The Darién Gap: A Reporter's Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas

by Belén Fernández

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.

Genres: Nonfiction

206 pages, Hardcover

Published August 12, 2025

Reviews

[Kelly Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Darién Gap: A Reporter's Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas is a harrowing, deeply human work of reportage that brings clarity and moral urgency to one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world.

Belén Fernández combines on-the-ground reporting with historical and political analysis to illuminate the Darién Gap not merely as a hostile landscape, but as the product of structural inequality and policy decisions with devastating human consequences. Her encounters with refuge seekers, smugglers, law enforcement, and local communities give the book its emotional gravity, grounding statistics in lived experience.

What makes this book especially powerful is its refusal to sensationalize suffering. Fernández writes with restraint and compassion, allowing stories to speak for themselves while situating them within a broader geopolitical context. The blending of travelogue, memoir, and investigative journalism creates a narrative that is both immersive and intellectually rigorous.

The Darién Gap is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand contemporary migration, U.S. foreign policy’s ripple effects, and the human cost of borders. It is unsettling, necessary, and difficult to forget.

[Keith L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been waiting for this. I was expecting a book that was going to cover a journey with migrants through the entire gap but this is not what was offered. The author paticpated in a journey to the Panamanian border, and, I absolutley understand why she did not wish to put her life in the hands of random savage human elements beyond that point. The book covers a lot of ground on explaining how US foreign policy has shaped the circumstances which force mass migration through the Darien.

I gave four stars because I enjoyed the book and found myself getting emotionally invested in the stories of her friends and others she met along the way. I also found the geopolitical discourse to be very informative.

I am waiting for personal accounts written by those who crossed the Darien. Given the amount of people who have crossed it in recent times I don't think that I will have to wait too long.