MIGRATION IS NOT A CRIME - Darié jungle, a gap on the pan-American highway

 Well, it was an hallucinating trip that took me up the winding channels of the Rio Negro “Black River”, and then on the Colômbian side, through the Reserva Natural Nukak Tunahi, and the Parque Nacional de la Serranía de La Macarena and the Serranía del Baudó, a mountain range that extends along Colombia's Pacific coast into Panama. And so, about the Darien jungle, this is a bridge area that separates Central America from South America, let's say, thus the thing is, there are no proper roads in this area, only muddy paths, paths through which I mounted surrounded by by illegal migrants coming from the south with the goal of reaching Mexico and then the United States, this is, mainly Haitians and other caribbeans, but also Colombians, Venezuelans and even Africans that manage to fly from Africa to Brazil, and then come up, cross all Amazonia, Colombia, etc. This is, people coming from Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, etc, and so, this is, most of them say good things about Brazil, their host country, but now, here, on Darié jungle, the paths are hard, rapes and robberies are common, and a broken leg can be fatal, the weather is very rainy, and so, the Darie jungle is also home to the Embera-Wounaan and the Guna people with whom I became acquainted, and then, through my approaches, I learned that some of the those Guna people have a high incidence rate of albinism, which led to their nickname of "White Indians'' between the surrounded villagers, but in the Guna philosophy, the albinistic people, or "sipu", as they say, is given a special place in their society hierarchy, and so, they are considered specials. As they told me, they have the specific duty of defending the moon against a dragon which tries to eat it on occasion during a lunar eclipse, and so, only they are allowed to go outside on the night of a lunar eclipse and to use specially made bows and arrows to shoot down the dragon trying to eat the moon… plus, the Yanomami natives, are people that practice ritual endocannibalism, in which they consume the bones of deceased kinsmen. And so, in this procedure the human body is wrapped in leaves and placed in the forest at some distance from their villages, and then, after the insects have consumed the soft tissue, the bones are collected and cremated, and the ashes are then mixed with a kind of soup made from bananas, which is consumed by the entire community. This is, the ashes may be preserved in a gourd and the ritual is repeated annually until the ashes are gone. But, in daily conversation, no reference may be made to a dead person except on the annual "day of remembrance", when the ashes of the dead are consumed and people recall the lives of their deceased relatives. So, during the mornings, while the men are off hunting, the women and young children go off in search of termite nests and other grubs, which will later be roasted at the family hearths. And the women also pursue frogs, terrestrial crabs, caterpillars, or even look for vines that can be woven into baskets. And while some others may gather these small sources of food, or go off and fish for several hours during the day, the women also prepare cassava, shredding the roots and extracting the toxic juice, and then, roasting the flour to make flat cakes, which they cook over a small pile of coals, and so, here I’m, tasting some of this cassava cakes, this is, me and the African immigrants, here on my side, exchanging gifts with the Guna people.