Authorities in the Guna Yala region have asked that the massive arrival of migrants into their autonomous territory be prevented because they lack the means to manage this flow, which is heading south of the continent after seeing their attempt to enter the United States frustrated.

The request from the so-called General Gunayala Congress comes after a boat carrying 21 people, 19 of them migrants from Colombia and Venezuela, sank off the coast of the region last Friday, resulting in the death of an eight-year-old Venezuelan girl.

Guna Yala is one of the six indigenous autonomous regions of Panama. Its paradisiacal Caribbean coast is a maritime corridor for the migratory flow, now booming from North to South given the tightening of the immigration policy of the government headed by Republican Donald Trump in the United States.

In a statement, the General Gunayala Congress called on the governments of Panama and the United States, as well as international organizations, “to suspend the massive arrival of migrants” to its territory, since it lacks the “conditions to receive and address this situation, which should be the full responsibility of the State with its Government.”

“We have been surprised that our territory, especially the sea route, has become a migration route for South American brothers who are returning to their countries of origin,” says the letter, which highlights that the region “lacks sufficient equipment, infrastructure and means of transportation to deal with this problem.”

Indigenous authorities say they met with the top brass of the National Border Service (Senafront) this week to coordinate the passage of migrants, but that this has not materialized.

EFE confirmed on Sunday the departure of a boat with 20 migrants, four of them minors, from the island of Gardi Sigdub, in Guna Yala, bound for Calidonia Island and then to Puerto Obaldía, a town that provides access to the Darién jungle, the dangerous border with Colombia that has served as a corridor for migratory flows in recent years.

More than two hundred illegal travelers, including children and the vast majority Venezuelans, were this weekend in a town near the Port of Cartí de Guna Yala, located about 140 kilometers from the Panamanian capital, ready to board a boat bound for the South.

The shipwreck in which the Venezuelan girl died took place on Friday in waters near the community of Mansucum, “in the context of the reverse migratory flow, immediately activating emergency protocols with units of the Caribbean Brigade,” Senafront said on Saturday.

According to official information, the boat that sank ignored a warning about “adverse” weather conditions in the area, as did two other vessels that suspended their trip to the town of La Miel, near the border with Colombia, which led to this “regrettable accident.”

The Ombudsman of Panama has requested that an investigation be carried out and that those responsible be determined for the shipwreck that occurred “in the context of the reverse migratory flow.”

The humanitarian organization also reiterated, “as it did when human mobility from south to north was recorded,” its warning about “the dangers that the maritime route entails in the face of similar events that claimed the lives of other people in similar shipwrecks” that affected vessels coming from Colombia.