By Eduardo Berdejo
Bishop Hugo Torres Marín de Apartadó said Oct. 11 that there was a humanitarian crisis near the Panamanian border when thousands of people risked their lives to cross the Darien jungle into the United States.
For several days now, thousands of migrants, many of them Venezuelans, have been arriving in the region of Colombia that lies across the Gulf of Uraba from Panama and waiting in the city of Necoclí on the Colombian coast for the opportunity to cross by boat to Capurganá in Panama, and from there cross the Darién Gap north to the United States. An adventure of more than 3,000 miles.
However, on the route, they are exposed to robbery, human trafficking and death.
In response, the general director of Migration Colombia, Fernando García Manosalva, recently visited the Urabá region to learn about the scenario in the Colombian towns of Carepa, Turbo, Apartadó, Necoclí, Acandí and Capurganá, where there are about 8,000 migrants.
In an interview with Noticias Caracol, Bishop Torres, in whose diocese these towns are located, said: “I believe this is a humanitarian crisis. “
The prelate said almost all the migrants are Venezuelans. “Many arrive in extreme poverty, without money, without clothes, without enough shoes to cross a border and a road as complicated as Darién,” he said.
“The bad thing,” he said, “is that the call has made the boats not to bring so many people and have to stay on the beaches, because they do not have to pay anything for a hotel and that makes the lives of those other people [much worse].
The bishop, who asked the government for good enough solutions, said he visited the town of Capurgana. “I ended up with a very young population, in their 30s and 40s, blindly following their path,” he said.
“They just need to move into the United States, improve their living conditions, improve the fitness of their children, [receive] a special (medical) remedy for their families,” but they are confused, he said.
Torres said that on the way, the migrants encountered “many other people asking them for money . . . Others have to borrow from them, others mistreat them. ” Citizens of countries crossed by migrants look at them with indifference and do not assist them, he added.
In an interview with the AP, Colombian Ombudsman Carlos Camargo said the existing scenario is “much more serious” than that of 2021, when thousands of people, mostly Haitians, arrived in Necoclí.
“The number of other people on the move who have left for Panama [so far in 2022] exceeds 150,000 to [with] the 134,000 migrants in 2021. And the trend is to keep increasing,” Camargo said.
This story was first published through ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language press partner. It has been translated and adapted through CNA.