Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap
For the September 2024 issue, Caitlin Dickerson reported on the impossible path to America.
As a Colombian American, I was deeply moved by “Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap.” Thank you, Caitlin Dickerson, for your courage. I had the deep fortune of migrating to the United States legally with my parents in the 1990s, so I didn’t experience the Darién Gap personally. Recently, I’ve been helping a Colombian refugee who traveled through the Darién Gap. He began to tell me of his experiences there, and I was astounded by his story. He is understandably still processing what he witnessed, and I am letting him go at his own pace. Dickerson’s reporting offered a remarkable window onto a harrowing journey undertaken by the most desperate of people. Thank you for investing in such solid journalistic work. Now I’m going to go hug my dogs and wife.
Carlos Enrique Gomez
Union City, Calif.
As a citizen of the United States and an avid consumer of its news, I’m saddened that most mainstream-media coverage of our immigration woes focuses on controlling our borders and not the underlying reasons people risk, and even lose, their lives in their attempts to immigrate here.
For those who only listen to sound bites, the word immigrant conjures frightening notions—outsiders on a quest to thwart our border security and take some of what we consider to be ours. In Donald Trump’s view, they are murderers, criminals, and rapists.
Caitlin Dickerson’s article reveals that these are mostly just normal people forced to flee their countries due to conditions beyond their control. I can’t imagine how dire circumstances would have to be for me to leave my home! It’s telling and sad to see that U.S. policy to discourage immigration has had the effect of increasing death rates among those who are already so helpless. Not to mention driving new profits for drug cartels.
I hope we can have more coverage centered on the root causes of immigration. After all, U.S. policy created many of the problems that plague countries in Latin America.
Peter Brown
Lyman, Maine
I teach high-school English in Columbus, Ohio. Last year, one of my students wrote an essay about his experience traveling through the Darién Gap. It was the first time I had ever heard of it. This student was hardworking and kind, and I was amazed by his story. When he wrote it, he had been in the United States for just over a year. It’s 288 words, with minimal punctuation and no paragraph breaks.
He left his home country in South America with his mom and sisters. After passing through the Darién Gap, they spent time in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, before eventually ending up in Ohio.
He concluded his essay with this: “It affects me in what? I got a lot of depression and stress and I won’t do something like that again.” I feel lucky to have taught this student, and I appreciate that The Atlantic covered this topic.
Chase Montana
Columbus, Ohio
In the September 2024 issue, McKay Coppins considered the most revealing moment of a Donald Trump rally.
McKay Coppins’s close reading of Trump-rally prayers was unsettling, even frightening. I was concerned less by the apocalyptic fear and strange theology that the prayers mobilized, and more by the unnerving similarity I saw to the rhetoric marshaled against Trump and Republicans by their adversaries.
I confess to seeing in Trump’s opponents—and I count myself among them—the same tendency toward exaggeration (Trump is a modern Hitler, Trump is an existential threat to democracy). Conservatives have been quick to argue that many progressives behave with a quasi-religious zeal: Popular slogans echo liturgy; cancel culture exists as a penalty for heresy.
I’d like to think that there are differences between Trump and his critics that I’m not discerning. Could The Atlantic do a similar sort of analysis of the weirder expressions by Democrats and progressives?
Gary Gaffield
Fort Myers, Fla.
For the September 2024 issue, Xochitl Gonzalez considered what happens when fomenting socialist revolution conflicts with raising a family.
As a mother of young children and a committed socialist organizer, I found that Xochitl Gonzalez’s recent article presented an unrealistic and at times bizarre portrait of the lives of people like me. The bulk of the article is a slippery mix of memory, feeling, and fact—understandable if its purpose was to explore the bitter process of reconciliation between an absent parent and her child, but unsatisfying if it aims to provide an accurate political analysis.
What moved me to comment was the strange choice, 6,000 words into an almost-7,000-word essay, to pivot to a discussion of the presidential campaign of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, who are running on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Although the author conducted an interview with the candidates, the only remnant of that interaction was a physical description of them (They are—“not that it matters—beautiful”) and a hasty reduction of their political platform (Burn it all down. Start from scratch). What a shame to silence these women and conflate their candidacy with the aberrant personal experiences of the author.
Polls show that more and more young adults like me have positive attitudes toward socialism. We see the failures of capitalism all around us, and we are eagerly dedicating ourselves to building a socialist future. Although the article depicts socialist activism as a kind of personal obliteration, a subordination of our individual selves to the menacing whims of “the party,” the reality, in my experience, could not be further from the truth.
I proudly support Claudia and Karina, not just because their politics offer the only viable path out of poverty, imperialist wars, and ecological crisis, but also because they are working mothers like me. When they speak about inflation at the grocery store, it is from experience. When they speak about the astronomical cost of child care, it is from experience. When they speak about fighting for a world that truly nurtures our children, it is proof that our identities as mothers are an asset, not a liability, in this struggle.
Moira Casados Cassidy
Denver, Colo.
In “Washington’s Nightmare,” Tom Nichols revisits the life of George Washington, whose bravery and self-command established an ideal that all future presidents would, with varying degrees of success, attempt to emulate. All, that is, save Donald Trump, a man who shares none of Washington’s qualities and exhibits the kind of base motives that the first president saw as a threat to the republic. For the cover, we turned to Gilbert Stuart’s The Athenaeum Portrait. The unfinished nature of the work suggests the ongoing American experiment, but also the existential danger that a second Trump term poses.
— Elizabeth Hart, Art Director
Correction“You Think You’re So Heterodox” (October) misstated where Joe Rogan’s home is located. It is west of Austin, not east of Austin.
This article appears in the November 2024 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”
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