There is no way back for the migrants by land to Panama.

The route leads along small paths and rivers through one of the wettest rainforests on earth, over steep hills and through areas where armed groups are hiding.

The Darién region between Colombia and Panama is also called the gap or plug.

To this day there are no road connections, and the “Panamericana”, the continental highway leading from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, is also interrupted at this point.

Darién can only be crossed on foot and by boat.

But the journey takes days and often ends in death.

Tjerk Brühwiller

Correspondent for Latin America based in São Paulo.

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Yet hundreds of people set out in Colombia every day to get to Panama on foot - and thus a little closer to the United States.

In the past few months, the number of migrants taking the dangerous route has increased massively.

According to the Panamanian authorities, more than 50,000 migrants from Colombia are said to have entered Panama by land this year alone.

That's as many as in the last three years combined.

The majority are Haitians and Cubans, and to a lesser extent people from South America, Africa or Asia.

Chaotic states

The starting point of the route is the small Colombian town of Necolí on the Gulf of Urabá, where the migrants take ferries to the other side of the Gulf in order to undertake the life-threatening march. In the past few weeks there has been a real rush of migrants in Necolí. Thousands are waiting to continue their journey. The situation has worsened to such an extent that the foreign ministers of several countries are looking for solutions. Panama has agreed to take in 650 migrants per day for the time being. Costa Rica, which borders Panama to the northwest, is also to be included. Panama's capacities are limited. Because chaotic conditions prevail in the arrival locations. Panama is overwhelmed with caring for the starved and often injured or sick migrants in the remote areas.

The migrants rarely made it to Colombia directly from their countries of origin. Most of them have been in South America for a long time. Many Haitians, for example, have set out from Chile and Brazil, where they had built a measly existence that they lost again because of the pandemic. The opening of borders in recent months has set a current in motion. The economic crisis in South America is also driving him. Without money and papers, the path to supposed happiness in the United States for migrants from South America leads over land and thus inevitably through the Darién jungle.

The reports from those who have made it to Panama are shocking.

They report robberies and accidents.

Armed groups target the migrants' few belongings and remaining cash.

Migrants report executions, violence and sexual abuse.

Others fall victim to the adversity of the jungle, get sick, injured or no longer have the strength to march on.

They are left behind in what amounts to a death sentence.

On the paths one repeatedly comes across corpses, report those who made it.

Always further north

Their journey does not end in Panama, but continues northwards, where they join the migrants from Central America, who have also been moving north again in greater numbers for some time. Almost everyone wants to go to the United States. In July alone, the American border agency registered more than 210,000 irregular migrants heading for the United States, the highest number in years. Around three quarters of them come from Central America, the rest mainly from Haiti, Cuba, South America and Africa. The number of Haitians who have reached Mexico has also increased sharply. This is indicated by the rise in asylum applications from Haitians in Mexico. There were almost ten thousand applications in the first half of this year, which is one and a half times as many as in the last two years.

Existing migrant flows in Latin America have increased and new ones have arrived. For example, millions of Venezuelans have left their country in recent years, two million for Colombia alone. Over a hundred thousand Nicaraguans fled the Ortega regime, mostly to Costa Rica. Cubans and Haitians are looking for ways to escape the crises in their countries. In the rest of Latin America, too, poverty has skyrocketed as a result of the Corona crisis, which could further drive migration.

Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes urged all countries in the region to participate in the solution.

The first regional framework will be created to deal with this irregular migration.

But it remains questionable whether a joint approach will be taken.

The Biden administration has already made it clear that migrants will not find any open doors on the border with the United States.

Mexico, on the other hand, does not have the capacity to become one large waiting room.

It has also sealed off the southern border and is bringing the irregular migrants back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

More and more migrants from the south are now arriving there.

The pressure increases.

It is so big that even the deadly rainforest of Darién is no longer an insurmountable obstacle.