Many Latin American migrants unable to enter the United States now return to their country. Many of them will have to return by Panama. But is Panama ready for this reverse migration?
Eyder Peralta, host:
President Trump essentially closed the door to immigrants who had tried to cross the South American border. Not only that, but he also sends susth and others in prison migrants in El Salvador. His policies have provoked a so-called reverse migration, and migrants say they feel like welcome nowhere. I was recently in Panama, where the benefits of politics are exposed.
Unidentified person N ° 1: Hola.
Unidentified person N ° 2: Hola.
Unidentified person # 3: Hola.
Peralta: To get to the small island of Gardi Sugdub, you need to cross the Panama forests until you reach the Caribbean coast, then you have to get on a small boat.
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Peralta: It’s paradise, really – turquoise waters dotted with small islands with white sand. We heard this remote island – 200 inhabitants – is a stop along the reverse migrant path. The Venezuelans who abandoned the American dream made a stop here on the way back.
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Peralta: And as soon as we dock, a group of Venezuelans surrounds us.
Unidentified person # 4: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: One of them says they succeeded in Matamoros. They were right opposite Brownsville, Texas, when President Trump came into office. They saw other Venezuelans turn into American authorities to have a chance to seek asylum, but some ended up being detained, others were expelled in southern Mexico.
Unidentified person # 4: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “We decided that there was no way to follow,” he said, “so we started to go south.” They have been on this trip for almost a year. It is another act of despair. Trying to find a safer path, they found themselves on this isolated island. When I ask for their names, they refuse. They are afraid of what they say could be used against them by the Panama and Venezuela authorities or even in the United States, they have no money to get on a boat to go to Colombia, and they clearly show that the islanders are not the most welcoming people. So we let them be, and we pass the bar in front of people partying for carnival.
Unidentified person # 5: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: The island is autonomous, controlled by the Guna people, who have lived here for hundreds of years. It is a grain in the middle of the Caribbean. There are no cars, so the buildings are separated by narrow earth aisles.
Unidentified person # 6: Dad.
Unidentified person # 7: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: Anisberto Herman is the secretary of the city, and he leads us to the congress, a huge roof hall with a thatched roof with benches facing a few hammocks where the Saylas – the spiritual leaders – rest. Journalists do not often come here, so Herman knows exactly why we are here.
Anisberto Herman: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “We reject the presence of all migrants,” he said.
Herman: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “Because they still come here,” he says. The migrants began to come here as soon as Trump took office. They came 20 at a time. Herman says they quickly overwhelmed this small island of around 200 people. While we are talking about, Nelson Morgan, the spiritual leader of the island, emerges from his hammock.
Nelson Morgan: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “People here don’t want migrants,” he said. And then he turns to the prejudices that were built here. Migrant women are prostitutes, he said. Some of the migrant men look at our women who take showers outside.
Herman: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “Some of them are good,” adds Herman, “but so many others are drug traffickers.” I ask what he thinks of President Trump.
Herman: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “He behaves badly with us,” he said. I tell him, but some of the things you say about immigrants are what Trump said.
(Spanish speaking).
It’s a bit ironic, right?
Herman: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “Yes, but the truth is that we are not prepared for it. These migrants came out of nowhere.” The truth is that the whole American continent faces a huge stranger. Over the past decade, when the countries of Latin America have descended in crisis, millions of people have fled north. It was an unprecedented migration, and most of them headed for the United States, so an entire system was created, bus routes to applications, to try to control this flow. But Trump came into office. He closed the border and upset the entire system. Panamanian political analyst Rodrigo Noriega.
Rodrigo Noriega: The system collapsed, and everyone looks in the other direction.
Peralta: Migrants ended up imprisoning Salvador, trapped in hotels or blocked in camps in the middle of a jungle in Panama. And this is only the beginning because hundreds of thousands of migrants are still in Mexico, and the United States has decided to strip around a million migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba from their legal status.
Noriega: And it will be like a cascade. People come from Guatemala to Nicaragua in El Salvador in Costa Rica in Panama.
Peralta: Fear, says Noriega, is that a policy at the open door could lead to tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of migrants in search of asylum in these countries. Thus, the policy that most of them has taken is essentially the same as the United States – we do not want migrants in our countries.
Noriega: In a way, we are accomplices of this policy.
Peralta: Back on the island, we find another group of Venezuelans who hope to catch a boat to Colombia the next day. Marta is 59 years old. Astrid and Jesus travel with their 4 -year -old daughter. Everyone left Venezuela almost a year ago. They crossed a jungle. They had to go to the food and sleep on the street. But they arrived in Mexico. They were so close to the American dream.
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: Marta says she had spent five months in Mexico, waiting for an appointment so that she could ask for asylum in the United States.
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “We were all dupled by the hope of an appointment,” she said. ” But when Trump came into office, he killed the CBP One application, canceled all appointments and stopped news. “The doors have closed and they abandoned the American dream.
Unidentified person # 8: (Spanish speaking).
Jesus: (speak Spanish).
Peralta: “I just want to rest, said Jesus.” I want to go home, being with my family, but getting home was as difficult as trying to go to the United States. “Some of their friends were arrested along the way, gathered in the Costa Rica and Panama camps.
Jesus: (speak Spanish).
Peralta: The United States has closed its doors and everyone has followed suit. All fled the disastrous economic situation in Venezuela, and they fled a government with which they do not agree, but now they are against the wall.
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Unidentified person # 9: (laughs).
Peralta: The only choice, says Marta, is to start kissing the Venezuelan president a **.
Jesus: (speak Spanish).
Peralta: “God helps me,” said Jesus. “I’m going to work, don’t take care of this pig.” Suddenly, everyone becomes serious, as the reality of going home has struck them. But they are not sad.
Jesus: (speak Spanish).
Peralta: “All these sufferings,” said Jesus, made them valorize Venezuela – the beaches, humor, even the bad flour of the government they use to make their beloved arepas.
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “It’s a God’s test, do you know?”
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “Maybe we got into this mess because we did not appreciate our lives.”
Marta: (Spanish speaking).
Peralta: “But I know that our lives will change,” she said. “I know God has something good in reserve for us.”
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