Migrants climb a mountain with the intention of reaching Panama, on October 8, 2022 in the Darién Gap, Colombia. Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda (EFE)
The Darien jungle is the mirror of despair and the most varied crises that Latin America is experiencing, as well as the changing and erratic migration policies of different countries.
Meanwhile, in 2021, thousands of Haitians risked dying for that thick jungle that separates Colombia from Panama;
and in 2022 it was the Venezuelans who threw themselves into the hands of coyotes or traffickers to fulfill the American dream;
Now it is the Ecuadorians en masse who are trying to cross the trail that has become a cemetery.
The Panama Migration Office has revealed that Ecuadorians are the second nationality that crosses the Darién the most irregularly.
At least 29,356 crossed that jungle during all of 2022. Although it does not compare with the more than 150,000 Venezuelans who did, it does show an alarming increase.
While in January of the previous year there were 100 migrants on that trail, in December 7,821 passed through there.
The jump of Ecuadorian migrants through El Darién is observed in September and especially in October 2022. According to Lorena Mena Iturralde, director of Continente Móvil, a consultancy dedicated to migration studies, the number reveals a significant change in the routes used by Ecuadorians for these irregular journeys to the United States and, at the same time, a change as to what are the expulsion factors that are causing it
That Ecuadorians now use this route has to do with changes in Mexico's immigration measures.
In 2021 these migrants could enter that country directly, due to a measure that had been in force since 2018. Ecuadorians then took planes to enter Mexico as tourists, but then they traveled to the northern border and crossed illegally into the United States.
This practice generated record numbers of Ecuadorians detected at the border and, in 2021, Mexico decided to change its measures and once again impose an entry visa.
Once Mexico closed, the flow of migrants moved to Guatemala and then, a few weeks later, that Central American country began to require a visa.
There the route through Nicaragua appeared for the first time.
Ecuadorians began to travel by plane to Managua, they entered as tourists and did not return to their country.
It was the beginning of another land journey to reach Mexico and then the United States.
However, it is an expensive route for most migrants, costing up to $20,000.
So El Darién is offered to them as a more accessible road, although no less dangerous.
According to accounts of Ecuadorians who have already arrived in the United States or who are waiting to pass through Mexico, migrants are sold the route through the Darién as a complete package that leaves Quito, passes the Rumichaca bridge, on the southern border of Colombia, and arrives in the jungle.
However, some do not measure the rudeness of that journey.
There is no official data on how many Ecuadorians have disappeared in the jungle, but according to the NGO 1800 Migrante, based in New York, there are 16 dead and 15 missing on that route.
The last known case at the end of 2022 is that of a family that lost three women, who dragged a river that they were crossing in the jungle.
The body of one of them was found, but her relatives are still looking for the remains of the other two.
"I did not know that they were going through the jungle, believe me, if I had known what they would face, I would not send my daughter on that dangerous trip," the mother of one of the disappeared told the NGO.
And not all of them are new to the journeys to conquer the American dream.
Many of those who cross are people who have already been returned from Mexico and are now trying this new route, explains the migration expert.
For her, the alarming increase in migrants of this nationality in that journey also has to do with a change in the expulsion factors that are causing this massive outflow of Ecuadorians.
“For years, Ecuadorian migrants argued economic reasons and unemployment;
but now they also include the growing insecurity in the country.
Many speak of a fear that their lives are in danger in Ecuador”.
With more than 18 million inhabitants, Ecuador has faced a series of economic crises in recent years.
In 2014 they suffered an economic disaster due to the drop in oil prices.
To this was added the 2016 earthquake that left 671 fatalities and thousands of homeless;
political crises and indigenous strikes;
Besides the pandemic.
“All this has meant job losses, school dropouts and food security problems.
This cocktail has contributed to the fact that at the end of 2020 and at the beginning of 2021 there were more factors that prompted them to migrate”, explains Mena.
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