HAITIAN ODYSSEY
The arrival of thousands of migrants at Del Rio last year was the end of a long, perilous journey through South and Central America
DEL RIO — From atop the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge that stretched above the makeshift migrant camp on the U.S. side of the border, the cries of children rose from below and the loud thunder of a government helicopter boomed overhead. Families shielded themselves from the hot sun under tents constructed from the carrizo cane that was growing along the river.
The arrival of some 16,000 Haitian migrants to this border town grabbed the nation’s attention mid-September 2021. There were images of border agents on horseback rounding up Haitians, a local disaster declaration and stories of pregnant women with little to eat and drink.
What Americans saw as the beginning of a crisis was the end of a long journey for many Haitian migrants who crossed South and Central America to be there.
Thousands were ushered into the country and made it to cities like Houston, Miami and Boston.
Others were not so lucky.
Since mid-September, according to the International Organization for Migration, the Biden administration has flown nearly 13,000 men, women and children back to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
But what happened in Del Rio was the bubbling up of one of the most surprising immigration stories of the decade — a story that traverses unexpected parts of the Americas: the Chilean capital of Santiago, Brazilian stadiums and a place where the Pan-American highway gives way to roadless jungle.
CHAPTER 1
NECOCLÍ, Colombia — Four dozen Haitian men and women strap their wide-eyed children into black-and-yellow life vests
underneath a large white tent in this beach town on the northwest coast of Colombia on a cloudy November morning. They wear their Brazilian and Haitian passports covered in plastic around their necks — a badge of the lives they leave behind.
It took thousands of miles on numerous buses to get here, yet the toughest part of the journey is ahead of them.
Babies are crying, but the mood is lively. The warm Caribbean winds that gust through town are familiar. A vendor offers popcorn and fried plantains for the road. Men carrying small tents and large plastic water jugs chat energetically in Haitian Creole as they wait to board. Backpacks and thick plastic trash bags hold the essentials — and the last treasures of their former lives.
They line up to board the Perla II, a boat that will take them across the Gulf of Urabá to one of the most secluded and dangerous stretches of Latin America. They’ve already dealt with price gouging, extortion from officials and blatant discrimination — but they haven’t seen the corpses yet.
Thousands of Haitians lined the beaches of this seaside town to make the trek through the Darién Gap. They are the same families who were met with chaos and squalor under the Del RíoCiudad Acuña International Bridge in fall 2021.
What drove Haitians from South America toward the Texas-Mexico border is part of a cross-continental migration story that started more than a decade ago with the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Seismic economic and political forces have moved Haitians to South American slums, to the Houston suburbs and even back to Haiti.
And nearly all made the journey through the Darién Gap — the only way to reach North America by land.
Perilous path
The Darién Gap is a mountainous and heavily forested stretch of land, connective tissue that joins northern Colombia (South America) and southern Panama (Central America). It is literally a 66-mile gap in the 19,000-mile Pan-American Highway, which runs from southern South America into the United States. Logistical difficulties, environmental concerns and a desire to keep foot-and-mouth disease out of North America kept the gap from being filled in over the decades.
Along the Darién Gap, there are no roads or hospitals or electricity.
There are armed groups, venomous animals, flash flooding, disease and death.
But for many, a chance at life in the U.S. was worth it.
In 2021 alone, some 83,000 Haitians hiked this difficult, beautiful terrain. Dozens did not
make it out alive. The Missing Migrants Project confirmed at least 52 people have died in the Darién Gap since January 2021, though they say their figures “represent only the barest of minimums in this area.”
Necoclí
Necoclí, Colombia, is a common stopping point before venturing through the Darién Gap.
With paved roads, ATM machines and cellphone service, Necoclí is a place to soak in modern-day comfort and stock up on supplies before migrants face days without electricity or plumbing. Necocli’s vendors push their carts selling ponchos, headlamps and knockoff Crocs to migrants.
Normally, it is a low-key beach town for Colombians. Not unlike Del Rio last fall, it became an unexpected hot spot for Haitian migration.
From Necoclí, the migrants take boats across the Gulf of Urabá to Acandí. Motorcycles and horses transport people on the dirt roads that crisscross this tiny, predominantly Afro-Colombian town. Those who can cough up the cash hitch a ride on horse-drawn wooden carts up the muddy hills to Las Tecas camp, where migrants sleep before they begin the roadless trek through the Darién Gap.
At Las Tecas, migrants pitch tents in a large clearing, just before the land becomes more rugged and a thick forest takes shape.
Under black and green tarps held up by wooden posts, locals from Colombia’s Chocó department surround the camp in makeshift storefronts to sell food, water, alcohol and even WiFi to the night’s guests.
On a cool night in November, many Haitians, Syrians and Venezuelans have set up tents before they venture into the forest. They mostly stick together by nationality and common language.
The Venezuelans tend to be young men traveling alone, while the Haitian cohort are more likely to arrive in families. Haitian mothers sit cross-legged inside their camping tents, tending to their small children. The men stand outside, protectively, and talk.
No protection
Jean Jeanbaptiste arrives at the camp late with his wife and son. Tall and full of energy, Jeanbaptiste explains how he got to Las Tecas camp — and why he’s willing to risk his life to make it to the United States.
Originally from Haiti, Jeanbaptiste arrived here after living for eight years in Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil.
“(Haiti) isn’t safe,” Jeanbaptiste says in Spanish, one of several languages he speaks. “The government wasn’t good with us poor Haitians, and it’s even worse today.”
He moved to Brazil to escape the instability and insecurity in Haiti, which grew more acute after the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse last July.
The country also has dealt with an uptick in kidnappings and gang violence.
“Nobody is protecting us there (in Haiti),” he says. “A chicken has more value than we do.”
He found safety when he immigrated to Brazil, which many Haitians did in the 2010s. There he said he worked at an Outback Steakhouse — and though life wasn’t bad, he found it difficult to get ahead living off the minimum wage of about $200 per month. He managed to save up for this journey with the tips he got.
Smiling comes easy to Jeanbaptiste, even as he describes his current predicament: being broke midway through the journey. He’s spent his last $300 to pay for a guide to take him to the Panamanian border. The journey has been pricey so far — around $3,000 for the three of them.
“The police is what’s killing us, taking a lot of our money,” he says. When they’ve taken buses, officials will come aboard and
threaten to turn them back to the city they came from if they don’t pay up.
He traveled from Brazil through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia to get here.
Now he’s worried if the money he paid will really get him to the Panamanian border. There’s no money-back guarantee if he doesn’t make it.
He’s headed to the U.S., where he has family in Massachusetts. He’s heard about people getting sent back to Haiti at the border and is worried he could be sent away, too.
“I can’t say (the U.S. is) abandoning us. They’re helping us because sometimes we cross and they let us in, no big deal, but sometimes they also deport us,” he says.
He admits he doesn’t know many specifics about the journey ahead of him. He’s taking it step by step — he knows tomorrow they have to climb a hill to eventually reach Panama — but from there he isn’t sure.
A local guide standing nearby, Andres Aristizabal Meza, pulls out his phone to show him photos and text messages from the other Haitians he’s shepherded into Panama’s southern border with Colombia.
The guide reassures Jeanbaptiste and reminds him that at dawn the group will depart and the most difficult leg of the journey begins.
Runway to America
Panama’s official migration statistics indicate that in 2021, some 83,000 Haitians and an additional 18,000 children of Haitians born in Brazil and Chile were detected at Panama’s southern border with Colombia. Migration experts use this number as a proxy for how many migrants are headed to the United States, though not all make it there.
The some 100,000 making this journey in 2021 are nearly three times the number of people that made the same odyssey during the entire previous decade.
It’s not just Haitians. Panamanian border authorities have a long list of nationalities they’ve seen crossing into their forested southern border on their way to the United States — some have traveled shockingly far from home countries like Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.
A small but increasing number of Africans have been crossing through this region as well, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“We’re talking about more than 10 nationalities that pass through here, Haitians in the largest volume,” Acandí’s former mayor, Lilia Córdoba, said in Spanish. Córdoba handles local migrant issues for the area.
In Las Tecas camp, a boisterous group of Venezuelans — mostly slender men in their 20s — talk about why they left home.
They joke that the only reason to go to Venezuela is to lose weight. Hyperinflation and food shortages have led to roughly a
The Darién Gap, which takes its name from the gap in roads in the border area between Colombia and Panama, is a dense jungle region that provides the only land route from South America to Central America. One common migratory route through the gap starts by boat through the Gulf of Urabá to Acandí.
“I saw a lot of dead people on that route. Each person who goes through this path and makes it here is a hero.” Jean Sony Eugene, Haitian migrant
third of the country being food insecure.
They are bracing themselves for the journey ahead, equipped with few personal belongings.
One young man, Daniel Alexander Olivero Coronel, explains how his father was killed in Venezuela and his mother didn’t take care of him, so he left the country on his own when he was 17 — roughly five years ago.
“To save your life, you have to immigrate,” he says in Spanish.
Since then, he’s been adrift in South America, moving from city to city to find a place where he could make a living and anchor himself.
He’s traveling without any money or help from his family, finding odd jobs here and there, or asking for charity.
He writes songs. But his notebook with his lyrics was destroyed in a downpour. He hopes he can start writing again when he finds a home.
“We’re fighting for a good future, to have something better,” he says.
On the other side of camp, two Syrians stand near a makeshift bar run by locals, where reggaeton and a blend of pop and old classic songs in Spanish blare throughout the camp.
As a kid, Ashraf Al Kontar left Syria to live with his dad, who worked in Venezuela. On top of the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, he wasn’t able to secure permanent immigration documents there. He decided to leave and go to Philadelphia to reunite with family there.
“(The U.S.) is the only country that’s going to give the freedom that one needs, the freedom to work, to live, to enjoy what you’re doing,” he says.
Life begins and ends
The journey is arduous; guides explain that travelers must repeatedly cross and recross waterways along the route.
Lilia Córdoba knows the stories from her months working with Haitian migrants.
“In the audio messages, they tell me there are a lot of dead
people on the path,” says Córdoba.
She remembers one woman who was traveling alone with her two daughters, around ages 3 and 5, who insisted on continuing her journey through the Darién Gap.
“I told the woman that it won’t go well for her because she doesn’t have someone to help her to take the two girls,” Córdoba says.
She asked some of the other people traveling with the mother to help out. Concerned about the family, she followed up with someone else traveling in the same group.
The girls’ mother had died along the path, Córdoba was told.
“And these girls?” says Córdoba. “Nobody is going to claim them.”
On her phone, she pulls up an audio message from a Haitian man who recounts crossing a river in Panama. He said he saw two people die while trying to cross, washed away by the river, including a pregnant woman.
Doctors Without Borders, which provides medical and mental health consults for people passing through the Darién Gap, said migrants reported 328 incidents of sexual violence and 86 cases of other types of violence from April 2021 through December. Half of sexual violence survivors were Haitian.
In their consults, migrants have presented with respiratory infections, skin and gastrointestinal issues and physical injuries from falling. Mental health patients have been treated after witnessing and experiencing violence from armed groups and seeing dead bodies.
But the forest also can be a place for small miracles.
Andres Aristizabal Meza — a Colombian guide who leads migrants to the Panamanian border — says he enjoys this work because he’s helping others. He beams as he reveals a photo of a woman lying on the ground in a tent — she had just given birth.
With the help of a Colombian woman managing one of the makeshift shops at the remote camp, without access to a doctor, hospital or pain medication, the Haitian woman gave birth to a baby girl.
“Luckily everything worked out, but it was scary,” says Aristizabal Meza. “It was crazy; it was beautiful.”
Into the heart of the gap
Before the sun rises at the camp, small children start to cry inside the tents, their voices cutting through the soft chirping of the frogs and insects. Pans clink over crackling fires as migrants prepare breakfast ahead of the tiresome journey.
The light begins to illuminate the panorama visible from the camp — dewy, bright green grass, a melange of lush trees and the shaded curves of forested hills in the distance. A tourist might call it paradise.
Birds sing with gusto and people start taking down their tents and begin to pack. They chat and joke in Haitian Creole and Spanish.
Those with the cash pay a “mochilero” or backpacker to carry their bags for them through the jungle. As the journey continues, these bags get lighter and lighter as people shed their heavy belongings to lighten the load as they make their way up and down hills and wade through rivers.
On the other side
If Jean Sony Eugene had known the journey would be this dangerous, he never would have sold off his belongings in Chile and risked the lives of his wife and unborn daughter to come to the United States.
He still finds it difficult to talk about what he saw in the forest — the murders, robberies, crying … the families forced to leave loved ones behind and forge ahead.
“I saw a lot of grotesque things in this place,” he says in Spanish.
The 32-year-old from Port-auPrince recalls stepping over corpses in the forest on the journey.
“Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans … I saw a lot of dead people on that route,” Eugene says. “Each person who goes through this path and makes it here is a hero.”
He and his wife ended up in Del Rio with the thousands of other Haitians who gathered there in the late summer and early fall of 2021.
They had crossed South and
Central America to get there — abandoning the life they built in Chile — yet they had no idea that afterward, the United States still might not let his family in at all.