Inside the journey across the Darien Gap
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 747 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Darien Gap is a dangerous stretch of jungle on a strip of land that connects North and South America. In recent years, stricter Central American border policies have driven hundreds of thousands of people to make this treacherous trek. The number of children among them has skyrocketed. We follow one family as they navigate the crossing.
In this episode:
- John Holman (@johnholman100), Al Jazeera English Correspondent
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tamara Khandaker and Fahrinisa Campana, with Manahil Navid, Catherine Nouhan, Tabish Talal, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Alexandra Locke.
The Take production team is Amy Walters, Ashish Malhotra, Catherine Nouhan, Chloe K. Li, David Enders, Duha Mosaad, Khaled Soltan, Manahil Naveed, Marcos Bartolomé, Sarí el-Khalili, Sonia Bhagat, Tabish Talib, Tamara Khandaker, and Zaina Badr. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan.
Alexandra Locke is the Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | Today, one family's dangerous journey through the Darien Gap. |
| 0:22.6 | The jungle is not a root. It's something so ugly, not even the devil goes in there. |
| 0:29.6 | Every year, hundreds of thousands migrate through this stretch of jungle that connects North and South America. |
| 0:38.1 | Many are children. |
| 0:40.3 | What does the journey look like? |
| 0:44.4 | I'm Malika Bilal, and this is the take. |
| 0:53.7 | I'm John Holman. I'm a correspondent with Al Jazeera. Based in Mexico City. My work takes me to different parts of Latin America. |
| 1:03.7 | Welcome back to the take, John. It's good to have you. Back in January, you took a journey through a place called The Darien Gap, with a group of about 700 other people, for a film that you made for Al Jazeera's documentary program, Fault Lines. |
| 1:20.7 | And you met a woman named Swanee Flores and her family. They were traveling north from Ecuador. |
| 1:28.1 | Tell me about them. |
| 1:29.4 | What's their story and why were they headed to the U.S.? |
| 1:32.3 | So we met Swanee and her family in the last camp |
| 1:38.1 | before you go into the Darien Gat. |
| 1:40.5 | They were about to go into the jungle. |
| 1:45.8 | My goal is to arrive in Arizona, where my dad is, and to be able to be together and start |
| 1:53.4 | a new life. |
| 1:55.5 | So, Swanee's ex-boyfriend was a gang leader. |
| 1:59.8 | She's 19, and when she broke it off, he took it really badly. |
| 2:04.3 | He killed my mom, and he was going to kill me, my daughters, and my brother. |
| 2:09.8 | What we did was run for our lives. |
| 2:13.9 | And he dragged her into the woods, beat her up, told her he was going to kill her. |
... |
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