Premises have denounced the effects on the Esmeraldas river, water source for the Embera people
The traffic of migrants in the Darién cap, which reached its critical point with half a million people crossing it in 2023, has decreased, but the millions of people who passed through the jungle shared by Colombia and Panama left high levels of pollution that mainly affect indigenous communities. Although the flow of the route to the US has diminished, the garbage that the walkers were leaving in their path has caused the Esmeraldas river to supply the Embera people in Panama, generate diseases among the inhabitants.
The locals report that they have stopped using river water to bathe after noticing skin conditions. Panamanian environmental authorities say that among the river pollutants are garbage, fecal matter and even bodies of migrants who died along the way and could not be collected by the inaccessibility of the territory. The locals say that now their fish smells like gasoline through the motors of the ships that transported immigrants outside the jungle.
The authorities estimate that the humanitarian crisis left 2,500 tons of garbage in the Darien plug and that cleaning it along the immigration route will cost around 12 million dollars.
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Video editor in El País multimedia team in Mexico City. She has a degree in Communication and Journalism Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with a specialty in audiovisual production and studies at the University of University Lumière Lyon 2.
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