Enrique's Journey (10 page)

As the train rolled north, the migrants drank their water bottles dry. The air in the car turned rank with sweat. Zepeda could hardly breathe. People began screaming and shouting for help. Some knelt and pleaded with God to stop the train.

Fistfights broke out in his boxcar as the riders jockeyed to suck fresh air through tiny rust holes over the doors. After four hours, he says, a woman with asthma begged for water, then slumped to the floor, unconscious. Others pried open her mouth and tried to give her the few drops they could find. Finally, they left her for dead. Some stood on her to reach the highest airholes.

In the next five hours, before immigration agents and Mexican soldiers stopped the train and opened the doors, Zepeda saw seven migrants fall to the floor. The boxcar, he says, looked like a rolling morgue.

Enrique looks elsewhere. A good place to hide could be under the cars, up between the axles, balancing on a foot-wide iron shock absorber. But Enrique might be too big to fit. Besides, trains kick up rocks. Worse, if his arms grew tired or if he fell asleep, he would drop directly under the wheels. He tells himself, “That's crazy.”

He could sit on a round compressor at the end of some hoppers, his feet dangling just above the train wheels. Or stand on a tiny ledge, barely big enough for his feet, on the end of other hopper cars. His hands would turn numb and callous after hours of hanging on.

Enrique settles for the top of a hopper. He finds one that is full, making it more stable. He holds on to a grate running along the rim. From his perch fourteen feet up, he can see anyone approaching on either side of the tracks up ahead or from another car. Below, at each end, the hopper's wheels are exposed: shiny metal, three feet in diameter, five inches thick, churning. He stays as far away as he can.

He doesn't carry anything that might keep him from running fast. At most, if it is exceptionally hot, he ties a nylon string on an empty plastic bottle, wraps it around his arm, and fills the bottle with water when he can.

Some migrants climb on board with a toothbrush tucked into a pocket. A few allow themselves a small reminder of family. One father wraps his eight-year-old daughter's favorite hair band around his wrist. Others bring a small Bible with telephone numbers, penciled in the margins, of their mothers or fathers or other relatives in the United States. Maybe nail clippers, a rosary, or a scapular with a tiny drawing of San Cristóbal, the patron saint of travelers, or of San Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of desperate situations.

As usual, the train lurches hard from side to side. Enrique holds on with both hands. Occasionally, the train speeds up or slows down, smashing couplers together and jarring him backward or forward. The wheels rumble, screech, and clang. Sometimes each car rocks the other way from the ones ahead and behind.
El Gusano de Hierro,
some migrants call it. The Iron Worm.

In Chiapas, the tracks are twenty years old. Some of the ties sink, especially during the rainy season, when the roadbed turns soggy and soft. Grass grows over the rails, making them slippery.

When the cars round a bend, they feel as if they might overturn. Enrique's train runs only a few times a week, but it averages three derailments a month—seventeen accidents in a particularly bad month—by the count of Jorge Reinoso, chief of operations for Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab, the railroad. One year before, a hopper like Enrique's overturned with a load of sand, burying three migrants alive. In another spot, six hoppers tumbled over. One migrant was crushed between the train car and a bridge the train was crossing. Another migrant was found dead downstream. The cars' rusty remains are scattered, upside down, next to the tracks. Enrique was once on a train that derailed. His car lurched so violently that he briefly thought of jumping off to save himself. Enrique rarely lets himself admit fear, but he is scared that his car might tip.
El Tren de la Muerte,
some migrants call it. The Train of Death.

Others cast the train in a more positive light. They believe it has a noble purpose. Sometimes, the train tops are packed with migrants. They face north, toward a new land, a neverending exodus.
El Tren Peregrino,
they call it. The Pilgrim's Train.

Enrique is struck by the magic of the train—its power and its ability to take him to his mother. To him, it is
El Caballo de Hierro.
The Iron Horse.

The train picks up speed. It passes a brown river that smells of sewage. Then a dark form emerges ahead. Migrants at the front of the train, nearest to the locomotive, call back a warning over the train's deafening din. They sound an alarm, migrant to migrant, car to car.
“¡Rama!”
the migrants yell. “Branch!” They duck.

Enrique grips the hopper. To avoid the branches, he sways from side to side. All of the riders sway in unison, ducking the same branches—left, then right. One moment of carelessness—a glance down at a watch, a look toward the back of the train at the wrong time—and the branches will hurl them into the air. Matilda de la Rosa, who lives by the tracks, recalls a migrant who came to her door with an eyeball hanging on his cheek. He cupped it near his face, in his right hand. He told her, “The train ripped out my eye.”

A DREADED STOP

Each time the train slows, Enrique goes on high alert for
la migra.
Migrants wake one another and begin climbing down to prepare to jump. They lean outward, trying to glimpse what is causing the train to change pace. Is it another false alarm? Sometimes, an oncoming train forces the engineer to pull off onto a siding. A migrant, moving from car to car, can inadvertently step on the pressurized brake line that runs the length of the train. Other migrants, frustrated by the train's pace, disconnect the brake line on purpose. The conductor must stop to fix the problem. A bad curve can also cause a train to slow. If the train speeds up again, everyone climbs back up. The movement down and up the ladders looks like a strangely choreographed two-step.

But slowing down at Huixtla, with its red-and-yellow depot, can mean only one thing: coming up is La Arrocera, one of the most dreaded immigration checkpoints in Mexico. Of the half-dozen checkpoints Enrique has eluded in southern Mexico, he fears La Arrocera most.

Immigration agents picked this place, named after two rice warehouses, because it is so isolated. There are acres of open cattle range and few houses or busy streets where migrants can hide. Usually, half of those aboard are caught by
migra
agents.

Enrique has defied La Arrocera before. On his last attempt, he lay flat on top of a hopper. It was night.
Migra
agents' flashlight beams danced over his car several times. Enrique held his breath. The train pushed forward.

This time, he arrives in the heat of noon. Tension builds. Some migrants stand on top of the train, straining to see the
migra
agents up ahead. The first migrants who spot twenty agents down the tracks scream a warning to the others: “
Bájense!
Get down!” As the train brakes, they jump.

The train lurches sideways. Enrique leaps from car to car, finally landing on a boxcar. The train stops. He lies flat, facedown, arms spread-eagle, hoping
la migra
won't see him. But several agents do.

“
¡Bájate, puto!
Get down, you whore!”

“No! I'm not coming down!”

There is no ladder all the way to the top. The only way up is to straddle their legs across two adjoining boxcars, using the horizontal ridges on the ends of the cars to inch higher. Maybe they won't come up after him.

“Get down!”

“No!”

The agents summon reinforcements. One starts to climb up.

Enrique scrambles to his feet and races along the top of the train, soaring across the four-foot gaps between cars. As he runs, three agents follow on the ground, pelting him with rocks and sticks, an experience many migrants say they have here. Stones clang against the metal. Enrique flees from car to car, more than twenty in all, struggling to keep his footing each time he leaps from a hopper to a fuel tanker, which is lower and has a rounded top.

He is running out of train. He will have to go around La Arrocera alone. It may be suicidal, but he has no choice. More stones ping off the train. Enrique scurries down a ladder and sprints into the bushes.

“
¡Alto! ¡Alto!
Stop!” the agents shout.

As Enrique runs, he hears what he thinks are gunshots behind him.

Except in extraordinary circumstances, Mexican immigration agents are barred from carrying firearms. According to a retired agent, however, most have .38-caliber pistols. Some of the shelter workers tell of migrants hit by bullets. Others tell of torture. Before long, Enrique will meet a man whose chest is pockmarked with cigarette burns. The man tells him that a
migra
agent at La Arrocera branded him.

In the scrub brush, though, Enrique worries less about agents than about
madrinas
with machetes. The name for these men is a play on words: these civilians help the authorities, as a
madrina,
or godmother, would, and administer
madrizas,
or savage beatings. Human rights activists and some police agencies say the
madrinas
commit some of the worst atrocities—rapes and torture—and are allowed by authorities to keep a portion of what they steal.

Sometimes, a
madrina
rides the train and pretends to be a migrant. The
madrina
radios ahead to report how many migrants are aboard and where they are hidden so agents will know which cars to target when they stop the train.
Migra
agents wear green uniforms. Enrique can't distinguish
madrinas,
who wear plain clothes.

Enrique runs on. He crawls under a barbed-wire fence, then under a double strand of smooth wire. It is electrified. At night, Guillermina Gálvez López, whose wooden hut fronts the rails at La Arrocera, hears the trains and, not long afterward, the piercing screams of migrants, wet from the swampy grass, who run into the wire.

“Help me! Help me!” they wail.

Ten times in ten months, train riders have carried to her front door men and boys without arms, legs, or heads. Often they are injured as they try to outrun the agents and get onto and off of moving trains.

Migrants hide their money. Some stitch it into the seams of their pants. Others put a bit in their shoes, a bit in their shirts, and a coin or two in their mouths. Still others bag it in plastic and tuck it into intimate places. Some roll it up and slip it into their walking sticks. Others hollow out mangoes, drop their pesos inside, then pretend to be eating the fruit.

Enrique figures he doesn't have enough money to bother.

Enrique knows he has plunged deep into bandit territory. At least three, maybe five swarms of robbers, some with Uzis, some on drugs, patrol the three-mile dirt paths that migrants must use to go around La Arrocera, authorities say.

Migrants describe similar experiences. “Don't run, or we'll kill you,” bandits yell. Strip off your clothes. Lay facedown on the ground. Bandits edge their machetes against migrants' throats or ears as they disrobe. Keep quiet, they are told. Don't look up. One bandit splits open waistbands, collars, and cuffs looking for hidden money. They keep belts, watches, and shoes. Migrants who resist are beaten or killed. Everyone gets a final warning: “If you say anything to the authorities, we will find you and kill you.” Local residents see groups of migrants walking down dirt roads naked, stripped of everything.

There's El Cantil, a tall, skinny man named after a particularly agile and poisonous snake. El Cochero leads ten bandits. La Mano de Seda, the Hand of Silk, is known for his mastery at robbing people. La Mara Valiente lives in the nearby town of Buenos Aires and operates where the tracks cross Reforma Ranch.

After the day's robberies, bandits retire to the neighboring town of Huixtla to drink and visit prostitutes. At the Quinto Patio, with its hot pink façade, a sign beckons: LADIES DANCE. There are La Embajada nightclub, Los Piños, Las Brisas, and the Bar El Noa Noa, which advertises pole dancers.

The bandits are so well known and seem to operate with such impunity that Mario Campos Gutiérrez, a supervisor with Grupo Beta Sur, thinks the authorities collaborate. Many of the bandits, Campos says, are current or former police officers. If they are arrested, they pay bribes and are quickly released. Witness statements against them mysteriously disappear. Migrants can't wait around for months until the trial. Bandits long ago intimidated any La Arrocera residents who considered testifying.

“If you say anything, they kill you. Better to keep your mouth shut,” says Antonio, a local elderly man, who is afraid to give his last name. An ice cream vendor near La Arrocera adds, “If you turn them in, they get out, and they come after you. They operate by light of day. There is no law here.”

The last time Enrique sneaked past La Arrocera, he was lucky because he was careful. He stuck with a band of street gangsters. Bandits try to avoid gangsters, who are probably armed, preferring easier prey. Enrique and the gangsters ran past a group of Mexican men standing by the tracks, machetes at their sides. The men looked at them intently but did not move or attack.

This time he is alone. He focuses on the thought that will make him run the fastest: “I cannot miss the train.”

If he misses the one he just left, he knows he will be a sitting duck, waiting for days in the bushes and the tall grass until another one comes.

Enrique races so fast he feels the blood pounding at his temples. The ground is wet, slippery. The grass, growing in three-foot tentacles, lassos his feet. He stumbles, gets up, and keeps running. He passes an abandoned brick house. Half the roof is gone.

The house is notorious. Not long before, Grupo Beta found a bed of bricks inside, covered with emerald green leaves from a plant that looked like a bird-of-paradise—and two soiled pairs of panties crumpled on the dirt floor. Women are raped here, most recently a sixteen-year-old assaulted repeatedly over three days.