(Part 2) The Trek: A Migrant Trail to America | The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper

00:12:08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajAnuQvFBk

Summary

TLDRThe video documents the harrowing journey of migrants making their way from Colombia into Panama, through dense and dangerous jungle terrain. The story particularly focuses on a 12-year-old disabled girl named Anna and her mother Natalia, who struggle with the difficult path due to Anna's epilepsy and limited mobility. As they and other migrants navigate the steep inclines and mud, many are misled about the route's difficulty and length. The environment is grueling, leading to physical injuries, exhaustion, and a lack of resources. Despite these hardships, the resilience and community among the migrants shine through as they help one another endure the brutal conditions. The jungle signifies both a natural barrier and a lawless area where organized crime indirectly controls the flow of human traffic more than drugs. This underscores a complex humanitarian challenge marked by hope, survival, and shared struggle.

Takeaways

  • 🌿 The jungle trek marks a difficult phase in the migrant journey from Colombia to Panama.
  • 🆘 Anna's story highlights the extreme vulnerability faced by disabled migrants.
  • 👣 Trekking barefoot through mud shows the migrants' sheer determination.
  • 🤝 Despite immense hardship, migrants display strong communal solidarity.
  • ⚠️ Many migrants are misinformed about the route's difficulty.
  • ❌ Misleading promises lead to exhaustion and unpreparedness.
  • 📉 The route sees less drug traffic, but more human movement organized by cartels now.
  • 🚨 The physically debilitating jungle terrain offers numerous challenges.
  • 💔 Heartbreaking scenes unfold as families struggle to stay together and carry on.
  • 🌧️ The weather and geographical conditions pose continual threats to travelers.

Timeline

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    Migrants journeying through Panama face numerous hardships. The path is fraught with challenges, especially for those like Anna, a disabled 12-year-old who experiences seizures. Her mother, Natalia, struggles to care for her in the difficult terrain. The journey involves crossing borders with people discarding shoes, highlighting the shift in atmosphere. Migration exposes individuals to deception about the journey's difficulty, as many were misled about the trek's length. Although some migrants find temporary relief, like Lewin's recovery, the overarching theme is the relentless and harsh nature of the jungle passage.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:12:08

    Migrants face misinformation about the journey's duration and severity. Resources dwindle, with Jean-Pierre and others running out of food. Anna reunites with her mother, but they remain stranded without nourishment. The jungle trek turns into a massive congregation, with traffic jams forming due to sheer numbers. Migrants, often walking barefoot or with inadequate footwear, help each other through the jungle's challenges. Exhaustion prevails as food supplies deplete and struggles continue, compounded by the transition from drug trafficking routes to migrant passageways in Panama. The journey reflects a test of resilience amid nature's daunting landscape.

Mind Map

Video Q&A

  • What is the main focus of the video?

    The video focuses on the difficult and dangerous journey of migrants traveling through the jungle terrain of Panama, highlighting personal stories like that of a disabled girl named Anna.

  • Who is Anna in the video?

    Anna is a 12-year-old disabled girl who is part of the migrant group, experiencing epileptic convulsions during the journey.

  • What challenges do migrants face in the jungle?

    Migrants face steep, challenging terrain, lack of proper footwear, exhaustion, and scarcity of food during their trek through the jungle.

  • How has the journey affected the migrants' physical condition?

    Migrants endure physical exhaustion, injuries like broken ankles, and medical emergencies, which make the journey even more perilous.

  • What is the significance of the Cartagena reference?

    The reference highlights the organized crime and logistical challenges originating from Colombia that migrants must circumvent.

  • How do the migrants cope with challenges during their journey?

    Despite hardships, migrants show resilience and mutual help, sharing resources and supporting each other through tough obstacles.

  • What is the situation of organized crime in the jungle route?

    Although there's a decreased movement of drugs, the organized crime aspect now involves indirectly facilitating migrant movements for a fee.

  • How does the jungle environment impact the migrants?

    The jungle environment poses significant physical challenges, being steep and hazardous, which contribute to physical and mental stress on migrants.

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  • 00:00:16
    Oh.
  • 00:00:16
    But
  • 00:00:17
    up here,
  • 00:00:18
    their heads may feel lost in the clouds.
  • 00:00:20
    Even though it's the jungle mist.
  • 00:00:22
    Dragging them further
  • 00:00:23
    and taking on a new evil.
  • 00:00:26
    The unknown of Panama,
  • 00:00:27
    a country with nothing for them, baa
  • 00:00:29
    a swift, expensive ticket
  • 00:00:31
    on through north
  • 00:00:33
    and leaving behind another the cash drain
  • 00:00:36
    of organized Colombian cartels.
  • 00:00:39
    The porters give parting wisdom with you.
  • 00:00:42
    Also.
  • 00:00:43
    I mean, you
  • 00:00:46
    know,
  • 00:00:49
    one of the lessons you
  • 00:00:51
    pay, I feel
  • 00:00:54
    is
  • 00:00:55
    tired
  • 00:00:58
    of it.
  • 00:01:00
    And euphoria up here
  • 00:01:01
    is completely misplaced.
  • 00:01:03
    Let's go slowly.
  • 00:01:04
    The scale of the lie,
  • 00:01:06
    some have been told, emerges
  • 00:01:08
    This isn't a short walk ahead
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    Especially acute is Anna's plight.
  • 00:01:15
    She's 12
  • 00:01:16
    disabled and gets epileptic convulsions.
  • 00:01:20
    Her mother, Natalia,
  • 00:01:22
    is the only one who can care for her.
  • 00:01:24
    But it's so much harder up here.
  • 00:01:27
    Up here
  • 00:01:34
    She later
  • 00:01:34
    tells us
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    she was told
  • 00:01:35
    the descent was a matter of 2 hours.
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    But it's not
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    worrying
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    And literally meters from Colombia,
  • 00:01:48
    the ground turns
  • 00:01:50
    people as they walk, just discarding
  • 00:01:52
    their shoes.
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    A real sense of the atmosphere changing.
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    Now we've crossed the border into Panama.
  • 00:01:59
    People coming together,
  • 00:02:00
    perhaps fearing for their own safety.
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    And this much is just possibly going
  • 00:02:05
    get your feet out of it.
  • 00:02:12
    But
  • 00:02:15
    I.
  • 00:02:17
    I got to tell you,
  • 00:02:19
    this man who didn't want to be named.
  • 00:02:21
    Now with nothing on his feet
  • 00:02:23
    but his resolve,
  • 00:02:24
    pause and imagine where you've come from.
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    If you're willing to do this barefoot
  • 00:02:29
    with a woolen sweater and plastic bags
  • 00:02:34
    pierce, your feet will break an ankle
  • 00:02:36
    in this mud. Maybe your brave
  • 00:02:41
    I want to
  • 00:02:44
    know
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    more about with the former
  • 00:02:48
    head of
  • 00:02:55
    Boston's
  • 00:03:00
    The mother, Natalia,
  • 00:03:01
    has managed
  • 00:03:02
    to find a Haitian man to help her
  • 00:03:04
    move her disabled daughter, Anna.
  • 00:03:06
    Forget you and cover up
  • 00:03:07
    when they come into the target as well.
  • 00:03:09
    Mama. Puerto Rico.
  • 00:03:12
    Hmm.
  • 00:03:13
    A little
  • 00:03:16
    L.A.P.D.
  • 00:03:17
    Come in a no queda,
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    no Puerto Rican stuff.
  • 00:03:23
    So
  • 00:03:27
    you know both Boston
  • 00:03:32
    the border.
  • 00:03:34
    Well, so much.
  • 00:03:35
    This route is insanely steep.
  • 00:03:38
    And so many of the people
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    that we've spoken to
  • 00:03:42
    on the way are complaining about how
  • 00:03:44
    this was nothing like
  • 00:03:46
    the easy route they were promised.
  • 00:03:48
    Understandably, it doesn't take long
  • 00:03:50
    for the Haitian volunteer to tire
  • 00:03:52
    and then faster.
  • 00:03:53
    Ana might be having a fit or just tired.
  • 00:03:56
    Or both. Or neither.
  • 00:03:58
    This could be how she often gets.
  • 00:04:00
    We just don't know.
  • 00:04:01
    And without her mother way
  • 00:04:03
    back behind her on the trail,
  • 00:04:04
    nobody really knows what she needs.
  • 00:04:07
    The Haitian migrants
  • 00:04:08
    who helped begins cutting a stretcher,
  • 00:04:10
    hoping others will come
  • 00:04:15
    back on ahead.
  • 00:04:16
    But they all face the same problem.
  • 00:04:18
    They can't move her
  • 00:04:19
    without taking a further from her mother.
  • 00:04:21
    So she is stuck waiting by her window.
  • 00:04:25
    And you can't.
  • 00:04:26
    But sometimes the jungle throws back
  • 00:04:28
    a moment of life.
  • 00:04:30
    And this day, it's Lewin's turn.
  • 00:04:32
    The little boy with a terrible cough
  • 00:04:34
    and fever
  • 00:04:35
    we met
  • 00:04:35
    earlier
  • 00:04:36
    has made a miraculous recovery overnight,
  • 00:04:39
    as if another life
  • 00:04:40
    has been breathed into him
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    by
  • 00:04:44
    the
  • 00:04:47
    Sometimes the forest suddenly breaks
  • 00:04:49
    and you realize
  • 00:04:50
    just how many of us there are here.
  • 00:04:53
    Even in the shallows,
  • 00:04:54
    the scraps of us
  • 00:04:55
    as a species are overwhelming
  • 00:05:00
    Link is from Wuhan.
  • 00:05:01
    Among the growing Chinese here,
  • 00:05:03
    he doesn't want to show his face
  • 00:05:05
    and learned about the gap from tick tock.
  • 00:05:08
    First from Hong Kong.
  • 00:05:10
    From Oak Island.
  • 00:05:12
    Hong Kong is on an island cookie.
  • 00:05:15
    Wow.
  • 00:05:16
    And then a club from Ecuador.
  • 00:05:19
    Yeah. In Colombia. Yes.
  • 00:05:21
    A little bit of Basil Marley's.
  • 00:05:24
    A little bit of her.
  • 00:05:25
    Yeah.
  • 00:05:26
    My money Chinese come here because
  • 00:05:30
    the cha Chinese society
  • 00:05:32
    is not a barrier.
  • 00:05:37
    I feel for
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    me.
  • 00:05:40
    He's paused to rest his knee,
  • 00:05:42
    but also run out of food already
  • 00:05:50
    Talk on their third dawn out here
  • 00:05:52
    turns to how much further there really is
  • 00:05:56
    Jean-Pierre was told
  • 00:05:58
    it would be a much shorter walk.
  • 00:06:00
    Not since the police
  • 00:06:00
    bought a toothless tiger with Marjorie.
  • 00:06:04
    The dog from a new dawn
  • 00:06:07
    because of excuse me,
  • 00:06:08
    only to her little facials.
  • 00:06:10
    And then also
  • 00:06:13
    removing the human
  • 00:06:14
    taking it gives immunity
  • 00:06:16
    more so slingshot
  • 00:06:18
    killer on Sunday then go for
  • 00:06:21
    something you no longer with your blue
  • 00:06:24
    allergies with due to new guard.
  • 00:06:27
    Yeah.
  • 00:06:28
    I'm officially my firm in Israel.
  • 00:06:30
    The liberals. I mean
  • 00:06:34
    the general government is
  • 00:06:36
    your business.
  • 00:06:39
    Anna the disabled
  • 00:06:40
    12 year old
  • 00:06:41
    has been reunited with her mother.
  • 00:06:43
    But they are again stuck
  • 00:06:45
    and without food.
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    You can see that coming up in my kitchen.
  • 00:06:48
    Never quite getting on
  • 00:06:49
    with like I've never met.
  • 00:06:51
    But we are not seen.
  • 00:06:51
    Have we done something?
  • 00:06:53
    I have no particular mannerism
  • 00:06:55
    and I'm a performer,
  • 00:06:57
    she says.
  • 00:06:57
    They're only here
  • 00:06:58
    as that same medicine
  • 00:07:00
    became unaffordable in Venezuela.
  • 00:07:02
    Why not put the decade
  • 00:07:03
    ahead of the Islamic world?
  • 00:07:04
    Just a second, or maybe even better.
  • 00:07:07
    No.
  • 00:07:08
    Three again, I'm at mine
  • 00:07:10
    and maybe you'll get me one more.
  • 00:07:12
    Let me ask a quick
  • 00:07:12
    I mean, that's just crossing the line
  • 00:07:16
    when you can't get outside
  • 00:07:19
    and you forget
  • 00:07:23
    just after dawn, they set out again
  • 00:07:27
    the canopy begins to feel
  • 00:07:29
    like a shroud in timing them,
  • 00:07:31
    cutting them off from the future.
  • 00:07:33
    They're pushing towards
  • 00:07:35
    nature's most beguiling way.
  • 00:07:37
    Of saying, don't come here
  • 00:07:43
    for so much of every day.
  • 00:07:45
    You stare at your feet,
  • 00:07:47
    your most vital assets here,
  • 00:07:49
    hoping they land safely,
  • 00:07:51
    especially in the opaque river
  • 00:07:53
    where one loose
  • 00:07:54
    footing can break an ankle
  • 00:07:57
    Most migrants wear these rubber boots
  • 00:07:59
    which fill with water curdling your feet.
  • 00:08:03
    But Manuel and Tamara,
  • 00:08:05
    who we met on the first night,
  • 00:08:06
    have their eyes on the finish line that
  • 00:08:13
    this route is littered with obstacles,
  • 00:08:15
    choke points and lines
  • 00:08:20
    in a bold new
  • 00:08:24
    lot
  • 00:08:26
    hours on their feet
  • 00:08:27
    without the comfort of knowing
  • 00:08:29
    you were at least moving
  • 00:08:31
    for ever damp, striding waiting.
  • 00:08:33
    What's crazy is over
  • 00:08:34
    the last hour
  • 00:08:35
    we probably haven't traveled
  • 00:08:36
    directly about 50 to 100 yards,
  • 00:08:39
    but this is just one
  • 00:08:40
    enormous traffic
  • 00:08:42
    jam of people through the jungle.
  • 00:08:45
    Sad fact is, more of them do it
  • 00:08:47
    the more they slow each other down
  • 00:08:48
    bottlenecks like this
  • 00:08:50
    and the greater risk they
  • 00:08:51
    put themselves on
  • 00:08:57
    Time and time again, though,
  • 00:08:59
    this ordeal summons
  • 00:09:00
    something beautiful from people
  • 00:09:02
    the mirrors nature here,
  • 00:09:04
    a glue binding them to each other
  • 00:09:06
    to help, cajole, care
  • 00:09:09
    sometimes for strangers of survival.
  • 00:09:12
    Survival together on
  • 00:09:16
    offer.
  • 00:09:17
    It's the best of us
  • 00:09:18
    and doesn't care
  • 00:09:19
    what passport you're carrying,
  • 00:09:22
    but it cannot alter the pain
  • 00:09:33
    how are you finding the road?
  • 00:09:36
    Yeah.
  • 00:09:37
    So this is a museum on the rocks.
  • 00:09:41
    It saw my mom fall down so many times.
  • 00:09:52
    Yes, I'm sorry.
  • 00:09:53
    Yes, I may be up for that either. Yes.
  • 00:09:55
    How can you hook it up with that?
  • 00:09:57
    But it's a horrible story.
  • 00:10:00
    We were there.
  • 00:10:01
    No one knows
  • 00:10:06
    how
  • 00:10:09
    no, I
  • 00:10:10
    I wish I could
  • 00:10:14
    set it up before, you know.
  • 00:10:17
    What's up? What does that matter?
  • 00:10:19
    And what the
  • 00:10:40
    It seems almost impossible
  • 00:10:42
    in the chaos two days ago,
  • 00:10:44
    but Wilson has met up again
  • 00:10:45
    with his parents
  • 00:10:47
    not in the Miami
  • 00:10:48
    swimming pool, though, just yet.
  • 00:10:50
    He wants something different,
  • 00:10:53
    something we'll see Tuesday.
  • 00:10:56
    Oh, yeah.
  • 00:10:57
    And then you hit out to me,
  • 00:10:59
    and you'll be asking me, can you promise
  • 00:11:09
    exhaustion
  • 00:11:09
    now decides everything
  • 00:11:12
    this camp, at first,
  • 00:11:14
    a handful of people
  • 00:11:15
    and then suddenly overflowing.
  • 00:11:18
    Gendry admits they are out of food.
  • 00:11:20
    They gave it all away
  • 00:11:21
    earlier, thinking
  • 00:11:22
    this was a two day hike.
  • 00:11:24
    More urgently,
  • 00:11:25
    she needs to soothe her mother,
  • 00:11:27
    who's gripped her, stick
  • 00:11:28
    too hard to stay upright,
  • 00:11:30
    her gloves, no help
  • 00:11:34
    the pristine, unbothered
  • 00:11:35
    green hides
  • 00:11:36
    a dark, violent change
  • 00:11:37
    that's been afoot here for years.
  • 00:11:40
    These people have become the new weight,
  • 00:11:42
    the new traffic.
  • 00:11:44
    The cartels move
  • 00:11:45
    less drugs along these routes.
  • 00:11:47
    These days,
  • 00:11:47
    we're told
  • 00:11:49
    these human packages
  • 00:11:50
    pay to move themselves
  • 00:11:52
    nobody steals them.
  • 00:11:54
    There are
  • 00:11:54
    few arrests to be made,
  • 00:11:56
    nothing to raid out here.
  • 00:11:58
    And all the risks are taken
  • 00:12:00
    by the packages themselves.
Tags
  • migrants
  • Panama
  • Colombia
  • jungle
  • journey
  • challenges
  • disability
  • survival
  • organized crime
  • resilience