Written from Panama, 22 March 2021
Location of events: Necocli, Colombia, 03 March 2021
Yon-Genre mind-dump, sans edit
We overnight at Necocli Colombia. Our destination was Darien Gap. The treacherous 60 mile stretch of unbroken jungle between Colombia and Panama. Migrants from approximately 150 countries pass through this jungle. Many are never seen again.
According to interviews, everyone is robbed multiple times. Allegedly, drug cartels make forced ‘loans’ to keep the migrants going, and indebted as they reach north to America. Chuck Holton, former Army Ranger, then Army Helicopter pilot, and now war correspondent, has studied the issue for two decades. Chuck lives in Panama. I write this morning from his home. His Spanish is fluent. Chuck says all pretty girls who go through Darien Gap are raped. Without exception.
Children often emerge alone, or carried by others, after parents are killed or die along the way. A friend of Chuck said one day, a woman hailed his car on the Pan Am highway, on the Panamanian side of Darien Gap, trying to sell a baby.
Kidnappings are normal. No DNA testing is made on adults with children.
Masako Ganaha has been with Chuck and I from D.C., to Texas, to Mexico, and beyond, and was there in Colombia. Masako spotted 16 year-old Madeisy and her 12 year-old brother Miguel. There conversation proceeded though Masako’s halting Spanish, and the help of Google Translator. We talked with Madeisy and Miguel on two successive days as they waited to boat to the Darien Gap.
Madeisy and Miguel were there with their mother. They were Haitians from Haiti. Madeisy said her father is from Dominican Republic and is in Dominican Republic. Madeisy had been in Chile (two years?), before heading north recently. North to America.
They are part of a recent massive surge caused by HOP: Human Osmotic Pressure. Positive pressure from bad circumstance such as famine, war, pestilence, communism, taxes — basically things like fire — create positive osmotic pressure that PUSHES people out.
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