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Part 2: Entering the Jungle
Miss part 1? It’s available here.
A screenshot from a video taken by Xavier on the tractor that brought him into the jungle
Before Xavier – a 22-year-old Venezuelan migrant – set off through the Darién Gap, he sent me a message: “In the name of the powerful Jesus and with the help of God, we are going to victory.”
Xavier, with his girlfriend and her four-year-old son, had decided they had no future in South America. After years of living in shanties and bouncing between odd jobs around the continent, the former barber – who left his country at age 16 – had decided to head north. Now was the time to do it, he said, because the border was “open.”
The journey to the US would pass through the Darién Gap – a roadless, gang-controlled jungle – and some of the world’s most dangerous countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico.
Before the group left, Xavier wrote to me: “They say that it will take three or four days to arrive in Panama…While we have signal, we will be sending you videos and photos for you to see.”
Shortly after, he sent a video of the group on a trailer being pulled by a tractor.
“We are leaving now,” said his last message.
No one knows exactly how many people have made this trip in the last few years. In some months, 50,000 Venezuelans have been detained illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. That’s just 50,000 Venezuelans – tens of thousands more are coming from other Latin American countries, as well as from India, China, African countries, and elsewhere.
Many people don’t make it: In Colombia, migrants told me stories of children being swept away by rivers, people being bit by poisonous snakes, and men having heart attacks. Stories abound of migrants being kidnapped or killed by gangs in Mexico.
After three days of silence, I worried that something terrible had befallen Xavier and his family. But then I received a message: “Max look where we are max God bless you we are in the middle of nothing max look at our location God bless you,” he wrote.
Xavier and his family at the jungle border crossing
He sent a map pin on the Colombia-Panama border.
“It was very hard max but God gave us the strength.”
Then silence again.
Every day, thousands of Xaviers are embarking on their own journeys.
In Colombia, a Venezuelan migrant named Marco said that his WhatsApp was full of people sharing details about their journeys to and lives in America. They talk about how good the money is and how welcomed they feel, especially in “sanctuary cities,” where they are often put in shelters and shielded from deportations.
Marco said his friends made the process look simple: “You pay this, you pay the boat, you pay that, right?”
“But it doesn’t happen like that,” he said. While crossing the Darién Gap, Marco saw “a lot of death” and was robbed. When he reached the other side, Panamanian soldiers beat him up and fed him raw chicken. No journey was worth that treatment, he decided, and returned to Colombia.
But others feel they have no choice: “Here in Venezuela, we don't have enough money to buy candy or buy food. The monthly minimum wage is $50, and a chicken is worth $40. What future do children have in Venezuela?” one migrant, José Ignacio, told me.
José Ignacio on the beach
Another, Jefferson, said that he couldn’t earn enough in Venezuela to pay for his son’s cancer treatment.
“When my son's illness progressed a little more, I no longer received the expenses for his medicines, and for that I had to emigrate,” he explained.
“What I want is to finish my son's treatment, for my children to be healthy, and to return with them. That is my fight. That is why I left the country, since it is very sad to lose a child.”
Three days later, I received another message from Xavier.
