Hobbling from snake bites, men and women traversing one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of jungle are abandoned to their fate. Corpses float by in the brown churn of the angry river. In the heart of the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama there is no time to wait for the incapacitated, the infirm or those not strong enough to push on. “The only thing you can do is help yourself,” says Tangie Sule, aged 29, shaking his head as he recalls the days and months he spent on one of the world’s most extraordinary migration journeys. The route from South to North America is well trodden by those seeking a new life in the US. But this year has seen a sharp rise in migrants from an entirely different continent. Tangie, like the 50 or so people he was travelling with through the rivers, mountains and swamplands of the Darien Gap, is from Cameroon. Tangie is one of hundreds of Africans now camped at the
Mexico border in a seemingly interminable queue for an asylum hearing Credit: Erin Siegal McIntyre /The Telegraph He is one of a growing cohort of refugees from war-torn Central Africa to escape to visa-friendly entry points in South America and hit the road on the long march to the US border. As Europe has tightened
immigration controls, and the numbers crossing the Mediterranean fallen away precipitously, citizens of troubled African nations have started looking west across the Atlantic. And why not?
Brazil and Ecuador’s visa requirements allow citizens of many countries in Africa to travel there with relative ease. Tens of thousands have made the epic trek in recent years. Last year 2,958 African migrants were detained in Mexico alone, according to government figures, up from 785 in 2014. Many more go undetected. Tangie is one of hundreds of Africans now camped at the Mexico border in a seemingly interminable queue for an asylum hearing – an increasingly rare occurrence under the administration of
United States President Donald Trump. Standing outside the San Isidro border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, mere meters from his final destination, he remembers the days and months he spent between here and his home town 10,000 miles away. African migration map to the US Tangie’s story A former money transfer agent, Tangie fled his home in Cameroon and flew to Quito, Ecuador. From there, he travelled north across the Americas to reach Mexico and, hopefully one day, the United States. Tangie, an Anglaphone, left Cameroon after he was persecuted by
police working for the dominant, French-speaking majority, he says. “I did not decide to leave but I had to leave because my life was at risk,” he says. He loves his country but says he was forced out. After being arrested twice and tortured for his activism work for the Southern Cameroon National Council, which represents the English-speaking minority, the police came looking for him in his home. “My younger brother was in the house with my sister. As he saw them coming; he tried to run and they shot him. They shot him dead,” he says. Tangie just starting out in the Colombian jungle, near Capurgana Tangie left his home town of Bamenda, and his wife and one-year-old child, to take a flight to Quito, now a gateway into the Americas for thousands of African migrants fleeing violence and poverty at home. From Quito he crossed over the border by land into Colombia. “I met African brothers and they told me ‘we should go far, let’s migrate, let’s leave this place’, so we started from Colombia and we went to Panama. We trekked by foot.” But blocking their way was the infamous Darien Gap. The treacherous 60-mile zone of dense rainforest that separates Colombia and Panama is infested with drug traffickers as well as poisonous snakes and spiders. It is the only break in the Pan
American highway, which runs from the tip of Chile to Alaska. Tangie and a group of some 50 Africans who met in Colombia entered the thick jungle through the coastal town of Capurgana, after paying for a rickety speed boat to take them across the bay at the end the Atrato River. Not everybody came out the other side. “It was a horrible experience believe me – if I had known what it was going to be like I would have remained in Colombia,” says Tangie. “You find somebody dying but you cannot help that person. We were in a group of Cameroonians of more than 50, believe me – around 45 of us made it. The others died on the way – they got swept away [by] the rivers in the jungle. Snake bites. There’s nothing you can do. The only thing you can do is help yourself.” He continues: “We had people who could not resist the mountain. All we did was tell the person take it easy, take it slow, we will wait for you at the summit. “There are times when we got to the summit and we waited hours for people and they don’t come. There are people that had snakebites and we didn’t have any medication for them – we saw their legs starting to get black and all we could do was abandon them. “We had people being carried by the [river] water – you just see their corpses left by the water on the bank.” African migrant route to the US - Darien Gap The Darien Gap isn’t just home to the usual jungle features of poisonous wildlife, fast-flowing rivers and challenging climate conditions. Often referred to as the ‘mouth of the funnel’ this slice of land is where tons of cocaine from Colombia moves north, heading for the world's biggest retail market – the United States. Weapons are also trafficked through the Darien Gap to be used by criminal gangs and /or guerrilla armies operating in the region. After finally making it over the Panama border, Tangie and his companions were given shelter in makeshift camps at the northern end of the Gap. After that, he says that they were bussed through the country at the expense of the government, who he says didn’t want migrants wandering around looking for help. The same happened in Costa Rica, where Tangie says that they were given a pass that gave them permission to pass through within 25 days. Migrants crossing irregularly the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Credit: Encarni Pindado /The Telegraph “We left and went to Nicaragua, Nicaragua to Honduras – who also gave us passes – and then we went to Guatemala. When we got to Guatemala we were told that if we were arrested we would be deported so we had to smuggle ourselves from Guatemala to Mexico,” says Tangie. He and his fellow travellers managed to get on a bus through Guatemala to the Suchiate river that runs along part of the border with Mexico. It is the main entry point for migrants from Central and South America and its
economy is almost entirely based round the flow of goods, and people. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people arrive at the final stopping point in Guatemala – Tecun Uman – and then take one of the dozens of cycle taxis up to the river’s edge. From there they cross on makeshift rafts, operated by oarsman who navigate the waters high or low for the price of a dollar per person. African migration route to the US - Suchiate river People smugglers are charging migrants some $3,000 for help getting from here to the United States border, said Oswaldo Garcia, who has been working as an oarsman for the last 14 years. To get from Central American countries to as far as the city of Houston, and evade Customs and Border Patrol, it’s much more expensive and costs between $9,000 to $12,000. Since the first mass caravan in October 2018, official vigilance on the river has been growing. Most recently, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) sent some 21,000 troops from the newly created National Guard to both of Mexico’s borders – part of the deal he cut with President
Donald Trump in June to avoid threatened tariffs. The security force is new, and was created by AMLO this year to bring down Mexico’s record homicide rates – in part caused by warring drug gangs. Instead, it has been tasked with apprehending migrants, and preventing them from coming into Mexico or trying to cross its northern line into the United States illegally. Never in its modern history has Mexico sent troops to its northern border with the US to prevent migrants from crossing - historically the country has depended on the remittances sent home by Mexicans in El Norte (the North, as the U.S is referred to in Mexico). Central American migrants queue at The Mexican Comisssion for Refugees in Tapachula Credit: Encarni Pindado /The Telegraph Less than 40kms away, a 45-minute drive from the Suchiate River, lies the city of Tapachula, and this is the first hub within Mexico for migrants wanting to declare themselves to the authorities. Most want legal status in Mexico to avoid having to stay out of sight and reduce their chances of being extorted by corrupt officials or, worse, kidnapped and blackmailed by crime gangs. Outside the offices of its immigration agency, INM, hundreds of people congregate everyday to get information about refuges and boarding houses and temporary legal status in the country as they move north to the U.S border. Black bin bags, cardboard boxes, blanket rolls and disposable eating plates surround babies sleeping on blankets on the ground, clad in nothing but nappies to counter the humid heat of Mexico’s most southern state, Chiapas. People here are from a spectrum of countries: the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Angola, Eritrea and even
India – nationalities very rarely seen seen on this migrant trail a decade ago. Some of them are asking for asylum in Mexico. Percentage of US refugee arrivals that are African Emmanuel, aged 42, a teacher from Angola, came via Brazil to Mexico. Softly spoken and traveling alone, he isn’t wedded to the idea of getting to the United States. “I don’t know the procedure here,” he says. “But as long as I can get a visa and find a job to do, I’m in Mexico. I can’t be here without working.” But most, like Aginetta, aged 30, from Kinshasa, Congo, who was traveling with her daughters aged 1 and eight, had their eyes on the US. “It’s difficult to be here,” she says. “I don’t have money to eat or sleep or drink.” Much like the US, Mexico has been overwhelmed by the wave of migrants coming from the region and other continents in the last year. In Tapachula housing is at full capacity, and many migrants are sleeping in the streets. Broadly speaking, people in Mexico have been tolerant of migrants, aware of the troubles they are fleeing. But generosity has worn thin since the first mass caravans in October last year. Migrants crossing the Suchiate river, the border between Guatemala and Mexico Credit: Encarni Pindado /The Telegraph Tangi said that he and his fellow African travellers have encountered negative reactions in Mexico. “Permit me but there is a lot of
racism here. Even in the bus, people take their clothes and cover their noses and it’s not comfortable for them.” These factors discourage many from making Mexico their final destination, and the majority end up clustering in towns along the northern border, waiting to ask for asylum in the US. Tijuana has a shabby charm in parts and American-style roads and restaurants in others. Both seedy and sophisticated, it is traditionally a popular tourist playground for Americans in cities like San Diego on the other side of the line. The crossing where Tangie and his friends are waiting, the San Ysidro, is thought to be the busiest land crossing on the border and in the world. But increasingly, tourists are staying away as they become bottlenecks for people wanting to get to the US. Migrants like Tangie are growing increasingly desperate as they wait for a way out and a change of scene. African migrants apprehended on the US-Mexico border A photo of the bodies of Oscar and Valeria Martinez, a father and his two-year-old girl from El Salvador who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande that separates the US and Mexico on parts of the border, recently sent ripples around the world. Many experts saw it as a direct result of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. “The US policy of metering who can request asylum at the ports of entry, which can mean weeks or months of waiting in dangerous Mexican border towns, drove this father to make the desperate decision to cross the river with his family,” said Maureen Meyer, director of the Mexico and Migrant Rights program at
Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA) think tank. “[The number of Africans migrating to Mexico] is a problem in a lot of senses,” added Maria Dolores
Paris Pombo, a professor at Mexico’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte. “Mexico has no tradition of integration, not even for Central Americans.... Racism in Mexico is very strong and there is very little support – including for applying for asylum. Most people have to support themselves from within the community.” Where there is desperation, corruption thrives. A number of migrants told The Telegraph said that by paying between $800 to $1,000, those waiting can advance their place in the line to speed up entry. “People are now buying their number before getting in,” said Tangie. Cameroon native Tangie Sule will spend months awaiting his asylum interview in the United States from Tijuana Credit: Erin Siegal McIntyre /The Telegraph For Tangie and his friends from Cameroon the wait will be long. Trump is making most asylum applicants wait in Mexico whilst their cases are processed – the “Remain in Mexico” policy – because the US
immigrant processing system is overwhelmed, some say ‘broken’. In the first week of June, more than 500 people from Africa were arrested by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on the Del Rio part of the border in
Texas, including one group of more than 100 people, according to CBP. That’s more than the total of 211 African migrants detained there over the whole of 2018. The migrants from Africa, a rising number from Asia taking a similar route, and Latin America are all part of a growing tide that Trump has called an “invasion” and declared a national emergency. Last week Tangie was still at the border – having been there for more than six weeks. In his final communications with The Telegraph, he said that he was considering crossing the border illegally as the numbers in line had failed to advance. “I have been persevering,” he said via a
WhatsApp message. “But life in Tijuana is getting harder day after day. I have no choice but to get into the US illegally. If you don’t find me online, just pray for me.” Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security