The Left usually claims that the interests of “indigenous people” are near and dear to their hearts. Yet, what happens when two sets of indigenes meet: on the one hand, the world’s migrants in search of greener pastures and on the other, people who live on land they were born on and don’t want to see it destroyed by the migrants as they pass through.
That sort of thing is happening in Panama’s Darien Gap, the last great barrier for US-bound migrants before reaching Central America. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a video today, featuring five chiefs of the Embera-Wounaan Indian tribe, whose 19,000 members live in the Gap. Todd Bensman, the Center’s National Security Fellow, interviewed the chiefs, who unanimously agreed that migration has caused significant harm to their traditional way of life by introducing drug and alcohol and other social problems to their people. In addition, the chiefs said open sewage and waste left by migrants have polluted the once-clean rivers and caused other environmental damage.
The chiefs expressed some hope in Panama’s new President, Raul José Mulino, who has pledged to close the Gap to mass migration. Their complaints center on the US. One of the five, Chief Leonide Cunampia, bluntly sent this message to Washington: “Shut down the border.”
For more, see CIS.org.