Seventy Miles within the Darién Hole
As a Colombian American, I used to be deeply moved by “Seventy Miles within the Darién Hole.” Thanks, Caitlin Dickerson, on your braveness. I had the deep fortune of migrating to the USA legally with my dad and mom within the Nineties, so I didn’t expertise the Darién Hole personally. Just lately, I’ve been serving to a Colombian refugee who traveled via the Darién Hole. He started to inform me of his experiences there, and I used to be astounded by his story. He’s understandably nonetheless processing what he witnessed, and I’m letting him go at his personal tempo. Dickerson’s reporting supplied a outstanding window onto a harrowing journey undertaken by probably the most determined of individuals. Thanks for investing in such strong journalistic work. Now I’m going to go hug my canine and spouse.
Carlos Enrique Gomez
Union Metropolis, Calif.
As a citizen of the USA and an avid shopper of its information, I’m saddened that almost all mainstream-media protection of our immigration woes focuses on controlling our borders and never the underlying causes individuals danger, and even lose, their lives of their makes an attempt to immigrate right here.
For many who solely take heed to sound bites, the phrase immigrant conjures scary notions—outsiders on a quest to thwart our border safety and take a few of what we contemplate to be ours. In Donald Trump’s view, they’re murderers, criminals, and rapists.
Caitlin Dickerson’s article reveals that these are principally simply regular individuals pressured to flee their international locations attributable to situations past their management. I can’t think about how dire circumstances must be for me to go away my dwelling! It’s telling and unhappy to see that U.S. coverage to discourage immigration has had the impact of accelerating loss of life charges amongst those that are already so helpless. To not point out driving new earnings for drug cartels.
I hope we will have extra protection centered on the foundation causes of immigration. In spite of everything, U.S. coverage created most of the issues that plague international locations in Latin America.
Peter Brown
Lyman, Maine
I educate high-school English in Columbus, Ohio. Final 12 months, one in all my college students wrote an essay about his expertise touring via the Darién Hole. It was the primary time I had ever heard of it. This pupil was hardworking and sort, and I used to be amazed by his story. When he wrote it, he had been in the USA for simply over a 12 months. It’s 288 phrases, with minimal punctuation and no paragraph breaks.
He left his dwelling nation in South America together with his mother and sisters. After passing via the Darién Hole, they frolicked in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, earlier than finally ending up in Ohio.
He concluded his essay with this: “It impacts me in what? I acquired a whole lot of melancholy and stress and I received’t do one thing like that once more.” I really feel fortunate to have taught this pupil, and I respect that The Atlantic coated this subject.
Chase Montana
Columbus, Ohio
‘Lord, Assist Us Make America Nice Once more’
Within the September 2024 challenge, McKay Coppins thought of probably the most revealing second of a Donald Trump rally.
McKay Coppins’s shut studying of Trump-rally prayers was unsettling, even scary. I used to be involved much less by the apocalyptic concern and unusual theology that the prayers mobilized, and extra by the unnerving similarity I noticed to the rhetoric marshaled in opposition to Trump and Republicans by their adversaries.
I confess to seeing in Trump’s opponents—and I rely myself amongst them—the identical tendency towards exaggeration (Trump is a contemporary Hitler, Trump is an existential menace to democracy). Conservatives have been fast to argue that many progressives behave with a quasi-religious zeal: Widespread slogans echo liturgy; cancel tradition exists as a penalty for heresy.
I’d prefer to assume that there are variations between Trump and his critics that I’m not discerning. May The Atlantic do an analogous form of evaluation of the weirder expressions by Democrats and progressives?
Gary Gaffield
Fort Myers, Fla.
My Mom the Revolutionary
For the September 2024 challenge, Xochitl Gonzalez thought of what occurs when fomenting socialist revolution conflicts with elevating a household.
As a mom of younger kids and a dedicated socialist organizer, I discovered that Xochitl Gonzalez’s latest article offered an unrealistic and at instances weird portrait of the lives of individuals like me. The majority of the article is a slippery mixture of reminiscence, feeling, and truth—comprehensible if its goal was to discover the bitter technique of reconciliation between an absent mother or father and her youngster, however unsatisfying if it goals to supply an correct political evaluation.
What moved me to remark was the unusual alternative, 6,000 phrases into an almost-7,000-word essay, to pivot to a dialogue of the presidential marketing campaign of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, who’re operating on the ticket of the Celebration for Socialism and Liberation. Though the creator carried out an interview with the candidates, the one remnant of that interplay was a bodily description of them (They’re—“not that it issues—lovely”) and a hasty discount of their political platform (Burn all of it down. Begin from scratch). What a disgrace to silence these girls and conflate their candidacy with the aberrant private experiences of the creator.
Polls present that increasingly younger adults like me have constructive attitudes towards socialism. We see the failures of capitalism throughout us, and we’re eagerly dedicating ourselves to constructing a socialist future. Though the article depicts socialist activism as a form of private obliteration, a subordination of our particular person selves to the menacing whims of “the get together,” the fact, in my expertise, couldn’t be farther from the reality.
I proudly assist Claudia and Karina, not simply because their politics supply the one viable path out of poverty, imperialist wars, and ecological disaster, but in addition as a result of they’re working moms like me. After they discuss inflation on the grocery retailer, it’s from expertise. After they communicate in regards to the astronomical price of kid care, it’s from expertise. After they discuss preventing for a world that really nurtures our youngsters, it’s proof that our identities as moms are an asset, not a legal responsibility, on this battle.
Moira Casados Cassidy
Denver, Colo.
Behind the Cowl
In “Washington’s Nightmare,” Tom Nichols revisits the lifetime of George Washington, whose bravery and self-command established a great that each one future presidents would, with various levels of success, try and emulate. All, that’s, save Donald Trump, a person who shares none of Washington’s qualities and reveals the form of base motives that the primary president noticed as a menace to the republic. For the quilt, we turned to Gilbert Stuart’s The Athenaeum Portrait. The unfinished nature of the work suggests the continued American experiment, but in addition the existential hazard {that a} second Trump time period poses.
— Elizabeth Hart, Artwork Director
Correction
“You Suppose You’re So Heterodox” (October) misstated the place Joe Rogan’s house is positioned. It’s west of Austin, not east of Austin.
This text seems within the November 2024 print version with the headline “The Commons.”
