It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: We Are All Brothers: How the Emberá Community of Bajo Chiquito Welcomes Migrants in the Darién Gap

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

In the second part of his series on the Darién Gap, James looks at the impacts of migration on the indigenous Panamanian Emberá community. Original Air Date: 10.29.24 Sources: https://www.notiparole.com https://www.instagram.com/p/DAaDkSwh1Jk/?igsh=bmgyanBteW10czd5 https://www.nytimes.com/1964/09/20/archives/a-new-canaldug-by-atom-bombs-nuclear-energy-is-the-key-to-replacing.html https://www.themanual.com/outdoors/darien-gap-feature/ https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/18/panama-darien-gap-jose-raul-mulino https://americasquarterly.org/article/the-darien-gaps-fearsome-reputation-has-been-centuries-in-the-making/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/27/the-darien-gap-a-deadly-extension-of-the-us-border https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/jmhs.pdf https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/20/snakes-swamps-whisky-british-explorers-went-ultimate-boys-adventure/ https://www.strausscenter.org/publications/asylum-processing-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-august-2024/ https://www.gob.mx/inm/prensa/el-gobierno-mexicano-y-el-inm-articulan-corredor-emergente-de-movilidad-segura-para-el-traslado-de-personas-extranjeras-con-cita-cbp-one https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-23/kidnapping-and-escape-of-95-ecuadorian-migrants-in-chiapas-if-you-continue-informing-we-will-return-them-in-bags.html https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Asylum-Policies-Harm-Black-Asylum-Seekers-FACTSHEET-formatted.pdf https://respondcrisistranslation.org/en/newsb/cbp-ones-obscene-language-errors-create-more-barriers-for-asylum-seekers https://www.msf.org/lack-action-sees-sharp-rise-sexual-violence-people-transiting-darien-gap-panamaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit

Gentleman'scuturban.com. Please enjoy responsibly. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of Footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scoville,

and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving. And this year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people

in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty. Your nation will put cash directly in the hands of these families in need, and they'll get to decide how to use it, whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business. Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by giving multiplier, which means more money for those in need. Visit givedirectly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. The social media trend is slanding some gen Zers in jail, the progressive media darling who's

public meltdown got her fired and the massive TikTok boycott against Target that actually makes no sense. You won't hear about these online stories in the mainstream media that you can keep up with them and all the other entertaining and outrageous things happening online in media and in politics with the Brad versus Everyone podcast. Listen to the Brad versus Everyone podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, it's me, James, and before we listen to this episode today, I just did want to make you aware that I conducted these interviews in French and Spanish, mostly Spanish, and then transcribed and translated them. So what you're hearing is a translated interview that's been edited for brevity and content. I hope you'll enjoy the episode.

Every day for the past two years, the population of Bahauchito has more than triple. At six in the morning, Peraguas come from other Embara villages along the river, dozens of them, all filled with orange life jackets. Migrants form a line so long that it stretches from the beach north of town all the way through the village and out the other side, and in groups of 15, they hand over their $25 each and get onto the Piraaguas. Each one puts on their bright orange life jacket, sits with their legs around the person in front, and they take off for the first official migrant reception centre in Las Blancas. As the last boat leaves, those who can't afford the trip begin a walk which could take eight hours.

I couldn't walk with them, but I handed the group of my water filter and one of those over-briced energy bars that are basically trail mix in a rectangular format and wish them the best of luck. As they force their tired legs and sore feet to walk again, the population of Bajaquito dropped back to the 500 or so indigenous people who live here. and the usual background noise of chattering dozens of languages gave way to crowing chickens and barking dogs. By the next morning, as migrants came walking in from the south, it would grow again to 1,500. For the last 10 years or so,

fewer than 2,000 people crossed in a year. But numbers have been steadily increasing. And now, the residents of Bajaquito see the numbers that they saw in a year in a single weekend. While you listen to this series, thousands of people will take their lives into their hands. as they leap into mud-colored rivers, ascend towering mountains in the pouring rain,

and desperately fight the urge to drink from a river polluted with human waste and decaying corpses. All of those who survive will walk out of that jungle, up the riverbank, along a muddy path, and into Baha'u Kito, where they'll buy themselves a cold drink and enjoy the hospitality of the locals for a night, before leaving to head north. At first, the locals told me didn't charge people at all.

They were shocked to see the migrants and wanted to help them, But, as numbers grew, they had to start asking for money as they couldn't afford to feed and house all the migrants arriving. Over time, they said, the cost rose, and now a bed costs about $5 for a night, and a meal's about the same. As they pointed out, that's less than half what I paid in Meta-Tee, the nearest town. A metat-tee doesn't have to haul its supplies up a river in a canoe using $7 per gallon fuel.

In Bahajikito, I sat down with an orderman, whose front room I just had lunch in. I wanted to get a sense of the change he'd seen over his lifetime in his community and how he felt about it. We saw how they arrived, injured, sick with vomiting, diarrhea. Then there was no health care here. What did we do? We had to speak for the government. It wasn't easy.

It was not easy. we told them that we needed a doctor and finally now, thank God, we have doctors here. The community, which has long been socially and economically marginalized and acutely under-provided with government services, had built a house themselves for the doctors and another house for migration officials.

It was the only way to help migrants access services, which in turn allowed them to move on with their journeys quicker, he said. However, like almost every other and about person I spoke with, He felt that the government should be doing more here. Even after all these years, serving as the first Panamanian village many thousands of people enter every year, they still don't have electricity, or a road that's accessible year round, both of which would make their lives and the transit of the migrants much safer. But that doesn't mean the state's totally absent here.

It used to be possible for migrants to take a Piraigua from Comigalina, little further south up river, and avoid some of the most dangerous river crossings. Bonille told me that authorities in the Comarca, which is like a state in the USA, have prohibited this. I wanted to see more of what was going on further south and what made it so dangerous, but I wasn't permitted to join a centrefront patrol going out that way, despite my request. I asked Bonil what made things more dangerous in that part of the river. First, he explained that the wide and low-lying beaches often seemed like good points for migrants to sleep, but that any rain in the mountains above would result in a rapid increase for the water level,

turning those beaches into rapids in minutes. He told me, looking down at the table, but not so long ago a storm had washed away sleeping migrants, drowning them in their sleep and washing their remains toward his village. But, terrible as it is, that isn't the only risk. You know very well that there's not a single country that does not have criminals. In every country there are criminals, yeah? So what happens at that point in the river?

As I was saying, at that point, and clearly it is not everyone, but there are some certain young men who engage in robbery and even rape. So that's why in this community, in this village, in coordination with the community, and the leaders, we, while the leader, spoke to the national government to ask for a chance to transport people from Comegaina so that nothing would happen to them. The government talked and talked, and for a while it was possible, and it was safe, and nobody died, nobody robbed. It was all going well.

But what happened? We have a leader, a cacique. I don't know if you've heard about it, but the regional leader, he put a barrier. He stopped it. Look, to be honest, these people with their degrees, this class of person, they're not humanitarians.

Despite the struggles and the relative absence of the government, overall he felt that the migration had been a positive for his community. He'd learned a lot from the migrants, he said, and enjoyed learning about their cuisines in particular. There's a common narrative in media that mentions Barojiquito that this village has been somehow stripped of its culture or ruined by migration, but the locals don't seem to agree with this. I also spoke to the village's leader.

She's the first woman in the whole Comarca to hold such a position. I'm chief of the community police and leader of the community. She explained to me that Bajikito was just one of several communities along a river, each with its own leader. Those leaders meet in the council and answered to a kasiqa of the Comarca. She also excited. explained that, as the first woman in the position, she'd made sure to advance the cause of women in her community.

Since I've had my administration, which has been seven months as Noka or leader, I have put some women to work. They're waiting for the migrants there. After that, I asked her to explain to listeners what exactly a migrant encounters when they first set foot in her village and the various steps that they might go through before leaving the next morning.

There is a check-in at first, verification of whether they have a crime in their country. From there, they go to immigration. Their documents are checked, and then they are free to choose where they're going to wait and rest for the next part of their journey. On behalf of UNICEF, we have free toilets. From the community, we also have a free place where they can camp or rest. That's theirs now. If they want better things, better rest, they can find accommodation available in almost every house here.

The next day we prepare everything, together with the center front security, we go to the beach there, and at the beach, we also coordinate with a coordinator from each village. I also want to make it clear as well that the boat driver must have their ID and be of legal age. From there, the migrants pay $25 a head and take the five-hour boat trip north to La Husblancas, which is the UN and government run camp and the first official migrant welcome center outside the Dallien. Having boat drivers who are of age is important. Migrants who can't swim trusts their lives to these boat drivers in high water.

Once they're at Las Blancas, they're close to the Pan American Highway and the beginning of the rest of their journey north. They don't have to walk any further unless they run out of money for buses. I asked what happened when someone couldn't afford the ride to La Hasblancas. What does the community do? The community takes responsibility for sending them, not the state.

The state, migration, centerfront. They don't pay for the fuel or the transport of these people. Specifically, she told me, the community sends three free boats a day. Mostly these are filled with women and children. And in my time there, it seemed that these people paid whatever they could. Those left over, usually men, would have to make the walk on their blistered feet and tired legs and risk further sickness, robbery, and heat exhaustion. I also wanted to ask a leader about the problems with theft.

in sexual assault that the migrants encountered on their walk into Bajaquito. And she was pretty forthright. This was an issue for the state, not for her community to fix. But then, where is Sennifront? Aren't Senefront supposed to be on all the banks of the river? Yes. So where are those thefts? Despite being able to prevent the Embra from using their boats on their river to transport migrants, the government at any level above the village isn't really present in Bajaquito. Senefront, Panama's combined Border Patrol and military receive migrants and register them there.

But all the services provided to the migrants, Camilla from the Embara or from non-governmental organizations. This pattern of the state failing to provide basic services, Bonil told me, is one that goes back a long time before the migrants began arriving here. So now, before the migrants began arriving here, we had a town, a town that the government is supposed to give what it has to give us as panicked.

But it doesn't. It was a town without anything. All we did was sell our products and sell stuff here for us. We grow rice, corn, plantains, everything. Well, it was a lot, but products that we grow are not enough to get by. Even today in late 2024, the village doesn't have mains electricity, nor does it have a connection to telephone networks, or a road that it can take year-round to connect it to the rest of the country.

and the few clean water taps in a town come from UNICEF, not Panama City. Doctors here come from European NGOs, and even the policing of the community is largely done by the community by a group called the Zara. An effort to better understand never about our communities, both with and without migrants, I wanted to visit another Embra village, and after the break, we'll hear about that.

I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com. Please enjoy responsibly.

Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? And what is this? How is that not a story we all know? What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet? Boy, do we have a show for you? From Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players comes Crimeless.

Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Rory Scoville, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity. of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfishes a city?

And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap, if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks you out. He has X-ray vision. How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimeless on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Dr. Lori Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, which is why my podcast is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need. This year, we're taking part in the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. And it's not just the Happiness Lab. Some of my favorite podcasters are also taking part. Think Jay Shetty from On Purpose, Dan Harris from 10% Happier,

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All right, so I'm just in my hammock now, kind of the end of the day. We're staying in another Embara village today, just probably, I mean, I bet it's a kilometer, two or kilometers away, you know, probably a decent walk, but it was pretty fast in the Peragua. It's a little more peaceful here, and our boat driver asked us to stay at his house. We said we would. you can probably hear like I don't know how much of this

is getting picked up it's a nice little village you know the I'll fucking wait until the dogs have stopped I guess when I wasn't in Bajo Chiquito I took a boat every evening to Maraganti Maraganti is only a couple of kilometres was away on a different branch of the river, but the walk might take hours through the thick jungle.

A Perraguero had invited us to stay with his family, and to see another in about our village. I'm always down to sleep outside, so I gladly accepted his invitation, and slung my hammock across his front porch. After a long discussion on whether the dinema cordage I was using would actually hold my weight, and, on my part, I'd probably ill-advised free solo onto the roof of his house to find a good anchor point for my hammock. In my time in Maraganty, I found my same. I found my of growing fonder and fond of this little community. Everyone's doors were open, and their village's children enjoyed

unsupervised playtime everywhere. There was never not a pick-up game going on at the concrete football and basketball court, and despite the fact that they were, on average, several feet shorter than me, and playing on concrete without shoes, local kids humiliated me at a wide variety of sports. With no electricity of them generators,

one Wi-Fi connection in the whole village as far as I can tell, and a few hours to myself in the evening, I happily settled into a routine of washing in a river along with everyone else in the hour before sunset, walking around town, chatting with the inhabitants, who seemed surprised but happy to see a gangly British man

ambling around their neighbourhood and petting their dogs. Once it got dark, I'd spend my evening sitting in my hammock as the grandchildren of our host asked me how to say various things in English. I played with the little toys I always bring along in case I run into children on my work trips. Being in Maragantee made me think a lot about my own life and the US in general.

I certainly have a lot more possession. here, but my neighbours don't let their kids run around in the streets, and cars would hit them if they did. People in my community, the next door app is anything to go by, spend seemingly countless hours bitching about the unhoused and other people's children. But here everyone had a roof over their heads, and other people's children ran in and out my host's kitchen without anyone batting an eyelid. Aside from laughing at my paleness when I was washing in the river, nobody here seemed that concerned that I was different. They let me hold their babies while they cooked. They didn't overcharge me for the bottles of water or snacks that I bought from

front-room convenience stores, or seemed that bothered about showing their meals and their homes with me. At night, we sat on tiny plastic chairs and talked about our shared interest in woodwork and what they wanted for their children. We talked about their boats in the river and about how terrible things must be for the migrants to risk their lives making the journey across these mountains that the Embra and their guna neighbours call home. Ever since I left their village, I've been thinking a lot about the part of the dawn of everything, in which Graber and Wengro detail how many indigenous people were adopted into colonial society, but chose to return to their communities. However, settlers in indigenous communities often chose to remain among the indigenous

communities. I don't wish to romanticize the very real struggles Yembra have with their economic marginalization and lack of access to basic services compared to other Panamanians. But I just want to reflect on the fact that there was something really special about the Little River community where dogs and chickens and ducks woke me up in the morning. Little children welcome me back every evening. They told me what they did at school or tossed a little ball back and forth and seemed entirely comfortable chatting to an adult from across the world. The people of Bajo Chiquito have shown that same hospitality to migrants and indeed to me. And so I wanted to ask the village leader how migration had changed her community. Like everyone else I spoke to, she insisted

they had held on to important parts of their culture, which he illustrated by giving me a history The town of Bajo Chiquito was founded in 1965. At first, there were three families, the Vaporizo, the Rosales, the Chagos. They came here for education reasons. Before everyone lived on their own, the education came, and that is why we grew this town. It was the education, she said, that had changed town, not the migrants. They have night school now for adults and a school for all the children with seven teachers.

The children speak Embara and Spanish and have a chance to get more education in Metatie or even in Panama City. Yes, it's due to education, not because the migrants travel all through here. Let this be clear, that is not because the migrants came here. Clearly, though,

the perception of change in their community is a concern. She told me that the local woman marries what she called a Latino man. They can't live together in the village. and she wanted to make sure I knew that children learned in Embara as well as Spanish. They also still knew dances and ceremonies, Bonilla told me. But some of the changes, she said, were positive, including one in gender relations. It's an ongoing struggle, I'll say, that to show that we women have the same capacity for thought and creativity as men,

we are fighting every day, and as you will see, it's not easy. One thing that surprised me was that the emberra would always remind me that they themselves have been migrants. They migrated to Panama City sometimes, they said. And they have little choice if they want post-secondary education or higher-level medical attention. Some of their kids even make the journey to the USA to study. What kind of hypocrites would they be, they said,

if they look down on people making the same journey? I'm going to tell you that before the immigrants arrived here within this community, we lived in the same way. I mean, we came from the countryside. We worked in agriculture. And we still continue working in the agriculture stuff, fishing, hunting, so on. We liked it a lot. Now, after the immigrants started to come, we are still the same, and it doesn't affect us.

Having them within our community, because they are, they're people. They're humans. The journey that the immigrants make is out of need. It is a need. So really, we too, for example, if we were to deal with problems like them, since we are just like them, we also have the right to emigrate as well. This is not the first influx of migration into Embra, and Guna land. In 1501, a wave of undocumented immigration from Spain, in the form of settler colonists like Francisco Balboa, arrived in the Guna and Embra territories. Ever since these Europeans first saw for themselves, what the Embraal already knew,

that this area was part of a narrow strip of land between two great oceans. People from around the world have been coming to what is now Panama as part of their journeys from north to south or east to west. The thin strip of land that joins the two American continents has been at the crossroads of the world for half a millennium. Archaeological digs in a region show that there were once roads and that gold and jade came here from afar. This rich civilization is one that Vasco Nunei is one that Vasco Nunei,

day Balboa first encountered, and it was they who first told him that their land lay between two oceans. It was somewhere just to the south of where I was staying, that exactly 511 years ago to the day, Balboa became the first European to set eyes upon the Pacific. Since Barboa, many other colonizers have come to Dalian to pit their notions of superiority against the might of the rainforest. The Kingdom of Scotland sent a group of settlers here in the 17th century. Mounted the side, this isn't a place with any similarity to Scotland, and it's easy enough to see why the plan failed, killed three out of four colonists, and essentially bankrupted an entire nation in two years, forcing it into a colonial relationship of its own with its neighbour to the south.

After the Scots left, having failed to create what they'd hoped would be a, quote, Scottish Amsterdam of the Indies, and the Spanish found a flatter and easier connection between the Pacific and Caribbean, the Dalyan region returned to its indigenous people, whose home it remains. But over the course of several hundred years, many empires have come to the Dalliant to die. The French tried to build a sea level canal, not so far from here, a canal without locks, but they ultimately failed. The US tried in the 1850s and 1870s to forge a route to build a canal to get East Coast banks access to west coast gold, before eventually finding an easier route further north. A century later, the US and Panama openly discussed dropping nuclear bombs on the

jungle to make it possible and to allow the construction of a road. The U.S. offered to shoulder two-thirds of the cost of building such a road, and hoped to have the Pan-American Highway completed in time for its 1976 bicentennial. But the gap's hostility in the growing environmental movement, as well as a desire to protect U.S. livestock from the foot-of-mouth disease that's endemic in South America won the day. The gap remained a gap, largely without the influence of the state. In the 1970s, the British Army expedition traversed to Dalyan and two range rovers, assisted by horses, parachute drop resupplies, and a team of engineers. They crossed the jungle in 96 days. They had to make their own bug nets for their horses out of the parachutes that were used to drop

corncops for the animals and rice for the humans. Expedition leader and seasoned explorer, as well as possibly the most British man in history, Lieutenant Colonel John Blashford Snell, wrote, without doubt it was a harder thing I've ever done in my life, calling the Dalian a godforsaken place. The Dalian is one of the wettest places on the planet. A particular cruel twists for the would-be colonizers from Scotland. In the months before I came here, I spent hours trying to work out how to waterproof my podcast equipment, and most of what you're hearing is recorded on a voice recorder

that I sealed up with gasket maker, shoved inside a condom, inside a dry bag, inside a pelican case. This rain causes flash flooding, the kind which sweeps whole villages away. The rivers in the gap aren't bridge largely because they simply wash away bridges after a storm. On our journey to Baho Chiquito,

I saw the remains of bridges that had dared to try. That's why my host built their houses on stilts, and it's on those stilts that I slung my hammock in Maraganti. Ever since the failed Dalyanski, the gap has been constructed in the Western imagination as the deepest and darkest jungle. The gap today is home to every type of malaria and numerous other diseases. There are deadly vipers, deadly spiders, big cats, and as if the natural threats were not enough, the US dropped bombs here in the Cold War to test his destructive might against one of the few areas of the planet that hadn't been made amenable to capitalism. many of them remain unexploded in the mountains.

Certainly, the physical geography of the Dalian poses a challenge, but I would argue that it's the imaginative geography of the gap, which is a greater impediment to travellers. In Spanish, they call it the tapon, the stopper. Local legend has it that a Spanish conquistador, one of the first to take his last breath in the waters of Dalian's rivers, carved a phrase into the rock which has endured long after he expired. When you go to the Dalian, entrust yourself to Mary,

for in her hands of the entrance and in gods the exit. It doesn't sound that different to the things I heard from migrants, and in the modern day they'll tell you about the horrific TikToks they saw before they entered the gap, and the decaying remains of fellow travellers they saw as they passed through. Media reports on the gap consistently refer to it as a nomad's land, but of course it's very much someone's land, the land of the indigenous people who have been here long before countries, borders or reporters. While it may have remained hostile to capitalism and the state,

and it can be deadly for inexperienced travellers. It's supported life for thousands of years. And I wait about Hojikido. I was reminded of just how comfortable my hosts were in a place where I felt so out of place. So as we were coming, we got caught in a huge rainstorm, just absolutely buckling it down suddenly and pulled in to a little sort of,

just a flat area of mud, really. I hopped out, tie out the boat, and next thing I know, our boat guy just ran into jungle, chop some huge palm leaves down and brought them back to me to cover me in my bag. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of, you know, developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different.

Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman'scuturban.com. Please enjoy responsibly. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers?

And what is this? How is that not a story we all know? What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet? Boy, do we have a show for you? From Smartless Media, Campside Media, Big Money Players comes Crimeless.

Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Roy Scoval, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like

a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfishes a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap, if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks.

you out. He has x-ray vision. How can I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimeless on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, Dr. Lori Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, which is why my podcast is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need. This year, we're taking part in the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. And it's not just the happiness lab. Some of my favorite podcasters are also taking part. Think Jay Shetty from On Purpose, Dan Harris from 10% Happier,

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Well, the Embraa might have preserved their comfort and culture. It's undeniable that migration has made a huge economic impact. 959 migrants left Baho Chigito on one of the days I was able to get numbers from Senefront. Each of them paid $25 for Piraigua, about $10 for food and lodging and maybe Wi-Fi, and press a few bucks more for clean clothes or a pre-a-clothes or a pre-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a. pair of off-brand crocks to let their feet heal from three days being constantly wet and blistered. At a conservative estimate, that's a little more than 33,000 per day, roughly the GDP per capita of Panama. That's a lot of money down here, especially for a community which has been alienated

and exploited for so long. Using this money, people have enclosed the bottom floors of their homes to provide more space to house migrants. All around the village, they're building better homes. Some of them have satellite internet now, or Starlink, or bigger and more reliable generators. This money has been spread around the Amara communities in the area, and every morning each of them sends Peraguas to transport the migrants, as almost 60 are needed every day, rolling out with Madaganti at 5 in the morning, as almost the entire adult male population of the village joined us in a huge flotilla of two-stroke smoke and dug-out canoes, and the morning mist still sat in the river was an incredible experience, and it is doubtless in industry for the whole area now. If Molino or Majorcas ever successfully stops migration here, it will be a massive economic. detriment to the people already marginalized for centuries. But despite the economic benefits, the people of Maraganti don't seem to want to become like Bajojikito. On our last day there, as we set off back towards the dirt road to the borders here, we saw that they were building

little cabins outside of town. These, they said, were for the migrants. They wanted the migrants to be safe, and their community to stay the same. They might not be able to sell meals to the migrants this way or charge them for Wi-Fi or phone charging, but they will be able to live a little more peacefully. Nambara have gone out of their way to ensure migrant's safety. They're the ones who mandate life jackets, and the ones who build a house for doctors. They're the ones who send free boats for women and children. Of course, they have an economic incentive to do this.

But in nearly a week living with them, I didn't hear them bad mouth for migrants, and nor did I hear the migrants complain about the way they were treated in the village of Bajojikito. But before they get to the village of Bajoicito, migrants aren't safe. And if you ask them, they'll tell you it's indigenous people who are robbing and threatening them deeper into the jungle. Undoubtedly, robbery, sexual assault, and murder are not uncommon in the Thadian gap. You can hear anecdotes of these on a daily basis in Bahajikito. And some of the stories I heard and things I saw are among the most horrific experiences I've had in years of reporting on pretty terrible things. I haven't included a great many of them here because I think it's hard for people

to meaningfully consent in those kinds of circumstances. But yesterday you heard about the human remains that almost everyone featured in this series had to walk past. This is a problem that's getting worse, not better. In just one week in February, Medicines en Frontier, the NGO that Americans call Doctors Without Borders, treated 113 people, including nine children after they were sexually assaulted by criminal groups in the Darienne. This number is close to the 120 people treated during the whole of January. These figures are double the monthly average treated in 2023 when 676 people were treated for the whole year. As you heard before, this is the problem that people in the community sometimes acknowledge. And as the village leader mentioned,

it's one that could be solved as the state would live up to its obligation to protect migrants within its borders. The leader also share with me that the community has its own punishment mechanisms. The place of punishment is the stocks. Three days ago, someone behaved very badly and we had to put them in the stocks. The man who mistreats women, we also put in the stocks. The woman who gossips, we also put her in the stocks. What she's talking about, about here are stocks in the old-fashioned sense, not in the watery bet sense. We actually saw someone chatting them one day, with their ankles locked in place. We didn't ask what they did how long they were there, as it seems difficult again to consent to an interview when you're

literally pinned in place. But this kind of punishment comes from the community, not the state. Aside from these punishments, the community hasn't done much to stop the things happening in the jungle, and I'm not sure if it's really able to. They're Panamanian, they say, and the state's responsible for the safety of migrants within its borders. And while it does, send centerfront patrols into jungle. The state doesn't appear to be doing much to protect migrants from sexual assault, robbery or murder. Earlier this year, the state did take decisive action to eject Medins-Saint-Fontier, after not reviewing their permission to work in the Darienne. This is quite a challenging permission to obtain. Even as a solo journalist, it took months

for me to get mine, forcing me to re-book my flight several times. I heard various explanations for why MSF were not allowed to keep working. I couldn't get an official response, but it's probably worth noting that they published a report headlined lack of action she's sharp rise in sexual violence on people transiting the Darien Gap on the 29th of February and they refused permission to remain in the region in the first week of March. MSF was allowed to return in October of this year and wouldn't comment further than the following statement which they emailed me in mid-October. In October, MSF resumed medical and humanitarian activities at Lahas Blancas Migration Reception Center, located at the edge of the Darien Jungle, after Panamanian authorities approved a

three-month medical intervention. MSF welcomes its decision and advocates to collaborate closely with Panama's Ministry of Health to provide comprehensive medical care to migrants across this route, as well as to the local population of the area. Right now, UNICEF Med San Dumont, Cooperation Española, and the Red Cross are helping migrants in Bajo Chiquito. UNICEF installed showers and toilets. Global Brigades and UNICEF provided taps with clean drinking water, and the medical NDOs provide health care, which is vital in saving lives and providing survivors of sexual assault with medical care in a 72-hour window where it can be most beneficial. It's worth noting that most migrants who are sexually assaulted won't stay to press charges. I know of one case

of sexual assault of a child while I was there, but the family wanted to continue their journey and so the charges won't be pressed. This makes it very hard to ascertain how many cases of a sexual assault there are in a Dalian every year. Aside from through medical reports from NGOs, and those only include the people who make it to Bahajikito, Allahas Blankas. The numbers are clearly high, and it's a fear that many migrants articulated to me. In the jungle, they're at their most vulnerable, they said. Most people robbed, they tell me, are held by armed attackers, carrying guns and machetes. But once a migrant set foot in Bahajikito, they're momentarily safe from Rory and assault.

For the first time in days, they can sleep without worry being attacked or washed away. and the rest of their journeys north, they'll face that threat again. But that's not what's on their mind when they entered town. All they want is a cold drink and a warm meal and a chance to rest their aching feet. It's a chance that they have thanks to the Embara people who receive them there. And I want to end with Bonnier

and his reflection on the suffering people endure on their way to eat rice and plantain in his little front room cafe. Truly, the migrants on this route are not here because they want to be. They are here because the economy in their countries is terrible, or something, everything is going badly on their countries. How could we mistreat them knowing that?

We won't. Not us. Never. This is a belief that we have. We are all children of God. God made the world and humanity, and we are not that different. We are all brothers.

If It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. If a Lenovo gaming computer is on your holiday list, don't shop around. just go directly to the source, Lenovo.com.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Lari Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, and this year my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty. Your donation will put cash directly in the hands of these families in need, and they'll get to decide how to use it, whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business. Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by giving multiplier, which means more money for those in need. Visit givedirectly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab.

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