Panama’s Darien Gap, a highway and a graveyard for migrants, sees rising dangers in the crowded jungle

Klismar Bracho knew it would not be easy crossing the Darien, the roadless jungle that straddles the border between Colombia and Panama. Human remains are regularly spotted alongside the route, which has turned into a densely-travelled path for migrants.

The number of those crossing may reach 400,000 this year, international organizations warn, a swell of humanity more populous than Halifax.

In 2022, people of more than 70 nationalities passed through in attempts to reach the U.S. border, in the hopes they will find a welcome reception there – and, for a small subset, in Canada – after enduring the privations of the jungle.

Able-bodied men limp out of the forest, battered by tumbles and so hungry they describe eating snakes. At one Panamanian town, a doctor reports one in 10 arrivals coming to see him for medical care.

Mr. Bracho, 25, has just one leg. He crossed with his partner and a stepson who is not yet three years old. “Before we left we agreed that it was going to be really hard – but we decided we have to make it,” he said.

On parts of the journey, he feared death.

These are the dangers that authorities have sought to underscore, as the region mounts a new effort to slow the flow. The U.S. has helped to lead that effort, ahead of the expected May 11 expiration of Title 42, a pandemic policy used to rapidly expel millions of migrants. At the end of April, the U.S. said it would begin processing migrants in Colombia, in hopes of diverting some from trekking into Panama.

Authorities have gone so far as to petition for the removal of social media accounts promoting the jungle route, Panama’s foreign minister, Janaina Tewaney, said in an interview.

“We have started, with the support of the U.S., a campaign called Darien no es una rota,” she said: The Darien is not a route.

“It’s about the violence and the dangers they face in the jungle by all the groups that are abusing their fragility.”

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But fragility has proven little obstacle.

A car accident claimed Mr. Bracho’s right leg when he was 15, and he now walks with crutches, his arms thick with muscle from supporting his weight. Six years ago, he moved from Venezuela to Peru, joining more than seven million of his fellow citizens who have abandoned the economic failure of their own country.

He still yearned for something better, describing the exhaustion of living day-to-day, earning what he could as a street vendor and polisher of cars. “I wasn’t making enough. I wanted more,” he said. “I want to get to the U.S.”

A few years ago, all of that might have seemed like so much reverie, particularly for someone navigating on a single leg. But as the trickle of migrants through the Darien has swollen to a human torrent, it has created a narrative of success that has found a global audience.

“I have a friend who walked through with a prosthesis who is already in Mexico City,” Mr. Bracho said. His friend told him: “The road is hard, but not impossible.”

That was good enough for Mr. Bracho.

His willingness to attempt a path that was once considered impassable underscores the immensity of the challenge for the governments that want to halt its use.

Even a few years ago, the trails through the Darien jungle were the realm of local Indigenous groups who knew the area, an occasional wealthy explorer and young Colombians who slipped through with backpacks full of narcotics, willing to confront the dangers of feline predators and flash floods in exchange for a payday.

Then, as more migrants started to come through, some posted videos to Tik Tok, describing the jungle route and often downplaying its dangers. The whole world took note.

South Americans now walk alongside people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Syria and many others.

Young men continue to make up the majority. But they are joined by the middle-aged, single mothers and even those not yet old enough to walk themselves. Last year, minors made up 16 per cent of those crossing. In the early months of this year, it was nearly one in five.

Even illness has proven little deterrent. “We’re getting more and more people with chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, HIV and cancer,” said Tamara Guillermo, field co-ordinator for Doctors Without Borders.

Panama has many reasons to push away the influx of people. The country spent roughly $50-million on food, basic medical care and some security for migrants last year.

Those crossing the jungle also imperil a critical natural resource. The Darien is among Earth’s most intact stretches of tropical forest and coastline.

But international aid organizations have expressed concern about the dangers of forcibly stopping the human passage.

“What we know is that militarizing borders does not reduce migration,” said Ms. Guillermo, the Doctors Without Borders field co-ordinator. “It only increases the suffering of the migrants, who will then have to seek for even worse pathways.”

Giuseppe Loprete, chief of mission to Panama for the International Organization for Migration, argues wealthier countries – Canada included – should examine their own labour markets and offer visas to those who can fill gaps, he said. That would allow people who might otherwise cross the jungle “to go through the border regularly and be integrated into another country,” he said.

He warned against any attempt to achieve swift results.

“The main countries that are involved, they all want to find quick solutions – although they know it’s the medium and long-term solution they should seek,” he said.

For now, Panama has agreed, saying it prefers diplomatic solutions to using its National Border Service to repel migrants.

“That’s inhuman,” Ms. Tewaney said. “Sending them back is like giving them a death sentence.”

She expressed hope that new U.S. migrant processing centres, one in Colombia and another in Guatemala, will help reduce numbers.

Another concern is providing support to the small Panamanian communities, many of them Indigenous, who have welcomed the sudden surge of migrants as a balm for their impoverished circumstances.

Ms. Tewaney plans to travel to Washington in May, where she will make the case for receiving help from organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, which have historically considered Panama too wealthy for aid. “Our challenge is to find a way in which we can receive that support, considering our special condition,” Ms. Tewaney said.

Convincing her own people, however, may prove just as difficult.

Migration has turned the distant outposts of the country’s southern fringe into boomtowns.

Bajo Chiquito is a town of 492 that has become a key transit point, with thousands of migrants arriving daily in boats on the Rio Chucunaque.

The signs of new wealth are unmistakable here. Beside the pads of concrete and dirt where migrants pay US$3 to US$5 a night to place a tent for the night – plus $2 to charge a cell phone, $1 for a three-minute WhatsApp call and another $5 for a meal of fried chicken with rice and lentils – workers carry long strips of lumber and slap cinder blocks into place. Wooden houses on stilts are quickly giving way to multi-storey concrete structures.

From the door of one, Hornito Berrugal looked out at the men mixing concrete a few metres away inside the walls of a new bar he is building.

Like many, he has put his dugout canoe to profitable new use carrying migrants down the river. Four communities share the bonanza, each taking a day in turn. On Bajo Chiquito’s day, Mr. Berrugal is permitted one boat trip to pick up passengers. But with 20 migrants each paying $20 each, it’s a considerable payday.

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Not long ago, the harvest of timber brought some revenue here. Now, migration makes up at least half of the local income, estimates Nelson Aji, 40, a local leader.

There are “no negatives,” Mr. Aji said, dismissing reports of rape in the community as untrue.

Even so, just about everyone agrees that a perilous moment approaches. In the first four months of 2023, the number of migrants crossing the jungle increased more than tenfold compared with last year – and April marked the end of the dry season.

The wetter months that follow are almost certain to bring greater hardship.

“When the rivers are up, people take bigger risks,” said Ariel Garibaldo, a doctor in Bajo Chiquito.

During the rainy season he expects more cases than the roughly one in 10 migrants who come to see him now. In the wet, people take longer to cross the jungle and dehydration becomes more common. Mud and slippery surfaces bring fractures. Cold and wet induces influenza and hypothermia.

Some people Dr. Garibaldo won’t be able to help at all, including those who drown in flash floods.

In El Real de Santa Maria, a small settlement down the Rio Chucunaque from Bajo Chiquito, the local cemetery now offers an unmistakable sign of the dangers. In March, workers completed construction of a 100-slot above-ground burial chamber. A concrete frame painted brilliant white, it was built behind an unmarked patch of rough grass.

That grass has grown over the unmarked grave of people whose bodies have been discovered in the river or the nearby jungle. Luis Antonio Moreno, a local doctor, believes roughly 50 have been entombed there, in pits dug with heavy equipment.

“We assume they were migrants, because they had no identification and didn’t look like they are from the area,” he said. Several more bodies lie in El Real’s morgue, where they have remained for several months. They may be the first to be interred in the new burial chamber.

“I get chills just thinking about it,” Dr. Antonio said.

“People need to leave those countries that are in crisis,” he said. “But we need to find a way to avoid these deaths – and this route that is so long and so dangerous.”

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Even in dry months, the jungle remains pocked with bodies, some surrounded by vultures. Venezuelan Junqui Campos saw two when she crossed in late April.

“I panicked,” she said. “But when you’re there, it’s too late to turn around.” She recalled seeing the footprints of big cats on the trail. The sight of the corpses became a potent motivator, especially after an injury left her limping.

“I thought about the dead bodies and I just kept going,” she said. “You have to get out of there or you will die, too.”

Social media posts about the trail can underplay its dangers, drawing people like Isis Fernandes and her four children, the youngest a one-year-old who was badly burned by a spill from boiling water. Ms. Fernandes herself injured a knee. It was “horrible,” she said.

Theft and sexual assault are common.

But so are people who have discovered that the jungle can now be surmounted at lightning speed. Carlos Fernando Vaca Guerrero, 43, arrived at Lajas Blancas with a pronounced stagger to his step. He had torn a muscle, he said.

He nonetheless crossed the jungle in a day and a half. “We were almost running,” he said. “Everything is dry and safe.”

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Blanco Alexander, 40, was with a group held hostage on the Colombian side until they each wired US$220 to their captors. They sustained their journey by eating worms, fish made into soup with river water and a boa constrictor killed with a machete and roasted over a fire.

“It was like Ed Stafford,” Mr. Alexander said, laughing as he compares himself to the British survivalist. The boa flesh, he said, tasted a bit like chicken.

Yohelin Puentes, 35, found a golf club in the jungle and used it as a crutch after injuring a tendon. John Navarro, a teenager, carried two skateboard decks with him, signed by his friends. He refused to leave them behind, a reminder of the Venezuelan life he hopes to never resume.

Mr. Bracho, for his part, smiled as he recounted the hardships he endured.

Even before setting foot in the jungle, someone who offered support as he disembarked from a boat stole money and two cellphones from his belt bag.

On the trail, the tips of his canes often penetrated deep into the muck or slipped off rocks. Some slopes were so steep that he dragged himself up, using trees as support. Repeated falls left him bruised. He navigated past cliffs where he feared a slip would bring death. One night he and his family did not arrive at a camp until 11 p.m.

And yet, the trio emerged from the jungle trails – a trip known to take some people a week – in just two days, he said.

“With faith and determination,” he said, “you can do it.”

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