Front Burner - A dispatch from the perilous Darién Gap

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

NOTE: In yesterday’s episode, we promised to bring you a conversation with a man who’s spent the last year in Gaza, both living through and reporting on Israel’s military campaign there. We were logistically unable to bring you that today, but we will do so as soon as we possibly can.For decades, the Darién Gap, a jungle crossing straddling the Colombia and Panama border, was considered impossible to cross.Today, it’s a path that many migrants take, risking their lives, to try and make it to the United States. Eight hundred thousand people are expected to use it this year, nearly 200,000 of them are children.This is all happening at a time when immigration is among the most pressing issues for voters in the upcoming U.S election, with presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.The Atlantic’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Caitlin Dickerson recently took three trips to the Darién Gap over the course of five months.She spoke to host Jayme Poisson about her report, Seventy miles in hell, which focuses the experiences of those caught in the middle of this ongoing immigration debate.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic, and I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals in learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel. Go to humber.ca slash cpl to get started. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, everybody. So if you heard yesterday's episode, you know that we promised to bring

you a conversation with a man who spent the last year in Gaza, both living through and reporting on Israel's military campaign there. He and his family, including three young children, have been displaced multiple times throughout the year, and like most Gazans, are living in very precarious circumstances. We did manage to get him on the line yesterday, but the connection just wouldn't hold. So we lost touch and we couldn't reconnect. Trying to get any kind of communication in and out of Gaza is very difficult. We're still working on it, but had to make a quick change and do the episode that you're about to hear. But I do want to say that we are going to bring you that episode from Gaza as soon as we possibly can.

For a long time, the Darien Gap, a jungle crossing connecting Central to South America, straddling the Columbia and Panama border, was considered impossible to cross. Today, it's a path that many migrants take, risking their lives to try to make it to the United States. 800,000 people are expected to use it this year. Nearly 200,000 of them are children. This is all happening at a time when immigration is among the most pressing issues for voters. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are promising very different futures on the issue. The Atlantic's Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Caitlin Dickerson, recently took three trips to the Darien Gap over the course of five months. Her piece is called 70 Miles in Hell.

And it really re-centers the experiences of those caught in the middle of this ongoing immigration debate. Caitlin is with me today. Caitlin, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Caitlin, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So you describe the Darien Gap as a superhighway into the United States. And this is despite the fact that this was a plot of land believed to be impassable for a long time, right?

And so what can you tell me about the Darien Gap and the kinds of people you came into contact with on these reporting trips? So the Darien Gap is this stretch of land that extends north out of South America. It's the only way to leave South America and head north on foot. And for a long time, very few people did it because you're dealing with a seemingly endless list of threats. The terrain itself is really arduous. This is the Darien Gap, one of the most dangerous and remote forests in the world. It's roadless, lawless, and almost entirely uninhabited. People have died from heart attacks just from exertion, trying to climb the mountains of the Darien Gap.

People fall frequently to their deaths. It's one of the wettest places on earth. It rains daily. So the rivers that you can cross dozens of times on a given day because paths kind of crisscross with them, they're prone to flash floods. And so drowning is a very common cause of death as well. I would like to send a message to anyone who is thinking of doing this route. It's very dangerous. If I knew this, I wouldn't have done it. Illness, of course, is an issue. People run out of food, they run out of water. The list goes on. And so for that reason, very few people attempted to do this for a long time. The Darien Gap was really the domain of trafficking groups who were looking for ways to move drugs and weapons secretly and were willing to brave these areas.

And that's obviously changed. So more than half a million people crossed the Darien Gap last year attempting to migrate to the United States. And it's just an unimaginable number or was an unimaginable number until it came to fruition. When I was there, I met people from all over the world. So the greatest number of people crossing are from Venezuela, which is I'm sure your listeners know is experiencing incredible instability and unrest under the regime of Nicolas Maduro. The mass migration of Venezuelans began in 2015. Many, unable to leave by plane, crossed into Colombia through the border town of Cucuta.

The UN estimates that 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled since then. But I also met people from China, India, Vietnam, from all over Africa and the Caribbean. So as you said, it's a superhighway and a global one. And can you just elaborate for me on why this path that people looked at as impenetrable has now become so popular? Like, why is that? as impenetrable has now become so popular? Why is that? The why has to do first and foremost with the global displacement crisis that we're living through. You have one in 69 people on the planet who are living on the move right now all over the world taking various migration routes. That is, of course, the result of anything from violence in a place like Venezuela and

political oppression to climate change, other types of conflicts, cartel-related violence increasing. The list goes on. War. There are just more people trying to migrate now than ever before. And also what's happened as a result of U.S. immigration policy specifically is a lot of pressure on Latin American countries by the U.S. to crack down on modes of movement that would have been safer. So of course, anybody in the Darien Gap would have preferred to take a plane or would have preferred to at least start their journey in a country closer to the United States and not have to walk through the jungle. But the U.S. has successfully pressured lots of countries in Latin America to crack down and restrict access to visas and restrict access to safer routes. And

so you have this funneling effect where people are squished through this one narrow pathway because it's been so difficult to police and it's one of the only routes that's left. Could you tell me about some of the people that you met? Could you tell me about some of the people that you met? Yes. A family who I spent a lot of time with were Burkhan and Orly Mar and their two children, Isak and Camila. They were from Venezuela.

Isak was one of the youngest children who I spent extended time with in the Darien Gap. He was two when we met. He had his third birthday once his family got to southern Mexico. And Camila was eight years old. They were a middle-class family in Venezuela, which was really striking. Burkhan's mother had been a lawyer. Orly Marr's mother had been a doctor. They were both university students when the Venezuelan economy first started to falter. So many people I met in the Darien Gap had tried to make life work elsewhere in Latin America first. But the pandemic's devastation on global economies made it such that living in Chile, living in Ecuador

or Colombia, where others had tried to resettle, it just became untenable. That's why they were crossing the Darien Gap. You've described this incredibly perilous journey. I've seen video of you using rope to climb up rock faces. You've written that children under five make up the fastest growing group on these trips. How is it exactly that children are managing these journeys as well? They're pushing themselves to their physical limits and not everyone survives. So there was a mother of a young boy, nine years old, who was named Khan from Vietnam in my story. They were crossing a river together. They took the same exact route that I did just about a week after me. And they were caught in the middle of a flash flood,

and nine-year-old Khan swept away, and he's believed to be dead. There's another child in my story who was buried in a tomb that the Red Cross helped to create in a very remote community in Panama, where some bodies that are retrieved by the government from the Darien Gap are interred. some bodies that are retrieved by the government from the Darien Gap are interred. And there was an eight-month-old Haitian baby girl who was buried there just recently. So this is what happens. I mean, people push themselves to their physical limits to be able to make this crossing, and they don't all succeed. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. happy holidays i'm frank capodosia dean of continuous professional learning at humber polytechnic i'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025 i want you to connect with humber cpl to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's

performance and engagement. Humber works with you to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. percent of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. Fifty percent. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. There's a whole industry at work on these journeys too, right? Porters, guides, There's a whole industry at work on these journeys too, right? Porters, guides, food vendors, all controlled by the Columbia cartel, the Gulf Clan. What was your experience with the people who facilitate the journey for migrants? are sort of always working. They're always video recording because they're putting together advertisements that go on the internet to try to encourage more migration. And I think that's

really important for people to understand that the deterrent policies that the U.S. government has really relied on to try to discourage migration, they really have just created this vacuum that cartels and people working for cartels have been eager to fill. It creates this opportunity where they say, well, we've been moving drugs and we've been moving weapons across the Darien Gap for a long time. So if the government isn't going to allow you to take a plane or take a boat or take a safer route, we'll move you and pay us and we'll be happy to increase our coffers as a result of that. But it's also important to understand that a lot of the individuals who are working

in the Darien Gap specifically, who are selling water, who are carrying backpacks, they're not full-blown members of the Gulf Cartel. The Gulf Cartel operates a little differently than cartels, for example, in Mexico do. So these are mostly local people from poor communities near the Darien Gap who live in absolutely abject poverty and have really no opportunities. as offering this service that both gives them a chance to put food on the table for their families and a lot of them view it as helping migrants, helping to keep them safe because they're offering sometimes life-saving resources like food and water. So the dynamics are really complicated. I know that in addition to the threat and risk presented by the natural environment in the Darien Gap, there's also threats of violence and sexual violence particularly, right? And where are those threats coming from? And can you just tell me more about them? of the Darien Gap because this jungle extends across the border from Colombia into Panama. In the Colombian portion of the jungle, that area, as you said, is controlled by the Gulf Clan.

And so they do not allow for petty crime. They don't allow for things like robbery and sexual assault that become really, really big risks when you cross into Panama. The irony, of course, being that the Gulf Clan itself is a criminal organization, but one that really acts almost like a quasi-governmental force in this part of northern Colombia. Once you cross the border into Panama, things change really dramatically, and you're in kind of a no-man's land. So the Panamanian government has struggled to control this area. There's very minimal presence of authorities there. And so it's been a great breeding ground for people who want to exploit migrants. People know

that when individuals are migrating, they have often every dollar to their name on their person to try to get them to safety. And a lot of the attacks that have taken place on the Panamanian side of the jungle have been at the hands of indigenous Panamanians, which again, is such a complicated issue. And that these are folks who've lived in these really remote areas that, as I said, have been dominated by cartels, dangerous cartels, moving drugs, moving weapons, and lots of indigenous Panamanians have had to basically take up arms to protect themselves because they've been ignored by their government. Now in comes this vulnerable group of migrants and some indigenous Panamanians, many indigenous Panamanians have taken to a more formal type of work where they're accepting money from migrants

for offering services in a way that isn't necessarily exploitative and certainly isn't harmful. But you do have some who have simply turned to robbing them and harming them and to sexual violence, as you said. There's an impression that many people here in countries like Canada or the U.S the numbers actually show that most people prefer to stay in nations close to home. I wonder if you could expand on that for me. How typical is that kind of story? I am so glad that you asked that question. I talked about global displacement being at its highest levels in history. And it's also important for people to know that actually most people who are displaced are living in neighboring countries, countries right next door to their own. So the number of people that we're seeing in the United States is it's a minority

in that sense. And the other thing is this idea I almost have to chuckle at now that people are migrating for the American dream or for the Canadian dream. Not to say that we don't enjoy incredible privileges based on having been born in those two countries, but it's just simply not the case. People want to go home. I don't know how else to say it because it's so straightforward. People want to live in places where their language is spoken. They love their culture. People were vocally lamenting the differences with American culture. In the sense that there's this idea that you have to work seven days a week to make it and really struggle and that work is so central to American culture and expectations. Expectations around family are different. Expectations around food are different, all these things.

And so again and again, I just heard that people were crossing the Darien Gap as a last resort. One other thing I wanted to offer that did surprise me in crossing the Darien gap was how many people I met who'd resettled once or even two or three times in other countries first. So they really had tried to make it work living in a country closer to home, but found that the situation was untenable because of both anti-immigrant sentiment and the lack of opportunity. So I think that also really undercuts this idea that there's an obsession with the United States and America that's drawing migration. I think what it shows is that the United States, as much as in our enforcement policy, we seek to keep people out, our economy sends a different message, right? In that people are absorbed very quickly.

They're employed often within a weekend of arriving in the United States because of this great demand for low wage labor. So that is sending a message that says to people abroad, you know, if you couldn't make it work in Chile or Ecuador or Colombia, come to the United States, you'll have a job overnight. If you don't mind, I'm hoping I could pan out with you for a few minutes to the national conversation in the U.S. around migration today. The visions being presented by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on this issue as we head closer to Election Day. Trump is essentially marketing himself as historically punitive on immigration. I saw he posted a slogan which read,

import the third world, become the third world. Today our cities are flooded with illegal aliens. Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. We're literally an uncivilized country now. We are going to start the largest mass deportation in the history of our country because we have no choice. It's not sustainable. Obviously people will remember his family separation policy, which is a subject that you did a lot of incredible work on. The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not

be a refugee holding facility. Won't be. A new directive by the Trump administration, facility. Won't be. A new directive by the Trump administration, zero tolerance, is to prosecute all such migrants criminally, which means by law, parents and children must be separated. How would you describe the national climate on immigration in the U.S. right now? It's very polarized, right, to use a word that your listeners have heard a million times, but it is. I mean, people are really distressed about immigration. It's rising on the list of issues that people who are polled name as their largest concern. And I think it's the culmination of lots of different factors.

I mean, our immigration policy, our immigration system is broken. It has been for a long time. I've been writing about that since the Obama administration. And I think that a failure to actually address the issue factually created a vacuum that could be filled with lots of fear and hate. And I think that people look at the border, they see large numbers of people crossing, they see disorganization, and that scares them. And that's a reasonable reaction. And I think obviously what Trump does with that reaction is to try to amplify, fan the flames of fear without actually seeming to make a whole lot of progress as a politician when he has been in office toward fixing the situation. So I think that people are feeling really divorced from the individual stories of folks who are headed toward the United States. And that's why I think it's so important

to get to know them and write about them because of a vague boogeyman is always scarier than somebody who you really understand. But it does feel like the heat really is turning up on this issue leading into the election. And so I think it's putting a lot of pressure on both political parties to come up with a meaningful response. And as a journalist, of course, I hope it's one that's rooted in truth and fact and reality, which is why I try to do stories like these to help people really understand what's going on. People might understand there to be a big difference between Trump and Harris on immigration, that they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Is this the way that you view things from what you're hearing from them on the campaign trail? Yeah, I mean,

I don't think that you can say that Trump and Harris or even Trump and President Biden, who was running against him previously, are similar. Trump has talked about a historic deportation regime. He's talked about huge camps in the middle of the country where rounded up people will be made to live outside waiting for deportation using the National Guard. It's the likes of a deportation regime that we've never seen before in American history. And I think we do have to take him at his word because there were a lot of questions when he ran for president the first time in 2015 as to whether he was being literal. And we learned that he, in fact, was. But what I think you're alluding to with your question is that Harris, Vice President Harris, seems to encountering Trump be not challenging the crisis that he's really centering, but to say, yes, in fact, there is a crisis, but I'm the right one to deal with it. And I'll do so by cracking down. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship

and secure our border. I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly, and humane. We can and we must do both. You have seen the Biden administration extend certain restrictions on asylum that began under Trump. And so there is a movement to the right that's happening within the Democratic Party. You're really not hearing anything about Democrats' priorities on immigration that they touted for the last 25 years, things like legalizing DACA, giving people who've lived in the United States for a long time access to legal status. Those ideas are not present in our current political debate. And there's a shift to the right among progressives, but I don't think that you can call them the same or even similar.

You mentioned how polarized this debate is right now. There's a lot of misinformation that, you know, is floating around. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on it. You know, what do you think is missing the most from the debate right now? That's a tough one. What I'm finding is that these ideas, these tropes, and this misinformation is actually penetrating the public consciousness. Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield are, quote, draining social services and causing chaos. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating, they're eating the pets. Between bomb threats and evacuations, the city of Springfield has been on edge ever since Donald Trump amplified those false claims about Haitian migrants who live there.

According to polling, you know, more Americans are signaling that they believe things like that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the United States. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. Which is, of course, an idea that comes out of the great replacement conspiracy theory that you can draw a line directly back to some of the ugliest chapters of American history when it came to immigration policies that were based solely on race. And you can also draw a line, by the way, directly back to other fascist regimes, to Nazis and neo-Nazis. And so that's really worth noting. Whether or not Trump wins the election in November, his ideas, these ideas that he's proffering that are very scary about immigrants and the threats that

they present, they are going to be with us for a while because they are changing public opinion. Okay. Caitlin Dickerson, I really want to thank you for this. It was really a pleasure to talk to you and thank you for all your incredible reporting. Thank you so much for having me. All right, that is allbc.ca slash podcasts.