Migrant transportation – a multibillion dollar business

The deadliest land transport accident in the history of Panama should not have happened. All the elements of the facts around the issue of migrants who cross the Darién have become a business and a cause of permanent mourning writes   Rodrigo Noriega in La Prensa.

The journey from the shelters in San Vicente in Darién to the shelter in Gualaca is approximately 674 kilometers. The damaged bus had a Darién license plate and belonged to a transportation cooperative in that province that offers service from Panama to Darién and vice versa. On this route there is not much fog, there are not so many curves and the only “mountain range” that passes is between Tortí (Chepo district) and Darién.

Orlando Vigil, one of the two drivers of the accident bus, was 70 years old and, according to reports, this was the first time he had made the night trip to Gualaca. Vigil died along with dozens of migrant passengers who entrusted their lives to him. The driver was not to blame for the accident, he was another victim. The bus that Vigil was driving was the first of a caravan of 5 that carried migrants from Darién to Chiriquí and were escorted by a vehicle from the National Migration Service. Escorted, not meaning guided on the route.

The ticket for a migrant from Darién to Chiriquí is 40 dollars, which makes it the most expensive ticket for ground transportation in the country. Each migrant has to pay for his ticket, and once he arrives in Chiriquí, he has to see how he gets resources to continue his journey north.

A round business
According to data from the Ministry of Security, last year 248,284 migrants crossed the Darién. Each of them had to pay for their trip to the Colombian, Panamanian, and Venezuelan coyotes. Colombian media have revealed that the Gulf Cartel has control over a large part of the migrant business, which includes serving as mules for drug trafficking and being part of the victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

It is estimated that each migrant had to pay between $500 and $1,000 between logistics, supplies, and other services to cross Darién. That means that the size of that part of the business was at least $124 million and up to more than 248 million for entering a trail in Darién.

That trail is another journey loaded with tragedy. Migrants who are dying of hunger or disease, entire families who are assaulted and stripped of what little they can carry, and women, girls, and boys who are outraged by Colombian and Panamanian bandits. In addition, there are the tragedies of other mourning, that of the mothers who must leave their young children behind on the trail and who they will never see again. There are also husbands who left their pregnant partners to chance, and also older adults and people with disabilities for whom the trail became a cemetery.

A human right
Migrating in search of a better future is a human right. The bankruptcy of the immigration policy of the United States, caught in the dead end of the battle between Democrats and Republicans, is causing an enormous amount of mourning among people who seek to fulfill that aspiration for a better future.

They are also part of that responsibility falls on the failed countries that are the source of the migration that passes through Darién. An infamous list led by Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela, to which extra-continental countries of Asia and Africa were added, and to which Ecuadorians are now added, in the face of a country that is beginning to be consumed by violence and hopelessness.

Panama has had to bite the bullet to serve them in the best way. Before the fatal accident, the name of the country was already in international headlines for the alleged sexual abuse and mistreatment reported by a United Nations report in which it was stated that the humiliation was carried out by Panamanian officials against the migrants.

Panama’s task 
In the short term, the United States is not going to change its immigration policy. For its part, Colombia will not control organized crime and the exploiters of migrants, who openly announce on social networks how easy it is to cross the Darién jungle and how charitable the Panamanian authorities are. So Panama is left with the task of changing the situation.

Perhaps it is worth copying the idea of ​​Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who proposed that his country’s military close the trails along which irregular migration and smuggling take place between Colombia and Venezuela. Panama must do the same.

The Darién trail can be closed and closed with a combination of rubble carried by helicopters, a blockade with concrete structures accompanied by other measures that include the controlled use of explosives to collapse part of the road.