For centuries, the Comarca Embera people have fished and bathed in the Turquesa River, a jungle waterway flowing out of the Darien Gap. They've long been accustomed to changes in the water — rainy season brings mud and sediment in the faster-flowing river. But now, they're seeing unprecedented change in the wake of a migratory crisis: Trash, gasoline and fecal matter have been left behind from the 1.2 million vulnerable people who trekked through one of the Earth's most biodiverse rainforests.
Migration through the Darien Gap — a remote area along the Colombia-Panama that sat largely untouched until it became the epicenter of 2021's crush of migration — has virtually vanished, but families in the small community of Villa Caleta still fear bathing in the winding river. Fish, their main food source, reek of fuel from boats that carried people down the Turquesa. And deeper in the jungle, criminal groups that pushed into the region to profit off the migratory route are part of illegal gold mining and deforestation operations.
