By Moncho Torres
Bajo Chiquito, (EFE).- The indigenous village of Bajo Chiquito, once the daily first point of arrival in Panama for hundreds of migrants after their perilous journey through the Darién Gap, is slowly attempting to return to normalcy. This shift comes after the abrupt halt of the migratory flow towards the United States, largely due to Donald Trump’s policies.
Bajo Chiquito has transitioned from a bustling hub to a quiet community. With a population of around 400, this indigenous village on the banks of the Tuquesa River received over 2,000 migrants daily during peak migration periods.
Its narrow streets were once crammed with makeshift lodging, small food stalls, clothing shops, and internet and phone charging services. Most of these businesses are now empty.
He fondly remembers the migrants, explaining that he tried to offer them something different to eat after their arduous journey through the jungle, instead of the usual rice and chicken offered at other stands.
Jason Mosquera, 25, has run a small stand for four years, selling ice cream, drinks, fast food like hamburgers, and internet connections.
Without migrants, now his only customers are his neighbors or an occasional visitor.
“On a normal day, I would serve at least 100 people, sometimes even more. Now, I only serve maybe 10, or six people a day. It has dropped a lot,” Mosquera told EFE.
This drastic change was unexpected, especially after over 520,000 people crossed the jungle in 2023, surpassing 248,000 in 2022 and over 300,000 in 2024.
However, measures taken since the beginning of his term in July 2024 by Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, such as closing jungle trails and signing an agreement with the United States for deportation flights, combined with Trump’s subsequent victory and his anti-immigrant policies, led to the abrupt decline in Darién crossings.
According to Panamanian authorities, only 2,927 migrants crossed the Darién into North America in the first half of this year.
Most of these crossings occurred in January (2,229), the numbers steadily decreasing thereafter: 408 in February, 194 in March, 73 in April, 13 in May, and only 10 in June.
29,722 migrants crossed the Darién in the same month in 2023, and 31,049 did so in 2024.
Return to Normalcy
The ‘nocó,’ or traditional leader of Bajo Chiquito, Esmeralda Dumasá, told EFE that the village is now experiencing a return “to its normalcy,” evident as children reclaim the streets.
“It’s back to how it was a few years ago. The village is normalized, and everyone has gone back to their crops. Everything’s normal… but there’s also a decrease in money, it has affected us a lot (because) we provided our services to the passing migrants,” she explained.
According to Esmeralda, most residents are farmers so they are returning to cultivating otoe (a type of tuber), corn, rice, and plantains, which are visible along the banks of the Tuquesa River.
The community revolves around the river, where they fish, wash clothes, and travel in their canoes in the absence of roads.
They also hope that authorities will help them find a new use for a shelter that they were building with their “savings” on an open field on the outskirts of the village. The shelter can accommodate about 900 migrants.
The Legacy of Migration
Although the migrants have disappeared, the international interest generated by this crisis brought projects from NGOs and organizations like the Red Cross, Spanish Cooperation, HIAS, Doctors Without Borders, and various UN agencies such as IOM, UNHCR, and UNICEF to Bajo Chiquito and other communities.
These initiatives provided essential services like drinking water, health, and sanitation, which continue to operate.
In the waiting room of Bajo Chiquito’s health center, Indigenous children and women in colorful traditional dresses have replaced the migrants.
Doctor Katherine Rodríguez has been stationed there for over a year. Initially, during periods of intense migratory flow, they could attend to up to 150 patients in a single day.
While everything is calmer now, she hasn’t forgotten some of the most severe cases, such as victims of rape in the jungle or “pregnant women with fractures.”
“There was also an accident last year on Christmas Eve, I think it was December 24th, very catastrophic: a tree fell on many tents (with migrants), many people were injured, many people died,” the doctor recalls.
Among the victims, she continued, was “a girl around 23 years old, Venezuelan,” who suffered a severe spinal injury. She was with her brother, who died, and her two-year-old daughter.
Deaths in the Jungle
The tragedy left three dead and about 20 injured, three of them seriously, according to the doctors and local leader’s count.
The ‘nocó’ states that one of the main causes of deaths in the jungle is sudden river surges: “Sometimes we would find five corpses in a single day.”
In 2023, “there were many because the river kept rising more and more at that time. Here, as natives, as indigenous people, we know that when it starts to thunder, the river will rise. But they don’t,” she explained.
Upriver, towards the jungle, guide Eutimio Bacorizo, 24, recounts how he had to run from these sudden floods, helping migrants take shelter in elevated areas.
Others were not as fortunate. “We heard laments, voices behind us shouting: ‘Help, help!’ We responded and there was no one… and when we got here, the rising water caught us, and we had to run through the mountains to save ourselves,” Eutimio sadly retells. EFE
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