17th century
66-mile stretch
A01=Belen Fernandez
Acandi
adventurers
Afghanistan
Author_Belen Fernandez
Belen Fernandez
Canal Zone
Caracas
Category=JBFH
Category=JPVH
Category=WT
Category=WTL
Chiapas
Colombia
dangers
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
eq_travel
hostile jungle
incarceration
individual stories
Johan
Medellin
Mexican-Guatemalan border
Mexico
migrant route
migration
migration history
muertos
Necocli
Panama
Panama Canal
political travelogue
politico-economic realities
refuge seekers
regional history
reportage
Scottish colonial experiment
Siglo XXI
Spaniards
Tapachula
testimonies
The Darien Gap
thrill-seekers
United States
US expeditions
Venezuela
Product details
- ISBN 9781978842083
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 12 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The narrow DariÉn Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or “the green hell,” it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.
In this book, journalist BelÉn FernÁndez visits the DariÉn Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. FernÁndez’s travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.
Engrossing and heartrending, The DariÉn Gap is a poignant and compassionate indictment of structural inequality and institutionalized inhumanity in a world where the have-nots must risk death for a chance at a better life-or any life at all.
In this book, journalist BelÉn FernÁndez visits the DariÉn Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. FernÁndez’s travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.
Engrossing and heartrending, The DariÉn Gap is a poignant and compassionate indictment of structural inequality and institutionalized inhumanity in a world where the have-nots must risk death for a chance at a better life-or any life at all.
BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ is an opinion columnist for Al Jazeera and the author of several books, including Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico's Largest Immigration Center. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin and her work has appeared in the New York Times.
