Search continues for missing shipwreck victim

On Monday, February 14, a boat with 27 migrants, mostly Afghans, capsized due to bad weather in Carreto Bay, in the indigenous community of Guna Yala on the Caribbean coast, about 25 kilometers from the border with Colombia.

“We currently have five bodies accounted for and we are still searching for a sixth body that has been reported missing,” said Jorge Gobea, director of Senafront, on TVN Noticias.

Among the five deceased there is a minor. According to Gobea, there was even a three-month-old baby on the boat.

“It is an area where the sea is impassable at the moment, there are a lot of waves,” he said. “The work of rescuing the bodies has been difficult because they were located on a cliff, and the cliffs cannot be reached right now, only by land,” he added.

COYOTES
Panamanian authorities suspect that the migrants were transported by human traffickers known as “coyotes”.

Panama has become a route for migrants trying to reach the United States from South America.

The majority enter through the inhospitable Darién jungle, on the border with Colombia, but they also do so by boat through the indigenous region of Guna Yala.

“It is an extremely violent route for the boats that transit through that sector,” said Gobea, as criminal groups try to introduce migrants through this indigenous region in the early morning hours.

As they pass through Panama, migrants face waves at sea, flooding rivers, dangerous animals and criminal groups in the jungle.

In 2023, more than 520,000 people, including 120,000 children, entered Panama through the Darien jungle, a record number.

Criminal groups “establish routes by sectors, sell them as a tourist package and deceive the migrant, who thinks that getting to Panama is only crossing the border,” Gobea said.