Riding the death train

'No Mas Sangre’ reads a banner hanging beside me. It’s 1.00 am on the night of my 38th birthday and I am standing, sweating from the humidity, beside a train-line outside a small town called Ixtepec in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

This train-line passes the back gates of a refuge. ‘Casa Hermanos en el Camino’ (House of our Brothers on the Road) is run by Fr Alejandro Solalinde, a slim, soft-spoken, late middle-aged Catholic priest. The refuge is a basic tin-roofed concrete place where Central American migrants can sleep safely, eat and wash, during their long dangerous journey north towards the US border.
Of course I am not alone. I would never come to the train-lines at night on my own. Even now, in the company of about 300 others – Mexican religious and human rights activists, journalists, film makers, Hondurans, Guatemalans and a group of families from El Salvador – I am on edge. All of the Central Americans in our group have lost one or more members of their family to this perilous pilgrimage towards illegal employment in the US, a journey attempted by approximately 400,000 Central Americans every year.  

We are part of the second ever ‘Caravana Paso a Paso Hacia el Paz’ (Step by Step Towards Peace). It is a brave and defiant initiative that began three days ago in Guatemala, and which will see a collective of concerned humanitarians travelling in convoy with a group of migrants all the way to Mexico City. Many of the people beside me are carrying placards, showing poignant photos of their disappeared relatives. We are waiting for the train carrying the migrants to arrive.
Mexico has two borders, or ‘fronteras’ as they are called here. While the whole world is familiar with the story of the Mexicans who make the journey across the Rio Grande to join over 12 million others ‘sin papeles’ in the US, I am going to tell you a different story, that of the Central American migrants whose dangerous journey begins over 3,000km further south of the Rio Grande, at the Mexican border with Guatemala. Unable either to afford the fares or to risk being caught at the immigration check-points that all buses must pass through, these migrants make their way north by riding on the roofs of cargo trains. The train that carries these transients has become known as La Bestia, the beast.

Though riding these cargo trains is hugely dangerous, with hundreds of fatal falls occurring every year, this is just one of the risks faced by the people who undertake the journey. The levels of violence with which these migrants are threatened might seem incredible to those of us unfamiliar with the crisis that engulfs Mexico right now. In the last five years over 50,000 people have been murdered as a direct result of the actions of both drug cartels and of the Mexican state’s ‘war on drugs’. It would be wrong too to think that the majority of these deaths are a result of internecine fights amongst the cartels: civilians, journalists, human rights activists and members of the police forces, as well as thousands of migrants, have been included among the dead.
As recently as July 26th, in a particularly gruesome case, a female journalist — Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a reporter for the daily paper Notiver who was defiant enough to report on the activities of the drug cartels — was found beheaded in Veracruz, one of the states we will cross during this Caravana. An estimated 140,000 people are currently missing –‘desparacido’ – in Mexico. It is unlikely that many of these disappearances will ever be investigated or the people found.
Every year, according to the CNDH (National Commission for Human Rights in Mexico), over 20,000 migrants are kidnapped on this very route. The majority of these kidnappings are carried out by the drugs cartels, who in the last five years, following a crack-down in Colombia, have come to be an increasingly potent force in Mexico.   

In the south of the country these gangs include El Cartel Del Golfo, and their former paramilitary outriders, the notorious ‘Los Zetas’, both of whom operate on the Caribbean side. The latter are a highly-trained and equipped group of former elite Mexican military forces. Following a period of training in anti-drugs trafficking operations in the US, they returned to Mexico and immediately defected en-masse with all of their weapons and equipment. Originally working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, they later spun away and now carry out brazen operations on their own behalf. In areas like the Southern Veracruz oil town Coatzacoalcos, even the mention of Los Zetas is enough to terrorise the residents. 
On the Pacific side of the country it is the Salvador/Los Angeles gang Mara Salvatruca, infamous for their facial tattoos, who currently rule the roost in a similarly ruthless style.  
Why would narco-traffickers concern themselves with these impoverished people who generally travel with no possessions at all, so as to avoid becoming targets for robbery? It seems that the kidnapping en-masse of groups of up to 300 migrants at a time has become a profitable sideline for the gangs. It is also a way of forcibly recruiting foot soldiers, who become cheap cannon fodder for the ongoing turf wars between the narco-traffickers.

As Padre Solalinde commented in an interview given to Telesur, the migrants are Mexico’s new generation of slaves...  
What happens is this: heavily armed gangs board the trains and kidnap all of the migrants present. They take them to isolated warehouses or ranches, usually in remote areas where they film the torture and murder of a random few people. These films are then used to extort small ransoms – the demands run from $2000 to $5000 – from the relations of the remaining migrants, in their home countries, or from any family members already living and working in the US.  At the rate of 20,000 kidnappings per year this is a very lucrative sideline.
In an even more sinister scenario, according to the testimony of many migrants, the ‘sicarios’ – kidnappers or hit men – often act with the co-operation of the federal, State, migratory or municipal police forces.
Those who cannot raise the money to pay off the kidnappers are frequently forced to commit crimes for the gangs, to act as drug mules, or in the case of the women, are frequently trafficked into prostitution. Most of these young men and women are never heard of again. In the spiral of violence that has consumed Mexico, the lives of the migrants (for the most part between their teens and early thirties) are now so expendable that the gangs have shown no hesitation in executing them and burying them in mass graves. Several such graves have been found in the last two years.

The group I am travelling with is crossing into Mexico from Guatemala at the hectic dusty outpost of Tapachula in Chiapas State, and proceeding from there onwards 250 km north to Arriaga, a small town that lies at the very beginning of the train line in Mexico.
Normally migrants travel on foot through the sweltering lowlands all the way from Tapachula to Arriaga, where there is another ‘Casa’ or refuge, there to await the irregular arrival of El Bestia, which will take them first to Ixtapec, in Oaxaca and then on across the country to the state of Veracruz. The other group from our Caravana, has taken a route north along the other side of the country catching the train in Tenosique, in the State of Tabasco. Both groups are due to link up in Coatzacoalcos the following evening.
Shortly after 1.00am, the whistle of El Bestia announces its arrival: it looms into view above us on the tracks. Give or take a few, there are 200 migrants on the roof. The train comes shuddering to a halt right outside the gate. This is an unscheduled stop of only a couple of minutes, made in a display of ordinary humanity by the train driver; it allows the stiff, wind-blown stowaways a chance to clamber safely down the ladders from the train roofs, which tower 20 feet above us.

The migrants are covered in dust. A volunteer hands out bottles of water and they gulp the precious liquid down straight away. Many of those waiting with me are women in their sixties, moved to tears by this safe arrival. For the most part the migrants carry nothing, but those with bags – small string-handled nylon back packs or just plastic shopping bags – are searched before they are admitted through the gates of the refuge. No one carrying a weapon is allowed in. In the tin-roofed kitchen, they are provided with a basic rice and beans meal, and are registered by three volunteers on the computers in the small, sweltering office. 
Within about two hours, all 500 of us are scattered on sleeping mats slung across the roofs, floors, and even in the open yard area of the refuge. Out on the rooftop, I don’t sleep much; shortly before it is bright, I am urgently shaken fully awake by a distressed young man, who is in search of someone he lost track of on his journey to Ixtepec. He wakes everyone one by one on his fruitless search.
Over a breakfast of eggs and pastries which I help to serve in the already searing heat, I have a chance to chat with some of the new arrivals. Johnny, a handsome young Honduran man of about 18, with his name tattooed across his shoulders, is full of adventure and confidence: it’s his first time making this trip. His two older companions are far more sombre. One of them, Raul – sporting a black eye – has made this trip three times so far. Guillermo, his companion, is on his second attempt having already been deported from the US.

They recount how they were robbed the day before in the notorious town of La Arocera in Chiapas by seven armed Mexicans. Raul says he got his shiner from a smack of a gun butt, delivered when he tried to plead with his assailants. Both older men are tense and smoke one after another of my cigarettes.  Gingerly I ask if they would not consider turning back; they explain that neither one of them have any way of surviving in Honduras. Raul’s father is dead and he is the only one who can provide for his mother and his two younger sisters – both of whom have young children.
Later, standing in the interminable queue to use the bathrooms I meet Raul again. “Sarah, I am so scared,” he tells me. I am horrified and helpless when he begins to cry and foolishly try to console him by giving him the remainder of my cigarettes.
Later in the afternoon, our caravan – a convoy of buses – sets out across the country to Veracruz. Mexico is a country of bizarre contradictions. Despite the fact that all of the Central American activists and parents in the caravan were refused visas for this trip and so are travelling illegally, we are accompanied as far as the Oaxaca State border by a number of armed Oaxaca police. When we cross the border into Veracruz, there is a delay as the Oaxacans are replaced by their VC counterparts.
Fr Solalinde has been the subject of death threats from a whole range of would-be assailants, and so two of the Oaxacan police, appointed as his armed bodyguards, remain with us. These guards are supposed to accompany him everywhere. However, in what is an over-the-top show of force by Puebla State police, they themselves are arrested later, on the pretext that they are illegally carrying weapons outside their own territory. Who knows really what machinations within machinations are going on?
I travel on the Honduran bus, which is brimful to overflowing. I end up sitting on a crate of water bottles in the aisle beside another Guillermo. He is good looking and well dressed. Despite the fact that everyone slept on dirt or concrete floors and competed for scarce, cold-water washing facilities during the eight-day bus and train-roof journey, he has somehow managed to stay spotlessly clean. Aged 26, and with a Master’s Degree, he is travelling in the Caravana on behalf of a missing first cousin, Jesus, who left Honduras two years ago and has not been heard from since.

His new job with an environmental organisation in Honduras only pays him enough to eat, but he tells me initially that he really wants to be part of progress in his country. He insists that he wouldn’t like to travel illegally to the US, even though his family could really use the financial help. However, by the time we get to Mexico City he will have changed his mind, deciding to continue on to the US. (And I will wish him luck: what else can I do?) 
Along the way, I change buses to one that carries mostly journalists and human rights workers – but Raul, Johnny and the first Guillermo are there too, smiling out at me from a group of about twenty of last night’s arrivals who have been given the spare seats.  There is a huge cheer as our convoy of eleven buses full of ‘illegals’ – with our police accompaniment flashing its blue lights front and back – sweeps past an immigration check point.
We arrive in Coatzacoalcos at 11pm and are plunged into a media frenzy. I count over seventy photographers and camera crews, all clamouring to talk to Solalinde, who remains smiling throughout. The various groups from our Caravana march behind banners and flags from each of their countries, the placards announcing the disappeared carried in front, for the benefit of the cameras. In the church in Colonia Lopez Matteo, where we are to sleep, both strands of our group are finally reunited. We now number over seven hundred people.
Though I have only been two days and two nights with the group I am already covered in mosquito bites, tired, filthy and disoriented from the relentless heat. The following day we move on northward to Tierra Blanca and on arriving, again late at night at the bare concrete pavilion that has been requisitioned for our group to sleep in, there are already nearly a hundred people lying around in the big empty cavernous hall. 

I am told more than once that our group has been infiltrated and to take great care to sleep in a circle of people I know. I have other woes to contend with. My spoiled, first-world stomach has been strenuously objecting all day to the lack of food hygiene and on seeing a queue of nearly two hundred people waiting to use a block of three toilets I give up and walk sheepishly out past elderly women migrants, who are unrolling their sleeping mats on the concrete floor. Feeling a fraud, I go to a roadside motel where I sleep the sleep of the dead.
Next morning we are back on the road again. Felipe Gonzalez, special rapporteur for the rights of migrant workers and their families from the Inter-american Commission on Human Rights of the Organisation of American States, meets with the Caravana to take testimonies in private from the families of the disappeared and then our procession continues on to the mountain town of Orizaba. It is in the city of Puebla, a wealthy conservative-type place and our penultimate stopping point, that Solalinde’s body guards are arrested.
It is here I have to leave the Caravana and head onwards to Mexico city, but I arrange to meet up again the following day, for the very last lap of the journey in Mexico City’s austere and grand central square, the Zocalo. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

At 9.00 am the following morning I am already emotional, watching the buses disgorge their cargo of people. As I approach my new Honduran friends, the group’s coordinator, Danira, grabs me by my arm. She is laughing out loud and with good reason: one of her group Maria Isadora Mungia, a thin weather-beaten woman in her late sixties has just been met, straight off the bus, by her missing daughter Sandra, who she had not seen or heard any news of in over 15 years.
Sandra tearfully explains how she saw her mother on the television news coverage of the Caravana the day before, and that she travelled through the night from the neighbouring Moreleos State to get here.  The emotion grips us all and we are caught in the huge, swaying embrace between the two reunited women.
Buoyed by this, our Caravana concludes with a jubilant march to the Mexican Senate. Cameras clicking and flashing furiously, we make our way through the well dressed Monday morning Mexico City crowds, chanting “Calderon Entiendes! Migrantes, migrantes no somos criminales, somos trabajadores internationales.” (Calderon Understand this! Us migrants, us migrants we are not criminals we are just international workers).
Now that we have arrived at our destination, there is an extraordinary euphoria in the air. We flood into the senate in our hundreds, as if we own it. A lengthy series of speeches and demands are made by the convenors of the Caravana, and the families of the disappeared. Ruben Figuero, a diffident young Mexican in his late twenties, who travelled all the way from Tenosique on the train roofs, remains inscrutable. Far happier riding the trains with a bandana over his mouth against the dust than making speeches, he receives the largest cheer of the afternoon.
Later, Father Solalinde addresses the senators. “This group of unarmed and outraged people, acting against violence and impunity,” he says, “have shown you, with all your power and resources, that it is possible to protect migrants. Not one person has been harmed on our Caravana. We demand you now take action to do the same.”

In my heart, I am aware too that things could just as easily have worked out differently. There is no way of telling if and when the drugs gangs or indeed State forces will choose to make a gruesome example of such a project. Believe me, it wouldn’t be the first time. But not on this occasion...

Tomorrow, there will be no reception in the Senate for the flood of people passing on their silent dangerous journey through Mexico. There will be no police accompaniment, no cheering and no speeches. There will only be young people, with neither security nor resources, other than those provided for them at great personal risk by people of conscience. People like Ruben. Like Solalinde. Like the poet Javier Sicilia, who refuses to be silenced even though his son was horrifically and incomprehensibly murdered last year in the drug wars. And like the thousands of anonymous others who defy threats and danger every day, to help their fellow human beings. 

It was my absolute privilege to have seen the best side of humanity during this Caravana. But the exodus goes on – and with it the risks. That is the inescapable fact.  
I feel curiously alone and exhausted as I make my way through the metropolis to find a hotel. I can’t help thinking of Johnny, of Raul, of the two Guillermos – and the hundreds of others – who are right now making their way to the train lines, to continue their precarious journey north...