At a Mass to remember deceased migrants at the US-Mexico border, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso in Texas lamented the deaths of 853 migrants on the US side alone during 2022.
Speaking from a platform overlooking the Rio Grande River, the new head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration also highlighted that no one even knows how many migrants have died en route to the US, particularly in the Darién Gap, a thick jungle that connects South and Central America.
“We’re conscious that there are many who have not arrived safe and sound,” Bishop Seitz said. “It’s possible that their stories will never be told until we meet them in the kingdom of God.”
He wished more people would see migrants not as potential enemies but as “brothers and sisters they haven’t met”.
The Church in Venezuela and Colombia has pointed to the horrifying conditions suffered by those crossing the jungle of the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia.
Red Clamor, which carries out pastoral work in Latin America in support of migrants and refugees, is running a campaign: “The Darién is not the way, it’s a dead end.”
The Latin American Church Network, which brings together more than 600 organisations of the Catholic Church in Latin America and the Caribbean, describes the Darién jungle as “a deadly way that doesn’t seem to stop the thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, who have decided to travel its paths looking for new opportunities for a better life”.
Red Clamor points out that “this journey has been deadly for so many, for the Darién is not the road, it is a dead end that takes the lives and dreams of those who, out of desperation, cast their lot with crossing it”.
Increasing numbers of migrants have been taking the route through the Darién Gap to reach North America. According to the United Nations, more than 148,000 Venezuelans crossed it between January and October 2022 – 50 times more than in all 2021.
It is particularly dangerous because the 50-mile stretch of rainforest and marshland has no roads.
The crossing on foot takes at least a week starting in the Colombian village of Capurganá, where migrants pay locals up to $400 to guide them through the jungle. Those without funds get together in groups and attempt to make the trek on their own.
Those who cross risk being robbed by armed groups that control drug-trafficking routes in the jungle. According to Doctors Without Borders, which runs three health posts on the Panamanian side of the Darién Gap, women face being raped.
Environmental dangers include crossing several rivers where there are neither bridges nor boats, clambering across steep mountainsides, and coping with numerous insects, snakes and carnivorous mammals.
No services of any kind are available and remains of deceased migrants are often encountered. There is no medical help available and no way to evacuate someone ill, injured, or simply exhausted. There is no police presence and no mobile phone signal.
Last year, Bishop Hugo Torres of Apartadó, a Colombian diocese along the border with Panama, said it is urgent for officials in both countries to find a safer passage for migrants.
“We have to create a culture where migrants are respected as they make their way to the promised land,” he implored.
Last week, the UN announced that it would seek $1.72 billion for 2023 to aid Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Some seven million people have fled the economic and political crisis in Venezuela in recent years, and most are scattered around the region. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration also flagged up the risks that Venezuelans take to migrate, including crossing the treacherous Darién jungle.
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