The road to the ‘American dream’: violence, sexual abuse and hell upon reaching Mexico

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They were two women and three children. They were relaxed, uninhibited. For them, the worst was over. They traveled from Venezuela, crossed the Darien jungle and survived their entry into Mexico, hell, they say.

“The Darien jungle is the most difficult. Dangerous roads, animals, dead people, criminals,” says one of the women who did not want to give her name. “But really, the worst is reaching Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico. That is the real hell. We survived because God helped us. Many of our traveling companions were kidnapped, the cartels did not let them continue. Then, they prostitute them in that town,” she adds.

Now they are in one of the shelters in Mexico City, waiting to continue their journey to the United States.

They cannot explain how they were allowed to continue. They speculate, perhaps the company of their children. The videos that showed them everything they had to go through to get there or… the Divine Lord.

When the presidential candidates for the presidency of the United States discuss the migration issue, I am not sure that they are aware of this situation. Hypocrisy and blindness cloud their judgment.

Migrants are continuing to cross the Darién Gap — the inhospitable jungle that marks the border between Colombia and Panama — despite it being one of the most dangerous routes in the world. More than half a million people — fleeing desperate situations in several Latin American countries — made the crossing last year in their journey north, with most heading towards the United States.

“The Darién crossing is the place of impossible choices,” Tirana Hassan, the first woman to be the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), summed up last week after visiting the Colombian towns of Turbo and Necoclí to document the large-scale humanitarian crisis. “The Darién is where Latin America’s poor migration policies converge, forcing migrants to cross the jungle, says the Singapore-born lawyer on her way through Bogotá, where she met with several officials from Gustavo Petro’s government.”

She adds, “and I have never seen what I saw with women crossing the Darién gap. Sexual violence is so prevalent and the reality that it may happen to women leads them to actually carry the morning after pill with them as they begin the crossing.”

This level of violence has prompted calls from numerous human rights organizations for governments along the route to provide care, both physical and mental, to the thousands of women who undertake this odyssey.

United States Expands its Migration Blockade; Colombia Questions Installation of Barbed Wire in El Darién