A look at one of the world's most treacherous crossing spots for refugees
To get to the U.S. border from South America, Haitians have to trek through an isolated stretch of jungle called the Darién Gap. In the latest episode of “Line in the Land,” a podcast produced by the Houston Chronicle and Texas Public Media, Haitian migrants take listeners with them on a jungle journey like no other. Read the full transcript here.
Hosts: Joey Palacios and Elizabeth Trovall
More reading:
This remote sliver of northwest Colombia is one of the world’s busiest migration corridors
Binge all the episodes of Line in the Land here. Episodes are in both English and Spanish. A Line in the Land was made possible, in part, by the Catena Foundation, providing more than 100,000 asylum seekers in the U.S. with community and legal support. Learn more at asylum.news
GUSTAVO: Hey, what’s up. It’s Gustavo Arellano and you’re listening to The Times, essential news…from the LA Times.
Today… episode 3 of “A Line in the Land,” from our friends at Texas Public Radio and the Houston Chronicle. It’s a podcast that explores the human story behind the Haitian immigration journey.
It’s Tuesday, August 16, 2022.
To get to the U.S. border from South America, Haitians have to trek through an isolated stretch of jungle called the Darién Gap. In this episode, Haitian migrants take listeners with them on a forested journey like no other.
By the way…If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes, you should go back and do that first. And we’ll be back with episode 4 next Tuesday. We’re airing an episode from “A Line in the Land” every Tuesday through the end of the month.
Intro mux out
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This is an automated transcript. We apologize for the errors, but the robots did their best.
Hey, there are episodes of line in the land in English and in Spanish. This is the English version. Para escuchar en espanol, vulva el feed and ver al version con el tititulo “la linea.”
Ambi in
It's a cloudy November morning in the quiet beach town of nickel glee on the Northwest coast of Columbia, Haitian men, women, and children. Wait to board a boat doc nearby we're here. At the beach on the coast, there's a group of around 40 people in black and bright yellow life vests. Let's say Barla two, all the migrants appear to be from Haiti.
It took thousands of miles for these families. This far, the toughest part of the journey is ahead of them.
Men carry small tents and large plastic water jugs. They have backpacks and thick trash bags to keep their stuff dry. They line up. And start boarding the boat.
It will take them north from this little coastal city in Northwest Columbia, across the Gulf of UBA, closer to Columbia's border with Panama. They've already dealt with price, gouging, extortion, and discrimination, but they haven't seen the corpses yet.
Mux in
Thousands of Haitians have lined these beaches to begin the track up through central America, to the US-Mexico border. To get there, they have to come here first. Then they move northward through a section of dangerous jungle known as the Darien Gap.
In 2021 alone, more than a hundred thousand Haitians and their kids hiked this difficult, beautiful terrain.
Dozens did not make it out alive. The missing migrants project confirmed at least 51 people died in the Darien gap in 2021. Though they say that's almost certainly an undercount.
Many of those that survived this deadly journey made it to the Texas border with Mexico in Del Rio. It's part of an immigration story that spans more than a decade and crosses continents./
Texas public radio, and the Houston Chronicles spent months reporting on this story. We went to Mexican migrant shelters and even got a taste of the Darien gap.
We spoke with Haitians across the Americas in person through what. And video calls the people who can best tell this story who can help us understand why so many people took this perilous journey, what they faced along the way and how immigration policies in the Americas played such a pivotal, And in some cases, devastating role in their lives.
I'm Joey Palacios with Texas public radio.
And I'm Elizabeth Tral with the Houston Chronicle.
This is episode three of line in the land.
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To understand the journey Haitians took to get to the US Mexico border. It's vital to understand the journey through the Darien Gap, a heavily forested stretch of land and a literal gap. Here's a cheesy 1960s travel video. Daring the Darien…
Clip: North America and South America will someday be joined by the Pan-American highway someday in the way Right now stands the world's worst roadblock on the world's greatest highway.
The video is about a crew who tried to drive Chevrolet Corvairs from north to south America, because a head lies the impassible jungle between north and south America. One of the least explored jungles in the world today, the Darien, with thousands of square miles of tropical.
It's 66 mile break in the 19,000 mile pan American highway, which runs from Southern south America into the United States.
It is called impassible because it is filled with rugged Hills valleys and mountains, tricky uncharted rivers, and an almost endless obsession of treacherous ravines. And. Okay. I know this video is a bit much, but as you can hear crossing, the gap was tough even for this fancy crew. And to this day, the Dian gap is still one of the world's most forbidding passages because the gap in the highway still hasn't been filled. Thanks to logistical and environmental concern. And a desire to keep out animal diseases, but tens of thousands of Haitians have made the so-called impassable journey on foot.
On the way, they face a number of life-threatening dangers, armed groups, Deep rivers, venomous animals with no roads, hospitals or electricity.
A tourist boat takes me and Houston Chronicle photographer, Marita Jesus across the Gulf of UBA. We arrive in the small town of Ang the Columbia. Where the journey towards the Dudy end gap continues.
This is where we meet our guide. we're sitting here on the porch of our guide. Mm-hmm um, who's gonna take us to the Las, the camp where a lot of the Haitians are camping before they enter the, the Darion gap gap. Donio grabs his bag and we make our way up the road. It's midday. And. We're cajoled into paying for a ride on a horse drawn wooden cart.
It's five of us, me and Marie are guide the driver garden and a Cuban migrant. We take off towards the muddy bright green Hills. We pass by other migrants along the way, a Haitian family, also on a horse and cart Venezuelan men on foot. The thousands of migrants who have paid for a ride up these Hills and other services have been a windfall here in one of the poorest areas of the country.
It's still light out. When we get to last camp here, the only shelters are tents and tarps held up by wooden posts. Music is blaring.
We're at a clearing before the train gets forested and unru. Where the daddy end gap unofficially begins at the camp. Local sell food, water, alcohol, and even wifi to the night's guests. It's surprisingly festive, a makeshift bar, a couple Syrian men are hanging out. One of them. Ashra Al. He left Syria after his grandma died, when he was a kid, he went to live with his dad who worked in Venezuela.
That was fine for a while, but things got really bad. As the country's economy went into a tailspin. He didn't have a visa to stay there either. I ask him, why go to the us,
the American dream? He says,
The US is the only country that's going to give the freedom that one needs the freedom to work, to live, to enjoy what you're doing. And he says he has family in Philly that wants him there.
More groups arrive throughout the evening and set up camp mostly by nationality tonight. It's mostly Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans. The Venezuelan young men are boisterous and lively and they're super skinny. They joke that the only reason to go to Venezuela is to lose weight. On the other hand, the Haitians are more reserved.
And arrive with families, Haitian mothers, sit cross-legged inside their camping tents, tending to their small children. The men stand outside protectively and talk. It's dark. When John John Baptist arrives at the camp with his wife and son, he's still getting a lay of the land. When I chat with him asking about what time they depart in the morning.
He's tall and somehow full of energy. Yeah.
Originally from Haiti, he's traveling through the Dian gap after eight years in a city in Southern Brazil for 10.
He says Haiti isn't safe and it's even worse today in Haiti, he says a chicken has more value than a human does.
Mm-hmm he moved to Brazil to escape the insecurity like many Haitians did in the 2010s. He found work at an Outback steakhouse. He admits life wasn't bad, but it was hard to get ahead on the minimum wage of around $200 per month.
Jean Baptist smiles a lot as he talks, even as he explains that his family is totally broke already, he spent his last $300 to pay for a guide to take them to the Panamanian border. The journey has been pricey around $3,000 for the three of them local.
He says it's corrupt, local police that are taking most of the money. Officials threaten to turn them back to where they came from. If they don't pay up,
he traveled from Brazil through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia to get here Ecuador. Now he says, he's worried if the money he paid will really get him to the Panamanian border. There's no money back guarantee. If he doesn't make it. At one point, he actually asks me if he's being lied to,
I tell him he's probably in good hands. But the truth is, I don't know for sure.
We'll be back in the do after this break.
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We're back. In 2021, 80 3000 Haitians and an additional 18,000 children of Haitians born in Brazil and Chile made this journey. That's according to stats from Panama's Southern border with Columbia, it's nearly three times the number that made the same journey during the entire previous decade. It's not just Haitians Panamanian border authorities have a long list of nationalities.
They've seen crossing into their Southern border on their way to the United States. Some have traveled shockingly far from their home countries.
Cordova is a local official who handles migration issues. She's seen at least 10 nationalities pass through.
She says there are mostly Haitians, but also Cuban Chile, Brazilians. Africans from and the Congo also Indians and Afghans Indians,
all in search of a better life. But in that search death or injury may be just around the corner in the dot and gap 328 sexual assaults and 86 cases of other violence have been reported in this area from April to the end of 2021. According to doctors without borders, half of sexual violence survivors or Haitian.
Shares horrific story. She's heard over audio messages about people who have died along the way. She remembers one woman who was traveling alone with her two daughters around ages three and five.
I told the meanness, I told the. That it won't go well for her cord west says she doesn't have someone to help her carry the two girls. The woman pushed ahead into the jungle. Anyway, Cordova checked on her. She was in contact with someone else in their group. They told her the mother died along the way.
And these girls, she says nobody is going to claim them. Who knows what will happen.
But the forest can also be a place for small miracles in Lu camp. Andres Missa says he likes his work guiding migrants through the jungle. It's a good way for locals like him to earn a living. And it's a way to help others.
He BES, as he shows a photo of a woman in a camping tent who had just given birth here in Las not long ago. Yeah. See,
it was a crazy, beautiful experience. He.
The camp at night is breathtaking. The stars are so bright above the blaring music is finally turned off. It's up to the frogs and bugs to serenade the sleeping camp.
It's still dark out. When some of the Haitian families wake up small children cry inside the tents pans, clink over crackling fires. As migrants prepare breakfast ahead of the tiresome journey. As the sun rises, the curvaceous forested Hills and the distance start to take. The bright green grass is Dewey birds call out enthusiastically and people start taking down their tents and begin to pack some Chad and Haitian Cray and Spanish.
There's a group praying right now have about 10 people. We're all holding hands and standing in a circle. Before the journey nearby 24 year old Jesus Fernandez from Venezuela shows me his bag filled with the few belongings he has to make this multi-day truck, a sweater shirt, his ID.
He's in the jungle. After fleeing Venezuela, he says the government killed one of his best friends when they were out protesting.
He says that was the straw that broke the camel's back. No, he vows never to return to the country until the government falls. He and his cousin had four suitcases. When the journey started
now they're down to a backpack. A suitcase and their tent to travel light for the tough journey ahead. One of the guides yells out to the camp. It's time to head into the forest. We quickly say goodbye. Hiss in Houston. The sun is up. We start walking up and down Hills along muddy paths, along rivers, along with the migrants, our local mochileros or backpackers, helping carry bags through the jungle for a fee it's not long before we cross our first river, one of many to come.
After just 20 minutes or so I'm out of breath. I take a breather with a group at the top of the hill and spot Jean, Jean Baptiste, also a bit winded but in high spirits.
He's wearing a blue Outback steakhouse t-shirt and a headlamp. I ask him if his feet are wet, like mine. We don't really have the right gear for this kind of a trip
We chit-chat while catching our breath.
It's just the beginning of the hike through the Darien gap. Everyone is sweating and tired already.
It's hard, but we're here and Shirley we'll get through it. He says,
we say our goodbyes, Marie, and I have to turn around. We didn't see the worst of what they faced, but we heard about how bad it got from other migrants. People like DACA and John Sony, O Jean, who we met in earlier episodes. Clearly their memories of the journey are laced with trauma. I spoke to OJ long after this trip, he says flat out if he had known the journey was so dangerous,
he never would have sold off his belongings in Chile and risked the lives of his wife and unborn daughter to come to the United States. He still finds it difficult to talk about what he saw the murder. Robberies crying. The family's forced to leave loved ones behind and forge ahead.
He says he saw grotesque things there.
Dead Haitians, Cubans. Venezuelans.
Sometimes he had to step over corpses to continue the journey. He says, anyone who makes it through this route to the US is a hero.
In Oya, Mexico, DACA says the journey. Wasn't all bad. She liked seeing so many different countries. but she also told reporter Stephanie Corby about the rushing rivers that would carry people away to their death. She remembers praying to get out alive.
I talked to dash in November at a migrant shelter for Haitians for weeks. This shelter was home for people like her Haitians, who didn't dare cross into the. For fear of being sent back to Haiti. She shows me around the shelter, the tent, where she's slept, the kitchen, the cold broken showers. She reflects on her journey through the Darien Gap.
At one point in the jungle, a man with a gun stopped her and asked for money. She was on the ground crying. She told him she didn't have any money.
They let her go. Unlike some others, traveling with her.
she doesn't know what happened with the people she left behind. She kept moving forward and didn't look back, send me glass.
This idea of having to keep moving forward and not look back. It speaks to this journey as a whole, for so many Haitians. It's part of surviving. But for us to better understand what's going on. We have to look back at Haiti's history and relationship with the United States. We have a bad marriage. One is powerful, whatever reason want to mistreat the either.
That's what USA is doing to Haiti.
That's next time on line in the land.
Mux out
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GUSTAVO: And that’s it for this episode of THE TIMES, essential news from the LA Times.
LINE IN THE LAND is reported and produced by Elizabeth Trovall (TRO-vall), Sofia Sanchez, Stephania Corpi (CORE-pee)… And Joey Palacios. Their editor is Alisa Barba (BARB-uh).
Cultural competency assessment by Myriam Chancy (Meer-ee-am Chaw-see). Sound design and music by Jacob Rosati.
Audio mixing by Bennett Smith. And special thanks to Dan Katz, Lily Thomas and Maria Reeve.
LINE IN THE LAND is a production of Texas Public Radio in collaboration with the Houston Chronicle.
You can find and follow the show and binge all the episodes in season 1 on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Times is produced by Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, Kasia Brousalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Madalyn Amato and Carlos De Loera. Our intern is Surya Hendry. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.