Thousands of migrants stranded on the beaches of Nekokli waiting for a boat to reach Darien: “We are in hell”

Rose Marie and Jean Carlos have been sleeping in a tent on the coast of the Colombian Caribbean Sea for two months. They live there with their two ten-year-old twin children and their dog Candy. He is from Venezuela. They packed their lives into a few suitcases and arrived on the beaches of Nekocli, Antioquia. Their first objective – like the thousands of migrants of different nationalities who camp with them – is to take a boat that will take them to Capurgana or Acandi, on the other side of the Gulf of Uraba. There the dense Darien forest waits for them. They would have to walk for three days until they reached the border with Panama. Then they face a long, expensive and very dangerous journey to the United States. By December they lived in Piedcuesta, Catalonia, near Bucaramanga, more than 700 kilometers from Necocali. There he recycled, fixed up apartments, and cooked at private dinners and beautiful hotels. He gave up everything for the “American dream.”

According to information from the Government of Panama and Human Rights Watch, more than 457,000 people crossed that border on foot in 2023. Nearly double the 248,000 who will pass through there in 2022. Although there is no exact count for 2024, local authorities in Uraba estimate an influx of 1,000 to 2,000 migrants every day, concentrated in the ports of Nekokli and Turbo. the Atlantic. With an aggravating factor: many people are not able to proceed on their way immediately due to economic difficulties, security problems or because the boats cannot cope. Like Rose Marie and Jean Carlos, thousands of Venezuelan, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Haitian, Cuban, Chinese or Afghan families remain stranded in Nekokli for weeks or months. They endure hunger, suffer from diseases and endure violence while raising money to cross the jungle.

“I’m a cook and my husband is a chef, but in Nekokli we are very hungry,” Rose Marie tells EL PACE. “On January 8, when we arrived, I weighed 67 kg. Now I am 57”. Her husband’s weight increased from 85 kg to 74 kg. The dog is also thin and dehydrated. They have made many sacrifices so that their children can get three meals a day. “The hardest day was when Jean Carlos started crying and asked me why I brought him here. “We are in hell,” the woman says. He nods with resignation: “It caused me depression. Impotence. You don’t have money to eat. You have to enter a disastrous, dirty bathroom. it’s horrible. I would sometimes cook for 800 people. Food was in abundance. We could eat whatever we wanted. Now we have nothing.” The beach, sun and sea have taken a toll on the whole family. “The children got chickenpox, terrible coughs, fevers, they cried many nights.”

Last week was particularly difficult in Nekokli. On Thursday, February 22, police and the National Navy captured the captains of two boats for crimes related to migrant smuggling. According to the prosecutor’s office, the high-speed vessels transported 151 migrants “illegally and in uncertain security conditions”. Shipping companies ceased operations in protest. This created a huge dam. The migrants continued to come at a normal pace, but could not proceed on their way. About 5,000 people gathered on the beaches. Food, drinking water and camping sites became increasingly limited. The human condition reached its peak.

On the afternoon of Thursday 29th, department officials and the companies agreed that the routes would reopen on the morning of 1 March. It continued like this. At 5:00 this Friday, hundreds of people gathered in long lines at Nekokli’s two docks to board the boats. Everything seemed under control in the crowd, even though there were no police or soldiers there. The secretary of the government of Nekokli, Johan Wachert, told EL PAÍS that, under the agreement, Migration Colombia would have to bring more officers to the ports “to prevent irregularities in travel and to meet minimum security conditions”. Furthermore, it is expected that a security council will be held next Wednesday with the police, navy and the prosecutor’s office to “unify norms and ensure that boat captains are not persecuted.”

In the region, the lucrative migrant trade is controlled by the Gulf Clan, the country’s most powerful illegal group. EL PAÍS spoke to at least 10 people from Necoclí, from different professions, and they all agreed that not a single dollar, a single migrant, or a boat moved without the authorization of the “owners of the world,” as That one of the sources told them … one of the guys who guard the beach where all the migrants go threatened the photographer who took the pictures to accompany this report. President Gustavo Petro said the new York Times That the Gulf clan earns $30 million annually from the immigration business. A source at the municipality with knowledge of the situation told EL PAÍS, “It must be one of the businesses that represents the most money for the organization, even more than drugs.”

Secretary Wachtert says he is not aware of the clan’s involvement in migrant smuggling: “We do not have direct knowledge of or contact with these organizations. We can’t validate it because we don’t know at what point in the chain it happens. However, the Ombudsman’s Office published a report in 2023 confirming that this criminal organization has all the power in the territory and handles drug trafficking and migrant smuggling.

While illegals and some local businessmen become rich, migrants live in misery. These include three trans women, who apart from having to leave their homes and face the pain of poverty, have also faced discrimination. Evangelical churches, which sometimes serve meals to migrants, ignore them: “When we get to the line they say lunch is over,” says one of three Venezuelan friends who To pay for the journey, they cut the hair of other migrants. “We came here for the American dream, to have surgery,” he says. Rose Marie and Jean Carlos have helped him. They visit them, lend them things to cook, they don’t discriminate against them.

The migrant couple takes turns working all day and all night. They sell coffee, candy and cigarettes. Every peso they earn is saved to meet the $990 they have to pay to ensure all five meet the limit (that’s $330 per adult and $165 per child). A dog named Candy is also going to cross the forest in a special bag. “We’re losing $400,” says Jean Carlos excitedly.

Next to the tent of the family of Rose Marie and Jean Carlos lives Carmen Rosalía Rojas, perhaps the oldest person among all the migrants gathered on the beach. She is 64, has a few faded tattoos and is the adoptive grandmother of a group of 23 Venezuelans who are fleeing Chile. Dance, sing and run on the beach. “I want to go to the United States to see something new. I already know all this. I’ve been to Ecuador, Peru, Medellín and Bogotá,” he remembers. Albert Diaz, one of the Venezuelans who stayed with him, says they found him at a gasoline pump in Bogotá. “He was begging for money, candy Selling. “We saw her crying because her grandchildren had left her and we told her to come live with us.” That was about a month ago and now they look like family. Albert Rosalia takes away her bag of documents, doesn’t let her work, and says they’re going to spend time together in the Darien jungle. “I promised her I’d come to the United States with her.”

It’s Thursday afternoon and news that the boats will be running again the next day spreads quickly through the tents. Some migrants feel happy because the dream of reaching the other side seems closer. Others are distressed because they have not received enough money yet. Everyone is afraid of the forest. The organization Doctors Without Borders has reported an increase in attacks on migrant populations while passing through Darien this week. “In recent weeks, health teams have recorded unprecedented numbers of extrajudicial violence and more attacks of sexual violence, threatening to worsen the already dire situation on the jungle route,” a report said. In just one week in February, its medical teams treated 113 victims of sexual assault, including nine minors.

It becomes night. Amidst the hardships, the migrants have created a large family settlement on the beach. “We are in hell, but together,” one of them says, and smiles. They light bonfires. They cook pasta with tomato sauce and distribute it to everyone in the neighborhood. There’s a young man who dreams of becoming a rapper in Harlem. His stage name is Turbo. He sings while shaving and cutting the hair of his friends. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t know each other until recently, now that they’re family, they know that togetherness is the only way to make the tragedy more bearable.

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