Panama buries migrants who died in the dangerous jungle of Darien in a mass grave and whom no one claims

In an isolated cemetery of the Panamanian province of Darien, a group of migrants who lost their lives while trying to cross the most treacherous stretch on their way to the United States was buried in a grave with a card containing the little data that forensic investigators have gathered in the event that someone claims the bodies. day.

The officials, wearing white protective suits, buried 15 bodies – 12 adults, two bones and a fetus – in the small Guayabillo cemetery in Agua Fría. A priest with a crucifix, a candle, and two white flowers placed on a small table next to the grave performed a simple ceremony. Indications such as “Unknown in Bajo Grande”, “Unknown from Rio Tuqueza”, “Unknown Infanta” and “Unknown Osamenta”.

“It is the least thing that can be done, bury them with dignity”, Priest Nicolás Delgado Diamante, who has been in Darien for 25 years, told The Associated Press.

For a long time, the migrants who manage to survive the crossing of the inhospitable Darien jungle they have testified to the presence of numerous corpses along a route in which they run into a section called the “Mountain of Death”, with mighty rivers -especially in the rainy season-, insects and poisonous snakes. However, little was known about what happens to the bodies of those migrants who die during a crossing of several days either from natural diseases, accidents, drowning or other causes.

So far this year, at least 50 bodies have been recovered in Darien, according to reports from forensic and investigative authorities.

This figure exceeds that of previous years in which the discovery of bodies averaged between 20 and 30 and reflects the largest irregular migratory wave that has been registered in the Darién in just over a decade. According to the authorities, more than 90,000 – mostly Haitians from South American nations such as Chile and Brazil – have made that journey this year.

“That figure is a minimum amount of what there are of human remains throughout the journey”, said Dr. José Vicente Pachar, director of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Panama. “Many of them die naturally, for example, they have a heart attack, they fall, but no one is going to pay attention to them. They stay there or they are assaulted or the stream of water comes and takes the corpses away ”. Mosquito bites and poisonous snake bites are also common.

Pachar acknowledged that there is no way to do a thorough investigation of the findings, for which international support would be needed, “to go along the paths, the trails, because all the descriptions and testimonies (s) that there are human remains.”

National Border Service agents often help with the rescue of the bodies, even using helicopters to remove them with personnel from the Darien prosecutor’s office. Yet that’s just the first challenge researchers face.

Many of the bodies often decompose due to the high humidity environment or are partially eaten by animals. Migrants who claim to have seen deceased persons en route continue on their way and generally do not stay on Panamanian soil to help in the subsequent process of identifying the bodies.

The route through the Darien plug —Where the Pan-American highway intersects— “it is so complex that it is very easy to find families that are divided along the route, even mothers who can no longer continue who have to stay inside the jungle because they have been hurt very badly (who ) they can no longer continue and they give their children to other people with whom they go and who are not their relatives sometimes, “said Katherine Fuentes, coordinator of migration, protection and social inclusion of the International Federation of Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) for Central America.

In Panama, much of the identification work falls to Pachar’s staff in the Panama City morgue.

If possible, they take the victims’ fingerprints, create dental records, and attempt to determine the cause of death. All that information is entered into a database. Most of the victims are not found with identification, it has been stolen or lost.

“It is a laborious process because generally the bodies are in a phase of putrefaction, many individual characteristics have been lost and there are also no testimonies because the migrants continue on their way and abandon the bodies,” said Pachar.

The superior prosecutor of the DarienJulio Vergara said that of the bodies found, 18 have not been able to determine their sex due to their advanced state of decomposition. Meanwhile, 15 were female and 11 male. Of the deceased, the official added, four were minors, 14 were adults and 26 had not been able to establish their age. Of those deceased, five Haitians, two Cubans and one Brazilian have been identified, he added.

The Haitians they made up the majority of the 15,000 migrants who camped for days in Del Rio, Texas, last month by a border bridge. The United States has deported thousands of them to Haiti.

“A situation that limits us in the immediate identification of these corpses is that, although it is true the migrants report to the Public Ministry the incidence of an event where they have observed that people have died … when we do the survey and we are going to to corroborate these facts, unfortunately the migrants who reported it have followed their route “, added the prosecutor Vergara, whose office has been overwhelmed by the increase in findings and the numerous complaints from migrants about assaults and rapes on the way.

The recent burial of 15 victims in Agua Fría followed a similar one in the same cemetery a few weeks earlier. In that case, six corpses were buried and artificial flowers were placed on the ground.

Pachar said the burials are necessary not only out of respect for the victims, but because morgues throughout Darien need to continually open spaces for new victims.

“If later there is someone who wants to take the remains of their loved one, we have a way of indicating ‘here they are’”Pachar pointed out.

Until now, the case of a family claiming the remains of a Cuban migrant and the actions of relatives for the body of an extra-continental migrant -as Asians and Africans are called- is known, which allowed a burial in Panama according to their customs and religious beliefs, Vergara said.

Of the last group, two had been identified, one 33 years old and another, whose age was not specified, was the victim of sudden cardiac death. The buried fetus had recently been delivered in a bag to the authorities by a Haitian woman who said she had lost her baby when she slipped during her journey through the jungle, prosecutor Vergara said.

The burials have caused resentment in some indigenous communities where the locals do not want the migrants to be buried in their cemeteries. There is also unrest in Agua Fría, so its main authority asked the priest Delgado Diamante, who performed the burial ceremony, to address the issue in his homily during mass in the local church.

The day after the burial, more than 800 migrants arrived at the Lajas Blancas reception station in motor boats down the Chucunaque River from Bajo Chiquito to join almost 300 who were waiting to board buses to continue their route to another camp in the Panamanian province. from Chiriquí, on the border with Costa Rica.

Haitian Iseris Shily, 34, and his wife Siberisse Evanette, the same age, were among them. Shily told the AP that it took him almost a week to cross the Darien jungle, a journey in which not only his pregnant wife aborted their baby and almost died, but he also claimed to have seen six migrants who died in a river.

“This tragedy is very difficult,” said Shily, who left her native Haiti in October 2017 for Chile, leaving her seven-year-old daughter behind. “It is an adventure that I do not want to live again.”

Shily’s wife had been sent to a hospital after suffering a hemorrhage, while resources had run out for the couple. The Haitian was looking for a way to contact relatives in the United States to send him money.

“My goal is to get to the United States, looking for a better life,” Shily said. “I am hoping to see my daughter again but I am afraid that they will send me (deport) to my country because there are many bad things there. Armed people are killing people in the street, the country is in a political crisis and has no government ”.

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