(16 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Villa Caleta, Panama – 7 April 2025
1. Aerial of Villa Caleta surrounded by jungle ++MUTE++
2. Man navigating boat on Turquesa River
3. Various unused boats on bank of river
4. Various of Luis Olea tending to his banana field
5. Unused life jackets and outboard motors
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Luis Olea, Former Boat Driver:
++ PARTIALLY COVERED BY SHOTS 4-5 ++
"We used to have 2,300 migrants going through, then 2,500, and after that it started going down, to 1,500, 1,600 migrants and so on, and now we are down to zero.”
7. Various of Villa Caleta
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Cholino de Gracia, Community Leader:
++ PARTIALLY COVERED BY SHOT 7 ++
"The worst part is that some people struggle to eat, because without any income we could have a supermarket here, but with what money can people buy things?"
9. Wide of Villa Caleta
10. Various of man tending to rice field
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Cholino de Gracia, Community Leader:
++ PARTIALLY COVERED BY SHOT 10 ++
"Many people became careless and did not cultivate crops, grow bananas, yam, rice. They were paying more attention to the migrants.”
12. Various of Pedro Chami carving wooden pan
13. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Chami, Former Boat Driver:
++ PARTIALLY COVERED BY SHOT 12 ++
"For those two years after I came back from the city, I was working fine here with the migrants. I would get $200 a day without fail. Now, I don’t even have a cent.
ASSOCIATED PRESS –
Lajas Blancas, Panama – 06 April 2025
14. Sign outside Lajas Blancas empty migrant camp
15. Various of empty migrant camp
16. Various aerials of empty migrant camp ++ MUTE ++
STORYLINE:
The Darien Gap, a stretch of nearly impenetrable rain forest along the border with Colombia, was transformed into a migratory highway in recent years as more than 1.2 million people from around the world traveled north toward the United States.
They brought an economic boom to areas that are hours, even days, from towns or mobile phone signal.
Migrants paid for boat rides, clothing, meals and water after grueling and often deadly treks.
With that burst of wealth, many in towns like Luis Olea’s Villa Caleta, in the Comarca Indigenous lands, abandoned their plantain and rice crops to carry migrants down the winding rivers.
Olea installed electricity in his one-room wooden home in the heart of the jungle.
People built homes and more hopeful lives.
Then the money vanished.
After Trump took office in January and slashed access to asylum in the U.S., migration through the Darien Gap virtually disappeared.
The new economy bottomed out, and residents newly dependent on it scrambled for options.
"We used to have 2,300 migrants going through,” 63-year-old Olea said.
“Now we are down to zero.”
Migration through the Darien Gap soared around 2021 as people fleeing economic crises, war and repressive governments increasingly braved the days-long journey.
While criminal groups raked in money controlling migratory routes and extorting vulnerable people, the mass movement also injected cash into historically underdeveloped regions.
Olea, like many of the Comarca, once survived by growing plantains in the jungle next to Villa Caleta, near the Turquesa river flowing near the Colombia border.
When migrants began to move through the region, Olea and others invested in boats to pick up people in the town of Bajo Chiquito, where migrants arrived after their brutal trek.
The boat pilots known as lancheros would transport migrants to a port, Lajas Blancas, where they would take buses north.
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