With a bag full of hopes and dreams, Iriana Ureña, a 32-year-old Venezuelan mother of two, arrived at a Migrant Reception Station (ERM) in San Vicente, at the edge of the Darien Gap. The look in her eyes showing the pain of a mother who would do anything to protect her children.
Iriana and her husband Eduardo decided to take the journey north from Venezuela through the jungle with their two children in search of better opportunities. The decision to leave their country, home, family, friends, and a life’s work to start all over again was a difficult but necessary one for them and many other migrants. They were hungry, dehydrated, and exhausted upon arrival at the station.
“The road was not easy, I felt that our lives were in danger. It was challenging because we saw very ugly things along the road, things that I would never think I would see in my life,” said Iriana.
According to statistics from Panama Migration Services, nearly 134,000 people, 80 per cent of whom were Haitians, risked their lives through the dense jungle in 2021. This is a record number of people crossing the 10,000 square mile rectangle of trackless jungle, rugged mountains, turbulent rivers, swamp, and deadly snakes that spans both sides of the border between Colombia and Panama. Today, the journey through the gap is made more perilous by criminal groups and smugglers who control the region, often extorting and sometimes sexually assaulting migrants.