The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail

by Oscar Martinez

  Many of the victims are never found. It’s not uncommon that migrants travel alone, without identification and through areas where they have no contacts. The body of one migrant woman, for example, was found on November 20, 2008, strangled in the Relicario neighborhood of the town of Huixtla. Those who met her before her death, in Tapachula, said she was Guatemalan. They met the man she walked with too. They recognized him by the scorpion tattooed on his hand.

  She was raped on the dirt-and-straw floor of a cardboard shack. That’s all we know. At the time of her rape and murder there wasn’t a police force dedicated to these rural areas, and really it’s a sorry sight now that there is—seven men from the nearby towns, standing guard with clubs in hand whenever they have some free time.

  The picture of the Guatemalan woman who was killed was published in the small daily newspaper, El Orbe, displayed on a half-page with two other pictures of tortured bodies. It shows the woman with wide-open eyes, a gaping mouth full of dried grass, dirt and leaves, and a bloodied scalp with fistfuls of hair torn out.

  There’s no open investigation. What’s left of her are the few scraps of stories from people who had met her on the trail. Orlando, who works at Huixtla’s cemetery, has a story. He sticks his tongue out as far as he can to show what she looked like when he was finally able to get her shirt out of her throat. The stories are all that’s left. Stories and a small purple cross, lost in a graveyard full of anonymous bodies. The epitaph reads: “The young mother and her twins died in Nov. 2008.” And her twins, it says.

  Who knows why her murderer chose this place. Every day while en route to El Norte I saw, and began to understand, that the bodies left here are innumerable, and that rape is only one of the countless threats a migrant confronts.

  THE BELATED WAR

  We arrive in hostile times. At the beginning of 2009, the government of the state of Chiapas finally started paying attention to the violence on these trails. The bandits of today were once day laborers and ranch hands, who for years watched lines and lines of Central American migrants sneaking fearfully through, always ready to duck into the scrub. And then one day one of the laborers must have got an idea: the migrants are walking these trails in order to hide from the authorities, so if there were to be an assault, a rape, say, or a robbery, nobody would report it.

  Migrants cross the river Suchiate on the southwestern border between Mexico and Guatemala, and from there begin their halting trip on microbuses and combis (the local word for public transportation vans). They board buses and then hop off before reaching the migration checkpoints set up along the highway. They duck into the foothills and walk a few miles to bypass the checkpoints, then get back to the road and wait for another combi. They make these mountain bypasses at least five times in the 175 miles until they reach Arriaga, where they can board a cargo train. On the trains they ride cramped and clinging like ticks, all the way to Ixtepec.

  For years undocumented migrants have considered robberies and assaults as the inevitable tolls of the road. God’s will be done, they repeated. The coyotes even started to hand out condoms to their female clients, while they recommended the men not resist an attack. For the past decade, in this hidden and forgotten part of Mexico, the stories of husbands, sons, and daughters watching women suffer abuses have been commonplace.

  At the beginning of 2009, after more than a decade of petitions from human rights organizations, the Chiapan government finally bowed to the pressure. A visit from the chancellors of Guatemala and El Salvador and a letter signed by more than ten organizations, including the Catholic Church, prevailed on the government to take the first steps: creating the Prosecutor’s Office for Migrants and convincing Governor Juan Sabines to order police chiefs in Huixtla and Tonalá to start patrolling the most dangerous portions of the migrant trails. In the end, though, they’ve just barely stirred the pot in the banditry free-for-all. Corruption and wickedness seem to float to the surface in every corner of this part of the country. Those in charge of cleaning up the worst areas are finding that there is simply not enough manpower to get the job done.

  The local police commander, Máximo, receives us on a typically humid day. This is the most suffocating month in the region. Keeping your shirt dry is nearly impossible. Commander Máximo is responsible for the area stretching from Tonalá to Arriaga, which is the top half of all of La Arrocera. When we sit down he puts in an order for maps, a stack of documents, and lemonade with extra ice.

  “All right, fellas,” he says to Toni Arnau (one of El Faro’s news photographers) and me, before we’re even able to ask our first question. “As you can see, we’ve attacked the problem at the root, and we’ve come up with a solution. I can tell you that in my zone there will not be one more assault or rape.”

  The stack of papers that he slaps on his desktop bears the title: “Operation Friend.” On one of the pages is a photograph of eight men, all under thirty-five years old. Above the photo the caption reads: “Alleged perpetrators of the events on the train, December 23, 2008.” Supposedly these are bandits who have expanded their field of operation, from attacks on the migrant trails to pillaging the trains heading out of Arriaga. During the assault in which these men were captured, a Guatemalan migrant who tried to stand up to them was murdered. The assailants carried both machetes and automatic weapons.

  “And how many are still in detention?” Toni asks.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Máximo says, “one of them is still locked up.”

  Máximo takes out another folder to wash out any bad feeling we may have. He slaps it down and drums his index finger on the plastic surface of the desk.

  “This is the guy we just caught in El Basurero. His job at the big migrant crossing point in Durango was to direct anyone he could off the main path, right into the hands of the assailants. But we took care of him.”

  The photograph is of a man named Samuel Liévano, a skinny fifty-seven-year-old rancher who owns a small plot of land right where the path splits and the trail leads back to the main highway. It’s the spot where migrants run past the last federal police checkpoint at the entrance to Arriaga. Liévano, however, guided migrants the other way, toward El Basurero (the Garbage Dump) where the old rail line is and where the bandits lie in wait. El Basurero is an open dump and a notorious site for assaults and rapes. Máximo and his men caught Liévano after the rare event that two Hondurans who were led into an ambush in El Basurero reported the crime at a migrant shelter in Arriaga.

  The informants against old man Liévano are two black Honduran men. They get to the shelter, where we’re waiting for them, without a drop of sweat on their foreheads. They’re fishing divers from the sweltering Atlantic coast, well-accustomed to a scorching day of work. Now, after five days waiting for the prosecution to call them, they’re fed up and want to get back home. Elvis Ochoa, an experienced twenty-year-old, says of the trip north, “It’s nothing,” and flashes a Los Angeles gang sign. He’s already lived in the States a few months. Nineteen-year-old Andy Epifanio Castillo, however, is a candid first-timer. He admits he’s had his fill, and doesn’t want to step any farther on Mexican soil. With slumped shoulders, he laments, “I risked my life for one that’s better.” If the boys leave tomorrow, Liévano will go back to his ranch, continuing to direct unknowing migrants into a trap, and proving the words of Máximo to be another superficial attempt at resolving a systemic problem.

  The bandits who held up Andy and Elvis, even after hearing that Liévano was in trouble, are supposedly still hanging around, one with a nine-millimeter, the other with a 22-gauge shotgun.

  Leaving the hostel, we try to figure a way to safely see El Basurero. Máximo offers us a ride, but mentions that things will probably turn out different for us—riding in a truck with four policemen carrying Galil rifles—than it usually does for undocumented migrants.

  We’re left with one last option. The prosecutor’s office that specializes in migration cases has just started a new round of operations. They call on the p
ublic municipal offices of various small towns, and assign officers to go undercover as migrants and then fight back against any assailants, with firepower if necessary.

  Only three weeks ago, four undercover policemen stumbled upon a robbery in progress in El Basurero. There were two migrants hiding in the underbrush who came out when they saw the police.

  “Keep still, you sons-a-bitches,” one of the policemen yelled.

  One of them moved. The policemen unholstered their pistols and when the hidden bandits saw the guns, they started firing and running. The two migrants were trapped in the middle: Wenceslao Peña, thirty-six, and José Zárate, eighteen, both Mexican. One was shot in the neck, the other caught two bullets in the thigh. When the firefight ended, only two men were standing unharmed. Two of the four policemen were shot with a 22-gauge shotgun. All of the wounded are still in the hospital in Tonalá.

  In the public prosecutor’s office, three men sit melting in front of a fan. When they notice the half-open door and our heads poking inside, they ask us what we want. After we explain ourselves, one of them, Víctor, steps out to talk with us. He was one of the uninjured officers in the recent gun battle. He has his shirt unbuttoned almost all the way to his waist, his belly taut against the opened fabric and the butt of a nine-millimeter sticking out of his belt.

  “What do you really want?” he says in greeting.

  “We’ve come straight from seeing the public prosecutor, Enrique Rojas. We’ve been here a week and are trying to get to know the migrant trails, to experience them as the migrant experiences them. We haven’t gotten very far.”

  “I don’t get it,” he says. “What is it exactly you want to do?”

  “Go with you on one of your operations.”

  Víctor throws a quick glance at one of his colleagues, who stands with his rifle strap across his chest. They exchange knowing, lopsided smiles.

  “No,” Víctor says, lengthening the vowel. “That’s impossible. It’s very dangerous, even for us, even though we’re armed. There’s a gunfight on every corner here. These robbers don’t think twice before firing. We always go in armed, and we still need protection from a second group of agents that follows us a couple of miles behind.”

  We spell out our arguments again, insisting, but with each motion we make, another trickle of sweat drips from our faces and Víctor ticks off another counter-argument.

  “It’s even worse in La Arrocera,” he says. “There the bandits are organized and carry AR-15s. We only go in when we’ve thoroughly detailed an operation first.”

  By the time we leave we realize that our only option left is to improvise. It’s unusual for someone to want to nose around these parts. By and large, the victims here are only written about once they are dead. Journalists and human rights organizations condemn and take the stories they hear in migrant shelters to court, but the only people who really know what goes on in La Arrocera are the migrants and the bandits themselves.

  These mountains, there’s no better way to say it, have their own laws.

  A year ago, chancellors from Guatemala and El Salvador toured through this region. They staged a whole spectacle: thirty federal police agents with two teams of state police on horseback sweeping ahead, other patrols waiting for them a couple miles up the highway. It was a whole army of uniforms. Honduras is currently preparing its official guided tour under the same conditions. The headlines that come out of these visits are a farce. “IN CHIAPAS THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS ARE GUARANTEED” appeared in three of the local papers.

  Commander Roberto Sánchez, known as Commander Maza, receives us outside of Huixtla. The heat hasn’t let up. It’s just stopped raining, and the water has sprung back from the ground as an infernal fog.

  Sánchez helps us as well as he can, but the conversation is brief and jumps between nicknames, recent deaths, and impunity. Chayote, he says, a famous local bandit who was detained four months ago, was released because his victims kept on their northern march instead of testifying. Chayote, we learn, actually turned himself in, opting to spend a few years in prison rather than get stoned by defensive migrants under one of the bridges in La Arrocera. And then there’s El Calambres, a member of one of the older gangs, who was detained in Tonalá, but the plaintiffs in the case—not surprisingly—also wanted to keep heading north. It’s normal. In Chiapas most denunciations filed by migrants are against the police. A migrant putting himself in police custody is about the same as a soldier asking for a sip of water at enemy headquarters.

  Tomorrow we’ll go to the police station responsible for patrolling this sector for the past three months. And we’ll remain locked into this paradox, easily traveling around the dangerous Arrocera without even a whiff of the fear that migrants breathe daily.

  ON FOOT WITH MIGRANTS

  We get to the station at six in the morning. The police like to make their rounds early, before the sun starts to burn. Inside the station, which is set up in an old ranch house, we’re greeted with a surprise. Three Salvadorans had come knocking the night before, asking if they could rest there. They’d wanted to catch their breath and be alert before getting to their next hurdle: sneaking past the first checkpoint in Huixtla.

  The men are stretching and yawning, having just woken from a four-hour nap.

  Eduardo, we learn, is a twenty-eight-year-old baker who’s fleeing the Mara Salvatruchas. Marlon is a twenty-year-old distributor who loyally sticks with Eduardo, his boss. José, twenty-six, is described by Eduardo and Marlon as their extra pair of hands. The officers who let them stay the night now plead with them not to leave until the sun is high, because, they explain, not even they dare walk La Arrocera in the dark. I get the feeling they are only being so kind because we are present.

  The three Salvadorans join us on our excursion. As we step out of the station we see a one-room cement house with a thatch roof, and a middle-aged man, barefoot and without a shirt, standing on its stoop, holding his daughter’s hand. He waves to us and the officers wave back. It’s a casual, everyday gesture.

  “And them?” I ask the officer next to me. “They’re your friends?”

  “Spies,” he answers dryly. “They work with the bandits. They’re the ones who push the migrants off trail and to the spot where the gangs wait to attack them. Every time we do our rounds, they’re out here, watching us.”

  We walk single file down the rocky path that, though still noticeably ravaged by Hurricane Stan which struck in 2005, serves the migrants as a life-saving guide through this jungle that seems like something out of Vietnam. The lush green of the plants blankets us, the ground is an obstacle course, and the puddles we’re hopping over are like miniature swamps. To our right, only a few paces behind the tangles of vegetation that tower over the side of our path, there’s the stable, called El Hueyate, which migrants often use for a night’s stay. And if you look carefully, you can see, behind the scrub brush, like a secret gateway to a parallel universe, narrow tracks marked off by cairns that lead to hidden ranches and other abandoned stables.

  “It was right here,” one of the officers says, pointing out a cement structure as we’re crossing a small bridge. All these officers speak in a matter-of-fact tone.

  It was here last year that an officer, one of his colleagues, was killed. A bandit broke his skull with a machete. A newly sharpened machete is, for these outlaws, more weapon than tool. They use it to break up soil, sure, but mostly to attack, or to defend themselves. The officers say the bandits always have a machete, their most loyal companion, in hand, as if it were a natural extension of their arms.

  We hear dogs bark, and we look around, but we only catch glimpses of flashing eyes peeking through the cracks of nearby gates and sheds and houses. People want to know who we are and what we’re doing.

  “They’ve got us surrounded,” the officer says, shaking his head, and then slams us with another of his loosely explained accounts of our surroundings. “What I told you about the bones,” he says, “happened here. And over there
, that’s where we found El Chayote’s body.”

  Vultures continuously circle the area, looking for dead cattle and dead people. Bones here aren’t a metaphor for what’s past, but for what’s coming. The bones the officer was referring to were a perfectly intact skeleton they found here a few months ago. And El Chayote was an infamous Arrocera bandit. His body was found right around here as well. We would have been able to see it from where we’re now standing: a big bruise in the middle of his forehead and his face caved in as if he were made of soft clay. El Chayote was found pelted by rocks. While the machete is the most common weapon for small-time bandits, rocks are a migrants’ defense.

  We’re walking among the dead. Life’s value seems reduced, continuously dangled like bait on a fishing line. Killing, dying, raping, or getting raped—the dimensions of these horrors are diminished to points of geography. Here on this rock, they rape. There by that bush, they kill.

  “They separate the women from the group and take them over there to rape them,” an officer points to a cluster of squat banana trees. “And, well, this is also where we head back to camp. This is where our patrol round ends.”

  We’ve barely walked a half hour. I can’t stop shaking my head. What we’ve walked is a fraction of what a migrant walks, and we’ve only reached the beginnings of their journey.

  People call this point La Cuña (the Wedge). It’s a narrow path that meets up with the highway, just north of El Hueyate, to the right of a mango tree where they rape, to the left of a heap of dirt where coyotes from Huixtla lead migrants straight into the jaws of the bandits they secretly work for.

  As the officer goes on describing the brutal facts of the land, the three Salvadorans watch silently, furrowing their brows. It seems they’re wondering what they should do next. “We’re looking for this one guy,” the officer says. “We think he’s hiding out here. They call him La Rana (the Frog). He’s got a big scar on his face. We know he works around here, but we just can’t find him, you know? I know they give him a warning every time we’re around here, before we can even smell him. They watch us so closely.”