Bajo Chiquito, Panama – For many years, residents in the remote Indigenous community of Bajo Chiquito, Panama, lived a quiet life.
No paved roads lead to the town. Only dirt paths and the Turquesa River connect Bajo Chiquito to the outside world. A dense jungle filled with parrots and howler monkeys cocoons the community.
But over the past few years, the lives of the Emberá-Wounaan people who call Bajo Chiquito home have been dramatically and perhaps irreversibly transformed.
That is because, over the last several years, Bajo Chiquito has mushroomed into a hub for one of the busiest migration routes in the Western Hemisphere.
Hundreds of thousands of people now cross from Colombia into Panama each year, using a narrow land bridge called the Darién Gap. Bajo Chiquito sits at the northern edge of its most popular trail: The Colombian border lies a mere 24km (15 miles) away.
“When I was a boy, it used to be silent here,” said Saray Alvarado, a 27-year-old local who works in a shop that recharges migrants’ phones for a fee.
The street behind him bustled with large crowds more befitting of a city. “A lot has changed,” he told Al Jazeera.
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