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Los
Migrantes – The Migrants Ignacio sat staring into the darkness. The desert beyond the concrete and steel world of the truck stop seemed to envelop like the wrap of a cocoon. His mind was numb from the events of the past seven weeks. His journey began at his home in the slums of San Miguel, El Salvador where he left his wife and three children in the care of his mother and his crippled father
Ignacio’s father Emilio lost a leg three years earlier when he fell from the “beast.” That’s what migrants call the freight train that once ran from Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico northward. Migrants climb onto PEMEX petroleum tank cars and cling to pipes and railings. If a person becomes exhausted and falls asleep they can fall onto the tracks beneath the moving train. This is what happened to Ignacio’s father. The flanged wheels of the “beast” severed Emilio’s right leg above the knee. He survived because he was treated in an INSS hospital in Tapachula and then deported to El Salvador.
The railroad south of Arriaga to Tapachula was washed out by a recent hurricane effectively removing a very long section of track. Ignacio and many others walked for days to Arriaga, miles from the old terminus to find the new end of the railroad.
Sarafina, a slender Honduran girl of about 17 became the first major casualty of the journey. She had talked fondly of joining her sister’s family in Chicago and working in a hotel kitchen there. While the travelers waited for the weekly petroleum train to arrive at Arriaga, several local Mexican men took Sarafina by force in the middle of the night. Ignacio and Javier ran after them guided only by the girl’s screams in the darkness. Her abductors disappeared with their victim. Her screams became muffled as if someone were covering her mouth. He would never forget the sound of her desperate cries for help. Her voice still haunted him. The next morning Ignacio and several others looked for any sign of the girl. They found her broken body amid blood stained bits of clothing. Local authorities took no interest. It was just one more unsolved crime against migrants to be recorded and forgotten.
At Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos south of Mexico City Ignacio spent two days looking for trucks going north. Finally Paco, a big rig driver risked his job by giving a group of some twenty four migrants a ride in his trailer atop a load of melons. Luckily the trailer was covered with a tarpaulin that kept out sun and rain. The melons were bound for a produce market in San Luis Potosi but made a terrible bed on which to sleep. Ignacio and several of his fellow migrants worked for a week loading and unloading trucks at the terminal in San Luis Potosi. With money earned there, they took a bus to Torreon in the state of Durango. This was another piece of their journey “al Norte,” to the north, to the USA and the hope for a better life.
The police in Torreon had other plans for Ignacio and his companions. They arrested the entire group and threatened them with deportation to Guatemala. The matter was settled when everyone emptied their pockets. With no money and no hope of earning any, they set out on foot toward Chihuahua. They ate nothing for days. They drank water from cattle troughs on isolated ranches and finally found a small river flowing from distant mountains. Had it not been for recent rains even this water would not have existed. They bathed in the stream, washed their clothing, and collected water in plastic bottles found along the roadside.
A priest in a small village fed the group and heard their confessions. He told them the names of villages to avoid and others in which to seek aid. Good fortune returned in Chihuahua when the entire group found a trucker headed north to Ciudad Juarez and the border with the USA. After weeks of uncertain travel Ignacio and his companions looked across El Rio Del Norte, The Rio Grande and into an uncertain future avoiding immigration authorities in the USA.
Under cover of a moonless night Ignacio and seventeen others climbed the border fence into the USA. Headlights suddenly illuminated the darkness. The travelers scattered in all directions hoping to escape the Border Patrol. Marsela and Carla were quickly caught. The two Mexican girls were exhausted and could not outrun their pursuers. Armando tripped over a guy wire attached to a utility pole and broke his ankle. He became the third captive. The “Patrulla,” the Border Patrol collared three of his fellow travelers. Ignacio and thirteen others managed to run through the dark alleys of El Paso avoiding capture. They melted into the local population and by daylight were well on the road northward.
Sitting at the truck stop, Ignacio thought of what his brother Ramon told him about dishonest employers in the USA. Ramon worked on a construction project in Las Vegas, Nevada for five weeks. He and his fellow “indocumentados,” undocumented migrant workers were never paid their wages. Five weeks of hard labor in the desert heat and nothing to show for it. Did they complain? Of course not, to whom would they have complained?
That is the game some employers play with migrants. Ramon had warned that Ignacio should question other migrants about prospective employers before risking such a loss. Even so, Ramon had gone on to pick vegetables in the Imperial Valley of California and managed to send an enormous sum of money back to his wife and children in San Miguel. The few hundred dollars he sent was indeed an enormous sum in the barrio where they eked out a living any way they could. With any luck, Ignacio thought, he too would soon be sending money home to his wife, children, and parents. He pondered the horrors of the long trek “al Norte,” to the north. Ignacio leaned against a warm concrete retaining wall and soon fell asleep.
Amid tumultuous dreams and through the haze of exhaustion Ignacio heard the familiar shout, “migra, migra.” He leaped to his feet and tried to see who was shouting. People ran into the desert darkness in all directions. Ignacio ran with them. The truck stop was soon empty. There under the lights of the fuel pumps stood a large SUV with the U.S. Border Patrol logo. Two Border Patrolmen pumped gas and bought supplies. They had seen the people scatter. They laughed and joked about cock roaches fleeing when the lights go on. The patrolmen soon drove away. Most of the “indocumentados” slept in the desert well beyond the lights for the remainder of the night.
At dawn they drifted back to the truck stop. Some still had a few dollars and bought food and hot coffee. There was little discussion. A few wondered aloud what the day would bring. Around four in the afternoon a local Hispanic truck driver hid the entire group in his empty cargo trailer. He assured them he knew all the back roads and could avoid Border Patrol check points. All went well for two days. No one was allowed outside of the trailer. Fortunately it was January and the heat was not a factor. It was actually very cold inside the truck. Ignacio remembered stories of migrant deaths in stifling hot cargo trailers. At least if he died now it would be by freezing to death. Small comfort he thought.
At the end of the third day the truck arrived in Denver, Colorado. When the driver opened the doors the exhausted migrants piled out into a snow filled alley behind a large Catholic Church. A priest opened a rear door and ushered them inside. Ignacio and his fellow travelers were fed a hot meal for the first time in weeks. The priest assured them that this was a sanctuary church and would not be raided by “migra” agents.
The group was separated into men and women. They showered, laundered their few items of clothing and settled into double bunks in separate quarters. “El sacradote,” the priest helped each person pick out appropriate items of used clothing from a large room filled with donated items. In the next few days volunteers from the local parish give the migrants an orientation in Spanish. They were told about job opportunities and about areas of the city to avoid. They were told that if they could not earn enough to sustain themselves, they could always come back to the church for food and shelter.
Ignacio persuaded the padre to send a brief telegram to his family in El Salvador and tell them that he had arrived safely in “El Norte.” Ignacio was alive and hope was alive. The future looked brighter for him and for his family. But Ignacio never forgot the journey “al Norte” nor could he ever forget the anguished cries of those who fell along the way. He could still hear Sarafina’s screams in the night. Her voice would never go away. End |