International
Migrant women, victims of theft, rape and with their children in tow for the Darién
Migration has long ceased to be a thing for men. Women alone, with children or with their partners leave their homes behind having to go through a “hell” like the Darién jungle, where they are victims of rape or robberies while carrying their children: “come on, there is little left.”
At the checkpoint of Bajo Chiquito, the first indigenous town that migrants arrive at after crossing the Darién jungle, the natural border between Panama and Colombia, the Panamanian authorities take the data of the hundreds of newcomers who, exhausted, are waiting for patients in their turn. Behind the officials, apart, sits a girl. Suddenly, it seems that he has identified someone in the queue.
“Do you know this girl?” the officer tells a woman. “Are you 12 years old?” she replies. They ask the girl and she nods. The officer then asks him if he knows where his mother is. “Yes, it’s coming further back.”
Venezuelan Karely Salazar, 31, travels with her daughters, 7, 10 and 12 years old. They have gone to the village outpatient clinic. The older girl smiles, protective with one of her sisters. The mother holds the other in her arms. “Right now I have this smaller one with a fever, with a cold fever, a two-day-old girl stuck in the river,” the woman explains to EFE, exhausted. “The father of them is in Venezuela,” he clarifies, without giving details.
“Thank God we crossed the jungle, but it really wasn’t easy, very difficult for the children,” he says. Children have to be climbed by stones, if you slip they can fall into the void, into the river, “and they go hungry, and they get cold,” and they can get ahead or stay behind.
“Did your eldest daughter get lost?” “Yes,” the mother nods, and her face changes. She says that the second day of walking she felt very bad on one leg, she couldn’t move, and the little girl walked among the people and “lost her way.”
“I didn’t sleep last night, because the girl got ahead of me and reached a part of the river that had to stop and she woke up there and I still woke up inside the jungle. Last night I cried and cried because I didn’t know where I was,” says the mother.
Try to explain yourself, to make it understood: “I came alone and with three girls, imagine, pull here, pending this one, take care that you fall, but no, the jungle is really not recommended, really not.”
Hundreds of migrants, or thousands, pass through that jungle every day when the flow is highest.
According to data from the Panamanian authorities, after the historical record of more than 520,000 migrants who crossed the Darién in 2023, so far this year more than 130,000 have already done so, including about 104,000 adults, of which about 35% are women. And among the more than 28,600 minors, 47% are girls.
The Panamanian authorities generally maintain a harsh speech against migration, remembering that on the Colombian side the control is held by the criminal group of the Gulf Clan, which in 2023 received about 68 million dollars for the passage of the migrants, in addition to other gangs that steal and attack those who pass by.
The director of Migration of Panama, Samira Gozaine, goes further: “There are stories of people who say that mothers put the children to drown in the river because it weighs heavily on them, when (…) the hills become very dense and they can’t continue, they simply abandon them to their fate,” she told EFE a year ago.
For the internationalist lawyer and human rights activist Iván Chanis, this type of speech “dehumanizes” and moves away from reality, because, as he explains to EFE, “what mother wants to leave her daughter behind?”
Luisannys Mundaraín, 22 years old, carries her baby in her arms. It gives him breastfeed. He tells EFE that when he crossed one of the cliffs with the baby, he slipped, but he was able to hold on at the last moment. To which were added the snakes, spiders, rivers, and “the thieves who steal one, also rape women.”
Mundaraín then recounts how his group was intercepted in “a ridge” by a group of armed hooded people, who asked him for “100 dollars for each, and the one who did not give him the money had to deliver the phone, if it was not an iPhone no, or if it was a woman he had to stay there, you know what for.”
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) assured, before the Panamanian authorities vetoed them from continuing to provide medical care in the country, that they treated more than 1,300 people for sexual violence in the Darién between April 2021 and January 2024.
“What you live in is a total hell,” says the young woman, but the crisis in Venezuela gave her no other option, with 12-hour work in a supermarket for 20 dollars a week, when “a pack of diapers was that if at 5 dollars and the most expensive food.”
Thus, when in the election campaign some Panamanian politicians were heard saying that they wanted to close the 266 kilometers of border in Darién, the young woman sighed.
“Something impossible to close it, because that way there are thousands of dangers, migrants will always continue to go through what they suffer in those countries, we are poor. They will always keep happening, risking their lives, the children, everything,” he concludes.
International
Mexico requests extradition of ‘Mini Lic’ for murder of journalist Javier Valdez
The Mexican government has requested the extradition of Dámaso López Serrano, a former high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, who is accused of masterminding the 2017 murder of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez, the Attorney General’s Office announced on Tuesday.
López Serrano, known as “Mini Lic,” was arrested last Friday in Virginia, United States, on charges of fentanyl trafficking, a crime he committed while on parole.
“This is the key issue for us, he [López Serrano] is the mastermind of this murder. The rest of the perpetrators are already processed and in jail, he was the one missing,” said Attorney General Alejandro Gertz.
“We immediately made the extradition request,” the official added during the routine morning press conference of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Valdez, an award-winning reporter specializing in drug trafficking and correspondent for AFP and the newspaper La Jornada, was murdered on May 15, 2017, in front of the office of his magazine Riodoce in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state.
“Mini Lic” was originally arrested in 2017 when he voluntarily turned himself in to U.S. authorities and pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine. In 2022, he was released on parole.
Gertz confirmed that the Mexican Attorney General’s Office had requested López Serrano’s extradition “countless times,” but Washington had declined to act on the request because he had become a “protected witness” for the U.S. government and “was providing a lot of information.”
“Now, with this situation where they themselves are acknowledging that this individual is still committing crimes, I think there are more than enough reasons for them to support us,” the prosecutor added.
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and was founded by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
Culiacán has been shaken by a wave of murders since the arrest of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada, another key leader of the cartel alongside Guzmán, on July 25 in New Mexico, United States.
International
Cuba’s government stresses openness to serious, respectful U.S. relations
Cuba reiterated on Tuesday its willingness to engage in dialogue with the United States, just weeks before Republican President Donald Trump assumes office. During his first term, Trump halted the historic rapprochement between the two countries, which had been initiated just ten years earlier by Democrat Barack Obama.
“It will not be Cuba that proposes or takes the initiative to suspend the existing dialogues, to suspend the existing cooperation. Not even the discreet exchanges on some sensitive issues,” said Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío at a press conference in Havana.
“We will be attentive to the attitude of the new government, but Cuba’s stance will remain the same as it has been for the last 64 years. We are willing to develop a serious, respectful relationship with the United States, one that protects the sovereign interests of both countries,” he added.
His statements come on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the historic rapprochement announcement between Washington and Havana.
On December 17, 2014, Cuban leader Raúl Castro (2006-2021) and Barack Obama (2008-2016) announced the beginning of a thaw in relations, which led to the restoration of diplomatic ties in 2015, after more than half a century of confrontation.
This process of thawing bilateral relations was later halted by businessman Donald Trump, who significantly reinforced economic sanctions against the communist-ruled country. The Republican will return to the White House on January 20.
Cuba, under a U.S. trade embargo since 1962, was re-listed in 2021 on the “blacklist of countries supporting terrorism,” blocking financial and economic flows to the island of 10 million inhabitants.
Subsequently, the administration of current Democratic President Joe Biden made only slight adjustments to the sanctions and also kept Cuba on this list. However, his administration resumed bilateral contacts with Havana on migration issues and the fight against terrorism.
International
Mexican government to use church atriums for gun surrender program to combat violence
The atriums of Mexican Catholic churches will be used for the voluntary surrender of weapons in exchange for economic and legal incentives as part of a plan announced on Tuesday by the government to reduce violence.
According to the Mexican government, there is a link between the illegal trafficking of weapons—almost entirely coming from the United States—and the spiral of criminal violence that has plagued the country since late 2006, when a controversial military anti-drug offensive was launched.
“The idea is to set up areas in the church atriums where people can voluntarily surrender their weapons, and in return, they will receive financial resources based on the weapon they are turning in,” explained President Claudia Sheinbaum during her regular press conference.
The left-wing leader emphasized that the program, called “Yes to Disarmament, Yes to Peace,” guarantees that those who surrender their weapons will not face any “investigation.”
“What we want is to disarm. This will be implemented next year. We also did it in Mexico City, and it had significant results,” added the former mayor of the capital, with a population of 9.2 million.
The disarmament plan is part of the government’s “comprehensive security strategy,” one of whose pillars is promoting a culture of peace, especially in regions severely affected by organized crime violence, Sheinbaum pointed out.
More than 450,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since the government launched its military-led anti-drug operation, alongside about 100,000 people who have gone missing.
Despite being a secular state, the Mexican Catholic Church has played a key role in efforts to contain violence, with priests acting as mediators between citizens and criminals. Several clergy members have been killed for this cause.
Just last week, the Catholic hierarchy called on cartels to declare a truce in their violent actions during the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12 and the upcoming Christmas holidays.
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