The Darién Gap, which connects Colombia to Panama, is a jungle with ruthless terrain. But despite its daunting obstacles — including robberies and life-threatening routes — at least 46,000 migrants have made the journey this year alone in an attempt to make it to the US.
With borders closed and entire countries on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, some 2,000 migrants — many of them children under age 5 — have been detained for months in Panama, near the rainforest separating South and Central America.
The Darién Gap is a small stretch of rugged, swampy terrain between Panama and Colombia. It’s the only point in the 48,000 mile long Pan-American highway where the highway literally stops — because it can’t go forward.
The Pan American highway doesn’t go all the way from South America to Canada without interruption. The road breaks in the dense forest between Panama and Columbia known as the Darien Gap. correspondent Jennie Erin Smith visited this beautifully inaccessible region and brought back tales of tamarins and paramilitaries.
The Darien Gap is the thin peninsula of land that connects Central and South America . The Darien Gap remains a natural land barrier of diverse Amazonian forest despite the clearcutting and road building of vast portions of the region. The Pan American Highway extends between Alaska and Argentina except at the Gap, and now […]