PANAMA BURYING MORE MIGRANT VICTIMS OF BRUTAL DARIEN GAP

AGUA FRIA — In an isolated cemetery in Panama’s Darien province, migrants who die crossing the most treacherous segment of their journey toward the United States are buried with a plasticized card containing what little information is available about them in case one day someone comes looking.

On a recent afternoon, white-suited workers laid to rest 15 sets of remains in a long trench at the back of the cemetery. A local priest standing at the head of the trench with a candle, crucifix and flowers performed a simple ceremony. On the white body bags were handwritten clues: “Unknown in Bajo Grande,” “Unknown in Turquesa river,” and “Unknown #3, Minor.”

So far this year, Panama has recovered at least 50 sets of remains from migrants crossing the Darien Gap, a number officials believe is only a portion of those who died in the dense, lawless jungle. In recent years, 20 to 30 bodies on average have been recovered annually, but this year Panamanian authorities say more than 90,000 migrants — mostly Haitians — have crossed the Darien Gap from Colombia and the body count reflects that surging migration.

“That number is a minimum quantity of the human remains there are along the whole route,” said José Vicente Pachar, director of Panama’s Forensic Sciences Institute. “Many of them die of natural causes, for example, a heart attack; they fall and no one attends to them. They stay there or they’re assaulted or the water’s current comes and takes the bodies that end up floating along the river’s edge.” Snake bites are also common.

“Right now we don’t have a way to investigate like we want to with international support, to go on the trails, the paths, because all the descriptions and statements (say) there are human remains,” Pachar said.

Agents of Panama’s National Border Service help recover bodies, sometimes extracting them with helicopters, along with investigators from the Darien prosecutor’s office.

But the recovery is only the first challenge facing investigators.

The bodies are often badly decomposed in the high-humidity environment or partially eaten by animals. Those who may have witnessed a death, being migrants themselves, keep going and are not around to assist in identifications. And most of the bodies are without identification, it having been stolen or lost.

Julio Vergara, Darien province’s top prosecutor, says that even when migrants report a death, “when we do the recovery and are going to corroborate the facts, the migrants who reported it have unfortunately continued on their route.” He said that of the cases he has opened this year, five Haitians, two Cubans and a Brazilian have been identified. Four of the victims were children.

Haitians made up the majority of the 15,000 migrants who camped for days in Del Rio, Texas, last month beside a border bridge. The U.S. has deported thousands of them to Haiti.

In Panama, much of the identification work falls to Pachar’s staff at the morgue in Panama City.