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What I Saw in the Darién Gap
The Darién Gap was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands of migrants are risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger, and disease to travel through the jungle to the United States.
Adults lugging babies and backpacks stood at attention as someone working under the command of Colombia’s most powerful drug cartel, the Gulf Clan, shouted instructions into a megaphone, temporarily drowning out the cacophony of the jungle’s birds and insects: Make sure everyone has enough to eat and drink, especially the children. Locals sold them food, allowed them to camp, and charged them to arrange the next leg of their journey—either on charter flights to Panama City from a tiny airstrip, or in fishing boats up the coast, to another village with a paved road that connects to a highway out of the country. In March 2023, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has a program to help families track down loved ones who have gone missing while migrating, built a mausoleum in the local cemetery with space for hundreds of bodies, and it’s quickly filling.
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