darien map, from panama side |
darien overview... less detail |
7/29/2003decisions, decisions...
with the border of south america approaching at rapid
speed, I have a decision to make about where to ship my car from panama.
As most are unaware, one cannot drive from north america to south america.
there is this pesky little thing called the darien gap in the way.
its a 54 to 125 mile roadless area (depending on who you ask, or whether
you have a schizophrenic crow) that lies on the panama-colombia border.
reports conflict on exactly why the road has not been
completed. since 1923, at the conference of the American States,
there has been a plan to finish this last remaining section, finally
linking the full 16,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina. but
apparently at the same time there was considerable concern that hoof and
mouth disease, widespread at the time in colombia and south america, might
spread northward. over time, the disease has come under control.
more recently however, other environmental concerns have
become quite outspoken, and now the primary objection (which thank god
seems to have been effective in blocking the effort so far) is that there
is a significant original wilderness left which is in danger if there is a
road built. in addition, the local indigenous tribes have become
more organized and politically savvy, and have been quite successful in
helping to thwart exploitation of their lands.
so at any rate, i must decide on where to ship jesse
since shipping is the only way to get her there. the possibilities
include colombia and venezuela on the carribean side and ecuador and
perhaps peru on the pacific side.
... and that brings us
to the issue of colombia. colombia is of course directly on the
other side of the darien, and so there is a certain satisfaction of
continuity in restarting the journey there. but colombia is also quite truthfully a rather dangerous place
in the world. some say the most dangerous... (though i can't help
but think there must be others where out and out murder is the norm
instead of simple kidnapping) in fact, everytime i brought up the idea of travel to
colombia back home, the chorus of voices was unanimous...
"don't go!" "what, are you crazy?"
but then so much of Americans' information and reactions
tend to be based on the media and hearsay. i mean, after all, people
still think iraq had "weapons of mass destruction." whatever the
hell those are.
so, then, what exactly are the facts?
[family and friends... this is pure research at the
moment! also, to anyone... i truly am interested in facts, whether
they support going to colombia or not. i know it is more dangerous,
but i believe that 1) it is possible to understand those dangers, and 2)
those dangers are not prevalent everywhere to the same degree. my
theory is that it should be possible to travel the primary road from
cartagena to ecuador during daylight hours using appropriate precautions
with a minimum exposure to risk. so raw numbers, maps, anecdotes are
all useful and welcome]
A simple look at the numbers:
Kidnapping for ransom occurs more often in Colombia
than in any other country in the world, and affects all parts of the
country, especially rural areas. In the last three years, 26 American
citizens, mostly dual nationals, were reported kidnapped. Of these, their
captors released most after a ransom was paid. Colombian authorities
rescued one.
(from the state department
website)
in fact, 2/3 of all the kidnappings in the world happen
in colombia (this is far and away the most prevalent violent crime that
happen to foreigners there). since the overall number of people
kidnapped in colombia every year is approximately 3000, obviously most of
the violence is happening between the rebel groups and each other, or with
other locals that serve some strategic interest with respect to the
abductors.
extrapolating from the state department numbers: in the approximately one
month that i would spend in colombia, 1 american may be kidnapped....
chances are that american will be a dual-national. ( i.e. a colombian
national that also happens to hold an american passport.)
in 2000, there were approximately 500,000 travelers to
colombia according to the
WTO. in general it seems that north americans account for
approximately 40% of
the travelers to colombia. therefore, assuming that tourism to
colombia has continued to drop as it has gradually over the last 10 years, one might assume that there are
approximately 400,000 travelers these days, of which 160,000 are likely
north american. if you figure that the majority of those are
american... perhaps 80%, that works out to about 125,000 americans, or
10,000 per month. so by extrapolation, my raw odds are perhaps .5 in
10,000 (.5 because less than one american a month is kidnapped, and
generally it is a dual-national). if you multiply that by a factor
of 10 (an arbitrary number) since i would be traveling overland and not just staying in the major
cities, one might figure my odds at about 1 in 2000.
in addition, over 95% of all americans kidnapped in
colombia are returned safely. so just getting kidnapped in itself is
not a death warrant... perhaps just a lengthy and expensive (and
frightening) experience.
most people have no idea that mexico has the second
highest kidnapping rate in the world. and even if they were told so,
would probably still have little problem traveling to one of the tourist
destinations there, even though the kidnappings which take place in mexico
are overwhelmingly done for the profit in it, whereas the kidnappings in
colombia are overwhelmingly done for political reasons. (tourists
are more likely profit targets as opposed to political targets).
in the bay area, where i live, there were approximately
250 homicides last year (2002) (less than 5 americans have been
murdered in colombia in the last 3 years). the bay area has
approximately 9 million residents in contrast to colombia's nearly
42 million. and yet i live there and travel freely in all parts
of the bay area, including the tough parts of san francisco, oakland and
san jose.
california's 2002 murder rate of 1,842 for 34 million people works out
to .005%. in contrast, the kidnapping rate of americans in
colombia on a per-traveler basis (26 / 375,000 * 100) is only.007%.
i have nearly the same likelihood of getting murdered in my home state as
i do getting kidnapped in colombia! jesus... maybe i should move
there instead!
to be fair, most of the murders in california are
targeted at demographics of which i am not a part (though i do regularly
travel to bad areas), whereas obviously a higher percentage of kidnappings of americans in colombia are targeted at my demographic (though certainly the
fact that most kidnappings are of dual-nationals mitigates it somewhat).
of course, once again, YES i realize colombia is dangerous. taking
raw numbers, colombia's murder rate is around 10 times the u.s. rate
(which has the highest rate of any developed nation) of 7 per 100,000.
i think what is really important is to get much more
specific and up to the minute information on the state of the specific
roads that i want to travel on in terms of how secure they are. plus
more... etc.....
excerpts from speeches
and the like... interesting stuff here.
8/1/2003
received an email
response off the lonelyplanet thorn tree site
Information sources:
Colombian Embassies (from embassyworld.com):
- Consulate of Colombia in San Jose, Costa Rica -
Dent de Taco Bell San Pedro, 150 mt. oeste, casa mano derecha, color
manadarina con rejas negras, Telephone: 506 - 2836871 / 2836861 Fax:
506 - 2836818 Email:
consulado.san.jose@sprintcol.sprint.com
- Embassy of Colombia in Panama City, Panama - World
Trade Center Building, office 1802, street 53 urbanizacion Marbella
Telephone: (507) 264-9266/214-9704/264-6513 Fax: 223-1134/2234159
Email: emcolpan@sinfo.net
- In the US...
http://www.colombiaemb.org/
Colombian government anti-kidnapping site:
http://www.antisecuestro.gov.co lots of bad links, only in
spanish... couple good maps of farc and eln controlled areas
US
State Department's Colombia Page Good information here.
Guerilla and paramilitary groups
Other colombia sites:
Darien Gap info:
Travelers info:
Maps:
as of 8/1/2003 this page is still in progress....
lots more to come. |
