This is the Friends of History Debating Society.

I'm John Batchel with my colleague Michael Yon, who's in Panama City.

And we've watched Michael's reporting for years now from Panama,

but chiefly about the Panama Gap, the Darien Gap,

Darien Province, the southernmost part of Panama,

where the Pan American Highway stops and doesn't

start again for about 60 miles in Colombia. That is the gap that is necessary to traverse through

up and down, triple canopy jungle, very dangerous paths. And when Michael started reporting on that,

there was a 10% death rate or disappearance rate in the march through it.

And we saw very, very desperate, poor people,

some of whom were pregnant, some of whom were carrying small children,

inadequately supplied, wearing flip-flops, not prepared for the flooding that they

encountered that would wash them away in a flash flood that night, not prepared for falling off,

the pace to get through the jungle, all of that, 21.

That transformed itself over these years into what appeared to be an industrial strength migration track

that was very much funded by someone outside as guides.

And we were never clear at first who was taking the money and who was armed while taking the money.

We had a couple of correspondents who marched through and were very suspicious of their guys,

but they were in a large group, and the large groups turned out to be successful.

They got through.

However, the camp at the other end, the indigenous people camp was overwhelmed, continually overwhelmed. There were never enough

facilities until and if Doctors Without Borders and other NGOs showed up to service. And then

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