By Carmen Segovia Fernandez
The Pan-American Highway is meant to connect the Americas on one single road stretching from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The highway is however broken off right before the Darien Region located between Colombia and Panama, since developing any kind of infrastructure in this 60-mile stretch of dense tropical jungle is, if not impossible, incredibly complicated. It is thus evident that the Darien Region is a hostile and inhabitable place where only the jungle thrives, yet in 2023, the Panamanian government recorded 500,000 migrant crossings from Colombia to Panama.
Darien Region Overview
Better known as the Darien Gap, this region is home to the highest mountains in Panama, hundreds of rivers, kilometres upon kilometres of dense tropical forest and a basically ungoverned space. Both the Colombian and Panamanian governments assumed that the natural rule of the jungle would be the only law that prevailed, as, other than a scattering of indigenous communities, the region remains unpopulated
So, how did the Darian Gap, namely one of the most uninhabitable and dangerous places on earth, become the main path to migration from South America to North America in the last few years? The answer is simple: crossing the Gap is the only option for the vast majority of migrants. On one hand, South America in the last decade has gone through important periods of political, economic and social turmoil, a cocktail of factors that has forced people from countries like Venezuela, Haiti and Ecuador to leave their homes and trek north to survive. On the other hand, safe migration routes and procedures have become scarce in the Americas, with the US historically having exclusionary migration policies and lobbying less powerful neighbouring countries into doing the same. For example, in January 2022, Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize all implemented new visa restrictions on Venezuelans. However, the only thing these exclusionary migration policies have achieved is to reroute migration. In short, northern and central American countries’ reducing legal access to people from southern American countries has done little to reduce migration numbers, and it has resulted in the Darién Gap being the only possible crossing for South Americans looking to migrate upwards towards the US.
Stories from the Gap
As mentioned previously, the Gap is characterised as a lawless, essentially uninhabited stretch of jungle, but as alternative migration routes become increasingly rare, armed groups from both Colombia and Panamá discovered a new source of income: controlling Migration through the Darién Gap. On the Colombian side, the armed organisation profiting from the misery of innumerable migrants is El Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s most powerful armed group. For this organisation, the business plan is quite simple: control which routes migrants can take, and charge each person per route depending on the difficulty, with prices ranging from $100 to $300 and routes lasting from 7 to 15 days. These armed groups also control who can accompany migrants in their trek, and charge a tax to anyone else who wishes to make a profit from migrants crossing. Overall, the Colombian government estimates that in 2023, after half a million crossings, the El Clan del Golfo made $57 million.
Another important part of the Clan’s business plan is advertising the crossing through social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. This has become a growing problem because in these advertisements, armed groups downplay the financial, physical and psychological burden the journey actually entails, thus encouraging possible migrants to take this incredibly unsafe route.
Despite this informal ruling over the Gap’s migration routes, danger is always looming since ultimately armed organisations do not ensure anyone’s safety; their goal is to profit off of migrants’ misery. For one, the natural environment is already an immediate threat to all migrants. In the Gap, humidity is overbearing, temperatures going beyond 35 degrees, there is constant rainfall, a wide array of extremely predatory animals and innumerable rivers where many migrants die by drowning or are forced to stop their journey midway. As a Haitian woman mentioned, the journey was “really quite hard, especially when the rain came. It was just mud, rivers and going up mountainsides non-stop … There were pregnant women, (we) had to walk in rivers … children were fainting, and even men, at times, who couldn’t continue.”
Aside from the environment, human-produced threats are also abundant. Sexual abuse and rape are of the most prominent dangers in the Gap. In 2021, even before migration through this route hit its peak, Médecins sans Frontières assisted 950 migrants, the majority of whom were women and most of whom had reported being sexually assaulted during the crossing. In 2023, the situation was still the same. Once again, Médecins sans Frontières counted 676 victims of sexual assault. Robbery and violent assaults are other dangers that the majority of people crossing are exposed to. Attacks often take place in the Panamanian side of the Gap. While migrants trek through the jungle, groups of 8 to 10 armed men threaten migrant groups at gunpoint, making them give away all the valuables they possess. Even those who say they have nothing are routinely subject to this procedure. Overall, all the obstacles outlined before evidence that crossing the Darien Gap puts already vulnerable individuals in an even more challenging battle for survival.
Moving forward
Migration through the Darien Gap has decreased since President Trump took office this year, namely due to an extremely harsh stance on immigration but also as a result of Panama’s efforts to close down transit centres for migrants. In fact, the US Department of Homeland Security has reported a 99% drop in crossing in the Darien Gap since 2024, although the exact number remains unclear due to lacking information and nonpartisan research. Nevertheless, the core causes for migration from South America prevail as most of Latin America continues to be socially, economically and politically unstable, which means that even in small numbers, Latin Americans will inevitably continue to leave their homes and move upwards in search of a better life. In this light, what is needed are more comprehensive migration policies from North and Central American countries. The Darien Gap has only evidenced that closing a door only opens a window, as migrants will always find a route around exclusionary laws. Consequently, Latin American countries should work together and build safe and legal migration routes, as Latin Americans will not stop migrating north. Survival should be a basic right that is guaranteed, not granted.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.
Image credits: Leica camera blog — Shows a migrant with his child crossing the Darien Gap.