Colombia city crowded with African, Haitian migrants
NECOCLI, Colombia — A small city on Colombia’s Caribbean shore is being crowded with migrants from Haiti, Africa and Cuba, making what they hope will be a journey toward the United States.
Local official estimate more than 10,000 migrants have massed recently in Necocli, a city of some 20,000 people better known for its beaches, coconuts and burbling mud volcanoes. It has become a bottleneck on the global migrant trail that winds through South and Central America, and on to Mexico and then the U.S. southern border.
Necocli residents say they have never seen so many migrants and city authorities have declared a “public calamity” because of water shortages caused by the additional demand from the migrants. Colombian ombudsman Carlos Camargo on Thursday visited the city’s docks where boats depart to verify the humanitarian situation of the thousands of migrants.
“I make a call to my counterparts in other countries to carry out joint actions to confront this problem,” he told The Associated Press.
For many migrants, the journey runs from the Ecuadorian border through Colombia to Necocli, where ferries carry people across the Gulf of Uraba to the even smaller border town of Capurgana — and then into an expanse of Panama known as the Darien Gap.
But the ferries can carry only about 750 people a day — half of the 1,500 a day that have been arriving of late. The ferries also sometimes shut down on weekends or due to bad weather.
So the migrants wait, some renting rooms in cheap tourist accommodations, others sleeping on the beach. When day comes, they line up — sometimes with children in arms — in hopes of buying the $50 ferry ticket.
“I am here in search of a better life, a better job,” said Rijkaard Samedy, a 27-year-old Haitian who, along with his spouse and son, spent five years among the burgeoning Haitian population in Chile. He said they decided to head north because they felt discriminated against in the South American nation.
Colombia’s government Defense of the People agency says at least 33,000 migrants so far this year have passed into Panama, most of them originally from Haiti, Cuba, Senegal and Ghana.
That’s a sharp rebound from last year, when pandemic restrictions reduced mobility for locals and migrants alike.
Many head first to South America, where some countries sheltered Haitians after a 2010 earthquake devastated that country. Some, like Samedy, eventually look north — especially after the pandemic squeezed regional economies.
The trek is dangerous and Colombian authorities have identified human trafficking networks operating in the region. Migrants are both aided and preyed upon as they make their way from the Darien through Central America and then Mexico. Rapes and robberies are often reported.