October 4, 2024 • 33 mins
James talks to Mia about a reporting trip to the Emberá community of Bajo Chiquito in the Darién Gap, and his experience interviewing migrants making the most dangerous part of their journey to the USA.
Sources:
Jesuit Shelter: https://www.feyalegria.org/panama/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media, Hello and welcome. It could happened here
the podcast where I take.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
An entire kindline, put it in my mouth at once,
and then try not to suffocate.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
That's that's what's already happened. You missed that.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Maybe if you were a subscriber to Cooler Zone Media,
you would have been you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm sorry, I'm not doing that, not doing them with FCC.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Note, Cooler Zone Media will not provide you access to
footage of games choking on a client far.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah that's sounding in a premium package. But we're not
here today to talk about snacks. Sadly that will get
another podcast. We are here today to talk about my
recent trip to the daddy En Gap in Panama. So
I guess to start off with we should probably explain,
like do you think me or I need to explain
like where it.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Is and what look I I went to school with
a kid who actually this happened multiple times the more
I know, I'm thinking back on it, like people who
thought that the Arabian Peninsula was in Mexico, So like,
in fact, you need to explain this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, wow, yeah, okay, I'm just imagining that what got
it mixed up, mixed up with the Yucatan.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It was really sort of oh wow, incredible stuff happening
in by schools.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, So for those of you who are not familiar,
the Dadian Gap is an area between Colombia and Panama
that has historically, like I've seen a lot of characterizations
of this which I think erased the existence to indigenous people,
which shouldn't be shocking given the corporate media, right. But yeah,
people have lived in this area for thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
They have happy and fulfilled lives. They thrive.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
There is no desolate place. It's just a place that
hasn't made itself amenable to capitalism. Really, it's a place
between Colombia and Panama where there are no roads, there
are not navigable rivers. It is extremely mountainous. It's one
of the most humid places on Earth. It is covered
in incredibly dense jungle. There are fast flowing rivers which
(02:11):
you have to cross as you travel there. And for
about half a million migrants last year, it was the
only way that they could come from South America to
Central America and they continue their journey on to North America.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
From a minder saying like, this isn't just people like
from South America, Like, there's a bunch of other people
who come into South America because it's easier to get
in who are taking this route too.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So for most people who are coming to want to
come to the United States, they can't fly directly the
United States, right, it's quite rare to get their asylum
that way, very rare. And there's a HNV Cuba, Haiti,
Nicaragua Venezuela program which in theory allows that it's backed
up for like two years. So most people will fly
to a country in South America. The most regular one
(02:59):
is Brazil because Brazil doesn't impose visas on countries that
don't impose visas on it, and then from there they
begin making their way north. Geography understanders will realize that
Brazil is a very long way from the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, that's very bad. Like that's that's not good. That's yeah,
it's not good at all.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Short of Argentina, you really you really couldn't get that
much further away, you know, in the continental Southern America.
So what people tend to do, especially so I spoke
to just off the top of my head. People from Nepal,
people from India, people from Venezuela, people from Colombia, people
from Angola, people from Cameroon, Togo, Iran. I spoke to
(03:40):
a Kurdish guy that he was from Iran. I'm trying
to think off the top of my head. That's most
of them.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Probably China, I know there's I didn't speak to any
Chinese migrants.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I went fully prepared with like a machine to translate
and everything, and I didn't see any Chinese migrants, which
is quite surprising. Haitian people, of course, the special Locitian people.
The Chinese were coming through the dairy and gap in
big numbers.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Last year.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The only thing I heard about Chinese migrants was that
someone had seen the remains of someone who they described
as Chinese. Yeah. So if you're not familiar with the journey,
it is the most dangerous part of the migration route
in the Americas right. It's one of the most dangerous
migration routes on Earth. People have to walk for between
(04:31):
two days and a week. I've heard even fifteen days,
but the accounts I had maxed out a week. There
is nowhere to get water, there is nowhere to get food.
You have to walk through mud that can come up
to your waist, You have to cross rivers that are
higher than you are tall. You have to climb boulders
shemier across cliff faces. The accounts I heard and the
(04:54):
things I saw were pretty horrible, like and we've kind
of had a fun introduction, but I would rather go
back to the uncertainty I had of like being in
Syria last year and knowing that there were bombs falling
on people every night, then have to see some of
that stuff again. It's horrific, Like I can't really. I'm
(05:16):
obviously working on a scripted series and we'll have that
out soon. But like, in terms of the things that
we do to each other, a humans like little children
die in the darying gap all the time. People carry
their babies across rivers on their shoulders. People carry other
people's babies when people are too tired from carrying their
(05:37):
own children.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And not everyone who enters leaves.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Right, it's if you drink the water from the river,
you'll probably die because there are dead bodies and upstream right,
there's human waste in that river. If you fall and
break your leg you'll die if you run out of water.
You're not really in a place where anyone has any
spare water to give you.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
It's horrific.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Every single account of the gap that I heard was
that no one should do it, that it's it's terrible,
that it's in human, it's like nothing people have ever seen.
But people don't have a choice, right, it's the only
way for people I spoke to, probably I have over
one hundred interviews recorded, you know, I spoke to more
(06:21):
people than that. The bast bulk of them were from
Venezuela and a place where I used to live, and like,
I understand that they lots of them have children, some
of them are bringing their children, some of them are
going ahead and trying to send money, right remittances back
to their children, right, And everyone said the same thing,
that there's no future for them in their country, that
(06:41):
they don't see a way of succeeding, of raising their families,
of having a future for themselves. There I met a
trans lady from Venezuela who was saying that, like, there
are legal things in place that won't allow her to
have her gender affirmed by documents, right, she wasn't able
to graduate with her degree.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, like things are just completely deliberately torpedo.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Your life just being who you are as yourself. Right,
people aren't doing this because they want this fictional housing
assistance or whatever it is that Trump and jadivans. People
are doing this because they don't see a future for themselves.
I spoke to Iranian women right who had been on
the road for nearly a year trying to avoid prosecution
(07:30):
at home for having participated in protests for like basic
human rights. Yeah, it's just the things I heard and
saw were deeply, deeply upsetting, And I.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Think it's retally important that we.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I guess, kind of bear witness to this because it
doesn't really get discussed when the US media talks about migration.
Maybe if we're lucky, they'll come to the southern border
for a day, right and do some rassionistic piece on it,
But like, pretty often they talk about migrants, but they
don't talk to them, and so, like, I think it's
(08:06):
important that we talk to them, and I think it's
important that we face up to the fact that like
this is a choice that the people who have been
elected in this country have made. They've decided that the
only way, For instance, the only place to use CBP
one right is in southern Mexico or north of Mexico City.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Can you explain what CVP one is for people who
don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, sorry, So CBP one is an app that allows
people to apply for an interview for asylum.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Just to sort of skip ahead, I guess people.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Understand that they have to use CBP one, and they
understand that they can only do it in Mexico. And
the people who I met in the Darienna are now
in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
They take a series of buses north. Not all of them,
I'd explain why, but some of them haven't been able
to leave Panama yet. They take a series of buses
north and they get to the Guatemala Mexico boarder and
they cross in Tapatula and then they work out the
CBP one is not compatible with the vast majority of
cell phones. It doesn't work with older Android like Samsung phones.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, yeah, it works with iPhones and I didn't see
a thing or person with an iPhone. If you're wealthy,
you can avoid the DADDI en right. There are ways
you can go around in a boat. There are ways
that you can sort of take a shorter route. The
route that I was on is the route that people
who do not have the resources to avoid this dreadful
(09:33):
journey take. And now they get to Mexico and they
realize that, yeah, you have to get to Mexico to
make the application right, and the way to get there
is to cross the dairy end. And then when you
get there, you realize that this thing requires you'd have
a special telephone that you don't have.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And it's just very bleak.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
It's a level of human evil, both in the sense
of it has been actively designed like this and in
the sense that they don't give a shit, like the
fact that that fucking app doesn't work on Android, it
doesn't work old or Androids, the fact that the app
fucking sucks shit like the entire way. Yeah, like everything
about this, Johnny. It's designed to be painful, to kill people,
(10:14):
to strip away like the hope that people have. Yeah,
and it's and it's designed to do this to like
attempt to satiate the fucking insane bloodlust of like seven
dipshits and fucking like rural southern Illinois. And it's like, Okay,
there's literally nothing you can do to ever appease these people.
The only the only thing that will ever appease them
(10:35):
is their own death. Like, nothing you're ever going to
do to these fucking immigrants is ever going to make
these people like like you could, You could, fucking you
could put these people in a country that has zero
immigrants at all, and they would still scream about it.
There's there's nothing you can fucking do. And people have
decided that in order to basically people have decided in
order to try to get like a one percent higher
(10:57):
margin in an election, they're probably still going to lose,
going to just fucking inflict inhuman suffering on unbelievably large
numbers of people.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, Like I think that's the thing I want people
to really like grasp is like somebody has made a decision.
Maybe we should take an ad break here, advertising break, all.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Right, we're back.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So specifically, I want to talk about what the US
is doing right now in Panama, what it started doing
since July. Right, That's why I wanted to go when
I did. Panama had to change the presidency in July.
We have Molina as president now and he's promised to
close the Darien. Right, if your source was his social media,
then you would think it was closed. I saw about
a thousand people a day crossing it. None of them
(11:54):
had seen a barrier, none of them had seen the
razor wire. But he's posted about they didn't know that
it was using. What they did know was that the
US had an election in November, and everybody wants to
get here before that. Yeah, you know, I tried to
explain that, like we actually don't transition power immediately right,
that that happens in January, but everybody is concerned to
(12:15):
get here before the election. And what the US is
doing in Panama is the US is currently funding deportations
and I like saw that happening firsthand. With this is
this is honestly one of those things which just really
fucks me up and like I need to like I
know it just I tried to record stuff at the time.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And I just it's all just me saying this sucks.
This is terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
This like what it looks like is so you leave
bab Jaqito, right, which is Barjiquito is an indigenous village.
It's a village of the Ember people who were wonderful.
There were nothing but kind to me.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I stayed in their houses for a week and slept
in my hammock in the house, I shared their food,
held their little babies like they were incredible and client
hosts and very grateful to them. From Baljaquito, which is
this tiny village right. The population of Barjaquito triples every day.
Five hundred people live there. A thousand people roll up
(13:17):
every day and then they're transported in dugout canoes, like
a tiny canoe that is carved out from the trunk
of a tree.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
They're two stroke bolted on the bag. I think I
posted a pitch on Twitter. If not, I will do.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
The micros are taken upstream. They pay twenty five bucks
each and they're taken five hours upstream. If they don't
have the money, there's three canoes every day that are
provided for free, and they generally try and make sure
that all the women and children getting those canoes right.
One of the things that MBAA has done has made
everyone wear life jackets just because a lot of these
people can't swim right. They've been crossing rivers above their heads.
(13:53):
They told me that they made human chains, right, so
everybody sort of locks their arms together because the rivers
wash people away. They're transported from Bajuguesel to a place
called Lajas Blancas, which is the first migrant reception center
in Panama. So they're now leaving like they don't have
reservations in Panama. But they're in the Embra Wunan Cormarka.
(14:13):
And then when they get there, they're in the dai
En Commarca. So they're in sort of outside of an
almost entirely indigenous state of Panama and in like what
you would consider like Panamanian government custody. I guess when
they enter in Lahas Blancas, and when they get there,
they register, right, they show their passport, they do all
that stuff. And that's where like un has Shelters with
(14:36):
the Red Cross has a facility there, the highs Has
of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Global Brigades, all these
big NGOs that you're used to seeing in these places
have facilities there. But to leave Las Blancas, they need
sixty bucks per person to get on a bus, right,
and if they don't have sixty bucks to get on
the bus, I was told these buses are owned by
(14:57):
Panamanian parliamentary deputies.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
But I haven't been able to confirm that unch fucking crush.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, someone is putting fifty five people on a bus,
taking sixty bucks from each of them, and sending about
twenty buses a day.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Like someone is making a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, people will remember that one of these buses crashed
last year, killing forty two migrants. But the really big
thing is it's not the bus. It's not the ten
hour bus ride. Like those people are so happy to
be getting on the bus because they're continuing. It's the
people who don't have sixty bucks and like, yeah, they've
made it this far with a combination of whatever savings
(15:36):
they had.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And like incredible tenacity.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Right, Like they pay someone in Columbia obviously to bring
them so to get to the start of their walk
in deli En. They leave from neck or Clean, Columbia,
come across on a lancha like a speedboat, and then
they walk up to the Columbian border where the guides
and leave them.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now the guides are obviously like this area is controlled by.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The golf cartel in Columbia, right, so they have safe
pass through that area. None of them had anything bad
to say about that area. It's when the guides leave
them and they're on their own into Panama. That's when
they didn't have water, they didn't have food because no
one's told them they need water and food to be fair,
right like that they weren't. I didn't think it was
going to take as long as it was, be as
hard as it was. It's not. So I've learned a
(16:18):
little bit from tiktoks and stuff, so I'm going to
bring a bit more. But four days of water is
a lot of water, Like speaking from experience, backpack in
the desert. If you don't have the right equipment, it's
hard to carry. So yeah, shuit is heavy, yeah, right,
like you do. Like that's the other part, Like.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
If you want four liters a person, right, that's like
going to be four kilograms and that's a day. So
most like that. By four days, what is it in pounds?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Eight point eight pounds, it's four liters.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, you're also carrying this like through the fucking jungle,
which is just like everything's wet all the time, right,
you're sweating, you're crossing rivers, your feet are always wet,
like everyone's feet when they arrived and last blankerts, I
took pictures of this. But they all have these crappy
boots that they buy Nika clean Plumbia and every bin
(17:08):
in Bajiquito is full of these boots because they suck.
And people like the blisters I saw, and like people
getting trench foot right, like where the entire skin on
their foot is just ready to slough off like a glove.
Like everyone buys these crocs from a vendor in Bajiquito there,
but like they can get through all that. They everyone
(17:30):
who I met in Bajo Chiquito, everyone who I met
on the trail, had made right. They through tenacity and
like a lot of people said it like it's a roulette.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You go in there and you hope for the best.
Not everyone makes it, but most of them do. So
the people who had made it get to go to
Lahas Blancats, right, and if they can't afford the boat
from Bait to the last Blankers, they can walk. It's
non fine, it's very hours of walking, right. I mention
some of those guys one day and I gave them
(17:59):
water filters stuff.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I wasn't allowed to walk.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
With them, but I was able to like talk with them,
and I spoke to them again when they arrived, right,
and they get to Last Blancats and they're just if
they don't have sixty bucks and they don't have it,
and then they stay there sometimes for months, and this
is not a place to stay for months. Like they
have little casitas which they have for like this one
for unaccompanied children, and then others I think are allocated
(18:24):
to families. But it's not much more than four walls
in a roof, and most people don't even get that right.
Most people are looking for a flat spot to pitch
the shitty tent that they bought in Colombia. And then
they're just stuck there. And there's obviously a relatively new policy.
They used to take five free people per bus, but
they don't anymore. Like from bar Jigito they have three
(18:45):
free boats a day, right, But leaving lasast Blancas, if
you don't have the money, then you don't leave. And
the people I spoke to there who are stuck there
are still stuck there. People have been stuck there for
more than a month. Their children aren't going to school,
they're sleeping on the ground. If this is not a
place that's designed to be a long term residence, it's
(19:06):
designed to be like one night and moving through and
every day new people arrive who can't afford it, and
so the population is growing and growing and growing, and
there seems to be no solution. No one I spoke
to could point to what they want them to do right,
Like they're being given free food by the government.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Some of them said the food wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I'm not sure if it's halal like sometimes some of
them said they'd seen foods that had pork in it.
But I didn't see any food to have pork in
it when I was there, so maybe that's been changed.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
But they're just stuck there. Yeah, there's nothing they can do. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
If they want to have money transferred there, they can
do it through a local intermediary who charges to twenty
five percent fee. So now if you don't have sixty yeah,
like you need seventy five bucks now right to get
your sixty bucks. Now, multiply that by a family of fire.
You can start to see why it becomes inaccessible to people.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
And that's that's a lot of money. Like if you're
in this position, like that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
It costs so much more to travel on busesm and
by foot. Across the Americans and it would to fly. Yeah,
Like all of them would love to fly, but they
can't because we have this system that makes everyone money
apart from the migrants.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, And it's like it didn't fucking it didn't fucking
used to be like this. Like when my family came
to the US, like we didn't have to like, you know,
we had a bunch of fucking harrowing shit to like
flee the Japanese and like get to Taiwan. But it
was like like when my parents, like and like their
parents like came to the US, they just they fucking
flew in. None of this fucking has to be the
way any of this shit works. It didn't used to
(20:46):
be the way any of this shit works. And it's
like like these are people from countries, and you know,
it's like, yeah, obviously, like my parents were like leading
from Taiwan to the US, right, which makes it easier,
but these are also these are people from places that
the US fucking hates, Yeah, and so like you you
would expack them to get like at least somewhat similar
treatment to people who came from like Taiwan, which is
at the time, you know, like US ally anti China stuff,
(21:08):
but like, no, we've just decided to just feed the
people to a fucking meek grinder.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, and it gets me to my next fucking trauma dump,
the sick an outbreak before the Yeah, yeah they're back.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So yeah, as me I mentioned, right, these are places
that the US considers to be dictatorial or impressive regimes
right around Venezuela, Cuba three that come to mind of
people that I met, right, And so a lot of
these people have what's called a temporary protected states in
the US. It doesn't mean that they necessarily can't be deported.
Sometimes they can, but sometimes it makes it a bit
harder right to deport to those countries. Panama, it's not
(21:55):
governed by United States immigration law. Yeah, we gave On
the day that Molino took office, Alejandro Majorcas, himself the
child of minrants from Cuba, I believe, went to Panama,
attended the inauguration, and then announced this six million dollar
aid package right which the US was going to give
to fun deportations from Panama directly. And I got to
(22:19):
see those deportations happening, right, like you'll hear them in
my scripted series. But like watching somebody take a dad
away from his baby, or a mother away from her children,
or one man's brother away from his brother. Like it's
(22:39):
just heartbreaking. These people have crossed the daddy in right.
They've undertaken a journey. Like I've done a lot of mountaineering.
I've done a lot of climbing. I like to fuck
around outside, but like, I've never done anything where I
didn't know if I was going to come back. Really,
and like they've done that. They've taken this incredibly difficult journey.
And then when they get to the other side, you you, you, you,
(23:00):
and you, they get picked out and they get deported
back right on flights that are paid for by your
tax dollars and my tax dollars. And this includes flights
to Cuba. This includes flights to Venezuela, right places that
the US considers to be like dictatorial regimes. And now
these people are back in Cuba. They're back in Venezuela,
but their government knows that they tried to leave and
(23:22):
they've spent all their fucking savings, so they're back in
square one. I spoke to a few Colombians. They've also
deported a lot of Colombian people most of the Colombian
people I spoke to in last Blancats were deported. They
called all the Colombian nationals to choose the office and
then these I was told that they were only deporting
people who had like warrants, like pending cases. But when
(23:45):
these people got back to Colombia, they were just free
to go, right, Like if you have a pending case
and someone delivers you to the government. I'm not an
expert in Colombian law enforcement, but it seems like that
would be a good time to prosecute that case. And
these people tell me that they've been let go. None
of them told me if they had warrants. Now, like,
I'm just going off what they said. But that night
(24:07):
they were texting me pictures themselves in handcuffs. By the
next day they were back in medine telling me that
they'd been sent home, including like I was talking to
a lady just before we recorded, who she doesn't know
where her children's father, her husband is right, And lots
of people will have like I guess what's the English translation,
like free unions, Like when they're like married for legal reasons,
(24:31):
they don't go and have a wedding, but they're considered
to be married common law marriage, I guess would be
the phrase, right, like they've lived together for a number
of years, share a house, etc. Often have children, but
they're not like they never had a wedding. So I
don't know if that document makes difference, But I watched
people have their children taken out their arms and be
shoved in the back of trucks and be deported, and like,
(24:54):
that fucking sucks. That is not something that I want
to see again. And it happens every single day there,
and it happens because your taxes are paying for it.
Didn't used to happen, and now it does, and it's
just heartbreaking. Like I don't really like it's there's nothing
(25:16):
you can do. You know that there's no you know,
I can't do anything to stop it. You can't do
anything to stop it, right, Like what you can vote
for Donald Trump, who would like to machine gun every
asylum secret at the border if you got a chance,
Or you can vote to Kamala Harris, who has presided
over record migrant deaths every year of her administration, who's
(25:37):
sending your money to port people in Panama, who knows
that the choices that she's made are resulting in like
death in Panama, death here right, Like there were four
people who died, and then the heat wave in the
first week of September, four people who died in o
Time mount and wilderness in a tiny area ten miles
across of border in San Diego, and my friends had
(26:00):
to go insert their bodies, and my friends found their remains,
and I had to confront the fact that, like, this
is the toll of the rhetoric, Like this is what
the rhetoric costs. The other thing I want to mention
is that like, even in the most desperate moments of
their lives, everyone looked out for one another in a
way that like we don't hear. Like one of the
(26:23):
things that really struck me was that, like everyone's kids
are just kind of out and about, right, no one's
particularly afraid of anyone hurting their kids, Like all of
these kids. And I saw people who had got split
up in the Gap find each other again in Bahochikito,
and like, you know, there were strangers who had carried
someone's children for two days because that other person was
(26:45):
so tired or they had another child they needed to carry,
and like, yeah, I'm strangely comfortable, I guess in refugee camps,
Like I went to Panama City afterwards, and like I
couldn't have it. It was too much for me, and I
had to stay in my hotel room and like I
guess it was just difficult. But like I feel safe
in those places. I feel comfortable, and like in a
(27:06):
sense it's well, you see the best of us and
the worst of us. I guess, like I can't imagine
being in a place where I know I could lose
my life if I slip and fall, and then thinking well,
I've got to carry this little kid.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Never met this kid before. I don't share a language.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
There was a group from Angola and they'd been carrying
Venezuelan and children. Right, they can't even talk to one another,
but they potentially.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Risk their lives to help. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty
fucking bleak.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I'm staying in touch with everyone I met, and they're
telling me about their journeys to the border. Unfortunately, the
thing that comes next is eight to nine month delay
as they apply for a CVP one appointment, And like
I wish I could offer something hopeful. I guess what
I'll say is what I always say that, like there
isn't anyone you can vote for who will fix this,
(27:58):
Like you can vote for Coil West with Jill Stein,
Like I'm not going to vote for someone who fucking
supports the policy sort of creating refugees in Syria, right whatever,
I'm not suggesting that that's a solution either. Like the
things that you need to do are like there is
a person helping migrants in your community. I spoke to
(28:18):
a Jesuit shelter. I'll put them in my scripted episode.
Like I'm not a big religious shelter guy, but these
guys were fucking great. These guys are saving people's lives
and making sure that people have the basic necessity like
literally turning up at the refuge camp and making sure
everyone had toilet roll and toothbrushes and things that, yeah,
you don't need for one night, but you're going to
(28:40):
be there for a month you don't have. You know,
what are you going to do? Spend five bucks on
toothbrush and toothpaste, But that's five less bucks you have
for your bus fare, right So, like I'll put them
out there. I would love to do a fundraiser, Like
if anyone can work out how to facilitate transfers to
migrants who are in the camp for free. That would
be great, Uh, Like that would be a service that
(29:02):
would make things considerably easier for people. But the way
that you fix this is showing up, Like it's showing
up at the border if you live near the border,
it's showing up in your community. It's countering this like
with people in your family and your circle, Like there's
a tacit agreement. I think in the entire corporate media
(29:23):
that migrants are humans without rights, Like they're just numbers
to these people, because I don't see them talking to migrants, right,
Like these are people who you know, like I help
them change their babies, I carried their bags for them,
I played with their kids so they could go take
a shower like that. They're people just like anyone else.
(29:44):
Of course they are right that, Like, Yeah, they're important
to me, and it's fucking miserable to see my tax
dollars used to make these people suffer.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, these people should be more important than the fucking
sons of boat dealers. Who's fucking got the land they
live because their ancestors fucking shot a bunch of people. Yeah,
like that's That's what's happening here, is that these people
who are you know, some of the most courageous people
in the entire world, are being sacrificed to appease a
bunch of fucking shits. It's a level of evil that
(30:14):
is just unfathomable. Yeah, I think, like we really shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I'm somewhat ranting now, but like, yeah, the pivot that
even the Democrats have done in the last four years,
right like, those people need to be held accountable for
what is resulting in like babies dying.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Like I saw dead kids.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I saw that because Kamala Harris and Joe Biden whichever
other fucking Democrat senators and representatives keep voting for this shit,
decided that it was okay for those babies to die
because they didn't want Fox News to say mean stuff
about them or NBC to say mean stuff about them,
right like, And of course they're trying to move that
stuff as far away from you as possible. Of course
(30:57):
they want the deportations to be done in Panama, not here,
so you don't see it in your community.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And of course they want people.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
To die a crossing the Darien and not on our
border because that's removed, and you don't hear it reported
on right, Like it's not a Venezuelan woman died on Thursday.
We're recording this on Tuesday, like Wednesday. You don't see
that reported, right, You don't see that there are little kids'
bodies in the jungle reported because it's out of sight
and out of mind, And like, I guess the thing
(31:25):
you can do is constantly bring it back into people's
minds and make them accountable for their choices. And like,
I guess this is the point where the electoralists get
mad at me. I'm not voting for someone who chose that, yeah, Like,
and I never could, Like I couldn't live with myself
if I did. I know a system which reduces our
political engagement taking a box every four years is asinine
(31:46):
and child like, Like I would much rather be out
there every day helping people than voting once every four years.
And like, you can do both, of course you can.
But yeah, there's not a voting solution for this, Like
it requires all of us to do a lot of
work because we're so far down the path which ends
(32:06):
in a really terrible place. Right, it's already a terrible
place that these people's lives don't matter, and that their
children's lives don't matter, and that we shouldn't care if
they're dying in the jungle. And we've got a lot
of work to do to get back from that, because
apparently it's okay with a lot of people in this country.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, I think part of the reason why it's gotten
this bad is that the social movements that had pushed
the Democrats in a slightly better direction in the late
twenty tens stopped social movement thing. So you know, the
only thing that these people will respond to is like
they're actually being mass mutilizations and them be feeling politically
(32:42):
threatened by it. So you know, we've done it before,
we can do it again.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
The biggest march in this country's history was the March
of migrants, Right, we can do that again. So many
of us, myself included, came here to have a chance
a better future. And like, even if you didn't share
some solidarity with people like showing up in massive numbers,
Yet these movement stopped social movementing and people fell out
of a little things. But like, this shit is important,
(33:09):
and I think we can build some bridges and we
need to do something to stop this because it's horrific. Yeah,
and so it's a genocide in Ghaza, like we can.
We need to do something to stop that too, but
we're not going to do it through voting.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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All Zone Media, Hello and welcome. It could happened here
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Speaker 2 (00:08):
An entire kindline, put it in my mouth at once,
and then try not to suffocate.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
That's that's what's already happened. You missed that.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Maybe if you were a subscriber to Cooler Zone Media,
you would have been you wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm sorry, I'm not doing that, not doing them with FCC.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Note, Cooler Zone Media will not provide you access to
footage of games choking on a client far.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah that's sounding in a premium package. But we're not
here today to talk about snacks. Sadly that will get
another podcast. We are here today to talk about my
recent trip to the daddy En Gap in Panama. So
I guess to start off with we should probably explain,
like do you think me or I need to explain
like where it.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Is and what look I I went to school with
a kid who actually this happened multiple times the more
I know, I'm thinking back on it, like people who
thought that the Arabian Peninsula was in Mexico, So like,
in fact, you need to explain this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, wow, yeah, okay, I'm just imagining that what got
it mixed up, mixed up with the Yucatan.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
It was really sort of oh wow, incredible stuff happening
in by schools.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, So for those of you who are not familiar,
the Dadian Gap is an area between Colombia and Panama
that has historically, like I've seen a lot of characterizations
of this which I think erased the existence to indigenous people,
which shouldn't be shocking given the corporate media, right. But yeah,
people have lived in this area for thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
They have happy and fulfilled lives. They thrive.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
There is no desolate place. It's just a place that
hasn't made itself amenable to capitalism. Really, it's a place
between Colombia and Panama where there are no roads, there
are not navigable rivers. It is extremely mountainous. It's one
of the most humid places on Earth. It is covered
in incredibly dense jungle. There are fast flowing rivers which
(02:11):
you have to cross as you travel there. And for
about half a million migrants last year, it was the
only way that they could come from South America to
Central America and they continue their journey on to North America.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
From a minder saying like, this isn't just people like
from South America, Like, there's a bunch of other people
who come into South America because it's easier to get
in who are taking this route too.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
So for most people who are coming to want to
come to the United States, they can't fly directly the
United States, right, it's quite rare to get their asylum
that way, very rare. And there's a HNV Cuba, Haiti,
Nicaragua Venezuela program which in theory allows that it's backed
up for like two years. So most people will fly
to a country in South America. The most regular one
(02:59):
is Brazil because Brazil doesn't impose visas on countries that
don't impose visas on it, and then from there they
begin making their way north. Geography understanders will realize that
Brazil is a very long way from the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, that's very bad. Like that's that's not good. That's yeah,
it's not good at all.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Short of Argentina, you really you really couldn't get that
much further away, you know, in the continental Southern America.
So what people tend to do, especially so I spoke
to just off the top of my head. People from Nepal,
people from India, people from Venezuela, people from Colombia, people
from Angola, people from Cameroon, Togo, Iran. I spoke to
(03:40):
a Kurdish guy that he was from Iran. I'm trying
to think off the top of my head. That's most
of them.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Probably China, I know there's I didn't speak to any
Chinese migrants.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I went fully prepared with like a machine to translate
and everything, and I didn't see any Chinese migrants, which
is quite surprising. Haitian people, of course, the special Locitian people.
The Chinese were coming through the dairy and gap in
big numbers.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Last year.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The only thing I heard about Chinese migrants was that
someone had seen the remains of someone who they described
as Chinese. Yeah. So if you're not familiar with the journey,
it is the most dangerous part of the migration route
in the Americas right. It's one of the most dangerous
migration routes on Earth. People have to walk for between
(04:31):
two days and a week. I've heard even fifteen days,
but the accounts I had maxed out a week. There
is nowhere to get water, there is nowhere to get food.
You have to walk through mud that can come up
to your waist, You have to cross rivers that are
higher than you are tall. You have to climb boulders
shemier across cliff faces. The accounts I heard and the
(04:54):
things I saw were pretty horrible, like and we've kind
of had a fun introduction, but I would rather go
back to the uncertainty I had of like being in
Syria last year and knowing that there were bombs falling
on people every night, then have to see some of
that stuff again. It's horrific, Like I can't really. I'm
(05:16):
obviously working on a scripted series and we'll have that
out soon. But like, in terms of the things that
we do to each other, a humans like little children
die in the darying gap all the time. People carry
their babies across rivers on their shoulders. People carry other
people's babies when people are too tired from carrying their
(05:37):
own children.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And not everyone who enters leaves.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Right, it's if you drink the water from the river,
you'll probably die because there are dead bodies and upstream right,
there's human waste in that river. If you fall and
break your leg you'll die if you run out of water.
You're not really in a place where anyone has any
spare water to give you.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
It's horrific.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Every single account of the gap that I heard was
that no one should do it, that it's it's terrible,
that it's in human, it's like nothing people have ever seen.
But people don't have a choice, right, it's the only
way for people I spoke to, probably I have over
one hundred interviews recorded, you know, I spoke to more
(06:21):
people than that. The bast bulk of them were from
Venezuela and a place where I used to live, and like,
I understand that they lots of them have children, some
of them are bringing their children, some of them are
going ahead and trying to send money, right remittances back
to their children, right, And everyone said the same thing,
that there's no future for them in their country, that
(06:41):
they don't see a way of succeeding, of raising their families,
of having a future for themselves. There I met a
trans lady from Venezuela who was saying that, like, there
are legal things in place that won't allow her to
have her gender affirmed by documents, right, she wasn't able
to graduate with her degree.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, like things are just completely deliberately torpedo.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Your life just being who you are as yourself. Right,
people aren't doing this because they want this fictional housing
assistance or whatever it is that Trump and jadivans. People
are doing this because they don't see a future for themselves.
I spoke to Iranian women right who had been on
the road for nearly a year trying to avoid prosecution
(07:30):
at home for having participated in protests for like basic
human rights. Yeah, it's just the things I heard and
saw were deeply, deeply upsetting, And I.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Think it's retally important that we.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I guess, kind of bear witness to this because it
doesn't really get discussed when the US media talks about migration.
Maybe if we're lucky, they'll come to the southern border
for a day, right and do some rassionistic piece on it,
But like, pretty often they talk about migrants, but they
don't talk to them, and so, like, I think it's
(08:06):
important that we talk to them, and I think it's
important that we face up to the fact that like
this is a choice that the people who have been
elected in this country have made. They've decided that the
only way, For instance, the only place to use CBP
one right is in southern Mexico or north of Mexico City.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Can you explain what CVP one is for people who
don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, sorry, So CBP one is an app that allows
people to apply for an interview for asylum.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Just to sort of skip ahead, I guess people.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Understand that they have to use CBP one, and they
understand that they can only do it in Mexico. And
the people who I met in the Darienna are now
in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
They take a series of buses north. Not all of them,
I'd explain why, but some of them haven't been able
to leave Panama yet. They take a series of buses
north and they get to the Guatemala Mexico boarder and
they cross in Tapatula and then they work out the
CBP one is not compatible with the vast majority of
cell phones. It doesn't work with older Android like Samsung phones.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, yeah, it works with iPhones and I didn't see
a thing or person with an iPhone. If you're wealthy,
you can avoid the DADDI en right. There are ways
you can go around in a boat. There are ways
that you can sort of take a shorter route. The
route that I was on is the route that people
who do not have the resources to avoid this dreadful
(09:33):
journey take. And now they get to Mexico and they
realize that, yeah, you have to get to Mexico to
make the application right, and the way to get there
is to cross the dairy end. And then when you
get there, you realize that this thing requires you'd have
a special telephone that you don't have.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And it's just very bleak.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
It's a level of human evil, both in the sense
of it has been actively designed like this and in
the sense that they don't give a shit, like the
fact that that fucking app doesn't work on Android, it
doesn't work old or Androids, the fact that the app
fucking sucks shit like the entire way. Yeah, like everything
about this, Johnny. It's designed to be painful, to kill people,
(10:14):
to strip away like the hope that people have. Yeah,
and it's and it's designed to do this to like
attempt to satiate the fucking insane bloodlust of like seven
dipshits and fucking like rural southern Illinois. And it's like, Okay,
there's literally nothing you can do to ever appease these people.
The only the only thing that will ever appease them
(10:35):
is their own death. Like, nothing you're ever going to
do to these fucking immigrants is ever going to make
these people like like you could, You could, fucking you
could put these people in a country that has zero
immigrants at all, and they would still scream about it.
There's there's nothing you can fucking do. And people have
decided that in order to basically people have decided in
order to try to get like a one percent higher
(10:57):
margin in an election, they're probably still going to lose,
going to just fucking inflict inhuman suffering on unbelievably large
numbers of people.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, Like I think that's the thing I want people
to really like grasp is like somebody has made a decision.
Maybe we should take an ad break here, advertising break, all.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Right, we're back.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So specifically, I want to talk about what the US
is doing right now in Panama, what it started doing
since July. Right, That's why I wanted to go when
I did. Panama had to change the presidency in July.
We have Molina as president now and he's promised to
close the Darien. Right, if your source was his social media,
then you would think it was closed. I saw about
a thousand people a day crossing it. None of them
(11:54):
had seen a barrier, none of them had seen the
razor wire. But he's posted about they didn't know that
it was using. What they did know was that the
US had an election in November, and everybody wants to
get here before that. Yeah, you know, I tried to
explain that, like we actually don't transition power immediately right,
that that happens in January, but everybody is concerned to
(12:15):
get here before the election. And what the US is
doing in Panama is the US is currently funding deportations
and I like saw that happening firsthand. With this is
this is honestly one of those things which just really
fucks me up and like I need to like I
know it just I tried to record stuff at the time.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
And I just it's all just me saying this sucks.
This is terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
This like what it looks like is so you leave
bab Jaqito, right, which is Barjiquito is an indigenous village.
It's a village of the Ember people who were wonderful.
There were nothing but kind to me.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I stayed in their houses for a week and slept
in my hammock in the house, I shared their food,
held their little babies like they were incredible and client
hosts and very grateful to them. From Baljaquito, which is
this tiny village right. The population of Barjaquito triples every day.
Five hundred people live there. A thousand people roll up
(13:17):
every day and then they're transported in dugout canoes, like
a tiny canoe that is carved out from the trunk
of a tree.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
They're two stroke bolted on the bag. I think I
posted a pitch on Twitter. If not, I will do.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
The micros are taken upstream. They pay twenty five bucks
each and they're taken five hours upstream. If they don't
have the money, there's three canoes every day that are
provided for free, and they generally try and make sure
that all the women and children getting those canoes right.
One of the things that MBAA has done has made
everyone wear life jackets just because a lot of these
people can't swim right. They've been crossing rivers above their heads.
(13:53):
They told me that they made human chains, right, so
everybody sort of locks their arms together because the rivers
wash people away. They're transported from Bajuguesel to a place
called Lajas Blancas, which is the first migrant reception center
in Panama. So they're now leaving like they don't have
reservations in Panama. But they're in the Embra Wunan Cormarka.
(14:13):
And then when they get there, they're in the dai
En Commarca. So they're in sort of outside of an
almost entirely indigenous state of Panama and in like what
you would consider like Panamanian government custody. I guess when
they enter in Lahas Blancas, and when they get there,
they register, right, they show their passport, they do all
that stuff. And that's where like un has Shelters with
(14:36):
the Red Cross has a facility there, the highs Has
of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Global Brigades, all these
big NGOs that you're used to seeing in these places
have facilities there. But to leave Las Blancas, they need
sixty bucks per person to get on a bus, right,
and if they don't have sixty bucks to get on
the bus, I was told these buses are owned by
(14:57):
Panamanian parliamentary deputies.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
But I haven't been able to confirm that unch fucking crush.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, someone is putting fifty five people on a bus,
taking sixty bucks from each of them, and sending about
twenty buses a day.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Like someone is making a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, people will remember that one of these buses crashed
last year, killing forty two migrants. But the really big
thing is it's not the bus. It's not the ten
hour bus ride. Like those people are so happy to
be getting on the bus because they're continuing. It's the
people who don't have sixty bucks and like, yeah, they've
made it this far with a combination of whatever savings
(15:36):
they had.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And like incredible tenacity.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Right, Like they pay someone in Columbia obviously to bring
them so to get to the start of their walk
in deli En. They leave from neck or Clean, Columbia,
come across on a lancha like a speedboat, and then
they walk up to the Columbian border where the guides
and leave them.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Now the guides are obviously like this area is controlled by.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The golf cartel in Columbia, right, so they have safe
pass through that area. None of them had anything bad
to say about that area. It's when the guides leave
them and they're on their own into Panama. That's when
they didn't have water, they didn't have food because no
one's told them they need water and food to be fair,
right like that they weren't. I didn't think it was
going to take as long as it was, be as
hard as it was. It's not. So I've learned a
(16:18):
little bit from tiktoks and stuff, so I'm going to
bring a bit more. But four days of water is
a lot of water, Like speaking from experience, backpack in
the desert. If you don't have the right equipment, it's
hard to carry. So yeah, shuit is heavy, yeah, right,
like you do. Like that's the other part, Like.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
If you want four liters a person, right, that's like
going to be four kilograms and that's a day. So
most like that. By four days, what is it in pounds?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Eight point eight pounds, it's four liters.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, you're also carrying this like through the fucking jungle,
which is just like everything's wet all the time, right,
you're sweating, you're crossing rivers, your feet are always wet,
like everyone's feet when they arrived and last blankerts, I
took pictures of this. But they all have these crappy
boots that they buy Nika clean Plumbia and every bin
(17:08):
in Bajiquito is full of these boots because they suck.
And people like the blisters I saw, and like people
getting trench foot right, like where the entire skin on
their foot is just ready to slough off like a glove.
Like everyone buys these crocs from a vendor in Bajiquito there,
but like they can get through all that. They everyone
(17:30):
who I met in Bajo Chiquito, everyone who I met
on the trail, had made right. They through tenacity and
like a lot of people said it like it's a roulette.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You go in there and you hope for the best.
Not everyone makes it, but most of them do. So
the people who had made it get to go to
Lahas Blancats, right, and if they can't afford the boat
from Bait to the last Blankers, they can walk. It's
non fine, it's very hours of walking, right. I mention
some of those guys one day and I gave them
(17:59):
water filters stuff.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I wasn't allowed to walk.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
With them, but I was able to like talk with them,
and I spoke to them again when they arrived, right,
and they get to Last Blancats and they're just if
they don't have sixty bucks and they don't have it,
and then they stay there sometimes for months, and this
is not a place to stay for months. Like they
have little casitas which they have for like this one
for unaccompanied children, and then others I think are allocated
(18:24):
to families. But it's not much more than four walls
in a roof, and most people don't even get that right.
Most people are looking for a flat spot to pitch
the shitty tent that they bought in Colombia. And then
they're just stuck there. And there's obviously a relatively new policy.
They used to take five free people per bus, but
they don't anymore. Like from bar Jigito they have three
(18:45):
free boats a day, right, But leaving lasast Blancas, if
you don't have the money, then you don't leave. And
the people I spoke to there who are stuck there
are still stuck there. People have been stuck there for
more than a month. Their children aren't going to school,
they're sleeping on the ground. If this is not a
place that's designed to be a long term residence, it's
(19:06):
designed to be like one night and moving through and
every day new people arrive who can't afford it, and
so the population is growing and growing and growing, and
there seems to be no solution. No one I spoke
to could point to what they want them to do right,
Like they're being given free food by the government.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Some of them said the food wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I'm not sure if it's halal like sometimes some of
them said they'd seen foods that had pork in it.
But I didn't see any food to have pork in
it when I was there, so maybe that's been changed.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
But they're just stuck there. Yeah, there's nothing they can do. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
If they want to have money transferred there, they can
do it through a local intermediary who charges to twenty
five percent fee. So now if you don't have sixty yeah,
like you need seventy five bucks now right to get
your sixty bucks. Now, multiply that by a family of fire.
You can start to see why it becomes inaccessible to people.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
And that's that's a lot of money. Like if you're
in this position, like that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
It costs so much more to travel on busesm and
by foot. Across the Americans and it would to fly. Yeah,
Like all of them would love to fly, but they
can't because we have this system that makes everyone money
apart from the migrants.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yeah, And it's like it didn't fucking it didn't fucking
used to be like this. Like when my family came
to the US, like we didn't have to like, you know,
we had a bunch of fucking harrowing shit to like
flee the Japanese and like get to Taiwan. But it
was like like when my parents, like and like their
parents like came to the US, they just they fucking
flew in. None of this fucking has to be the
way any of this shit works. It didn't used to
(20:46):
be the way any of this shit works. And it's
like like these are people from countries, and you know,
it's like, yeah, obviously, like my parents were like leading
from Taiwan to the US, right, which makes it easier,
but these are also these are people from places that
the US fucking hates, Yeah, and so like you you
would expack them to get like at least somewhat similar
treatment to people who came from like Taiwan, which is
at the time, you know, like US ally anti China stuff,
(21:08):
but like, no, we've just decided to just feed the
people to a fucking meek grinder.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, and it gets me to my next fucking trauma dump,
the sick an outbreak before the Yeah, yeah they're back.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So yeah, as me I mentioned, right, these are places
that the US considers to be dictatorial or impressive regimes
right around Venezuela, Cuba three that come to mind of
people that I met, right, And so a lot of
these people have what's called a temporary protected states in
the US. It doesn't mean that they necessarily can't be deported.
Sometimes they can, but sometimes it makes it a bit
harder right to deport to those countries. Panama, it's not
(21:55):
governed by United States immigration law. Yeah, we gave On
the day that Molino took office, Alejandro Majorcas, himself the
child of minrants from Cuba, I believe, went to Panama,
attended the inauguration, and then announced this six million dollar
aid package right which the US was going to give
to fun deportations from Panama directly. And I got to
(22:19):
see those deportations happening, right, like you'll hear them in
my scripted series. But like watching somebody take a dad
away from his baby, or a mother away from her children,
or one man's brother away from his brother. Like it's
(22:39):
just heartbreaking. These people have crossed the daddy in right.
They've undertaken a journey. Like I've done a lot of mountaineering.
I've done a lot of climbing. I like to fuck
around outside, but like, I've never done anything where I
didn't know if I was going to come back. Really,
and like they've done that. They've taken this incredibly difficult journey.
And then when they get to the other side, you you, you, you,
(23:00):
and you, they get picked out and they get deported
back right on flights that are paid for by your
tax dollars and my tax dollars. And this includes flights
to Cuba. This includes flights to Venezuela, right places that
the US considers to be like dictatorial regimes. And now
these people are back in Cuba. They're back in Venezuela,
but their government knows that they tried to leave and
(23:22):
they've spent all their fucking savings, so they're back in
square one. I spoke to a few Colombians. They've also
deported a lot of Colombian people most of the Colombian
people I spoke to in last Blancats were deported. They
called all the Colombian nationals to choose the office and
then these I was told that they were only deporting
people who had like warrants, like pending cases. But when
(23:45):
these people got back to Colombia, they were just free
to go, right, Like if you have a pending case
and someone delivers you to the government. I'm not an
expert in Colombian law enforcement, but it seems like that
would be a good time to prosecute that case. And
these people tell me that they've been let go. None
of them told me if they had warrants. Now, like,
I'm just going off what they said. But that night
(24:07):
they were texting me pictures themselves in handcuffs. By the
next day they were back in medine telling me that
they'd been sent home, including like I was talking to
a lady just before we recorded, who she doesn't know
where her children's father, her husband is right, And lots
of people will have like I guess what's the English translation,
like free unions, Like when they're like married for legal reasons,
(24:31):
they don't go and have a wedding, but they're considered
to be married common law marriage, I guess would be
the phrase, right, like they've lived together for a number
of years, share a house, etc. Often have children, but
they're not like they never had a wedding. So I
don't know if that document makes difference, But I watched
people have their children taken out their arms and be
shoved in the back of trucks and be deported, and like,
(24:54):
that fucking sucks. That is not something that I want
to see again. And it happens every single day there,
and it happens because your taxes are paying for it.
Didn't used to happen, and now it does, and it's
just heartbreaking. Like I don't really like it's there's nothing
(25:16):
you can do. You know that there's no you know,
I can't do anything to stop it. You can't do
anything to stop it, right, Like what you can vote
for Donald Trump, who would like to machine gun every
asylum secret at the border if you got a chance,
Or you can vote to Kamala Harris, who has presided
over record migrant deaths every year of her administration, who's
(25:37):
sending your money to port people in Panama, who knows
that the choices that she's made are resulting in like
death in Panama, death here right, Like there were four
people who died, and then the heat wave in the
first week of September, four people who died in o
Time mount and wilderness in a tiny area ten miles
across of border in San Diego, and my friends had
(26:00):
to go insert their bodies, and my friends found their remains,
and I had to confront the fact that, like, this
is the toll of the rhetoric, Like this is what
the rhetoric costs. The other thing I want to mention
is that like, even in the most desperate moments of
their lives, everyone looked out for one another in a
way that like we don't hear. Like one of the
(26:23):
things that really struck me was that, like everyone's kids
are just kind of out and about, right, no one's
particularly afraid of anyone hurting their kids, Like all of
these kids. And I saw people who had got split
up in the Gap find each other again in Bahochikito,
and like, you know, there were strangers who had carried
someone's children for two days because that other person was
(26:45):
so tired or they had another child they needed to carry,
and like, yeah, I'm strangely comfortable, I guess in refugee camps,
Like I went to Panama City afterwards, and like I
couldn't have it. It was too much for me, and I
had to stay in my hotel room and like I
guess it was just difficult. But like I feel safe
in those places. I feel comfortable, and like in a
(27:06):
sense it's well, you see the best of us and
the worst of us. I guess, like I can't imagine
being in a place where I know I could lose
my life if I slip and fall, and then thinking well,
I've got to carry this little kid.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Never met this kid before. I don't share a language.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
There was a group from Angola and they'd been carrying
Venezuelan and children. Right, they can't even talk to one another,
but they potentially.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Risk their lives to help. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty
fucking bleak.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I'm staying in touch with everyone I met, and they're
telling me about their journeys to the border. Unfortunately, the
thing that comes next is eight to nine month delay
as they apply for a CVP one appointment, And like
I wish I could offer something hopeful. I guess what
I'll say is what I always say that, like there
isn't anyone you can vote for who will fix this,
(27:58):
Like you can vote for Coil West with Jill Stein,
Like I'm not going to vote for someone who fucking
supports the policy sort of creating refugees in Syria, right whatever,
I'm not suggesting that that's a solution either. Like the
things that you need to do are like there is
a person helping migrants in your community. I spoke to
(28:18):
a Jesuit shelter. I'll put them in my scripted episode.
Like I'm not a big religious shelter guy, but these
guys were fucking great. These guys are saving people's lives
and making sure that people have the basic necessity like
literally turning up at the refuge camp and making sure
everyone had toilet roll and toothbrushes and things that, yeah,
you don't need for one night, but you're going to
(28:40):
be there for a month you don't have. You know,
what are you going to do? Spend five bucks on
toothbrush and toothpaste, But that's five less bucks you have
for your bus fare, right So, like I'll put them
out there. I would love to do a fundraiser, Like
if anyone can work out how to facilitate transfers to
migrants who are in the camp for free. That would
be great, Uh, Like that would be a service that
(29:02):
would make things considerably easier for people. But the way
that you fix this is showing up, Like it's showing
up at the border if you live near the border,
it's showing up in your community. It's countering this like
with people in your family and your circle, Like there's
a tacit agreement. I think in the entire corporate media
(29:23):
that migrants are humans without rights, Like they're just numbers
to these people, because I don't see them talking to migrants, right,
Like these are people who you know, like I help
them change their babies, I carried their bags for them,
I played with their kids so they could go take
a shower like that. They're people just like anyone else.
(29:44):
Of course they are right that, Like, Yeah, they're important
to me, and it's fucking miserable to see my tax
dollars used to make these people suffer.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, these people should be more important than the fucking
sons of boat dealers. Who's fucking got the land they
live because their ancestors fucking shot a bunch of people. Yeah,
like that's That's what's happening here, is that these people
who are you know, some of the most courageous people
in the entire world, are being sacrificed to appease a
bunch of fucking shits. It's a level of evil that
(30:14):
is just unfathomable. Yeah, I think, like we really shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I'm somewhat ranting now, but like, yeah, the pivot that
even the Democrats have done in the last four years,
right like, those people need to be held accountable for
what is resulting in like babies dying.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Like I saw dead kids.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
I saw that because Kamala Harris and Joe Biden whichever
other fucking Democrat senators and representatives keep voting for this shit,
decided that it was okay for those babies to die
because they didn't want Fox News to say mean stuff
about them or NBC to say mean stuff about them,
right like, And of course they're trying to move that
stuff as far away from you as possible. Of course
(30:57):
they want the deportations to be done in Panama, not here,
so you don't see it in your community.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And of course they want people.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
To die a crossing the Darien and not on our
border because that's removed, and you don't hear it reported
on right, Like it's not a Venezuelan woman died on Thursday.
We're recording this on Tuesday, like Wednesday. You don't see
that reported, right, You don't see that there are little kids'
bodies in the jungle reported because it's out of sight
and out of mind, And like, I guess the thing
(31:25):
you can do is constantly bring it back into people's
minds and make them accountable for their choices. And like,
I guess this is the point where the electoralists get
mad at me. I'm not voting for someone who chose that, yeah, Like,
and I never could, Like I couldn't live with myself
if I did. I know a system which reduces our
political engagement taking a box every four years is asinine
(31:46):
and child like, Like I would much rather be out
there every day helping people than voting once every four years.
And like, you can do both, of course you can.
But yeah, there's not a voting solution for this, Like
it requires all of us to do a lot of
work because we're so far down the path which ends
(32:06):
in a really terrible place. Right, it's already a terrible
place that these people's lives don't matter, and that their
children's lives don't matter, and that we shouldn't care if
they're dying in the jungle. And we've got a lot
of work to do to get back from that, because
apparently it's okay with a lot of people in this country.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, I think part of the reason why it's gotten
this bad is that the social movements that had pushed
the Democrats in a slightly better direction in the late
twenty tens stopped social movement thing. So you know, the
only thing that these people will respond to is like
they're actually being mass mutilizations and them be feeling politically
(32:42):
threatened by it. So you know, we've done it before,
we can do it again.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
The biggest march in this country's history was the March
of migrants, Right, we can do that again. So many
of us, myself included, came here to have a chance
a better future. And like, even if you didn't share
some solidarity with people like showing up in massive numbers,
Yet these movement stopped social movementing and people fell out
of a little things. But like, this shit is important,
(33:09):
and I think we can build some bridges and we
need to do something to stop this because it's horrific. Yeah,
and so it's a genocide in Ghaza, like we can.
We need to do something to stop that too, but
we're not going to do it through voting.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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