Metetí, Panamá, 22 dic (EFE).- Panama closes 2023 marked by the worsening migratory crisis, the year has broken the record of half a million migrants transiting through the Darien, the jungle that connects the Isthmus to South America, a figure that doubles the record set last year and includes an increase in the number of minors.
According to the Panamanian authorities, as of Dec. 20, 513,782 migrants had crossed the Darien, most of them Venezuelans (326,589), followed by Ecuadorians (56,328) and Haitians (45,628), with the aim of reaching the United States, but also Canada, in search of better living conditions.
Both violence and socio-economic conditions in their countries of origin have forced them to cross half the continent and the Darien on foot. Despite tightening migration restrictions in the region this year, they face a deadly jungle with natural dangers and the presence of armed groups, as reported by interviewed migrants to EFE.
One such case is Segundo Muela, a 35-year-old Ecuadorian from Latacunga, south of Quito, who, faced with the lack of work and the escalation of violence in Ecuador decided this month to go to North America with his wife and two children, ages four and seven.
“Our family motivated us to leave because of the lack of work and the insecurity in Ecuador (…) mafias ask you to pay for the “vaccine” (a form of extortion)… when we want to open a business, they ask us to pay for it. For security, they say, but it’s a lie,” Muela told EFE in Bajo Chiquito, the first town where the migrants arrived after crossing the jungle.
More than 100,000 minors have crossed the Darién
This year, 2023, “has been a record-breaking year. More than 100,000 children and adolescents have crossed, 50% of them under the age of five,” Johana Tejada, gender expert for the United Nations Children’s Fund, told EFE.
Most of the migrating families come from Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador, and Colombia, said the expert at the Lajas Blanca shelter, which, like Bajo Chiquito, is the scene of this situation with numerous families with children and adolescents.
Unicef expert warns of an increase in the arrival of minors separated from their parents during the crossing and of adolescents traveling “alone.”
Humanitarian organizations enhance their projects
The massive arrival of migrants has forced humanitarian organizations to reinforce their projects in Darien after 2022, a year that also registered a record number of 248,000 people in transit.
“We have been working in an inter-agency network in what we call ‘scenario building’ to reorganize and improve our interventions according to this growth,” Verónica Martínez, the migration delegate of the International Federation of Red Cross based in Darien, told EFE.
After crossing the jungle, the migrants first arrive in Bajo Chiquito. Here, the authorities register their data and the migrants spend the night. The next day, they travel in canoes (paid by the migrants) down the Turquesa river to one of the two existing shelters in Darien.
In addition to the UN, there are several organizations that provide humanitarian and medical aid, as well as the Panamanian authorities, who provide food aid in a unique operation in the continent, in which the government has invested about 70 million dollars in recent years, according to official data.
From Darien, the migrants must take a bus to get to Costa Rica.
The restrictions announced by several transit countries, such as Panama, which is deporting undocumented migrants with criminal records, or the United States, which has made asylum more difficult to obtain, fail to stop the flow.
“We all want to work so that we can have a better quality of life and provide a better future to our children and family in Venezuela,” says Stephanie Refinjojozolano, a 22-year-old Venezuelan who, along with her 6-year-old daughter and husband is heading to the US. EFE
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