According to one expert, the Biden administration's border policies are contributing to the destruction of indigenous peoples in Latin America.
Panama's indigenous Embera Wona'an people have seen their way of life decline rapidly over the past three years, and tribal leaders blame it on a surge in migrants passing through their territory on their way north from South America to the United States.
“What struck me most about listening to the five Embera chiefs was how much their concerns evoked the very similar past marginalization of indigenous tribes who were pushed aside and wiped out in the 19th century by gold miners, settlers and U.S. cavalry who put their own self-interest first,” Todd Bensman, national security fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, told Fox News Digital.
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Vice President Kamala Harris holds President Biden's hand during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
Bensman's comments came after a recent visit to the Darien Gap region, a vast, largely uninhabitable wilderness on the border between Colombia and Panama that is also the indigenous territory of the Embera, a tribe of 19,000 hunters and farmers who are now central to broader US border security policy.
Bensman interviewed all five chiefs of the Embera-Oonan reservation and detailed their plight. New York Post reportHe argued that much of the responsibility for the situation facing tribes lies with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Rather than stemming this dangerous flow, the White House has encouraged it,” Bensman wrote in the report. “The Biden-Harris Administration has lavished millions of taxpayer dollars on UN agencies and NGOs that have flocked to the region to help ease the burden of travel to the Darien Gap.”
The report outlines how mass migration to the United States, encouraged by lax US border policies, has particularly harmed the Embera, who have seen their homeland overrun with people, garbage and human waste as migrants make their way north to the United States.
But perhaps even worse is the effect this situation has had on many members of the tribe, many of whom abandoned their traditional ways of life in pursuit of the quick money that could be made by facilitating dangerous wilderness journeys.
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“Embera men are the drivers of almost all the boats that transport migrants. They are making money,” Bensman told Fox News Digital.
But the opportunity for quick money has led to rampant drug and alcohol abuse among the tribe and a wholesale abandonment of hunting, fishing and farming traditions, leaving many members of the tribe with food shortages, a problem made worse by the presence of food-hungry settlers.
“There are now fights between migrants over the currency they use to pay,” Bensman said. “The villages I saw look very different from the ones residents described a few years ago. In some of the places I saw, the changes have been dramatic. There is filth and trash everywhere.”
A Panamanian Embera competes in the javelin during the Third Generation Indigenous Games in Pueblo Nuevo Buri, Panama, on December 16, 2021. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)
Bensman argued that the current situation the tribe faces has many similarities to the plight of indigenous peoples in North America, only this time “the US and international liberal institutions” are “clearly repeating the same horrific old history with the Embera.”
“The liberal progressives who staff the UN and NGOs promoting a new type of gold rush through tribal lands may be expected to have a higher moral compass than General George Armstrong Custer or President Andrew Jackson, whose era treated Native Americans as if they didn't exist. But economic migrants flocking to America's gold fields are clearly more important to these organizations,” Bensman said.
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Tribal leaders, unable to get a seat at the table to decide their fate, wanted to send a message to international leaders, including Biden.
“Mr. President and candidates, you are trying to kill and finish off all the Indians in the Comarca!,” General Leonid Cunampia told Bensman during the interview. “We must be careful about what is happening in our territories. Immigrants are polluting us!”
On June 28, 2024, migrants arrived at the Migrant Care Reception Center in Lajas Blancas, Darien province, in the jungle region of Panama. (Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images)
Bensman argued that the US needs to devote substantial resources to air deportations to deter more migrants instead of making it easier to cross, but he sees little chance that a Harris administration would change the current administration's approach.
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“The Trump administration will inject a lot of aid into the region that Panama hopes will fill the gaps. The future cultural survival of this tribe is at stake,” Bensman said. “Either administration has an obligation to give this tribe a seat at the table going forward.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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