Dany Chapi decided that migration was the only way to support his three children and wife. “It was very difficult to tell my family that I was leaving because we were never apart,” she recalls. He didn’t tell them when he was leaving, nor did he say goodbye to them, it was July 4, 2022 when he informed them that he was in Colombia, on his way to Panama to take the dangerous road through the Darién, a jungle wall to cross between Colombia and Panama. One of America’s lungs that hides hell for hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach the United States.
The goal was set to reach North America at all costs, but he didn’t succeed on the first try. Dany was arrested by the immigration authorities in Mexico and returned to Quito. He waited a little over a month to recover from the dehydration left by the crossing and departed again, through the Darién again. On that occasion, the residents of his neighborhood learned that he would repeat the trip and 40 people asked him to go with him, including eight children. “There was a woman who was very chubby, she was traveling with her seven children. I was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to climb the mountain of death, but she wanted so much that we all helped there,” says Dany. who acted as guide this time.
Unlike the migration of the 1990s, when millions of Ecuadorians sailed to the United States and contacted a coyote or human trafficker who allegedly traced the entire route, the cost was $15,000. Thousands of families applied for loans or money from moneylenders, which charge interest rates of up to 25%. This route still exists. But when Dany and three other friends first decided to migrate, they got the information from Tik Tok and from an acquaintance who made the trip, and she survived. “He left us voice messages and explained what we should do,” but for most of the journey, they followed the other trekkers who, like them, shared the same goal of traversing the jungle that more than 250,000 migrants have traversed in the last year .
The Ecuadorians are the second nationality, according to the migration from Panama, that has made the most use of the irregular passage of the Darién. The number shows an alarming increase, by January 2022 the passage of 100 people had been recorded, by October there were already 8,587 in a single month, at the end of the year. A total of 29,456 Ecuadorians traversed this jungle.
Of the 4,161 medical consultations conducted by MSF in the first weeks of January after leaving Darién, 13.3% relate to Ecuadorian patients; that is, 550 people. Throughout 2022, 7% of the 40,000 services provided to migrants came from Ecuador, including Dany. “I asked them for help because I got the flu on the way, but the worst thing is that I got very ugly cuts on my legs and feet from the wet boots because of the water coming in while crossing the rivers,” he says the consequences: 12 hours of walking in seven days.
“You see a lot of things along the way, a lot of people giving up, a lot of people who are hurt and there is no one to help them and they stay there to die,” describes Dany. He also saw the dead in the river and uploaded it to Tik Tok where he documented the journey, the children crossing the rivers, the Ecuadorian flags pinned to the trees to leave their mark, the struggle for the safe escorts and the brief pauses in the camps that were set up as night fell. Dany and her friends were also attacked by armed groups in the middle of the jungle. It was life or $100 and in no time they lost all the money they had on them.
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Dany Chapi had three mechanical workshops in the Ecuadorian capital before the pandemic, but like many other people, shops closed and when reactivation began he managed to run just one shop. There was just enough for a family of five and to pay the employees, but not for the “vaccine,” the blackmail that criminal groups are demanding without discrimination against businesses in Ecuador.
“They entered the premises twice, I notified the police but they did nothing.” He decided to emigrate when, in broad daylight, the criminals visited not just Dany’s shop but the whole street to tell them there were consequences would give for wealth and family if they did not pay the monthly amount they asked.
After crossing the dangerous jungle twice, Dany says: “I’m less afraid of crossing the Darién than I am of living in Ecuador.” Now he is planning his third attempt to North America, this time with his wife and three children. The complex situation of insecurity in the South American country, where more than 4,600 people were murdered last year, has supplanted the lack of jobs and opportunities that have always been the reasons for Ecuadorians to migrate. “Many of the people encouraged to walk this route have expressed that there is a factor of violence or that they did not feel safe in the place where they were,” explains Cristina Zugasti, representative of Doctors without borders in Panama.
“A 50-year-old man who came for a consultation told us that he was selling things on the street and that the criminal groups asked him for $2,000 and he said he couldn’t pay, so he left,” he adds . There are other cases where the fear that it might be their turn at any moment motivated them to leave, like that of a woman who was called more than once from her children’s school while she was at work. “It was the director who didn’t pay for the vaccine and they had to run to pick up the children because they had been threatened with a bomb,” says Zugasti, in another of the cases they have collected in the short time Doctors have provided psychological support to migrants leaving the Darién.
The second time Dany traversed the jungle, she traversed Central America and Mexico and made it to the United States. After a few days he started assembling kitchen furniture. The American Dream had crystallized. But his wife decided to follow him, accompanied only by their 3 and 14 year old children, she also did it through the Darien Jungle. “It was very difficult, but they made it,” he says. However, they did not have the same luck and were arrested in Mexico. It was Christmas Eve in December 2022 when Dany got the call. “My wife cried broken, she was in Ecuador, they had been deported,” and he decided to go back for her. “In June I will try again, but with my family,” he says
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