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