult, so they have to use
the hard way, which is the only way.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
The truth is dead bodies, terrible stories and families celebrating
the end of their work is nothing out of the ordinary.
And Bahajiqito, the Enbarra town with the population of just
five hundred and ninety's a place I've been trying to
come to for almost as long as I've been writing
about migration. There are a few stories in my time
as a journalist that I've been pitching for close to
a decade. Most of the time I give up if
(12:45):
there are no bites after a few months. And that's
why you won't see me write about the people who
try to hire mercenaries to intimidate voters in twenty twenty,
or the Burmese rebels w if I did their revolution
with co op produced tea, or a surfing team in
the Gaza strip and on reflect and you probably won't
hear about that last one anywhere now the media cycle
has a way of coming around to these stories eventually, sure,
(13:07):
but I not really want to go back to what
it is you didn't give a shit about people before
and only care about their stories now because they get
more traffic. But there's one story I've never given up on.
That's the story of the Daddy En Gap and the
people who risk their lives crossing it for a shot
at the American dream. And at this point I do
want to ignolige. I'm incredibly grateful to the people I
work with for trusting me when I asked them to
(13:29):
pay for me to disappear in a dugout canoe into
the jungle and come back two weeks later with a
story the Daddy and looms in the stories of migrants
I meet in the US border as a sort of
heart of darkness on what is a very difficult and
dangerous journey. It's worse than the freight trains they hop
on in Mexico, worse than the crowded buses, worse even
(13:50):
than the months of waiting for an asylum appointment. I
firly believe that you can't really understand and write about
things you haven't seen, smelt, and heard. So for years
I've been asking, yet it is to send me to
the tiny ember our community on the banks of the river,
so that I could share the final steps of this
horrific journey with the people who see little option but
(14:11):
to risk their lives for a better future for their children.
Because the US refuses to create more legal pathways, people
instead take the sudden pathway straight up and down the
mountains to the Darian rainforest. The journey will take them
past the corpse into people who never left. The terrain
is too fierce for anyone to carry their remains out,
(14:31):
so they must simply rut there as a reminder to migrants,
so they must keep going. It's a sort of deterrent
through death that has been the unofficial and official US
border policy for decades.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
To turn or not.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Once you're in the Daryan, there's no turning back, and
the lack of escape routes has made the gap popular
among criminals, who commit untold numbers of sexual assaults, murders,
and armed robberies every year in the jungle. Despite this,
more than half a million migrants made a perilous journey
last year, and if many you have not, more will
do so.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
This year.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Do you understand that, Daddy, And you have to first
understand US immigration policy, which is something I talk about
a lot on this podcast. I want to include here
a clip from Amos am I going from North Africa
who met my friends and helped them build shelters in
the Cumba last year, explaining his journey to the United States.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
So another route right now, which is a difficult route,
is through Brazil because Brazil has a I don't know
if you guys know, and I think they do that
for Americans too. Yeah, so Brazil has sort of I
don't know the word, but the equivalent to them is
if you impose a visa on Brazil, Brazilians will imposed
(15:42):
his own news. They do that to Americans too, So
so you know where I'm from, they don't have a
visa to as far as for Brazilians, so we don't.
So a lot of Africans can go to Brazil and
from Brazil take the route all the way.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
They Camos James couldn't fly here directly that he was
able to get a little bit closer to the US
by flying to Columbia. I'll let him explain how he
pulled that off.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
For me, to have a pass to Colombia. It was
not easy, so we have we had to There was
a female female on that twenty World Cup that was
that was taking place in Colombia, so we had to
go to Columbia as football fans. That's why they had
(16:32):
They had to give us our bizare yes all right?
From Colombia, we'll find our way out of the airport to.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
Where we are.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
Today, both from a continental America. We'll have to travel
to Brazil. Just like Amos he's won a cap. I'll
let the speakers introduce himselves.
Speaker 9 (16:54):
My name is Tomayer, I'm from i Don.
Speaker 10 (16:58):
My name is Mohad for my name is Ali, and
I'm Promiraan.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
They told me why they left around, but I'm sure
manage you could wear that went out of yourself, so
we won't included here. How did you come from Iran
to here?
Speaker 7 (17:11):
You go for a Turkey?
Speaker 10 (17:13):
It was so difficult, and we came from Iran, Tehran
to Dubai, after that south all of Brazil and after
that believe Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Akokley and Jungle Panama
here Panama, and it was so difficult for us because
(17:36):
we're young. We just leave our family, my sister, my mother, father.
It was so emotional and it was so hard for us.
But because of the freedom, because we can't speak in
our country. You know, if you speak in your in
the street, something like it, they will arrest you. Yeah, ja,
(17:59):
when you are not Muslim, when you really like something
like a Christian or something else, they verity, yes it.
It was so so, so, so difficult living in Iran,
but it's a wonderful country, but not government.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
When I talk to migrants, I always want to offer
them the chance to share their stories in ways that
they want to share them. And I asked them what
they would want to say if they could talk directly
to Americans. It's a question I ask a lot, because
in all the coverage of migration I've seen in this country,
I rarely see migrants' voices. I'm very familiar with being
the only journalist in a place, and I'd be lying
(18:38):
if I said I didn't prefer it that way. But
I do always feel obliged to use the platform I
have here to give people a chance to share their stories,
their voices, and their struggles. So here's their message to you.
Speaker 10 (18:50):
We love you, hope too, you love is it's hard
to share.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's very good.
Speaker 11 (18:59):
All right, be our next home and we should be
proud of that, We should be bored for that. We
should be be a real American for the concert.
Speaker 9 (19:10):
Yeah, they know women are very bad situations, have a
bad situation in Iran. Yeah, for all people, that is saying,
but for women is very very, very hard. I think
American people know about Massa Amini. Yeah, and they really
(19:36):
they chill us, really, they chill women for simple things.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I heard hundreds of stories like this in my time
in Bajo Jiquito and the last Blancast migrant reception center
that migrants travel to after they arrive in Baja Chiquito.
People left horrific things behind them and saw horrific things
on their journey, but they all remained hopeful for a
better future in America. These journeys, in some cases.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Can take a year or more.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
One napoorly Man I met in Bajojuquito, I'd spent thirty
months just to get that far, and among his group,
his journey had been the fastest. As long as these
journeys are that Darien often stems out as the hardest
part do understand why I want to take you back
to that shady spot by the river, just a few
minutes south of Bajo Juquito. So what I'm doing right now,
(20:35):
you can hear from my foot depths, is I'm doing
what it told me not to do. I'm walking along
the migrant trail. Lots of like vines and creepers and
oh fucking hell, that's me ely eating shit. There's little
bits of tape marking a trail. I think they just
come down the river here, and some local guys are
(20:57):
pushing out wheelbarrows on the trail to dump trash. There's
trash everywhere to fucking mess. Uh the little wood arrows
that they've carved just outside town to direct people into town,
and if I heard, I can see migrants making what's
probably hopefully their final crossing of the river here. One
thing I noticed was that as soon as I got
(21:17):
out of sight in near shot of the town, the
jungle seemed a lot more intimidating. I'm somebod who spends
a lot of time in the mountains, and I grew
up playing in the woods. I'm comfortable outdoors, and I
frequently camp and hike for days on my own.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
I like it better that way, and I might.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
See more comfortable forty feet under the sea free diving,
or three hours from the nearest road. Then I'm in
a busy city sometimes, but in the jungle, after all
the stories I'd heard that week.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
I was afraid. I get scary. I don't know why.
I mean, everything's new to me. I'm, you know, relatively
comfortable in the outdoors.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But fucking there's new animals, there's new plants. I don't
know what's poisonous, what's going to kill me, and who's
going to try and hurt me?
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Got another fucking horse, Jesus wept. I'm jumping out my skin. Everything.
Now it's funny.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I'm in a place that's beautiful, you know, like these
better paradise plants are just just growing. Here's gorgeousness. Horses
along to people of the black community. I suppose it's
having snacks, you know, eating jungle horse food. And here
here I'm at the river.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
It's wide.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Here, it's sort of shallow, and it's been dammed up
a little bit with rubbish, just like flocks and and
jets some kind of stuff.
Speaker 12 (22:44):
And then.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
This is where people cross because of that little dam,
but it's still got some force to it, like you
wouldn't want to fall and crack your head or you know,
a lot of these folks.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
You can't swim even without the fear.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
It's hard going because you've only hiked on trails, so
I have don't realize how much work goes into making
that surface possible. There are no trail crews in the Darien,
and as a result, every step has the potential to
results in a sprained ankle or another injury, which might
sound trivial but can be faithal in such a remote
and challenging place. Trail is all rocks, like maybe rocks
(23:18):
the side of a fist by that way now, and
then there are sort of in this area we only
have the lower canopy, so we have ferns, we have reeds,
bamboo plants growing really tall and straight, that's what they
use for the poles that the pit I was, and then.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Sort of low grassy kind of plants.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
And then where the migrant to walk is just this
muddy trail that every time it range just turns into
like ankle to.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
Knee deep mud.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
And I could see them making pretty slow progress along
the trail towards me. At the end of the day,
as I took a piaguard back to Madagante, where I
would be staying the night, I reflected again on this
and the incredible tenacity it took for people with little
outdoor experience some terrible equipment to pass through the jungle.
You know, I'm a fit person. I run ultramarathons. I
(24:05):
used to be exercised for a living. And it's fucking hard.
It's wet, everything's wet all the time. If you're wet
from the rain, then you're wet. If you're wet from
the sweat and you're wet. If you cross rivers, you
get wet. You just can't stay dry. And everyone's feet
are just fucked when they get into town, like the
(24:26):
size of the blisters I've seen, And like one lady
had a cramp today where like it just locked up
a whole that she like I grabbed her or she
was falling down and I was able to hold her up.
But people are really pushing themselves physically as well as psychologically.
That river crossing south of Bachigito was as far south
(24:48):
as I was going to be able to get without
being forced tobly abjected from Panama, and my request to
take a boat or walk further south was denied by
the Panamanian Ministry of Security. So the only part of
the migrants journey I would share with them with their
last kilometer or so of their walk. Even then, I
wasn't really supposed to be leaving town at all, So
several times over the days I spent in Bajajiquito, I
(25:10):
would look over my shoulder, hop down the river bank,
jump across the stream, and lightly jog out of town.
Once on the trail, I'd started to walk slowly and
try and waive a groups of outcoming migrants. I didn't
want to scare them.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
I offered to.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Carry their bags and gant any help I could, supporting
them as they walked towards their first meal and clean
drink of water. In up to a week, just getting
(25:52):
to bajaji Gito was a journey in itself for me.
I took two flights a five hour drive, which was
equally split between paved roads, roads that aspired to pavement,
and dirt roads. At the end of our road journey,
the Pan American Highway, the links Alaska to Argentina, seems
to give up on fighting the jungle and Peter's out.
Asphalt turned to worse asphalt, which turned to dirt, which
(26:15):
turned to mud, which led us to a river. A driver, however,
was prepared for this.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
The drive here was mad, like that road was fucked.
We're in this tiny little card.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
The driver took off his shoes and socks to conduct
the more technical section of the drive, which I thought
was quite amusing. And yeah, really steep, lots of holes,
lots of potholes, you know, just really rutted out a
kind of dirt road.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
And then we got here and took.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Some guys, negotiated a price and told them where we
wanted to go, and they said, yeah, sure, buy some water,
you know, snow water on the way about three hours
and so we bought some water right there, and yeah,
here we are on the boat now, as you can hear.
I recorded this on a piragua. It's a kind of
dugout canoe with the hole made out of a single
(27:05):
tree and a tooth stroke motor bolted on the back.
It's the only way to travel here other than on
your feet, and it's the only way the Embarra can
get the produced cigaret to market. The skill of the Piragueros,
the people who drive the piraguas, is incredible. They navigate
parts of the river so shallow that they have to
pull up the tooth stroke motor, and I noticed all
(27:26):
the motors have propellers that are covered in chips and
bashes from smacking into the rocks at the bottom. In
the bow of the boat, I sat on top of
my giant rucksack, marveling at the birds, insects, and foliage
of the jungle, and occasionally I jumped up to make
fairly useless contributions with the boat's bamboo pole under the
close supervision of Marcellino, our driver, and a soon to
(27:49):
be host for mostly just laughed at me as I
leaned my whole way into the pole, which nosably slipped,
and I tried to avoid falling face first into the
chocolate brown water. On the way to Baajiki, we passed
several small lumber our villages. Little children waved at us
from the banks or from the shallows of the river
where they washed and played. Adults looked on and doubtless
(28:09):
why there One nurse's Exct. Three white dude was going
the wrong way on the river for a migrant but
they smiled and waved back anyway. After an overnight flight,
a five hour drive, and three hours in a dugout canoe,
we rounded a corner in the river. Bao Jigito came
into view. Over the last few years, it three oorientated
itself from a tiny indigenous village to an unofficial reception
(28:32):
center for migrants. On my hopelessly outdated topo map, the
area has nothing but contours and green shading, no roads,
no trails, no markets of human existence at all, And
perhaps that's how the state sees this place. The Daddy
n is as real to most Panamanians a Sesame street
or Jurassic park, But for them this has been their
(28:54):
home since long before Panama and Columbia and even maps existed.
A few dozen houses in the village, mostly built on
stilts to avoid the seasonal floods, now, offer up their
rooms as hostels for the migrants. Some of them have
enclosed at bottom floor using plywood or cinder blocks. Others
have strung hammocks from their support posts. For four or
(29:15):
five bugs, migrants can get their first good night's sleep
since they left Neck or Clee in Columbia as much
as a week before. Along the main street, which is
really just to raise concrete footpath about a meter across,
you can buy a meal any of half a dozen
places for five bucks. You can get an hour of
Wi Fi for a dollar, or charge your phone for
at the same price. Cold drinks for a dollar as well.
(29:36):
Are one of the many front rooms that have turned
into small kiosks. And that's where the migrants I have
been sitting down with at the river went. When they're
arrived into town, I let them be for a while
I went off to interview more migrants. About a thousand
of them arrive in this village every day. Each year
since a pandemic has seen record numbers arrived, and the
little village on the side of a hill, surrounded by
(29:58):
palm trees and full of smiling children in their traditional
brightly colored pollumers chasing chickens and dogs, has welcomed every
single one of them. About a thousand of them arrive
in this town every day.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
To get here.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
They also take a boat from necko'clee across the golf
of the Dabienne. They crossed on small motor boats to
Kapolgana or Kandel. Those are both towns on the western
side of the Gulf of the Darienne. From there they
begin their walk. Even though they're now north of the Dolf,
they're still in Colombia and on the Colombian.
Speaker 6 (30:28):
Side of the border.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
They're guided by guides, to whom they pay several hundred
dollars and in return received protection and a wristband that
ensures they can walk without being robbed. Nobody I spoke
to had made it this far without paying a guide.
The area is largely under the control of the Golf Cartel,
several members of which were sanctioned by the USA.
Speaker 6 (30:48):
While I was in the jungle.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
The markers I spoke to didn't really have much bad
to say about this part of their experience, but universally
acknowledged that the next part was where they really confronted
their fears and nightmares about the Daddy inne Here's one
Venezuelan migrant sharing his experience.
Speaker 13 (31:05):
That's nothing compared to what comes from the border. To hear, Yes,
the road is better, and I say that the danger
is less too, and they have everything you need there.
You come prepared, you have, you come with water, and
there are also many ravines where you can drink water well.
There are springs that come from the mountain, but from
the border on it's pretty ugly.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
It's a stretch from the Colombian Panamanian border at a
place that they call Las Banderas, which means to flags,
to Bajo Chiquito, where migrants suffer the most. There they
can't drink from the river because a human waste and
human remains that constantly fill it like the water deadly.
They must walk on unmaintained trails. It often turns in
(31:47):
deep mud. They only have the supplies they carry, which
often run out, or they jettison to stave weight on
the incredibly steep mountain path. They climb and descend those
mountains across rivers, often without eating or drinking for days
at a time. On the trail, they passed by the
bodies of their fellow travelers as a constant reminder of
(32:07):
the risk they're taking. If you ask people in Panama City,
they'll tell you that Dalian is closed now. Your president,
Nose Raoul Molino was elected on a promise to shut
down the gap, end the humanitarian crisis, and deport more
migrants with US funding, and that funding has certainly arrived,
with more than six million already spent since he took
(32:28):
office in July. Since then, Panama has deported more than
eleven hundred people to Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
And India.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Each of these has been funded by US taxpayers. Obviously,
the jungle isn't closed, and it can't really be closed,
but in an interview before he was elected, Molino said
that the border of the United States, instead of being
in Texas, has moved to Panama, and that is something
he can do with US support. I spoke to us
(32:57):
in venezuel And ladies to help them carry their bags.
It's a steep hill, and they were saying that no
one had seen any barriers. I don't know when to
think about any barriers or any fences in a Darian
and that like they hadn't heard it was closed. Evidently
it's not. I'm standing in front of one hundred people
who just got off a boat from.
Speaker 6 (33:13):
The Darienn.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Hubris Aside, the rhetoric of closing the Dadi m signals
are turn not just in Panamanian politics, but in the
way the world sees and handles migration. The US has
always sought to externalize its borders from US train border
patrol officers and Dominican Republic along the border is Haiti
to DHS agents deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. As migration
(33:37):
has become more politicized, the US has sought to move
its enforcement away from prying eyes and from compassion, and
instead brought more trauma to a place that is already
so hard. I've spent much of the last decade of
my life watching the state try to bring the mountains
and desert close to where I live under its control.
I've stood with Kumia people as the government dynamited their graveyards.
(34:00):
I found border wal contractors lost deep in the mountains.
I've driven the impossibly steep concrete roads that they built,
worried about my truck turning end on end. I've seen
billions of dollars thrown at these mountains, and I've seen
people with twenty dollars angle grinders or ladders made of
old palettes defeat the wall in moments. Trying to close
borders doesn't work at home, and it won't work in
(34:22):
the Daddy and Gap either. Just building the roads to
get the construction equipment into the gap is a gargantuan
task in any attempt to create a barrier across the
sixty kilometer wide wilderness area, or simply push migrants onto
other more dangerous routes, into places where you can't build
and the places where nobody can rescue you if you
fall down or break your leg. That doesn't mean there's
(34:44):
nothing the US can do. I saw first hand the
impact of Americans spending here as migrants had a reception
center called Lajas Blancas, had their families torn apart, and men,
women and children cried as their parents and partners were
taken away for a flight back to columb be A, Cuba,
or Venezuela that my taxes helped to pay for. I
consoled the children with toys and stickers and something to
(35:07):
eat as their dads were loaded into a flatbed truck.
A government didn't send money to feed these children, but
it seemed to have the funds to fund their parents' deportation.
By deporting people from Panama, the US effectively deprives them
of much of the due process they should, in theory,
have the right to in the United States, and the
US can easily deport them back to places like Cuba
(35:28):
and Venezuela, which he considers to be dictatorial regimes. The
US does not and cannot stop migration. People have always moved,
and people will always want a better future for their children.
What it can do is make it as painful and
dangerous as possible. But the rais of word barriers in
the Daddy and Gap which I've seen person on social
(35:49):
media didn't exist for the hundreds of migrants I spoke to.
No one I asked had even seen them, but what
they had seen was far worse.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
There are many rivers that you're forced into all the time.
You're putting your life and everything else on the line there.
I was worried that the indigenous people would come out
and do something to us. In the nights. I was
worried that any of the children, god forbid, would have
an accident. The same for me. It's horrible to think
about it now.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
This mother hood cross with a five, six, and sixteen
year old child, the baby of six months. They'd all
made it in one piece, but the journey clearly had
its impact on the children.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There are many people who are left out there without
food and do not have anything to give to their children.
We had food until last night, nothing left now, and
we had to each one had to just eat a
little bit because we had nothing else to give them.
You can't find anything there. It's in the middle of nowhere.
People died right now along with those who came with
(36:53):
us yesterday. How many died yesterday?
Speaker 6 (36:56):
Three?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think three died yesterday. One drowned in the river. Yeah,
it's really tough.
Speaker 14 (37:02):
This.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
No, no, nobody should do this. Nobody. We do this
out of pure physical necessity to look for a better
future for our kids. We can't stay in our country.
We couldn't stay any longer.
Speaker 6 (37:14):
There.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
Here are a couple of the kids I spoke to,
or in some cases the kids who took my regorda
and conducted interviews with each other.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
The mountains, I was so tired and I couldn't climb anymore,
And when I fell on the river, I was really scared.
Speaker 12 (37:33):
Anymore.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
Apparently the whole thing was like an adventure she'd seen
Pepper Pig having, which at once made me giggle and
also one reflection, It's one of the saddest things I've
ever had to record. I'm sure her mum told her
that to make it easier for her to pass through
a terrible place. They're really sure to be at home
washing Pepper pig and playing with her friends. No walking
past three dead bodies which are currently decomposing on the trail.
(37:58):
She seemed remarkably resilly. She said the long bust ride
she'd taken to get there one boring because she enjoyed
looking out the window and the whole journey was.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Well, I'll let her say, Mamma, I'm not buying.
Speaker 14 (38:11):
Her.
Speaker 6 (38:12):
Mum gave us a different account.
Speaker 14 (38:14):
Raho.
Speaker 15 (38:18):
I didn't want to cry because I didn't want her
to see me crying. But sometimes I would explode because
it's hard for your child to ask you for water,
to ask you for food, and you don't have any
to be in a place where you walk. You walk
from five in the morning, it's five in the afternoon.
You're walking, you don't know what to do, going through
more than one hundred rivers and asking God not to
(38:38):
rain and not wanting it to get worse. It rained,
and the girl got a fever.
Speaker 6 (38:43):
She got a fever.
Speaker 15 (38:45):
But well, God is good that we pray a lot.
I say that we don't know God so much in
the church from the process and the process that we
are in, and we don't know we can be so
strong until we go through that storm and we see
that he protect us. He knows that he was always
there watching over us, taking care of us at all times.
Speaker 5 (39:05):
Parents being amazed at their children and drawing shrink from
them and their faith was a common message I heard
from migrants. He's a migrant from Zimbabwe telling me how
her daughter inspired her to keep going, but she felt
like she couldn't walk anymore.
Speaker 14 (39:19):
My daughter, she was strong, she was strong, but she
was crying also, but she has got wound all over
the body. Even me, I was crying myself. I was like,
I want to just put myself in the water, then
I can just go both. The gene was tough, really
really tough. The mountain, the stones, the river. It's not
(39:40):
easy at all. It's not very I don't even recommended
someone to say you use daddy and gave no. And
even myself, I did know about it. I was regretting myself.
Speaker 10 (39:52):
I was crying.
Speaker 14 (39:53):
I was like, God, I don't know my family and
my family they don't know where I am right now.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
But like so many other migrants, when the government of
the world abandoned her, she found strength in the strangers
along the road, who wouldn't abandon her.
Speaker 14 (40:09):
We didn't even eat anything. We just asked and people,
can I have a piece of biscuit?
Speaker 10 (40:14):
They just help us.
Speaker 7 (40:15):
That's nice.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
The other migrants helped you.
Speaker 14 (40:17):
Yeah, the others.
Speaker 5 (40:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (40:19):
Do you think that they treat African people differently?
Speaker 14 (40:23):
Very nice, especially these Spanish people, they are very nice.
I don't want to lie because if you need help,
you for call them for your The other ones they
might run away, but the other ones they just come
for help. They even give us tablets on the road,
give us energy drinks, give my daughter a sweets for energe.
(40:45):
They push us like, let's go, guys, let's call, let's go.
You make it, and we really make it.
Speaker 5 (41:17):
The journey over the mountains to Banama has become more
and more popular in recent years as other routes have
become more dangerous or closed themselves off to migrants entirely.
It's a route the Embira tell me that started with
people leaving India and then Haiti. It grew as conditions
in Venezuela became more unsustainable and people found themselves too
poor to stay home and too poor to travel north
(41:40):
by any other means, and so they chose a deadly
jungle over a future in a country where their votes
don't matter. Last year, as many as half a million
people cross the jungle. This year we might see more
migrants arriving about Jiguito spend the day in the village
before taking off in a piagua of their own up
to Lahas Blancas the micro reception center I mentioned earlier.
(42:02):
They register with Panamanian Board Patrol known by the acronym
Cena Front, and they call their families to say they survived.
Then they dry out their blistered feet, enjoy the cooking
of several of the families who have turned their homes
into sort of ersad's restaurants. They sleep on the floors
of the houses or underneath them, wardge their phones for
a dollar a time. Certainly, migration has changed this town,
(42:25):
and I want to talk about that more in tomorrow's episode.
But despite more than a million people passing through this route,
you don't find anti migrant sentiment here right now, Despite
the gap being a deadly de terrent, numbers are expected
to reach a record again this year, maybe seven hundred
thousand people will walk the gap. But despite these numbers,
(42:46):
which may seem high for a small country. I didn't
really find much anti migrant sentiment in Panama as a whole.
There's plenty of it in the US, though, And as
the United States winds down its war and terror, it
needs a new nebulous enemy to fight its military spending
and to keep the security into veillance companies donat into
politicians in their millions. In part, it is found that
(43:08):
by simply opening a floodgate of weapons and funding, they
can spew forth genocide and death in Palestine and keep
some of its income streams.
Speaker 6 (43:18):
But it needs a more long term solution.
Speaker 5 (43:21):
There are only so many Palestinian babies that can bomb,
and we'll run out of Palestinians long before we run
out of bombs. The USA is new enemy when it
must seek out all over the world. It's a migrant.
It's a woman I met carrying her child across the mountains.
The little Venezuelan girl throwing bottle caps into a cinderblock
with me to pass the time as she asked me
(43:41):
questions about America. It's a twenty one year old man
whose remains my friends found in the border on a
hot day this September. The US will stop at nothing
and fining and destroying the migrant, and just as it
did in the War on Terror, it will find fast
friends in states desperate to avail themselves to a seemingly
unlimited flow of resources. US dedicates to keeping its conflicts
(44:02):
out of the sights and the minds of its citizens.
The USA's open hostility to migrants isn't something that's unknown here.
Everyone I met knew about it. Several of them had
watched with horror as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued
(44:25):
not about how to treat migrants but about who could
turn more of them away. In a recent presidential debate,
Every migrant I met had questioned about CBP one, about
US asylum policy, and about how they could get to
the US before a second Trump administration. Despite this, they
all clung to their versions of the American dream. They
wanted to work and be paid a fair wage, to
(44:47):
send their kids to school and maybe to college, to
feel safe in their homes, and to be able to
speak and dress as they wished without fearing consequences. All
of those things are imperiling this country too, and they
know that, but they still feel their dreams are worth
the journey. For Noemi, little girl who took the daddy
in a astride, The American dream was pretty simple. She
(45:09):
wanted two things, to see Minnie Mouse and to see
her around.
Speaker 12 (45:14):
Why am I miss a studio app?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Not yet?
Speaker 12 (45:22):
An amimia a dia amida, It could happen.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 15 (45:38):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host
Prop
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