Perilous Darien Gap offers ray of hope for Venezuelan migrants
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- 17 Oct 2022
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“They say Venezuela is improving, but look how it is,” Jose Muñoz said while gesturing toward hundreds of his countrymen camped out on a beach in this town on Colombia’s northern coast.
In the coming days or hours, they will begin making a dangerous trek through the so-called Darien Gap, a jungle- and swamp-covered, 100-kilometer-long (60-mile-long) expanse that straddles the Colombia-Panama border and is one of the most treacherous sections of their United States-bound journey.
“Darien isn’t as dangerous as what we’re leaving behind,” Muñoz told Efe in Capurgana, a town just southeast of that missing stretch of the Pan-American Highway that is home to armed guerrillas, drug traffickers and deadly wild animals.
“Darien is a ray of hope for us; leaving our families behind is more painful,” he said.
Muñoz, who is making the trek alone, said his inability to afford food and medicine for his family was the decisive factor.
“That’s the reality we face in Venezuela, not what they say … it’s a dictatorship,” he said.
Like Muñoz, Angelismar had spent years debating whether to take this step.
That Venezuelan woman said she had suffered through a steady rise in prices and her family’s inability to make ends meet, but it was not until the birth of her son, Nelson Giovanny, less than a year ago that she made up her mind to migrate in search of a better future. Read More…
