In August 2019, journalists Nadja Drost and Bruno Federico joined Caribbean, African and Asian migrants in their perilous trek through a 60 milewide swath of jungle straddling the ColombianPanamanian border. Their reporting offered a rare insight into who migrates to the U.S. through this unusual and long migratory corridor via South America, as well as how and why they do.

The Pulitzer Center supported the report, which was released in 3 parts for PBS NewsHour. Part 1—“What Migrants Face As They Journey Through the Deadly Darien Gap”— was streamed during the webinar.

In this webinar, we invited the two journalists for a conversation about their report. The event was moderated by Piotr Plewa, Visiting Research Scholar at the Duke Center for International and Global Studies (DUCIGS). Introduction provided by Miguel RojasSotelo, Adjunct Professor in International and Global Studies at Duke University.

Nadja Drost is a Canadian journalist based in New York City after a decade based in Bogotá, Colombia. She works in print, radio, and television, and regularly reports from Latin America as a Special Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour.

Bruno Federico is an Italian filmmaker and cinematographer based in NYC, following a decade in Colombia, where he started making independent documentaries in 2010. He regularly shoots for the PBS NewsHour and Foreign Correspondent, the international documentary strand of the ABC (Australia). His coverage of Colombia’s peace process was recognized with a 2017 Overseas Press Club Award (with Nadja Drost). He has been making his own documentaries since 2010.

The event was produced by the Duke Center for International and Global Studies (DUCIGS), and cosponsored by Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), Duke Center for International Development (DCID), and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke (CDS).