[rootsudo]

I find it pretty funny that someone posted about the Pan American highway yesterday, and then the Darien gap today. It’s interesting how ignorant most HN’ers are just south of the USA.

The user PanamaNewb covered most of it correctly. It’s still a dangerous area. There are famous bloggers that have gone missing and literally only their bones have come back. The famous one thus far is: http://travelswithmitzi.blogspot.com/2018/10/killed-in-darie... Jan Philip

Most people mistake the issue there as a technical or engineering one. It isn’t. It’s political and human centric. The indigenous people don’t have a true connection or believe in the government of Panama or Colombia. Go back over a century and the whole land was just Colombia, but Roosevelt (yes, that US president!) wanted the a Canal thru Panama and thus Panama became a country.

Decades later it came up again for road construction but it was already heavily used for smuggling and other curious business. During the 60s through 90s it came up a lot for the cocaine trade. When that was gone, the power vacuum created a few gorilla militants that aligned themselves with the indigenous- most notably the FARC.

That doesn’t really exist anymore, but the people that belonged to several faction still do and many still have revenue from passage or related business.

Most people that need to legitimately get through just take a ferry to Turbo and vice Versa. The migrants walking through is a new phenomena in the volume that try to go through. If you can read Spanish and can find the telegram/signal groups you can even get day by day news of what happens and which days the migrants are told to wait and not try. It correlates to some curious activity or so I understand.

Most people outside of South America lack the understand the above history and the dynamics in general of this graft. But before you point fingers - everyone most likely is somewhat related from Panama to Panama military, Colombia and Colombian military. The anti government groups and the idginious people.

Tl;dr no one wants change except government of Colombia and people on the internet that have no idea of what happens there. Colombia government wants to build roads and tunnels for trade and then eventually enforce laws. But the later always has bad outcomes in Colombia.

[crazygringo]

This is a great, informative comment.

You're also being downvoted, surely, because you're needlessly insulting HN'ers in your first paragraph.

If you refrained from calling people ignorant, then I'm sure informative comments like this would be upvoted instead. :)

[rootsudo]

Probably, but it's true.

Ignorant isn't bad, people want and should learn. It isn't an insult but I find it hilarious how the continunation of conversation from yesterday to today is this. HN is unfortunately USA centric and a majority of people in the USA do not know what happens outside the 48' borders.

[crazygringo]

No, the word ignorant is insulting. That's just a fact about everyday English usage which it might be helpful for you to be aware of. It's the word's fundamental connotation.

Also, a majority of people in pretty much every country don't know much about what happens outside of their borders.

The idea that Americans are particularly ignorant is a tired myth that deserves to die -- and if you've traveled the world and met people, you'd realize that geographical "ignorance" is widespread pretty much everywhere. Shocking, even. Sure, people in smaller countries know a bit more about nearby countries, but the American equivalent is a New Yorker knowing about Florida and Texas and California, since America's pretty huge.

So no, it's not true.

[rootsudo]

I AM a New Yorker and I do know Florida and Texas. You picked a very poor example. There are also a huge influx of New Yorkers that have migrated to Florida and Texas. In fact the joke is many New Yorkers end up to Florida and Retire/Die. The majority of the Villages/Spring Hill in Florida are from recently relocated New Yorkers.

Nice try, etc etc, I don't wish to argue. People are very ignorant of The Darian Gap and die everyday being cute.

And the first result on Google is this: https://conversational-leadership.net/blog/ignorance-is-not-... it's a common debate.

[crazygringo]

> I AM a New Yorker and I do know Florida and Texas. You picked a very poor example.

No, you clearly missed my point entirely.

I'm saying that's the same level of geographic knowledge of usual examples of e.g. Germans being more knowledgeable about European countries, so why aren't Americans more knowledgeable about South America? The answer is that there's a lot more to be aware of in America in the first place. America is the size of Europe just on its own. We know plenty of geography in absolute terms, but for us a lot more of it happens to be within our own borders.

Most people in the world don't know about the Darian Gap. You think Brazilians or Argentines all learn about it or something? It's a relatively local thing, and that's fine.

You're claiming that Americans are especially ignorant of world geography compared to other countries. That's just not the case.

In any case, hopefully by now you've learned that calling other people ignorant never goes down well.