Wading mud up to their knees, some limping, scores of Venezuelan migrants struggle with an eye on the price: hope for a new life in the United States.
With sore feet, wounds and spirits agitated several days after their ordeal, still from the middle of the road, they crawl in a single record through the famous Darien jungle that links Colombia with Panama.
With a long way to go through Central America and Mexico, the organization of men and boys, some babies, already have many horrors to tell.
And all this would possibly have been in vain. Last week, the United States announced that Venezuelans arriving by land without documents would be returned to Mexico.
For Jesus Arias, 45, it is mandatory to “risk your life to have a future. “
“But honestly, I wouldn’t recommend crossing the jungle. It’s very difficult,” he told AFP when he and others reached an indigenous agreement in Panama, Canaan Membrillo, one of several border checkpoints on the 575,000 hectares (1,420,900 acres). ) forest.
Arias arrived in Canaan Membrillo dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, worn by other men in the organization after injuring his knee.
He embarked on the adventure knowing that it would be complicated because “in Venezuela there is no long term. It’s getting worse every day. “
He may still have no choice but to return to the crisis-stricken country, ravaged by violence, lack of trust and lack of essential services. The UN refugee agency says 6. 8 million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela since 2014.
Under the U. S. executive order, 24,000 Venezuelans applying for a humanitarian program will be allowed to enter.
“We’re leaving anyway,” Arias said. Even if they arrest us, sometime we will enter. “
The number of Venezuelans crossing the Darien reached a record high in 2022: about 133,000 between January and mid-October, according to Panamanian authorities.
For last year as a whole, the figure 2,800.
Venezuelan Nélida Pantoja, 46, saw “many dead, many mountains, many rivers that took many people . . . It was horrible,” he told AFP in Canaan Membrillo.
But like most of his fellow migrants, he vowed to “keep trying” until he enters the United States.
Darwin Vidal, 33, said he struggled to muster the strength for what lay ahead: He was only fighting on rough terrain, but he was also at the mercy of venomous snakes and other wildlife, as well as groups of thieves.
“I was given 3 days lost in the jungle with my family. With my children we were going too slowly. We couldn’t be with the group, we fell and got lost” in a moment of fear, he said.
Rusbelis Serrano, 18, said the worst is over.
“My mom, my dad, my brothers are waiting for me” in the United States, Serrano told AFP. “I don’t have much anymore. I have to keep trying. “
The Panamanian government says at least another hundred people have died crossing the Darien since 2018, a portion of them in 2021, the deadliest year to date.