Migrants are transported on single-engine boats from San Andrés to Nicaragua. (Reference image) -GETTY IMAGES
Ester lost her husband Roberto on the Colombian island of San Andrés a month before their first year of marriage.
Ester and Roberto are not their real names. She requested that fictitious names be used due to death threats her family received from her when she traveled to San Andrés to investigate the disappearance of her partner in October.
Roberto belongs to the hundred migrants who have disappeared in the last two years on this island in the Caribbean Sea which has become a “VIP route”, as defined by the Attorney General of Colombia, to emigrate to the United States without crossing the feared Darién Gap.
The Attorney General’s Office revealed that migrants pay between $1,500 and $5,000 for “tour packages” that include permission to enter the island and transportation on clandestine boats from San Andrés to the port of Bluefields in Nicaragua, a 232-kilometer journey . From there they continue their journey through Central America and Mexico to the United States.
Migrants who have the resources to cover these expenses try to avoid the Darién, the jungle shared by Colombia and Panama, where river currents, animals and armed groups threaten those who dare cross this dangerous stretch.
In early December, Colombian authorities reported the capture of 24 people in San Andrés who were part of a migrant and drug trafficking organization called La Agencia.
Among those arrested were five active Colombian Navy crew members, one officer and four non-commissioned officers.
It is necessary to prevent the island from becoming “a second Darien Gap” (the Attorney General of the Republic) after revealing that in the last two years 977 migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Uzbekistan, Ecuador and China have been rescued in the waters of the San Andrés . , Vietnam, Bangladesh, Belarus and Bosnia.
Colombian authorities have announced the dismantling of a drug and migrant trafficking group from San Andrés called La Agencia – GETTY IMAGES
Relatives of the missing
BBC Mundo spoke to a dozen relatives of 15 missing Venezuelan migrants in San Andrés, including pregnant women and children.
Three ships disappeared in 2022: the first on Friday 5 August, the second on Wednesday 12 October and the third on Saturday 17 December.
The fourth boat, on which Roberto was travelling, disappeared on Saturday 21 October this year.
Everyone agrees that their relatives found out about the packages to San Andrés on social networks. However, the majority decided to undertake that route at the suggestion of friends, neighbors or acquaintances, who had already done it or knew someone who had done it. Thanks to them they obtained contact with coyotes.
In all cases, these “guides” insistently called the migrants to guarantee that they would pay for the service. They also offered to pick them up at their front door to take them to the airport in Venezuela or to help them cross the border into Colombia.
Some said their relatives had previously been asked for photos of people who would be travelling, including children, without specifying the names of the hotels or inns where they would be staying.
All said that guides or representatives of purported travel agencies processed the tourist permit required by San Andrés authorities to allow travelers to enter the island. Many said they received it the same day.
Family members interviewed reported that their relatives were initially satisfied with the service, but before boarding the boats they said they had doubts or were afraid of making the journey to Nicaragua.
Many complained about the precariousness of the boats, even without life jackets, and the fact that they remained in clandestine places waiting for the weather conditions to allow them to set sail at night and evade Coast Guard patrols.
When they learned that their relatives had disappeared at sea, many posted messages on social media asking for help. From then on they received extortion calls and death threats for insisting on the search.
Some relatives said the migrants’ social media accounts were active after their disappearance. Several Whatsapp chats show recent connections.
Relatives posted notices to locate the missing migrants on the boat on October 21 – COURTESY OF THE RELATIVES OF THE AVAILABLE IN SAN ANDRÉS
Ester and other family members joined a Telegram chat managed by an association called ONSA Venezuela, an acronym for National Organization for the Rescue and Maritime Security of the Aquatic Spaces of Venezuela.
Several relatives said the chat administrators insisted that the migrants were dead, that they had probably been eaten by sharks.
Additionally, they silenced or expelled participants who suspected their relatives had been kidnapped or were victims of a human trafficking ring.
The general secretary of ONSA Venezuela, Luis Guillermo Inciarte, ruled out that the association tried to disorientate the relatives.
He explained to BBC Mundo that the organization provides consultancy for “maritime search, rescue and salvage work”.
“Family members come to us because they don’t know what to do in this situation,” Inciarte said. “We have notified relatives of people who have disappeared in the waters of San Andrés aboard at least ten boats in the last four years.”
Inciarte, captain of a yacht, explained that through Telegram chat they put relatives in contact with the authorities of Colombia, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
He said the boat’s relatives chat last October had 80 participants.
“People who did not hold back emotionally due to distress and those who did not identify were turned away,” he said. “We know that members of organized crime may try to enter our chats to obtain information and sabotage the search.”
The ONSA representative indicated that the analysis of several experts led them to conclude that the October ship sank due to bad weather conditions in the open sea and excessive weight caused by passengers and luggage.
However, since the bodies and belongings of most of the migrants have not been found, Ester and the others share the belief that their relatives are alive, subjugated against their will.
In this first-person testimony, Ester tells how her husband, a 29-year-old Venezuelan migrant, disappeared and the efforts she made to find him.
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“I dreamed that he was asking me for help”
The night my husband left on the boat I had a nightmare. I dreamed that he was asking me for help.
I woke up with a start at 4:00 in the morning. I hadn’t heard from him since 6.45pm the day before, when he made a video call to inform me that he would soon be leaving on a boat from San Andrés for Nicaragua.
He told me that he was hiding in a small room, together with the other migrants, waiting for nightfall.
When he saw that they would be leaving with a small boat, he asked the guide to get a larger boat with two engines. I told him: “My love, go back if you don’t feel safe”.
The guide told them that they would start from a place called La Piscinita. They (the migrants) had to sit around a bonfire, as if they were tourists to dress up. She told them they should turn off their cell phones to be safe.
I asked him to share his position with me, but he said the Internet was weak. The last time he connected on WhatsApp was at 8.02pm on Saturday 21 October.
A month later we celebrated one year of marriage.
“He felt he was physically unable to cross the Darién”
We have a fast food business, but we weren’t doing well. That’s why my husband wanted to go to the United States. He first applied for a tourist visa and then for a temporary residence permit with a sponsor, but Immigration denied him both procedures.
He thought about crossing the Darién, but because he was plump he felt he was physically unable to cross the jungle. Additionally, people on social media said migrants were attacked along the road or dragged to their deaths by rivers.
Then he contacted a neighbor from Trujillo, the state where he was born, who had already arrived in the United States and set out on the journey with a trusted guide. He gave her his number and they got in touch.
The guide placed my husband in a WhatsApp group where other Venezuelan migrants said the journey through San Andrés had been comfortable. They were all in the United States.
The guide called him every day to ask him if he had already bought the ticket or to tell him that he had bought it himself. I told my husband I didn’t like him putting so much pressure on him.
The guide told him to bring all the money in cash. He paid him $2,600 to come to the United States.
The package included the flight from Bogotá to San Andrés, with the tourist permit to enter the island. Boat transfer to the island of Maíz and ferry transfer to Nicaragua.
Also the road trip through Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala to the municipality of Tapachula (in southern Mexico).
I didn’t agree that he was carrying so many dollars with him, much less paying for it in advance in San Andrés. Then he told me that the guide had given him four envelopes with the initials of the people he would pay at each stop of the tour.
But he never told me how much money each person received or who they were.
Migrants crossing the Darien jungle risk being swept away by river currents – GETTY IMAGES
Three days after his last connection on WhatsApp, a stranger called me. He told me that the boat my husband was traveling on had capsized.
I started crying, screaming, I didn’t understand anything. The man told me that he was related to another migrant who was on the same boat, but I realized that his voice was familiar to me. I heard him talk to my husband several times.
I specified it and he confessed to me that he was the guide.
The man said he went out to sea to look for the migrants, but found no trace. He told me that those waters were full of sharks, so they had probably already eaten him.
I continued chatting with him, until I asked him if my husband might have been kidnapped.
“No, no. “There is no one kidnapped,” he told me. “The problem is that he took a big boat.” I got very angry because the problem was that he hadn’t arrived, but the man interrupted the communication.
On Facebook I found a group of relatives of other boat victims. They were differentiated based on the day the boats disappeared: August 5, October 12, December 17, and my husband’s boat, October 21.
Twenty days after the disappearance we learned that eight passports had been found that allegedly belonged to the crew of the boat on October 21, near the coast of Costa Rica.
All of us family members were surprised that our passports were intact after spending so many days at sea.
Migrants request information on tour packages via Whatsapp – COURTESY OF THE FAMILY OF A MISSING PERSON IN SAN ANDRÉS
“I was willing to wear three life jackets to go look for him”
I decided to travel to San Andrés with one of my husband’s cousins. I can’t swim, but I was willing to put on three life jackets if necessary and rent a boat to go look for him.
First we went to the San Andrés police station to report the disappearance. A man dressed in plain clothes welcomed us and told us that he was in charge of the investigation and that he would not accept the complaint because someone else had already filed it.
—Won’t they look for him? — I asked the man.
—No, they were lost at sea. “It’s up to the Navy,” he told me as he practically led us out of the police station.
As we were leaving he told us that San Andrés was a dangerous island for two single women.
The next day we didn’t leave the hotel. The owner asked us what we had come to do in San Andrés.
My husband’s cousin received a call on her cell phone from a woman who said he had been kidnapped by the Miskito, an indigenous tribe in Nicaragua. She told him that if we wanted it back, we would have to pay $4,000.
He told her we didn’t have that money and the woman hung up.
The next day we went to a winery, a pizza place and a shopping mall. We felt observed, wherever we were asked where we came from.
“Venezuelan? What a shame for his compatriots. That boat was lost, they are probably all dead”, they told us over and over again.
I got in touch with a journalist from San Andrés who also had a relative missing on one of the boats. I told her I wanted to rent a boat to go look for him, but she told me I couldn’t do that. The boatmen’s relatives were threatened.
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“I won’t stop until I find him”
My husband’s cousin and I decided to go to Bogota as soon as possible. We went to the nearest ombudsman’s office we could find and there they told us that my husband’s name was not on the list of 40 people missing on that boat.
My husband’s cousin decided to make the missing person report public on social media.
He received a call on his cell phone at 3 in the morning. On the screen it said that the number was from Arkansas, USA. A woman spoke to him very quickly, with a Spanish accent that she couldn’t identify.
She told him she knew “what he was doing was wrong.” She then gave him his son’s name and told him not to look for a place in the cemetery.
From the news and from other relatives I learned that my husband’s guide was recently arrested in that raid carried out in San Andrés in which some Colombian soldiers seemed to be involved.
I’m sure my husband is alive. Even though I’m scared for him and my family, I won’t stop until I find him.
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2023-12-28 16:30:37
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