No choice: brave the jungle of Darien to escape Maduro’s Venezuela

An 80 percent drop in GDP in a decade under Nicolas Maduro has pushed more than seven million Venezuelans to seek a better life elsewhere – Copyright AFP MARTIN BERNETTI

Juan José Rodriguez

Oswards Ruiz said he had no choice but to flee Venezuela after President Nicolas Maduro claimed re-election in a July election that the opposition said it stole.

Seated on the ground next to a flimsy tent in a jungle in Panama, the 39-year-old said he began receiving death threats after the election for supporting the opposition.

“The people achieved what we wanted: to win the elections. But they stole it from us,” he told AFP.

“We were beaten up by the ‘colectivos’ (armed pro-Maduro groups) and we had to flee… I left my country because they wanted to kill me.”

So Ruiz and a companion traded one life-threatening situation for another and opted for an arduous trek through the Darien jungle, which separates Colombia from Panama, from where they hope to reach Central America, Mexico and eventually the United States.

“That jungle is the worst thing that can happen to a person,” Ruiz said of the crossing, adding that he saw several bodies along the way.

A few meters from his tent, Rosa Perez, a 40-year-old Venezuelan, sat crying.

A relative who had accompanied her and her son Matias, 11, on the trip was swept away by a Darien river.

“While crossing the river, they slipped and he (her son) managed to get out because his backpack was floating. The other one doesn’t,” Perez said, showing a photo of the missing man, 25-year-old Reiner Jimenez.

– ‘Illusions have disappeared’ –

An 80 percent decline in GDP in a decade under Maduro has prompted more than seven million Venezuelans – almost a quarter of the population – to seek a better life elsewhere in recent years.

Many had hoped to return under a new opposition-led government, as polls had predicted.

But the prospect of six more years of Maduro — whose re-election bid has been rejected by dozens of countries, including the United States — has prompted more people to leave instead.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado had warned on election day that another “three, four, five million” people would likely leave if Maduro “seized power.”

In an interview with AFP via Zoom on Friday, she warned that “some people cannot wait” for the situation to improve.

“If you are hungry, if you cannot send your child to school, if you cannot afford the medicines… you cannot wait for these processes to consolidate.”

At a reception center for migrants in Lajas Blancas, a jungle hamlet about 250 kilometers east of Panama City, hundreds of people sleep in wooden barracks or tents.

The Panamanian government, with international assistance, is providing basic services to help migrants regain their strength before embarking on the next part of their journey, to Costa Rica.

In 2023, a record 520,000 people crossed the Darien, risking life and limb in treacherous terrain littered with pumas, jaguars and other wildlife, as well as criminal gangs.

So far this year, the number is about 260,000 – about two-thirds of them Venezuelans.

The numbers are down from last year as Panama has closed several jungle routes, Panama says.

A Venezuelan soldier, who asked to be identified only as Jose for fear of reprisals, told AFP in Lajas Blancas that he had left before the July 28 elections, with his family and their dog.

“Very few soldiers decided to stay. “I was one of those who decided to leave my country because I don’t agree with the things happening there,” he said.

“We had hoped that this government would end and that we could return,” but now “all those illusions have disappeared.”

– ‘People will starve’ –

At the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino cited Venezuela as a “concrete example” of the political instability that he said was fueling “mass migration.”

Since taking office in July, Mulino’s government has expelled dozens of migrants from Colombia, Ecuador and India on flights funded by the United States.

Washington has pledged $6 million to repatriate migrants from the Central American country, hoping to reduce the number of irregular crossings at its own southern border in an election year.

However, Panama is allowing Venezuelans to pass, given the dire political and economic situation in their country.

Ruiz’s traveling companion, Marcos Arcilla, predicted that more Venezuelans will leave “because people there will starve.”

“No one goes through that (the jungle) because they want to,” Perez added.