Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: It's me James, and before we listen to this episode today,
Speaker 2: I just did want to make you a way that
Speaker 2: I conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish,
Speaker 2: and then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing
Speaker 2: is a translated interview that's being edited for brevity and content.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed the episode, s l P G awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the journey is dangerous, but what can we do.
Speaker 3: We can't stay in a country where the economy is
Speaker 3: getting worse and worse. With a salary of three dollars
Speaker 3: a month, you can't survive. Like my friend said, if
Speaker 3: you have a job in other countries, maybe you can
Speaker 3: invest some money. But where are you going to get
Speaker 3: the money to invest If before you had a salary
Speaker 3: that fed you paid for your car, your house and
Speaker 3: your children to enjoy it all with, and now you
Speaker 3: can't even afford to put gas in the car. So
Speaker 3: it's true. Yeah, the darien is dangerous, but nothing is impossible.
Speaker 3: We walk hand in hand with God and with the
Speaker 3: faith that we will get there. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: it isn't difficult. But I'll say it again, it's not impossible.
Speaker 3: You suffer, you cry, you go hungry cold, but thank
Speaker 3: God we made it through.
Speaker 2: Bored around the Touquesa River, the jungle rumbles quiet as
Speaker 2: you pass by on your boat. Insects, frogs, and birds
Speaker 2: all combined to make a sort of deep throbbing that
Speaker 2: emanates from the darkness between the trees. It seems at
Speaker 2: wants to be calling you in and warning you to
Speaker 2: stay away. I've been in the jungle before, in the
Speaker 2: Rwanda Congo borderlands and in Venezuela, but I've never really
Speaker 2: felt the sense of foreboding I did as we rode
Speaker 2: down the river, protected only by our hollow log, looking
Speaker 2: into the triple canopy forest, and knowing that if I
Speaker 2: walk long enough in the shadows, I'd be confronted the
Speaker 2: remains of people I might have interviewed if it hadn't
Speaker 2: been for a rolld ankle, a slippery rock, or a
Speaker 2: desperate sip of water. To understand what drives people to
Speaker 2: enter the jungle with their children and their dreams, I
Speaker 2: think we also have to understand what drives them to
Speaker 2: leave where they're living. And that's what I want to
Speaker 2: talk about today, the story of migrants crossing the daddy
Speaker 2: and gap is an American one. It's impossible to disentangle
Speaker 2: the people making this dangerous journey from the history of
Speaker 2: support for dictatorship, sanctions, and imperial plunder that ties to the
Speaker 2: United States to its American brothers and sisters in the South.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I play a game with myself at the border
Speaker 2: where I try and meet people from all the countries
Speaker 2: named in Washington bullets in a single day. Since Biden
Speaker 2: bungled the Afghanistan withdraw, it's become a lot easier, but
Speaker 2: Tibet can be hard. For two hundred years, since President
Speaker 2: Monroe gave his State of the Union address in December
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty three, the US has seen the Western hemisphere
Speaker 2: is its sphere of influence. While its opposed old fashioned colonialism,
Speaker 2: it has used less avert methods of control as well
Speaker 2: as overt military across the hemisphere. For much of the
Speaker 2: last century, it supported and installed dictators who would prevent
Speaker 2: what it saw as a threat of state socialism in
Speaker 2: its sphere of influence, and allowed them to create economic
Speaker 2: and political climates that were unsurvivable for the majority and
Speaker 2: extremely profitable for US based corporations. The direct result of
Speaker 2: this policy has been economic insecurity, political instability, and state
Speaker 2: violence across South and Central America, resulting in people making
Speaker 2: the very natural humor decision to flee to somewhere safer.
Speaker 2: As in so many other empires, they've made the choice
Speaker 2: to lead a destabilized colonial periphery and seek safety instability
Speaker 2: in the metropol. For more than a century, money and
Speaker 2: good have been able to travel seamlessly up and down
Speaker 2: the continent, but people have not. The bananaread for breakfast
Speaker 2: this morning made the journey in a few days, but
Speaker 2: people take months, if not years, pay thousands of dollars,
Speaker 2: climb mountains, forded rivers, and risk their lives on trains
Speaker 2: and buses that cost a lot more than the flights
Speaker 2: I took to Panama, but offer considerably less comfort and safety.
Speaker 2: As climate change has have greater impacts, more and more
Speaker 2: people are forced to leave their homes as their livelihoods
Speaker 2: become less sustainable. The Guna, the indigenous people of the
Speaker 2: Panamanian coast in an area called Guna Yala, are having
Speaker 2: to withdraw from some of their islands because of sea
Speaker 2: level rise. Right now, agriculture across the world is increasingly
Speaker 2: threatened by extreme weather and rising temperatures, and our oceans
Speaker 2: are less they're able to sustain life than they once
Speaker 2: were due to pollution and overfishing. Forced to leave their
Speaker 2: homes as people have been for millennia by weather patterns changing,
Speaker 2: people head to places that have once caused much of
Speaker 2: the issue and tried to insulate themselves from its consequences.
Speaker 2: Their American dreams are modest. To overcome the crippling low
Speaker 2: pay they received, a home, to bring their children up
Speaker 2: in a place where they have a good chance of
Speaker 2: surviving their twenties, to work and get paid enough to
Speaker 2: get by. They want to be able to protest and
Speaker 2: not get shot, and to look forward to the future
Speaker 2: not feared. These aren't guaranteed in the USA, and as
Speaker 2: many of you listening will know, it can be hard
Speaker 2: for us to make ends meet here as well. But
Speaker 2: despite what you see on social and legacy media, things
Speaker 2: are unlikely to become as bad here as they are
Speaker 2: in Venezuela, Cameroon or Iran anytime soon. I've lived in Venezuela,
Speaker 2: specifically in the formerly jab eastern neighborhood of La Pastora
Speaker 2: in Caracas, and I've seen how hard it is for
Speaker 2: my friends who still live there. Even for people with
Speaker 2: no other disadvantages, making rent and feeding your family can
Speaker 2: be a challenge. That's part of why Venezuelan people make
Speaker 2: up the majority of the folks I met me Dadian,
Speaker 2: so much so that I'd slipped back into using Venezuelan
Speaker 2: slang in Spanish, and after a few days of seeing
Speaker 2: the same people engaging in the kind of friendly mockery
Speaker 2: and banter that I remember well from Caracas, mostly the
Speaker 2: super form of asking them why they crossed a Daddian
Speaker 2: gap in Man United shirts or worse yet, in a
Speaker 2: Chelsea shit. It's important to steal moments of humor in
Speaker 2: these difficult times, to laugh a little among all the suffering,
Speaker 2: and that's something people in Venezuela have done very well
Speaker 2: for a very long time. But despite their humor, I
Speaker 2: could tell the journey had a serious impact on the
Speaker 2: people I spoke to.
Speaker 4: You have to go through a lot, a lot of jungle,
Speaker 4: a lot of hills. There are people, there are dead
Speaker 4: people on the road, So it's it's something you cannot
Speaker 4: really explain. It's complicated because everything can be explained in
Speaker 4: a fashion, but it's it's not the same as living it.
Speaker 4: It's insanity, three four days with that food and nothing.
Speaker 4: One thing is to live it. Explaining it, talking about it,
Speaker 4: that's different. It's hard to put into words.
Speaker 2: This interview is when I conducted with one group of
Speaker 2: Venezuelan migrants with my voice recorder in the chest pocket
Speaker 2: of my shirt and whatever bags it let me carry
Speaker 2: in my hands. We walked along the last part of
Speaker 2: the trail, discussing what they'd seen. For a while, we
Speaker 2: joked a little. One guy had crossed it a man
Speaker 2: united ship. I talked him about the team and the
Speaker 2: universe was dislike non Menu fans have for Menu fans.
Speaker 2: Then after a while they opened up more about their experiences.
Speaker 2: They had, they said, seen their bodies and they couldn't
Speaker 2: stop thinking about what happened if they'd fallen, and they
Speaker 2: wanted to know how, when or if the dead people's
Speaker 2: family would ever find out.
Speaker 5: The family waits for that person to come out to
Speaker 5: hear that they made it, because if not, who's going
Speaker 5: to let you know? There's no signal and nobody's going
Speaker 5: to grab the body, and you're not going to carry
Speaker 5: them out. The person stays there and eventually, years and
Speaker 5: years go by and the family won't know where they
Speaker 5: are or how they died. Those are the sort of
Speaker 5: things that one doesn't expect to see, and it makes
Speaker 5: you just want to hurry past. Not that you wouldn't
Speaker 5: want to get the documentation from the body and deliver
Speaker 5: it and tell them how this person had passed away,
Speaker 5: But how dare you just go grabbing a dead body.
Speaker 2: Vernetuinan elections were held on the twenty eighth of July
Speaker 2: this year. Venezueynan presidents have a six year term and
Speaker 2: the incumbent to colas Ma Duro, has been in office
Speaker 2: since twenty thirty. I let the Venezuelan people and that
Speaker 2: introduce themselves and explain the result of the election. Now
Speaker 2: there's a bit of background noise here, but that's because
Speaker 2: we were walking on the trails and it's hard to avoid.
Speaker 3: I am coming from Venezuela, migrating through the jungle for
Speaker 3: a better future for me and my children. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you it's hard, but it's not impossible. No, that was
Speaker 3: electoral fraud. And I tell you what, one day, you
Speaker 3: just have to leave.
Speaker 2: Maduro was opposed by A Juardo Gonzalez, an opposite candidate
Speaker 2: who represented a wide coalition increating groups on the left
Speaker 2: and right. One Maduro might have support among Western socialists
Speaker 2: and even communists. The actual Venezuelan Communist Party's youth organization
Speaker 2: formed part of the Popular Democratic Front that opposed him.
Speaker 2: Despite Paul Watchers tallying a massive victory for the opposition,
Speaker 2: Maduro controls the National Election Council and proclaimed himself the victor.
Speaker 2: People protested, and Maduro responded with bullets. Gonzales fled to
Speaker 2: the Dutch and then the Spanish embassy and later claimed
Speaker 2: asylum in Spain, where his family lived. But for regular
Speaker 2: working class Venezuelan's there's no option to hop on a
Speaker 2: flight to safety. Instead, they have to be getting the
Speaker 2: long walk north. As many Venezuelans respect you told me.
Speaker 2: In addition to the electoral fraud, Venezuela is undergoing an
Speaker 2: economic collapse, at least as the Chavis they said, most
Speaker 2: people could eat. When I lived in La Pastora, I
Speaker 2: was able to access medical care from Cuban doctors. Now
Speaker 2: they say things have become a survivaldo so Venezuela.
Speaker 6: When Venezuela well, I would say that Venezuela, you know, yeah,
Speaker 6: you can live, but not on a minimum wage.
Speaker 4: I would say that, for example, working independently in an
Speaker 4: independent business, maybe you can live good. But working and
Speaker 4: surviving for a minimum wage now, the truth is that
Speaker 4: it doesn't work, and that's serious. Things are still bad
Speaker 4: with the new elections and the new government. Everything is ugly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The streets of Caracas are full of protests. Every day.
Speaker 4: People went out to protest. Sometimes they shoot people. The
Speaker 4: government mistreats people. But if you can live with it,
Speaker 4: and you can live with it it's ugly. Well, that
Speaker 4: is why we left there for a better future, and
Speaker 4: we will keep moving onward onward.
Speaker 2: This group were young men traveling in advance with their families,
Speaker 2: hoping to earn some money, save it up, and send
Speaker 2: it home. They knew what they were getting into when
Speaker 2: they got to the USA, that migrants were often underpaid
Speaker 2: and might struggle to make ends meet, but they still
Speaker 2: thought it was better than staying home and watching your
Speaker 2: children's future disappear.
Speaker 5: If you don't have papers, you don't have a work permit,
Speaker 5: you have to work for it. They want to pay you,
Speaker 5: not for what you demand or anything.
Speaker 2: I met lots of Venezuela families with children who had
Speaker 2: different illnesses or disabilities, things they couldn't obtain or afford
Speaker 2: treatment for in Venezuela. They were traveling to the US
Speaker 2: in the hopes of finding a better future for their kids,
Speaker 2: or any future at all. I met young men who
Speaker 2: left their children behind but carried the children of strangers,
Speaker 2: even those with whom they didn't share a language. Christian,
Speaker 2: who he heard from earlier, showed me how he'd carried
Speaker 2: someone else's child on his shoulders until he fell and
Speaker 2: hurt his knee. We all help.
Speaker 4: I put little children up here on my shoulders to
Speaker 4: carry them, but it isn't easy.
Speaker 2: In the jungle, they'd formed chains using their arms to
Speaker 2: cross rivers and carried little children on those who couldn't swim.
Speaker 2: In Barji Guito, I saw a group of men from
Speaker 2: Angola receiving hugs from Venezuela and women they'd helped in
Speaker 2: the jungle. Without the help of the Angolans, they said
Speaker 2: their children wouldn't have made it. One slip or a
Speaker 2: loss of grip, they told me, would be fatal, and
Speaker 2: the remains of those who had done just that served
Speaker 2: as a grisly reminder. Later, little boys, maybe eight or
Speaker 2: ten years old, gleefully recounted seeing a dead body on
Speaker 2: which the head had quote exploded while their parents winked
Speaker 2: in recollection. I wanted to understand a bit more of
Speaker 2: what they were fleeing. That made it worth going through
Speaker 2: all this.
Speaker 6: Venezuela.
Speaker 7: Well, I left Venezuela because I worked in fishing. But
Speaker 7: right now, in Venezuela, despite the fact that it is
Speaker 7: a country rich and oil, there's not enough gasoline for
Speaker 7: the fishermen to go fishing. And since I did not
Speaker 7: have the ability to even buy basic things such as food,
Speaker 7: the situation was, well, it was a little complicated. I
Speaker 7: had to immigrate. I had nothing else to do. They
Speaker 7: didn't rob me, well, they were going to rob me
Speaker 7: because I didn't have anything to steal. We passed by
Speaker 7: and the group that was behind us got robbed. They
Speaker 7: raped women in that group.
Speaker 2: Almost every Venezuelan Migro and I spent to share a
Speaker 2: similar story. One said he didn't store security cameras, but
Speaker 2: nobody could afford them now, as it had to choose
Speaker 2: between rent and groceries or medical procedures that they needed
Speaker 2: but couldn't afford. Overwhelmingly, they said the same thing no aifuturo,
Speaker 2: there's no future. One group said to me that they
Speaker 2: couldn't wait for their country to become like Cuba, as
Speaker 2: decades of embargos took their toll on the population. But
Speaker 2: others reminded me in them that least of Cubans seem
Speaker 2: to have doctors. Venezuela has an eighty percent poverty right now,
Speaker 2: and though it sits on one of the largest oil
Speaker 2: reserves of any country on Earth, it's been plagued by
Speaker 2: planting oil prices in the years of hyperinflation, which got
Speaker 2: so bad at one point the shots stopped putting price
Speaker 2: tags on things and relied on staff to give up
Speaker 2: to the minute prices. Today, alongside a regime that lacks legitimacy,
Speaker 2: a state that readily uses horrific violence against his people,
Speaker 2: an election that was essentially ignored, Venezuelan's must also deal
Speaker 2: with shortages of basic goods, poverty, and malnutrition. Unlike Cubans
Speaker 2: who have a relatively good political lobby in the USA,
Speaker 2: Venezuelan's coming to the USA do not benefit from special laws.
Speaker 2: Cubans under the Cuban Adjustment Act have a part of
Speaker 2: the citizenship and permanence once they set foot on US soil.
Speaker 2: Venezuelans do not. They're covered by something called a temporary
Speaker 2: protected status, but this does not afford them much in
Speaker 2: the way of stability, protection, or a secure future. His
Speaker 2: Erecha Pinhidro of Alotolado and Incredible Organizations does valuable work
Speaker 2: with migrant legal aid advocacy and humanitarian relief, explaining just
Speaker 2: how temporary a TPS is.
Speaker 8: So temporary protected status is it's basically a form of
Speaker 8: protecting individuals who are already in the United States when
Speaker 8: their countries have experienced a natural disaster, if they are
Speaker 8: in war, there's some kind of situation going on that
Speaker 8: makes it difficult for them to return, and so temporary
Speaker 8: protected status was first created in nineteen ninety and the
Speaker 8: first individuals who receive the status were from El Salvador,
Speaker 8: and since then, I think there's been a few dozen
Speaker 8: countries that have been designated. But basically the way it
Speaker 8: works is they designate a country and so if you
Speaker 8: were in the United States before that designation date, you
Speaker 8: can apply for temporary protected status within a designated time
Speaker 8: period and you get a work permit. It's valid for six,
Speaker 8: twelve or eighteen months and then two months before it expires,
Speaker 8: the Secretary of the Department of holand Security has to
Speaker 8: say whether or not they're going to reauthorize GPS. So
Speaker 8: there's like eight hundred and sixty thousand people in the
Speaker 8: US who have temporary protected status and it's not a
Speaker 8: pathtis citizenship. So basically people are just in limbo sometimes
Speaker 8: for decades, you know. They just have to reapply for
Speaker 8: this permit every eighteen months. So I have quite a
Speaker 8: few salvador and friends who've been in the United States
Speaker 8: since the nineties. They have kids, some of them a
Speaker 8: cuarrent kids or a US citizen, and they can't become
Speaker 8: permanent residents or have a paths the citizenship unless they
Speaker 8: leave the country and either come back with another type
Speaker 8: of parole or you know, apply through a consulate, which
Speaker 8: many of them are just not willing to take that risk.
Speaker 2: Well, makes things even more complicated for the Venezuelans, is it.
Speaker 2: Many of them are traveling with that document. It costs
Speaker 2: three hundred bucks to get a passport, they told me,
Speaker 2: and the weight's considerable. This makes their journeys even harder
Speaker 2: as every country the enter has to approve them to
Speaker 2: without a passport getting a visa, they said, would be
Speaker 2: nearly impossible, and just trying might result in the government
Speaker 2: coming after them. Such things, they said, are reserved for
Speaker 2: the wealthier citizens. People like Gonzales, who's asylum claim and
Speaker 2: stays at the Dutch and Spanish embassies and his right
Speaker 2: to join his family in exile are all luxuries that
Speaker 2: most of his country people can't expect. Its dead. Most
Speaker 2: Venezuelans must ride buses through Columbia, then walk north through
Speaker 2: the jungle, then ride buses stir away on trains, or
Speaker 2: walk again all the way to the border. They all
Speaker 2: lamented to dai and crossing, and so they wouldn't advise
Speaker 2: it without other options.
Speaker 9: They all made it anyway, community see, because unfortunately we
Speaker 9: don't have much in our country.
Speaker 5: You don't have another option when you're dying of hunger
Speaker 5: and you don't have a future, you can't even study.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's worth it.
Speaker 2: The economic situation is dire in Venezuela. Many families can't
Speaker 2: make ends me their currency is almost worth US, and
Speaker 2: the majority government seems to have successfully installed itself for
Speaker 2: the fueseeable future. This will mean a continuation of embargos
Speaker 2: is sanctions, which will harm the people more than the regime. Sadly, though,
Speaker 2: economic hot kIPS is not a criteria which won't be
Speaker 2: grounded asylum in the USA his Erica.
Speaker 8: Again, so severe economic deprivation can be persecution if it's
Speaker 8: linked to one of the other projected grounds, so race, religion, nationality,
Speaker 8: political opinion, or membership, but in a particular social group.
Speaker 8: So for example, if someone participated in anti Moduro political
Speaker 8: activity and then we're blocked from getting a job or
Speaker 8: just denied economic opports to the point where they're starving,
Speaker 8: the economic deprivation could count as persecution, but it's a
Speaker 8: very difficult case to make in the United States. In Mexico,
Speaker 8: you can get protection based on generalized conditions in your country,
Speaker 8: and so you know, Venezuelans betweeing economic collapse or even
Speaker 8: Central Americans fleeing extreme violence have a much easier time
Speaker 8: dating protection in Mexico than they would in the United
Speaker 8: States because of that kind of extra category of protection
Speaker 8: in Mexico. The issue with Mexico is just the very
Speaker 8: limited capacity of this islum system overall, and the very
Speaker 8: dangerous conditions in which people are forced to wait while
Speaker 8: their cases are judicated.
Speaker 2: Going forward from the Dadian, they'll face an enormously difficult journey.
Speaker 2: The US does have a program for Cubans, venezuelan Ands,
Speaker 2: Haitians and Nicaraguans, then in theory allows them to apply,
Speaker 2: be pre approved and flies straight to the USA, But
Speaker 2: it's so delayed and it's just no an option for
Speaker 2: people who barely have enough money for food, let learn
Speaker 2: a plane ticket there.
Speaker 8: HMV program is for cubanations, nick Garaguins, Venezuelans who have
Speaker 8: not crossed into Panama or Mexico in the past few years.
Speaker 8: You did not qualify who've done that or have not
Speaker 8: been inter died at sea. If they're Haitian or Cuban,
Speaker 8: you have to have a sponsor in the United States
Speaker 8: who have some kind of legal status. You have to
Speaker 8: be able to pay for the flight, you have to
Speaker 8: have a passport, and you have to be able to
Speaker 8: wait forever long it takes for your application to be approved.
Speaker 8: And the Department of Homeland Security just announced that they
Speaker 8: are not renewing parole for people who are already in
Speaker 8: the United States. So people from those four countries who
Speaker 8: were in the US head up to two years of
Speaker 8: humanitarian parole which is not being renewed, so they either
Speaker 8: would need to apply for something else or go back
Speaker 8: to their country, or just I guess, stay in the
Speaker 8: Saints undocumented until their CODs.
Speaker 7: Boy.
Speaker 2: I heard the same story hundreds of times that week,
Speaker 2: sometimes off mike and sometimes on mike, sometimes holding my
Speaker 2: voice recorder and notebook, sometimes just sitting on the ground
Speaker 2: or walking on the trail or enjoying a bottle of
Speaker 2: cold water in Bahjigito. Crippling poverty and bad governance in
Speaker 2: their country made it difficult to see a future there.
Speaker 2: They wanted better for their children, so they bought them
Speaker 2: across the mountains and risked their lives in the jungle
Speaker 2: to give them a chance in life life. I prepared
Speaker 2: a lot for this trip, and I tried to search
Speaker 2: for everything had my experience on the internet. But one
Speaker 2: thing I really didn't expect to learn in the jungle
Speaker 2: is just how much it's possible for parents to love
Speaker 2: their kids. I watched exhausted mothers hoist their babies onto
Speaker 2: their shoulders to keep walking and somehow come up with
Speaker 2: a story that made the whole thing an adventure, not
Speaker 2: a tragedy. Then did the same thing again the next day,
Speaker 2: without sleeping or eating. I watch fathers carefully lay out
Speaker 2: their sleeping map so their children could rest where they
Speaker 2: tried to do the same on the dirt or hardwood
Speaker 2: floors every day as their savings grew lower and they
Speaker 2: outlook more bleak. I watched parents try to smile for
Speaker 2: their kids. The sacrifices I saw them make, starving for
Speaker 2: days to give their kids something to eat, or spending
Speaker 2: their last remaining dollar on clean clothes for their kids
Speaker 2: while they walked barefoot couldn't afford shoes really brought home
Speaker 2: for me the desire these families had for a better
Speaker 2: future and the sacrifices they were willing to make for
Speaker 2: one another. A week later, it's still hard for me
Speaker 2: to accept that I'm home safely and they're still in
Speaker 2: as much danger, if not more.
Speaker 10: Our walk lasted five days. Thank god I was always
Speaker 10: strong enough and able to get back up when I fell,
Speaker 10: because if I fell and my children had to see
Speaker 10: me fall and not get up, imagine how bad that
Speaker 10: would be. My children want more in the future, but
Speaker 10: they despaired in the jungle. They said, tell me, mommy,
Speaker 10: when are we going to get there? Mommy? What could
Speaker 10: I say to them, my dear, we have to have patience,
Speaker 10: because we have to make the crossing. We have to
Speaker 10: move forward. If not, we can't get out of here.
Speaker 2: Even among such difficult times, the Venezuelan's always greeted me
Speaker 2: with a laugh and a smile, especially after a few
Speaker 2: days of running into each other. When I used venezuhealen
Speaker 2: slang or my accents slowly reverted to the Spanish I
Speaker 2: learned in Karrakas only two decades ago, they'd laugh at me,
Speaker 2: as they noted at that time Karakas had attracted plenty
Speaker 2: of migrants. Recern some of them, like me, didn't stay,
Speaker 2: but we came to We wanted to see a revolution
Speaker 2: in the flesh, and they welcomed. For a while in Caracas,
Speaker 2: I lived in a social center in La Pastora. I
Speaker 2: didn't pay rent, but there was a small empty room
Speaker 2: and no one seemed to mind. Every day I talked
Speaker 2: to strangers, big friends, and try and learn something new.
Speaker 2: The situation there was an ideal. For one thing, we
Speaker 2: didn't really have showers, and also I got robbed at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: So for most of my time in the country, I
Speaker 2: stayed with the Chilean family i'd met. They welcomed me
Speaker 2: a more a left total stranger into their homes and lives.
Speaker 2: In the evenings, we spent hours talking and they'd tell
Speaker 2: me stories about how they'd suffered under Pinochet, the hopes
Speaker 2: they'd had for their country, and how they'd had to
Speaker 2: flee to Caracas like tens of thousands of their fellow Chileans.
Speaker 2: They introduced me to Victor Hara and Jolly Pan. I
Speaker 2: introduced them to chumber Wamba, and we shared an affection
Speaker 2: for George Orwell. The song you heard after the adverts
Speaker 2: was not in fact chumber Wamba, but Chilean left his
Speaker 2: folk musician in Victor Haa. He's playing Eldrecho de vi
Speaker 2: Videnpaz the right to live in Peace in English, and
Speaker 2: it's one of his most famous songs. It confronts the
Speaker 2: US War in Vietnam. Later, after how I was tortured
Speaker 2: and murdered by the Pinochet regime, it became an anthem
Speaker 2: of protest in the country. Haarah and his friend pabul
Speaker 2: and No Ruda were both symbols of the cultural power
Speaker 2: of the Chilean people and the brutality of the Pinochet
Speaker 2: regime who broke the hands he used to play his
Speaker 2: guitar before they killed him. Haah and the Rudah both
Speaker 2: moved in the same revolutionary artistic circles as my Chilean
Speaker 2: host in Venezuela. At night, they tell me stories about
Speaker 2: the time they spent together. We'd have to speak loudly
Speaker 2: as a man who adopted me as a sort of
Speaker 2: surrogate grandson and permanent hearing damage from the torture he'd
Speaker 2: endured under the same regime. Luckily, he'd been able to
Speaker 2: flee with his wife to Venezuela, where they were welcomed.
Speaker 2: They never returned to Chile and happily lived out the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives listening to their victor Haara records
Speaker 2: in Caracas and living the ideals that had seen them persecuted.
Speaker 2: Their kindness to me, a nineteen year old stranger with
Speaker 2: terrible Spanish and nowhere to sleep at night, reflected the
Speaker 2: kindness they'd received, and I've tried to reflect it in
Speaker 2: turn ever since.
Speaker 8: Oh no.
Speaker 2: Oh, I never once heard any children crying and last
Speaker 2: blankets or barjiquito. Well, none until the deportations took their
Speaker 2: parents away on my last day there. Most of the
Speaker 2: time the kids entertained themselves one day in Last Blancas,
Speaker 2: where migrants can wait and spend weeks or months they
Speaker 2: don't have the funds to move forward with their journey.
Speaker 2: I left my picture while she made a call and
Speaker 2: bumped in some little children playing a game where they
Speaker 2: throw water bottle caps into half a breeze block from
Speaker 2: various distances, each of them counting how many they could land.
Speaker 2: I sat down next to them, put my recorder on
Speaker 2: the ground and asked nicely if I could join it
Speaker 2: like a tiny pit boss. One of the kids bought
Speaker 2: me a pile of bottle tops. I chattered with them
Speaker 2: as we threw a bottle cap to the broken piece
Speaker 2: of concrete. What was it like in America?
Speaker 1: They asked.
Speaker 2: They's had a lot of questions about Africa, having probably
Speaker 2: met African kids in the casita just across the way.
Speaker 2: Do they have big buildings in Africa? Does it rain there?
Speaker 2: How long does it take to get there in a bus?
Speaker 2: Then they tested by venezuela and legitimacy by drawing me
Speaker 2: in a ripper in my notebook, and I ask him
Speaker 2: if I knew what it was? What I passed a test?
Speaker 2: They asked me how to say some things in English,
Speaker 2: and they showed me the toys they bought with them,
Speaker 2: which were very few. One of them had a small
Speaker 2: plastic cow of which he was very proud one. After
Speaker 2: a while, they asked what I was doing, and I
Speaker 2: showed them how I record interviews, at which point they
Speaker 2: began recording themselves in each other, wildly stabbing at the
Speaker 2: buttons on my recorder, which I will admit scared the
Speaker 2: crap out of me, but I didn't have the heart
Speaker 2: to take it off them. They stroked the fluffy wind
Speaker 2: protector I use on my microphone. It told me it
Speaker 2: was like a tiny teddy bear. Eventually I was able
Speaker 2: to trade my recorder for several small wooden animals they
Speaker 2: brought with me as gifts, which seemed to be a deal.
Speaker 2: The left all of us feelings that we come out ahead.
Speaker 2: They seemed to n't bothered by the suffering around them.
Speaker 2: But Las Blancas is no place for children. They should
Speaker 2: be in school, learning the English phrases they kept repeating
Speaker 2: to me every time I saw them. But for a
Speaker 2: chance to use their English, they first had to endure
Speaker 2: a month more danger and deprivation. I gets son some
Speaker 2: slightly hold. The children made the journey alone or almost alone.
Speaker 2: They were accompanied by a spaniel called Chanel. I saw
Speaker 2: a future while as people are carried with them through
Speaker 2: the dry and gap. But to my analysis, is the
Speaker 2: first spaniel that has made the treacherous Crossinguela.
Speaker 11: Donzuela.
Speaker 2: Like everyone else, they had terrible memories from the jungle.
Speaker 12: The truth is you have to fight a lot to
Speaker 12: be able to get out of there, because not everyone
Speaker 12: gets out of that jungle, and it's even more difficult
Speaker 12: with small children. There are times when one goes without
Speaker 12: food and it's very stressful because all around us all
Speaker 12: we saw was the jungle, and we never saw the
Speaker 12: way out. But it is complicated. The truth is that
Speaker 12: it is very hard the jungle. Well, I would really
Speaker 12: recommend that people never go there. All our feet are hurting,
Speaker 12: we can't walk properly. Our whole body is hurt. We
Speaker 12: went days without eating.
Speaker 2: They were traveling. They said to join their parents, and
Speaker 2: because in Venezuela they told me they were always hungry.
Speaker 2: They saw people sleeping on the streets and worry that
Speaker 2: would be their only option. One day they didn't leave.
Speaker 12: I want to see mom. I haven't seen her in
Speaker 12: three years, and I want to have my American dream too.
Speaker 13: I want to see my dad and my aunt and
Speaker 13: my uncle. I haven't seen them for three years years either.
Speaker 2: Despite the heart yet, they didn't blame their parents for leaving.
Speaker 13: We know that we made it because of them. They're
Speaker 13: the ones who sent us money for the things we need.
Speaker 13: We were able to get a few things, not everything
Speaker 13: we needed, but it's all thanks to them.
Speaker 2: The end of their interview, as I always do, I
Speaker 2: asked them if there's anything else that they wanted to share.
Speaker 7: I don't know. For our parents, we love them a
Speaker 7: lot and hope we can see them soon.
Speaker 2: Like many of the Venezuelan's I spoke to, their American
Speaker 2: dreams were pretty modest for most of them, though they'll
Speaker 2: be unachievable in the current immigration system. They'll end up
Speaker 2: stuck in Mexico, in Mexico City, perhaps for further south,
Speaker 2: but in Tijuana or Juaro's waiting across the border. They're lucky.
Speaker 2: But if they cried a cross between ports of entry
Speaker 2: or get caught traveling without red string in Mexico, they
Speaker 2: were being deported or relocated back to southern Mexico Hestica
Speaker 2: explaining that process.
Speaker 8: The Mexican National Guard has been detaining people who are
Speaker 8: trying to cross the US medical border, and they had
Speaker 8: been sending them south to Mexico City and Chiapas to Tapachula.
Speaker 8: Now there's been this huge effort to stop people from waiting,
Speaker 8: not only at the US Mexico border, but even in
Speaker 8: Mexico City. So we're seeing Mexican Immigration and National Guard
Speaker 8: doing sweeps of migrant camps, of apartment buildings, doesn't matter
Speaker 8: if the person has a CBP one appointment. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 8: just send them souths to either Chiapa's an increasing lead
Speaker 8: to Basco so viet Moosa, which is where people are
Speaker 8: arriving in Tabasco, has one shelter and I think the
Speaker 8: capacity is around to two hundred fifty three hundred people,
Speaker 8: and earlier this year they were sending twenty thousand migrants
Speaker 8: a month there and then they posted the military steps
Speaker 8: so that people can't leave, and it's very dangerous there.
Speaker 8: It's a drug tracking area, so it's you know, not
Speaker 8: only are people sleeping in the streets, but they're sleeping
Speaker 8: on the streets of some of the most dangerous cities
Speaker 8: and massacre win very few services there to help them
Speaker 8: even get their next meal.
Speaker 2: This, of course, didn't happen without the influence of the
Speaker 2: United States. In many ways, Joe Biden has done exactly
Speaker 2: what Donald Trump promised to do. Not only has he
Speaker 2: built more wall, he's also forced Mexico to pay for
Speaker 2: a significant amount of the US IS immigration enforcement. But
Speaker 2: when people are sent back to south of Mexico, they'll
Speaker 2: just make their way north again, only this time with
Speaker 2: fewer resources and even greater risk. They're all proud of
Speaker 2: where they're from. About half the groups I saw had
Speaker 2: Venezuela flags and the cats or backpacks, but they're also
Speaker 2: very aware of the betrayal they get as Venezuelan's and
Speaker 2: the US media, and many of them made the very
Speaker 2: valid point if American is afraid of Venezuela gangs, they
Speaker 2: ought to consider how much more afraid people are in
Speaker 2: a country where they actually exist.
Speaker 1: Yes, we Incelana Parazon stands and female I'm thirteen.
Speaker 7: Please don't believe that because one person from Venezuela does crime,
Speaker 7: that all Venezuelans do crime.
Speaker 2: But at least they get it portrayed in the US media.
Speaker 2: Many African migrants don't even get that. Of course, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they don't know about the USA. His powers
Speaker 2: in her Anglophane Cameronian group again talking about their impressions
Speaker 2: of America where they'd like to live when they arrive here.
Speaker 11: You know, America is a very beautiful country, and America
Speaker 11: has human rights. They care about the citizens. In fact,
Speaker 11: they care about humanity. See, I don't want to have
Speaker 11: a friend that I'm gonna stay with for the meantime.
Speaker 2: Then it gets that's great, Yeah, that helps a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do you know which city your friend lives in?
Speaker 11: She's in Maryland, Maryland.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, So.
Speaker 11: If I'm asks, if you don't mind me asking, of course,
Speaker 11: what Americans? How do they treat or how do they
Speaker 11: say immigrants?
Speaker 2: Oh, my friend, it's changing a lot. African migrants in
Speaker 2: particular will struggle with their life of resources. The absence
Speaker 2: of solidarity structures an obvious anti blackness along the journey.
Speaker 2: Along with this, people they meet along the way simply
Speaker 2: lack context of the journeys, why they're leaving, what they're fleeing.
Speaker 2: Language barriers may exclude many of them from using CBP one,
Speaker 2: which is only offered English Spanish and Haitian Creole. Less
Speaker 2: than fifteen percent of asylum cases are conducted in English,
Speaker 2: but the app ignores huge swass of the world outside
Speaker 2: the Western Hemisphere and Bajiquito. I used French to speak
Speaker 2: to migros you didn't speak English, and began to notice
Speaker 2: the complete absence of signage. And I think other than
Speaker 2: Spanish and sometimes English and Creole, this is likely an
Speaker 2: issue throughout their long journeys. Here's one migrant from Angola,
Speaker 2: and I should probably know at this point that Angolan
Speaker 2: people tend to speak Portuguese, that's a national language, but
Speaker 2: French with the language I shared with some of them,
Speaker 2: as I don't speak Portuguese.
Speaker 5: Pretty completely.
Speaker 14: It was too much, very complicated. Like me, I did
Speaker 14: a week in Brazil, out at Brazil and for Peru,
Speaker 14: Peru to nicol Klee. Then here I did. We did
Speaker 14: four days, four days walking. There are many mountains, many risks,
Speaker 14: there are many animals along the route. You have to
Speaker 14: follow the path for four days and there's no food.
Speaker 14: But we are glad to arrive today. This is the
Speaker 14: first group. There's the second, third, fourth, fifth group. They're
Speaker 14: still on the road. I'm very proud of the fact
Speaker 14: that we made it despite the suffering.
Speaker 3: But God was with us.
Speaker 14: That is what is important.
Speaker 2: There are numerous instances of French speaking migrants trying to
Speaker 2: approach the border near me in Santy Cedra and being
Speaker 2: turned away for not having an appointment on that it's
Speaker 2: not available in a language they can understand. These language
Speaker 2: barriers might stop the migrants getting information, but they don't
Speaker 2: stop them helping one another. His powers group describing the
Speaker 2: isolation they felt, but also the kindness they experienced. Do
Speaker 2: you think people on the trip treat African people differently?
Speaker 11: Yes, they're living communicated, They're just by themselves. They don't associate.
Speaker 11: They look at all differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I had someone who support their tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I saw.
Speaker 11: I saw how kind the.
Speaker 2: Person was because of their obvious foreignness and perceived an
Speaker 2: ability to communicate. African migrants are often targeted for crime
Speaker 2: in Mexico. Since leaving Panama, I've heard from migrants who
Speaker 2: are raped, kidnapped, ransomed, and I even heard about one
Speaker 2: who was killed. Because of their difficulties accessing this CVP
Speaker 2: one app many face longer waits in Mexico, which may
Speaker 2: in turn leave them open to extortion or see them
Speaker 2: decide to cross the border between ports of entry. I've
Speaker 2: met hundreds of migrants, mainly Mauritanians and Geneians, who have
Speaker 2: made this difficult choice since Biden's Asylent Bank came into force.
Speaker 2: Due to the distance, African migrants also face a longer,
Speaker 2: more expensive, and more dangerous journey. His premier from Zimbabwe,
Speaker 2: describing her journey to get to bat the situation for.
Speaker 1: Me it was tough. I just ran away to South
Speaker 1: Africa and South Africa was not safe. Solophobia and they
Speaker 1: almost kill me and my boyfriend and even my my
Speaker 1: big father was abusive, too much aposive because of the politics,
Speaker 1: opposition party. So it was now even in South Africa,
Speaker 1: I was not safe at all. It was those people.
Speaker 1: They were like following me and my daughter. For I
Speaker 1: spent three months on the road coming here. I leave
Speaker 1: South Africa, I think fourth of July till now I'm
Speaker 1: in Panama. I'm still working using basses.
Speaker 2: Jesus, how did you get away from Africa to America?
Speaker 8: Did you fly or take a boat?
Speaker 1: The thing is I fly from Juannespec to Brazil. Then
Speaker 1: I seek Asylam in Brazil. Then I wanted to stay
Speaker 1: in Brazil, so people said, no, you in Brazil, you
Speaker 1: can't because of language. Yeah, yeah, Portuguese. So I start
Speaker 1: also using people's roots, like you list take this pass
Speaker 1: from point A to point base. So we take a
Speaker 1: bus from Brazil to Bolivia, then from Bolivia to Peru, Peru,
Speaker 1: toad equad to Colombia. Then you start working with using
Speaker 1: Darwin Cape too. I'm here in Panama.
Speaker 2: African migrants will end up in different shelters, little more remote,
Speaker 2: will have less connectivity, again, making their asylum process harder.
Speaker 2: Unlike migrants from the Western Hemisphere, they might struggle to
Speaker 2: find solidarity networks even inside the USA without a significant diaspora.
Speaker 2: Many of the migrants I met the jungle have struggled
Speaker 2: to find sponsors. Los of the people I spoke to here,
Speaker 2: including Primrose and her daughter, are still looking for someone
Speaker 2: to give them a help hand as they start their
Speaker 2: new life. We spoke a lot over the week I
Speaker 2: is there, and we've spoken most days since. It's heartbreaking
Speaker 2: for me to see her daughter going for months with
Speaker 2: our education or even a safe place to sleep. I've
Speaker 2: seen photos in them sleeping on the street. They've ridden
Speaker 2: crowded busses north, and I've heard their frustrated attempts to
Speaker 2: comply with the arcane and complicated restrictions on their right
Speaker 2: to come here and ask for help. And it's been
Speaker 2: really hard since I got home to reconcile this with
Speaker 2: a national discussion that seems to see migration as a
Speaker 2: number that we have to decrease a migrants to something
Speaker 2: other than people who want to come here for all
Speaker 2: the same reasons. I live happily and peaceably as our neighbors.
Speaker 2: Now that they've come this far, magants from outside the
Speaker 2: Western Hemisphere have to keep going. They cannot even file
Speaker 2: their claims on CBP one until they make it to Tapatula,
Speaker 2: which is hundreds of dollars and thousands of kilometers from Panama.
Speaker 2: They'd likely don't have the funds to go back home
Speaker 2: even if they want to, and they're far more likely
Speaker 2: to be robbed or kidnapped along the way. However, their
Speaker 2: story is often aren't told. Reporting on the board is
Speaker 2: still largely focused on Spanish speaking migrants, with some space
Speaker 2: of Chinese O Haitians. The migrants from Africa rarely get
Speaker 2: much care or attention in the media. In part this
Speaker 2: has helped them before the demonization the Venezuelan migrants'rel too
Speaker 2: aware of, but in part it also leads to a
Speaker 2: lack of concern for their needs. I went to end
Speaker 2: today with Gabriel from Equatorial Guinea sharing his message for Americans. Aha.
Speaker 15: Know, yeah, a lot of people get this confused. Africa
Speaker 15: is not a country. A lot of them think when
Speaker 15: they see you and you're black person, they say, are
Speaker 15: you African? And it's like, there are lots of countries
Speaker 15: in Africa. Khana, Nigeria, you got, Guinea, you got the
Speaker 15: more Aitanian people. There are loads of countries. I wish
Speaker 15: people would know. How do I say this? I wish
Speaker 15: they'd take us into a out because really they don't
Speaker 15: consider us when they say Africa is a country. They
Speaker 15: don't care about us the way we care about them.
Speaker 15: And this is the way of seeing things which doesn't
Speaker 15: consider us as human, not the same as them. You understand,
Speaker 15: they see us as Africans or animals, something like that.
Speaker 12: It could happen.
Speaker 7: Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 12: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 12: coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio, app,
Speaker 12: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 12: now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly
Speaker 12: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.