(Bogotá) At least 10,000 Venezuelan migrants en route to Panama bound for the United States are currently gathered in a locality in northern Colombia, local authorities announced on Monday.
Posted at 8:18 p.m.
These migrants are stranded in Necocli, on the shores of the Gulf of Uraba, in the Caribbean Sea, local human rights defender Wilfrido Menco told the Colombian press.
They are waiting for boats to be able to cross this gulf in order to reach the border town of Acandi, from where they intend to begin the perilous crossing of the Darien, a thick jungle of border mountains between the north of Colombia and Panama.
“There are no more tickets to take the shuttle boats” to Acandi, said Mr. Menco.
This region has experienced an unprecedented influx of migrants in recent weeks, the vast majority of them Venezuelans, wishing to cross all of Central America to reach the United States.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 160,690 immigrants have passed through the Darien where “the migratory flow has increased considerably”, according to Panama’s Interior Minister Juan Pino, who said he was “struck by this crowd coming from the south and the silence of the countries from which this migration comes”.
This flow for the first eight months of the year is already higher than that recorded for the whole of 2021 (133,000), which already exceeded that of the whole of the previous decade.
The statistics have exploded since July, and despite the rainy season which makes the crossing even more difficult, they peaked at 48,000 crossings for the month of September alone.
In Necocli, which has 45,000 inhabitants, “about 2,500 migrants arrive every day, mostly Venezuelans, at the rate of about fifteen buses every four hours which land their passengers at the port, worried Mr. Menco.
Colombia is on the path of many migrants on their way to North America, including Haitians, Cubans but also some Africans and Asians. At the end of 2021, the last sudden influx of candidates for exile via the Darien was mainly Haitians.
It is not known why it is currently mainly Venezuelans who are attempting this odyssey. But the crossing on foot of the Darien, mountainous jungle infested with snakes, dotted with ravines and where criminal gangs are rampant, remains particularly dangerous, and is done between three to four days.