Photojournalist on his trek with migrants through Central America’s perilous Darién Gap

[Music] my guest today is Federico Rios Escobar a renowned photojournalist originally from Colombia who's covered many topics including migration across Latin America for media Outlets like the New York Times for example federo welcome thank you so much for being here thank you s and honor I'm also very happy to speak to you because you have a very unique perspective on the complex issue of migration particularly in the Americas when and why did you start covering migration uh the first time I photographed migrants was in 2015 I was following Caravans of Venezuelan migrants traveling out from Venezuela by foot walking into the Colombian mountains they reach the border between Venezuela and Colombia and they start walking the mountains trying to make it to Bogota which is the capital city of Colombia but that Journey took them like maybe two or three weeks on foood uh on the side of the road now and also they have to cross uh mountains and valleys they were not prepared for um there's amountain called Berlin and it's like 3,300 m above sea level and that's mean that means it's it's very cold it's very um it's very harsh the weather is rainy the the altitude also like you start losing the the oxygen on your lungs you can't breathe easy and they were not prepared for that from there uh I realized there were the smallest number of Venezuelans traveling south not to Colombia but to Brazil and I went to Brazil to photograph them and I crossed the great Savanah of Venezuela with them most of them were indigenous from the W ethnic group going through Brazil because they they didn't knew where to go and they were like out of food and energy and schools and medical supplies and everything so they were heading south to Brazil and it was much more complex because in Brazil there's a different language they they speak Portuguese in Brazil it's the only country in South America that speaks a different language than Spanish so for the ones coming to Colombia at least it was same language the one going to to to Brazil was a different language different uh perspective of many other things so it was much more complex migration um can be a very polarizing issue and in your photographs you cover the human aspect of migration beyond the politics what makes you highlight why do you think it's important to highlight the individual Stories the struggles the dreams that migrants have I have focus on poor people migrating not not even in migration because it's a very wide word uh it's a very wide concept but the poor migrants are people who touch the bottom of of Life at a point where they lost their hope and they can't hold themselves or their families in the place where they are so when somebody in those conditions decide to migrate they decide to left everything behind and the most important is that they are conscient of the idea of not coming back that's a very compelling concept for me because this idea of not coming back it's like it's it's so hard to understand and basically for the people listening to us in this conversation they can be migrants somehow you know like those people migrating here and there uh moving from one city to the other or moving from one country to the other country even with families and it's for that kind of uh middle class migrants even for them is very complex because they miss their home their food the the block where they grow the friends everything you know it's like new country New Life new everything and it's it's so complex to go back and people start missing some things but poor migrants is much more complex for them much more complex for them so for me it's very compelling and it's very important to to give some awareness to put these on the table so people can be able to speak about it because otherwise most of us most of the people who see these articles and these these photographs they they can't understand the conditions these people are are migrating in the idea of not coming back it's so hard the idea of bringing your kids and risking their lives that's that's huge and some people have Point their fingers uh on the people on my photograph like how they thereare to bring the kids and risk their lives the kids can lost their lives or or the kids can be separated from the parents the other option is leaving them behind and not seeing them anymore in life so either of both is not an easy choice or you risk your son's or your daughter's life or you decide not to see them anymore uh in the case of the Venezuelan migrants they decide to go to the United States and work right really hard and try to send some money back so their kids can have like some basic needs covered and better conditions for the living Hood than what the grown ones had when they were young but the same at the same time it's like uh depriving a kid to grow with without her father and her mother is something I can't just imagine so for me it's important to highlight how these people is migrating desperately because they have no basic needs cover and it's a where they come from and it's not it's not only an economic situation it's a it's much more than that is greater than that is the economy is the education is the access is the possibility to travel is the possibility to see the world um if if you go to North and I mean the global North if you come come to Europe if you go to to the United States you can easily find uh public spaces with wider audience if you if you walk by a park if you walk by a lake you can find like a street concert or Street performance things like that you don't find them that often in the south in the global south I mean like I think like I have been photographing migration through daring Gap migration from Venezuela mostly and many other countries crossing the daring Gap trying to reach the states but but when I go to the concept migration is happening from the global South to the global North because of the same reasons so Africa Europe is basically the same it's like you don't find parks you don't find public uh scenarios you don't find uh arts and culture uh you don't have that kind of opportunities you know it's not just about money it's about the living hood is about the condition you you live and the condition you can share with your family to to grow your kids your work has been featured in Publications like the New York Times National Geographic how do you choose which story stories you will tell through your photographs well I have to give a lot of credit to my photo editors working with me and I have to give a lot of credit also to the journalists working with me for National Geographic I work with paa Ramon she's a friend uh friend writer from from Brazil for New York Times I work mostly with Julie turkewitz in the Daran Gap but I have worked also with um Ken bensinger ining gap for the New York Times and I work with Nick casy when I start covering migration from Venezuela to Colombia I work with Sophia VI Jamil I have worked with many good and talented writers but also it's dialogue with my photo editors because when you're when you're there you're so involved that sometimes you lose the scope so I I I work really hard trying to choose who to photograph and what to show but honestly the the the filter needs more people also and my editors and my colleagues helps me a lot do migrants want to be photographed and interviewed I I never photograph somebody who don't want to be photographed and if by accident because I had happened if by accident I photographed somebody who doesn't want to be in the picture I just Del let the picture he like I don't care I just don't care I was in the middle of Daring Gap walking by myself like Julie tur which my colleague was back in the base like two days walking back from what I was she was riding a lot and on I was climbing a hill very Mighty Hill and I saw this old woman maybe 80 years old walking the hill she was not walking by herself like there was a group of people helping her and holding her arms like yeah basically carrying her like as she was like trying to to walk in the mud her dress was all cover in mud and her face was all sweaty and you could see a very old woman walking and I start photographing and I start photographing and photographing when I'm photographing I'm I try to be very aware of the people in front of my camera and the people in the surroundings also and the people around that old woman they seem to be okay with my pictures not the old woman because she was she was like extremely exhausted like looking down she was not even looking at me and I was thinking these are very powerful and compelling images to tell how even an 80 years old woman is walking the daring Gap trying to make it to the stage so if you if you lost hope at that point that you're risking your life when you're 80 or maybe more so I think this this is a telling image the woman reached the the top of the mountain where I was and the people around was looking for a place for for a fallen trunk to see that woman so she can catch her breath they set her and I took a couple of more pictures and I just moved back so she had can have like some space and some air and I moved back and I was like just holding my camera on my chest looking at the woman but from a uh distance you know and I was standing there and somebody approached me and in a very bad English uh there was this young guy telling me the woman was was her grandmother and asking me to delet those photographs because he told me this is my grandmother we come from Afghanistan and she didn't have her face and her head covered if my family or any relative see this picture she would be disgraced it's it's going to be a dishonor for her to be in a photo without covering her her head or her face and I didn't had a problem like I just got my camera in front of the guy just delet the pictures even when I knew those were going to be like powerful and telling images but I think nobody it doesn't matter how big it is the the media or the publication or the audience the photo is going to have nobody should be photographed and published without their permission so one of the things that makes me proud as a photographer is that most of the people I photograph uh all first all the people I photograph allow me to photograph them I have like I would say 95% of the names of the people most of the people I photograph I stay in touch with them is very tricky in the jungle because you can't ask ask them for the WhatsApp because there's no there's no reception in the jungle and most of them lost their phones on the journey so I asked them for WhatsApp email and Facebook Facebook still being very popular in Latin America and and I still using Facebook even when most of my friends are not there because that's my point of contact with most of migrants and also I try to photograph the people with with respect and with a conversation so uh when When I Was preparing this exhibition with ifoc um the communications team use one of the photographs to design a piece to um promote the exhibition when they sent me the peace the first thing I did is sharing the peace with Mari Alejandra which is the woman in the center of the peace with her family and she was so happy that yesterday I post the piece on my social media and immediately Alejandra shares that on her social media I'm really proud that Mari Alejandra saw the picture uh after they exit the jungle I showed them the picture that was more than a year ago and yesterday when I when I showed a be on my social media and Mar Alejandra reposted on her social media that makes me feel proud that means she doesn't feel uh objectified and she doesn't feel betrayed or mistreated with my picture but proud of what she had made and like this is what she does and also like she understand what I do as a journalist she understand that I photograph her with respect enough respect to be able to show her circles circle of friends and family how I photograph her and how I'm having an exvision here with her pictures and she feels represented by my pictures that's the tool on my mental health to go to sleep every night that I feel that I'm not betraying people in front of my camera my of my camera but treating them with full respect and creating a connection I use um very small and short distance lenses so I don't shot people from long distance I need to be like two 3 m from people to photograph them and in the jungle it's like once I lift my camera in a road in the jungle in a dirty path in a mudy path or under the rain or under the sun like there's there's no way to photograph these people without them knowing you're photographing them and you're not going to find pictures taken by me of people covering their faces or like trying to put their hand behind um between them and my camera so that that makes me proud and that kind of that's my tool to reconcile myself with with my pictures and go to sleep every night that's really wonderful to hear that preserving the Dignity of the migrants that you photograph is really an important part of your work so thank you for that one of the misconceptions uh about migration uh through the Daran jungle is that most people are coming from uh South and Central America but that's not accurate the migrants that cross there come from all over the world yes can you talk about who you've encountered where have people come from there is besides Afghanistan yes there's a 195 countries in the world about 195 that's basically the count um and there is 100 nationalities crossing the daring Gap that's more than half of the countries in the world I have seen people from Bangladesh Mali Somalia China Afghanistan Iran Pakistan like when you think that more than a 100 nationalities are crossing the daring Gap that helps you understand the size of the situation when you think people from half of the countries in the world are traveling South America risking their lives in huge economic depths to try to make it to the states looking for a better future risking everything they have and looking to not go back that helps you understand the size of the of the situation and the size of the problem because this is global problem um collapsing economies uh countries without Education Health Care opportunities like basic access to food things like that um conflict right of course conflicts are one of the main reasons uh but somehow it's like you you you would expect people from a country in Conflict trying to flee the country what you wouldn't be expecting is people from a peaceful country fleeing the country because even is in peaceful times they can't find enough opportunities for them one of the things that I have found in daring Gap is Venezuelans that are not coming from Venezuela but from other parts of the countries Venezuelans who fleed Venezuela many years before and tried to set alive in Colombia Peru Bolivia Ecuador Argentina Chile Uruguay Paraguay Brazil and after years of work they were not able to afford anything like anything basic again I'm not I'm not looking for a like a I don't know an airplane no no no no basic stuff very basic stuff so I have this photo of Lis Miguel and her daughter Lis Miguel was 27 years old he came from Venezuela he was a mechanic himself he came with his wife or Lis braer his son uh was seven and Melissa his daughter was four years old uh his mother-in-law and a brother of of a wife there was six of them they set up in a small City in Colombia and the only work he found was like doing Moto taxi which is like a cab within a motorcycle paying like 50 cents ride he was not able to put enough food on his table he was not able to pay for the school of her sons um he was not able to pay for anything there was there were the six of them living in one room so it's like that's that's not the basic and I think for many people going against migration that's what's hard to understand because they think these migrants have a decent life in the places where they come from and they don't and they had decent lives and they decide to migrate because they are dreaming about a private plane but no that's that like that's that's a common mistake so Luis Miguel risked his life uh he traveled the jungle with his family on the second day of his journey he was so exhausted so exhausted he was he had he had to sit down he was not able to to to speak uh he continu his journey he crossed the jungle he exit the jungle they were living in a in a church in Guatemala collecting coins and selling candies on the rad lights after months of traveling the jungle he made it to the states he works to shifts his wife also has two shifts of work the kids attend school uh Melissa uh graduated from kinder School Lis brainer is attending Al of school and he's going to baseball classes public free lessons of baseball and Melise is attending dances they had an old used car but it's the first car of their life uh it's very particular because in Europe people most of people don't own a car because they don't want to and because they don't need to they can like just use a bicycle or walk or use public transportation in the states having a car car is like a basic need because things are much more forward and L Miguel sent me this video of his kids when he bring the car to his house and it was just like if I I I I can't describe the happiness of these kids because this was something way beyond their dreams they never dream about having a car and this is not even new one this is a used old car but this case were like mind blowed you know it's like I I don't know if someone comes to me and tell me okay pack your stuff we're going to Mars something like that you know it's like so big that it's not even on their dreams and I saw that video of course with tears on my eyes and I was like this is middle class basic stuff this is not winning the lottery this is not something like that mhm you spoke about um the challenges or the just the danger of the Daran jungle how difficult this actually this route actually is how impossible it is I understand there's sort of official and unofficial routes across the jungle and you've been on both can you share some of your personal experiences so basically there's a part of the journey where migrants pay to groups that control the area and that makes that part of the journey safer for them and there are other Paths of the journey where no body is controlling the area and the migrants are quite often victims of uh thefts and sexual assaults because nobody controls the area and like then nobody's guaranteeing their security I can't possibly imagine having to do this so it's not just the physical threat and challenges that people go through it's also the psychological right the mental to this must um have on adults and especially children which is what you talked about earlier is there anything that you think our listeners and viewers should know or be aware of in particular when it comes to understanding what these these people are going through so the mental health toll on a migrant that cross the daring up has to be huge that has to create a deep impact that maybe I'm not a mental health professional I of course I got attention on mental health because of my work but I think that would be one of my top priorities to suggest in case somebody ask about what to do uh about migrants it's like I think they need mental health because this is physically very challenging of course but I think it's way easier to recover from the wounds on the on the body than recover on the mental health situation and this is affecting everybody like starting from the kids and of course the grown ones but for a kid it's like I can't imagine what happens to kid M walking next to dead body on the route and asking their parents Mommy Papa what what's what what happened to this guy like he just died and and also the uncertainty of where are you going to sleep what are you going to eat when are you going to uh reach what you're looking for and I think think that's a mental health wound that's going to last forever that's that's very challenging also because uh what I have learned is that Mental Health Care is not just like in one visit to a mental health professional but sustained treatment through the years I learned that because I do that myself I was going to ask you how do you take care of uh your mental health because I'm sure this must affect you even as an as an observer just like that I can't like one thing I learned a few years ago is like if you if you have a broken bone you don't go to your house and try to care to yourself if you have a broken bone you go to the doctor the doctor takes an x-ray and decide if you need like um a cast if you need a cast or if you need surgery so the doctor is the one deciding and you you're not the one deciding what to do with your broken bone if you have a mental health situation it's the same is not you the one deciding to go to your house and trying and forcing yourself to smile like you go to mental health professional and you give yourself give yourself up and the mental health professional is the one telling you what's the professional procedure to do with you like you you when I when I went to the to the psychiatrist for the first time I enter her her her room and I and I told her I'm here because I think I need to be here but I don't want medication and she was the one explaining to me she told like I'm going to take care of this I need to look at it and then I'm going to ask it and I'm going to tell you what you need but this is not you telling me what you need if you need medication I'm going to tell you you need medication if you need treatment or conversation that's what I'm going to give you and if you need medication I'm going to give you medication and you better take it and and I was like um wow yeah you're right and then I start taking like uh I start taking me like a like a periodic treatment I and I think it's very important like that that would be like my my number one advice for a journalist for a photographer um and also for a humanitarian worker is you're going to see something like this go trade yourself before not after before because it it works like that like if you can be prepare to see what you're going to see that's going to be better it's not a muscle but it works like a muscle MH you know like you train so when you're in the field you you can you can take it without pain and then you exit and then you go again because you need to digest all that you have seen in a different way said that that said I I will have to insist on the mental health of the migrant population in a different level because it would be very unfair and it would be nonsense to try to compare my mental health situation with a migrant mental health situation because even when I have a really hard time seeing what I have seen in the daring Gap there's a huge difference I'm working there I know I have my safe space I know I have my work I know I have my my house and my bed far from there and I could ex I I can exit the jungle anytime jump in a plane and go back and stay in my safe place they don't they just don't they are there risking everything with nothing back and nothing in front but hope nothing else they have no guarantees they had no network of safety they have nobody to call in an emergency had nothing but also they can't access mental health once they exit the jungle because they don't want to stay in Panama for one or two years just having mental health attention they they want to keep going they want to move forward because they want to reach the United States and find a job a house food a school for the kids some basic stability and maybe then they can have mental health access this actually brings me to um mention that the eye of network of national societies and their local staff and Volunteers Of course play an important role on this route um through the Darian jungle jungle to make sure that the migrants are really not alone on this journey they're not there throughout but they are there at certain points we call them humanitarian service points and this is where our teams provide not mental health but psychosocial Support Services as well as you mentioned earlier you know phones people lose their phones if they have them they can charge them here if they don't they can make a phone call using the phones there they are provided with food first aid water um cash voucher so they can buy some necessity um have you seen firsthand some of the work of the Red Cross uh on your when you were there yes at the exit of the Jungle uh there's a migrant Reception Center in Panama it's called lasas Blancas are like governmental institutions there and there's a big white container of the Red Cross and uh most of migrants go straight there because they that that looks like a safe place for them and they go there for wide variety of things sometimes uh they just want to talk to somebody and I think that's like the first humanitarian Act is just to listen and I have seen many people with this sometimes white sometimes red bests like just talking to people talking to people that like that that's kind of for me that was very interesting just people who want to be here so they just walk there of course some of the times is it's much worse and these humanitarian um actors are giving humanitarian AIDS you know some people who have wounds some people who have like I don't know blister sunburn um stomach pain headache some people who want to call their families who people who needs to charge the phone some people who lost everything and sometimes even lost the family members on the route and they they don't know if they are alive or dead or where they are so Red Cross is always like the safe point of access of course if you come from a country in war it's very complex to trust somebody dress in military fatigues so it's like and when they see Aid workers like the Red Cross that's immediately even for other languages and other cultures that's immediately the safe contact point so they go there and what I have seen is people from the Red Cross with um kind face kind souls and a lot of patient to listen and attend thousands of people every day thousands Beyond migration you've covered other issues in Latin America from armed conflicts to environmental crisis why not be a wedding photographer what drives you to keep telling these challenging difficult old heartbreaking stories I think I see myself as a bridge uh and I see my pictures as as a bridge covering a gap of communication most of the time I think people understand the things I see but quite often I see myself in a position when I'm explaining things to people that are so basic for me like trying to explain people what's ding up makes me realize that most of people don't understand what's staring up if you Google what's the longest uh paved Road in the world sometimes Google says is the road the Pan-American Road growing from Alaska to the south of Argentina and that's a lie because that's the daring Gap and there's no Road and when I realize people don't understand that it's like wow when we published the first piece of our daring Gap there were some people commenting on the piece and it's like why are they walk in the jungle why they don't just take a bus like yeah because you can't there's no Road there are no buses there are no cars there's the only way to reach the other side of the of the daring Gap is crossing the jungle there's no other way so when I realized there was a lot of people who doesn't understand that I start thinking okay this is this is important for me and also that's like my personal way to think I'm contributing to society some somehow because I'm helping Society to understand part of the situation that are happening like it's it's easy to think about human groups about like uh just like a mass nonf a mass of people and then you can just like Point your finger and try to decide what to do with them when you talk about migrants at large and you said the number like 540,000 migrants cross the daring grab from Latin America to Central America try to reach the states in 2023 like that's a group of people but but when you go from 540,000 migrants to Luis Miguel 28 years and Melissa 4 years old traveling the jungle and Lis Miguel exhausted on the second day of traveling the jungle then you start thinking a different way and I think that's my way to contribute to society and I think that's part of my compromise with society and some some people have have um some people could think that just showing them is is meaningless because I don't provide any help from this for these migrants but my way to reconcile myself is to think that I'm not providing care for these migrants but I'm trying to raise the conversation to a different level where decision makers can see the situation and try try to do something about it and that's my way to contribute instead like carrying a big backpack with food and being delivering food in daring Gap so I I feel myself pretty committed to keep telling stories of the world that many of us don't see that often and I I think somehow I go to places and I photograph situations that people don't see under daily life because they don't and also I I think they don't need to I don't want to drag all the humanity to the daring gap for them to see with her own eyes I try to build a trusted audience and a trusted body of work so people can see my photographs and understand that I'm photographing truth I'm trying to bring the truth from these infernos to their realities speaking of your photographs we've come back to that I'd like to um mentioned that we we're recording this interview um just before the launch event uh of the Darian photo exhibit here at the IFC headquarters in Geneva which includes several of your photographs so you will also be joining during that event the panel discussion speaking about what you've learned what we just heard now um during bring your missions to the DAR end so I'll first take this opportunity to invite our listeners and viewers that are in Geneva to join us um over the next couple of months and view the exhibit which we will hopefully become a traveling exhibit and the second thing I'd like to uh bring up is we usually ask our guests to bring an item with them uh that has a personal meaning and of course it makes a lot of sense that you would bring something related to your work uh can you tell us about what it is and show us so this is the mockup of my new upcoming book it's called Darin um it's a book of migrants it's a book about migrants and about migration the the heart the core of the book is about migration and the daring Gap but the book covers way more than that um it starts on the migration of Venezuelans to Colombia and Brazil as our conversation started and it ends uh in the current lives of migrants living in the United States of course the book tried to approach the the wi variety of uh situations by migration which means also like some of them died on the trail some of them go that just go missing on the trail um but this collects most of my work of 11 years covering migration we're very excited to see the exhibit today uh as well as this book once it comes out when does it come out at the end of this month oh okay so this is a real preview yes that's just a moap okay it's some pre-sale and yeah it's a I see here at the end what you mentioned these are some of the pictures I don't know if we can show um of the migrants before during their trip in the Daren and now when they're settled um and safe so thank you for that uh federo and um another question that I have for you I that we and that we usually ask uh our guests um who most of the time come from within the IFC Network um the name of this podcast is people in the red vest and I always ask our guests what does the red vest mean to you it's a symbolic color most of our staff and volunteers wear red vests but they can also be as you mentioned white or blue um or other colors even they all of course share the emblems of the Red Cross red crescent um so as an outsider what does the red vest symbolize to you so it's not just for me but for me and and for what I have seen of migrants once I I see red best I see two things I see safety and hope um because after traveling ding jungle if you exit in the O in the other the side and you see the bread bestest you know you you made it you know you're safe and and you know you have hope if you have like if you had no food you know that does something maybe um cookie maybe like slice of bread maybe drink of fresh water like fresh and and water you can r on and also that you you're going to have like basic health care and basic information but that means a lot not only for me like for me and for migrants and for me it's the same like I'm I'm when I'm when I'm crossing the jungle I'm photographing people who's very anguished and I can't provide care myself to the people I'm photographing because I'm photographing them so when I see when when I'm looking at their faces and they see the red bests and they they they see the red us is like taking taking a load load out of their bags because they know this safety and Hope on on these people on that positive note thank you federo for sharing your experiences with us today and um getting allowing us to get to know you and your work a little bit thank you Sasha for inviting me and and thank you to the if [Music]