Jaque, Panama (AP) – While the boat bounced through the minced waters of the Pacific, Mariela Gómez and her two children snuggled for 17 hours above the gasoline tanks, uncertain of what was advanced in the dense jungle.
The 36 -year -old Venezuelan mother was among one million migrants who traveled along the continent in recent years in the hope of reaching the United States. But with legal roads cut under the president of the United States, Donald Trump, she and thousands of other Venezuelans are now trying to return in an “reverse migration.”
More than 14,000 migrants, mainly from Venezuela, have returned to South America since Trump’s immigration repression began, according to figures from Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica.
Struggling to buy even food after failed attempts to stay in the United States, Gomez cannot pay the $ 280 position per person on the most frequent Caribbean route to Colombia. Then, a growing number of migrants such as her are shipping boats that transport the load between the capital of Panama and the Pacific coast dressed in the jungle of Colombia.
The new route is half the price and twice asleep.
“We lost hope,” he said. “We are trying to return, but we don’t have the money to return.”
‘Only clothes on your back’
In recent years, migrants fled the crisis in Venezuela once they crossed the dangerous jungles of Darien’s gap between Colombia and Panama and waited for months in Mexico an asylum appointment in the United States, but when Trump assumed the position, many of those people were stranded in Mexico. Without other options, they turned back, going down through Central America on buses.
They pass aboard slow motion load boats full of goods along the other Panama coast in the Pacific Ocean for days, before boarding the precarious motor ships that trigger along the coast. The ships are often full of 15 to 30 people. Hundreds so far they have toured the route, according to a United Nations report published earlier this month.
“People arrive with very few resources, some with only back clothes,” said 56 -year -old boat driver Nacor Rivera. “Many cannot pay for the boat ride, so I had to help many of them, carrying them for free.”
In June, one of those ships transported 38 people crashed into the sea, hurting a pregnant woman, children and a person with disabilities who lost the wheelchair.
According to the UN Report, they land in Jungled stripes of Colombia, a region full of armed groups that take advantage of migrants, where there are no shelters and little access to medical care.
“We urge the authorities to take care of people in this reverse migration to prevent them from falling into criminal networks and trafficking in illegal armed groups, and make them victims of even greater violence,” said Scott Campbell, a UN Human Rights officer in Colombia, in a statement.
Migrants land with serious cases of dehydration, burns, malnutrition and mental health problems. Those without money can “remain stranded in inhuman conditions,” the report said.
That was the case of Jesús Aguilar, a Venezuelan migrant who was caught in a Panamanian rural city in Darien’s gap for two months. He managed to look for money slowly to pay a boat to Colombia after a place offered to work by cleaning his farm.
Trying luck in South America
Others, like Gomez’s family, spent months in Panama City saving money to travel back to Venezuela, but when they fell short, they decided to take the cheapest route along the Pacific.
Sitting on gasoline tanks, Gomez Acuna his 5 -year -old son wrapped the blankets. The family fled the South American country in 2017 before a spiral economy and a growing repression of the government.
For years, he lived in Colombia and Peru, like millions of other Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years. Unable to reach the end of the month in countries that have struggled to handle the crush of vulnerable people, Gomez began to look at the United States in the hope of building a new life.
After crossing Darien’s gap and later the border between the United States and Mexico to Texas in October, his family was quickly dragged by the border patrol of the United States and gave the Mexican authorities that withdrew them in southern Mexico.
Shortly after, he decided that his only way to follow was to return home. Without work and with posters that take advantage of migrants like her, staying in southern Mexico was not an option.
At least in Venezuela he has his home and his family, he said.
“I would have been risking our lives and risking my son’s life,” Gomez said. “We just hope God protects us.”
Now, when he returns home, he is not sure of what he will find in Venezuela, who has faced a continuous offensive against the dissent of the government after the elections played last year.
She said that if the government of President Nicolás Maduro remains in power, staying in her country does not seem an option. “I would have to leave my country again, maybe go to Chile,” he reflected. “I would have to try their luck in another country. Again.”
“But at this time, we just have to focus on getting to Colombia,” he added.
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Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
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Follow the AP coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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