By Georgie Pease | Issue 26
“One month and sixteen days,” 10-year-old Anderson said without hesitation. He keeps careful count of the time that he has spent camping on the streets in the Colombian beach town of Necocli with his father and teenage brother. Day after day, he leans over the pier’s railing, watching hundreds of migrants from South America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa form crowds at the entrance of the main pier to board small motorised ferries. The boats transport them across the Gulf of Uraba, which separates the continental stretch of Colombia’s Caribbean coast from the Darien, a mountainous isthmus blanketed by tropical rainforest where Colombia and Panama coincide. They aim to trek through Darien's swampy and precipitous forests and continue north towards the United States.
At the pier, Anderson is sharp, chatty and confident. He befriends migrants, vendors, and local officials with his nonstop questions and a contagious dimpled smile. After fleeing Venezuela’s collapsing economy nearly a decade ago, Anderson’s family rebuilt their lives in the northern Colombian city of Medellin, but since the pandemic high unemployment rates and gentrification have jeopardised their financial security. In April, Anderson’s father’s monthly earnings added up to less than half of the family’s rent, and he decided they could not stay in Medellin. Returning to Venezuela was not an attractive option: food shortages, limited access to medical and reproductive care and education, frequent power outages, unreliable internet, high unemployment rates, hyperinflation, authoritarian rule and waves of civil unrest have turned life into a daily struggle for survival for many Venezuelans who remain at home. The family resolved to undertake the long, dangerous and uncertain journey over land to the United States.
The dangers that the Darien Gap poses to migrants are well documented: travellers face forceful rivers and venomous animals, as well as aggression from armed paramilitary groups, gangs, and Panamanian authorities. Compounding these threats, the fees involved in reaching the jungle present an even greater obstacle for many travellers fleeing economic instability. Before crossing the Gulf of Uraba, migrants must pay the Gulf Clan – the narco-paramilitary group that controls the migration route on the Colombian side of the border – for permission to continue. Boat companies charge foreign tourists 20 USD to cross the gulf, but to board the same ferries migrants must first pay between $170 and $350 to one of the Gulf Clan’s ‘guides’. $350 represents a month’s full-time minimum wage earnings in Colombia, or 100 times Venezuela’s current monthly minimum.
Between 600 and 1,000 migrants cross the Gulf of Uraba each day, but many people arrive in Necocli without money to pay the Gulf Clan’s fees. As a result, hundreds of people are currently congregated in encampments on Necocli’s streets and beaches, unable to continue their journeys. Families and solo travellers mill between colourful tents, hammocks, foam sleeping mats and small cooking fires. Most are busy attending to daily necessities: washing clothes, preparing food, transporting water, negotiating payments with the paramilitary, or seeking work. Parents and older siblings hold, discipline, or play with young children. Most campers are Venezuelan citizens pushed abroad by economic instability or political repression at home. Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians and Hatians are also frequently present. Other migrants come from as far as West Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
For many people en-route to the U.S., Necocli becomes a formidable obstacle that increases the uncertainty and insecurity they face. Travellers often remain in encampments for weeks or months, surviving with limited access to water, food, bathrooms, medical care, or internet as they seek the means to pay the Gulf Clan. Some find temporary work at restaurants, in construction, or collecting recycling. Others report being pressured to cover costs by carrying drugs north at great personal risk. Many people decide the financial, physical and psychological costs of the journey are too great, and return to situations that they previously considered unlivable.
The current model of migration through Necocli extends and intensifies human suffering, and is unlikely to change in the near future. Ample push factors continue to drive people from their homes: the crisis in Venezuela, surges in gang-based violence in Haiti and Ecuador, and the exploitation to which mining and monoculture subject communities are just a few examples. Additionally, the Gulf Clan has a strong financial interest in maintaining the flow of migrants through regions where it has extensive de-facto control: in 2023, an estimated 20% of the group’s earnings originated from charges imposed on migrants.
Yudeisy, a 23-year-old Colombian woman, spent nearly two months in Necocli. At night she and her husband slept on a thin mat under an awning, and during the day she tried to earn her fare by working in restaurants. She decided to attempt to reach the U.S. after her 4-year-old son went into a coma following a violent assault by a man who lured the desperate family to his home by offering them shelter when he found them sleeping in a bus terminal. Yudeisy struggled to pay the costs associated with her son’s recovery, and hoped that sending home dollars would enable him to access the medical and psychological care he needed. In Necocli, she found that work opportunities were minimal and low-paying, and that most employers were reluctant to hire migrants. Her earnings barely covered daily expenses like food and public restroom fees. When she heard from her family that her son’s condition had worsened, she decided to transfer everything she had saved in Necocli to cover his emergency expenses, and travel home. Without money for transport, Yudeisy and her partner began the 1,000 km return journey on foot.
Karol, a 21-year-old transgender woman from Venezuela, has spent the majority of her adult life on the streets of Necocli. She attributes her decision to leave home to a dearth of educational opportunities. “In Venezuela there was no guarantee that you’d be able to study… we were killing our youth”, she explained. She also suffered judgement from her family and feared persecution by authorities for identifying as a woman. “In Venezuela trans women are killed just for being trans”, Karol said. “Anything that doesn’t conform with binarism, or anyone who’s not a cisgender man or a cisgender woman, is persecuted”. Beyond being at significant risk of becoming targets of hate crimes or state-perpetrated violence, transgender and nonbinary people in Venezuela are denied the right to documentation that reflects their gender identity. This limits their access to social services, education, and employment.
When Karol was 16, she left Venezuela alone, on foot. She reached Bucaramanga, Colombia where she was admitted to a state-run home for children and adolescents, but policy mandated that she leave the home when she turned 18. Leaving “was a totally drastic change”, she remembered. She found work in restaurants and bakeries but struggled to support herself, lost weight, and had to put her dreams of studying on hold. Karol decided her best options lay in the U.S., but she reported that after spending two years camping in Necocli and trying to earn the requisite fee by working in restaurants and selling candy in the streets, she began receiving threats from the Gulf Clan. “They wanted to kill me so I had to go to Bogota urgently…. They don’t accept cultural or sexual diversity there”.
From Bogota, Karol submitted a U.S. visa application via the Safe Mobility initiative, which the U.S. government, the International Organization for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched in 2023 to encourage people to apply for legal entry into the U.S. rather than attempting the dangerous route over land. Karol’s application was approved four months after she submitted it, but eight months after the approval she continues waiting for confirmation of a travel date. In her case, the “lawful pathway” promoted by the U.S. government has proven nearly as static as the situation in Necocli. Meanwhile, Karol has found employment in Bogota and is taking online courses in human rights, English, and customer service. She continues to navigate a precarious financial situation and face discrimination for her gender identity.
Just 9,000 approved Safe Mobility applicants had arrived in the U.S. as of September 2024, 15 months after the programme began operating. Far more people pass through Necocli each fortnight. The programme’s current structure and scale offer little hope of reducing the number of people attempting to cross the Gulf of Uraba nor mitigate the humanitarian challenges they are facing.
Karol, Yudeisy, and many others made the difficult decision to return to the insecurity they had fled, but Nataly*, 11, is among the hundreds of people who remain in Necocli’s encampment. She is the oldest of five siblings who have been living on the beach with their parents for 21 days. Like Anderson, Nataly keeps an exact count of her time in Necocli. After struggling to make ends meet for three years in Chile, one year in Ecuador, and a month in Peru, the Venezuelan family decided to try to reach the U.S. Nataly describes Necocli as “horrible!”, explaining that the heat and rain make her constantly uncomfortable, and strong winds blow sand into her eyes. At night, beachside bars play loud music until well past midnight that prevents her from sleeping. Plus, the beach can be boring, she says: The siblings play games together, but can’t play in the water because of the high levels of contamination from sewage. Most of all, Nataly misses school, and hopes that she can study again soon.
Responses of the governments of countries along the migration route like Colombia, Panama, and the U.S. have been limited in scale and largely ineffective. People fleeing unlivable situations often do not have the option of waiting months or years for institutional approval to travel via lawful pathways and most continue to opt for the informal route through Necocli. In the encampments, the Gulf Clan’s influence challenges institutional efforts to identify and implement strategies for the protection of migrants.
While economic hardship, persecution, violence and environmental destruction continue to push people from their homes, the Gulf Clan’s business booms and bureaucratic processes lag far behind the pace of humanitarian need. The obstacles that converge in Necocli are yet to erode the resilience and determination with which people attempt to use movement to access safety and opportunity. However, the challenges that confront migrants at this consequential shoreline force many to pause or redirect their journeys, extending their suffering and vulnerability.
*name has been changed
Georgie Pease
Georgie has coordinated projects for NGOs supporting migrants, refugees, and newcomer communities in Colombia and the U.S. She studied human rights history at Durham University (U.K.), and writes about experiences of migration in the Americas.
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