Central American migrants undeterred, despite Mexico's effort

TAPACHULA, Mexico — Four Salvadoran men in jeans and T-shirts trudged along the railroad tracks under a hot sun, their steps carrying them steadily toward a fuzzy but seductive dream.

They had been in Mexico for only a few hours and already federal police officers had forced them to strip and had taken almost all their cash, they said. They had 1,500 miles to go to reach the U.S. border, with no food or water and $9 each.

They intended to walk along the Chiapas coast for the first 250 miles through a dozen towns where migrants are regularly robbed or raped. Then they planned to clamber aboard a freight train with hundreds of other immigrants for the trip north, a dangerous journey that has left hundreds before them maimed after they fell under the wheels.

"It's dangerous, yes, one risks one's life," said Noe Hernandez. "One risks it if you have a family member in the States to help you. It's not just for fun we go through Mexico."

Mexico's effort

Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, announced measures last month to slow the flow across Mexico's southern border and reduce crime in this lush but impoverished region. He stepped up the presence of soldiers and federal police here, unveiled a guest-worker program and promised joint state and federal operations to catch illegal immigrants.

But much remains to be done to stop or deter the migrants, and for now the measures have had little effect.

Every three days, 300 to 500 Central Americans swarm the freight train in Arriaga, strapping themselves with ropes or belts to the tops of cars or riding between the wagons, they say.

The migrants still wade across the Suchiate River between Guatemala and Mexico with little hindrance. Corruption is rampant. Mexican soldiers and police extort money from the migrants but seldom turn them around, aid workers and migrants said.

Federal authorities do catch and deport illegal immigrants from Central America on their trek north -- about 170,000 last year, according to a spokeswoman for the National Migration Institute.

On Jan. 19, as part of Calderón's new get-tough policy, about 400 federal police officers stopped the freight train just after it left Arriaga and arrested more than 100 immigrants who had climbed aboard.

Biggest deterrent

Still, aid workers say that most get through. The biggest deterrent, migrants say, is not federal authorities but armed thugs who waylay them along the railroad tracks or on paths through the countryside used to avoid the immigration posts along the main highway.

This month, Misael Mejia, 27, from Comayagua, Honduras, was awaiting the train in Arriaga with nine other young men from his town. They had walked for 11 days after wading across the Suchiate to get to the railhead in Arriaga.

None had a dime after being ambushed a week before by three men in ski masks in daylight near Huehuetan. Two of the men carried machetes, the third a machine gun.

"They told us to lay down and take off our clothes," Mejia said. "I lost my watch, about 500 Honduran lempiras, and 40 Mexican pesos," about $31.

Mejia said he would press on. He has a brother in Arizona. He left behind a $200-a-month job as a driver, along with his wife. His brother makes $700 a week as a carpenter.

"I felt hopeless in Honduras," he said. "Because I could never afford a house, not even a car. There is nothing I could have."

Down the street from the tracks, at the Hearth of Mercy shelter, where illegal immigrants can get a free hot meal and medicine, Juan Antonio Cruz, 16, told how he had left El Salvador after the Mara Salvatrucha street gang had threatened to kill him.

It was his second attempt to reach Arizona, he said. The first time he had endured eight freezing nights and sweltering days aboard the train by strapping his belt to bar atop a tanker car. The border patrol caught him as he crossed into Nogales, Ariz., and sent him back home to Usulutan, where the gang members threatened him again.

"When I think about the train, I feel fear and panic, for the thieves who attack you, and also for falling off," he said.

Dream ends

For some, that is how the dream ends, with a fall under the train's heavy, whirring wheels.

At the Shelter of Jesus the Good Pastor in Tapachula, Donar Antonio Ramirez Espinas rubbed the bandaged stumps of his legs, sheared off above the knee, as he recalled the night of March 26, 2004, when he dozed off while riding between cars, lost his grip and fell onto the tracks.

"I fell face down, and at first I didn't think anything had happened," he said. "When I turned over, I saw, I realized, that my feet didn't really exist."

Back in Honduras, he had been working menial jobs in a parking lot and at a medical warehouse, making about $120 a month. Then he and a few buddies decided to try their luck in the United States.

"You make the decision to look for a better life, not to continue with the life your father led, and for this you risk your life, without knowing that you could end up like this," he said. "An amputee."

After the accident, he spent two years at the shelter in Tapachula, wrestling with depression and thoughts of suicide. When those black days passed, he returned home, only to find his parents, his former wife and even his three children had trouble accepting his disability. "My 9-year-old said, 'Papa, why did you come back like this?' " he remembered. "I didn't dare answer him."

Ramirez has returned to the shelter here, where he hopes to learn a trade -- fashioning prosthetic legs and arms for other victims of the train. Others at the shelter told similar stories. Some doubted they would be able to make a living back home, where even getting a wheelchair is hard.