Dany Chapi decided that migrating was the only option he had to support his three children and his wife.
“It was very hard to tell my family that I was leaving, because we had never been apart,” he recalls.
He did not tell them when he would leave, nor did he say goodbye to them, it was July 4, 2022 when he told them that he was in Colombia, heading to Panama, to cross the dangerous road through the Darién, a jungle wall between Colombia and Panama .
One of the lungs of America that hides hell for hundreds of thousands of migrants who want to reach the United States.
The goal was set, to reach North America at any cost, but he did not succeed on the first attempt.
Dany was detained by immigration in Mexico and returned to Quito.
He waited a little over a month to recover from the dehydration that the crossing had left him and he left again, again through the Darién.
On that occasion the residents of his neighborhood found out that he would make the trip again and 40 people asked him to go with him, including eight children.
"There was a lady who was very chubby, she was traveling with her seven children, I was afraid that she would not be able to climb the mountain of death, but she wanted so much, that we all helped there," says Dany, who this time acted as the guide.
Unlike the migration of the nineties, when millions of Ecuadorians left for the United States by boat and a coyote or trafficker was contacted, who supposedly had the entire route traced, the costs amounted to 15,000 dollars.
Thousands of families requested loans or money from moneylenders, who charge up to 25% interest.
That route still exists.
But the first time Dany and three other friends decided to migrate, they got the information from Tik Tok and from an acquaintance who had made the trip, and she survived.
"He left us voice messages and explained what we should do," but most of the journey they followed the other walkers who, like them, had the same goal of passing through the jungle through which more than 250,000 migrants have crossed in the last year.
Ecuadorians are the second nationality that has used the irregular passage of the Darién the most, according to migration from Panama.
The figure reveals an alarming increase, by January 2022 the passage of 100 people had been registered, by October there were already 8,587 in a single month, at the end of the year.
A total of 29,456 Ecuadorians crossed that jungle.
Of the 4,161 medical consultations carried out by Doctors Without Borders in the first weeks of January upon leaving the Darién, 13.3% correspond to Ecuadorian patients;
that is, 550 people.
In all of 2022, 7% of the 40,000 services were given to migrants from Ecuador, including Dany.
"I asked them for help because on the way I got the flu, but the worst thing is that I got very ugly cuts on my legs and feet from the boots that were wet because the water got in when crossing the rivers," he recounts the consequences. than 12 hours walking for seven days.
“Along the way you see many things, many people who give up, many people who are injured and there is no one to help them and they stay there to die”, Dany describes.
He also saw the dead in the river and uploaded it to Tik Tok, where he documented the trip, the children who crossed the rivers, the Ecuadorian flags that were tied to the trees to leave their mark, the fight for the safe-conducts and the short breaks in the camps that were assembled at nightfall.
Dany and his friends were also assaulted by armed groups in the middle of the jungle.
It was life or 100 dollars, and in an instant they lost all the money they had carried.
Dany Chapi had three mechanical workshops in the Ecuadorian capital until before the pandemic, but like many other people, the businesses closed and when the reactivation began, he managed to maintain only one store.
He gave just enough for a family of five and to pay the employees, but not for the "vaccine", the extortion that criminal groups demand without any discrimination from businesses in Ecuador.
"They entered the premises twice, I notified the Police but they did nothing."
He decided to migrate when the criminals visited not only Dany's business, but the entire street, in broad daylight, to tell them that if they did not pay the monthly amount they were asking for, there would be consequences against the assets and the family.
After crossing the dangerous jungle twice, Dany says: "I am less afraid of crossing the Darién than of living in Ecuador."
He is now planning his third attempt to go to America, this time he will do it with his wife and three of his children.
The complex situation of insecurity in the South American country, where more than 4,600 people have been murdered in the last year, has displaced the lack of employment and opportunities that have always been the reasons why Ecuadorians migrate.
"Many of the people who are encouraged to do this route have expressed that there is a factor of violence or they did not feel safe in the place where they were," explains Cristina Zugasti, representative of Doctors Without Borders in Panama.
"A 50-year-old man who came for a consultation told us that he was selling things on the street and that the criminal groups asked him for $2,000 and he said he couldn't pay, so he left," he adds.
There are other cases in which the fear that at any moment it will be their turn has motivated them to leave, such as that of a woman who on more than one occasion was called by her children's school while she was at work. .
"It was the director who had not paid for the vaccine and they had to run to pick up the children because they had been threatened with a bomb," says Zugasti, in another of the cases that they have collected in the short time that the doctors have assisted with help. psychological assistance to migrants when they leave the Darién.
The second time Dany crossed the jungle, she crossed Central America and Mexico and made it to the United States.
She started working assembling kitchen cabinets after a few days.
The American dream had crystallized.
But his wife decided to go after him, accompanied only by his 3 and 14-year-old children, she also did it through the Darien jungle.
“It was very hard but they did it,” she says.
However, they did not have the same luck and were arrested in Mexico.
It was December 2022, Christmas Eve, when Dany got the call.
"My wife was crying broken, she was in Ecuador, they had been deported," and he decided to go back for them.
"In June I will try again, but with my family," he says
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