Stories from Mexico’s Casa de Migrantes: Journey to the US border
The urban landscape of Tijuana, Mexico ends abruptly at the US-Mexico on April 3, 2008 in the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area southeast of Chula Vista, California.
SALTILLO, Mexico — La Casa de Migrantes is the last safe house before the Mexico-US border for thousands of migrants heading north toward the United States. Flanked by the glorious Zapalinamé Mountains, which are part of the Sierra Madres, the house was founded by Father Pedro Pantoja and two nuns more than a decade ago, offering legal and psychological help and campaigning for migrant rights.
On average, 600 new migrants arrive each month, seeking food, security and shelter after a painful journey riding a freight train known as "The Beast.'" Here are the accounts of a single traveller and a family of three:
Doris Roque Barillas, 27, is one of 45 people from Cobán, a city in central Guatemala, who each paid a local family of coyotes (human smugglers)$6,000 to get them safely to Houston.
Half of the price owed was paid before they left, the other half upon arrival.
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Doris Roque Barillas sits on her bunk bed in the Casa’s women’s dorm room in Saltillo, Mexico. |
The group was split into smaller assemblages who then travelled only using buses, which are known to be safer than the train because travellers are less vulnerable to maras, or gangsters, but are potentially more expensive because travellers encounter police and immigration officials who demand payment.
Asked why she embarked on this route, Doris said, “seven months ago my life felt perfect. I had my own flat, a fiancé, a job in a bank. But then my stepfather abandoned my mom who has uterine cancer, taking all their money, the car, everything. The bank cut everyone’s wages and I couldn’t afford $600 a day for her chemotherapy. That’s why I am here.”
Doris walked over the mountains at the Guatemala-Mexican border in order to avoid any immigration officials the guide had warned couldn’t be bribed.
“We were stopped by what looked like a police van but the two men said they were Zetas,” she said. “The guide shouted ‘run’ so we all ran, I was so scared. Then some Mexicans wanted money or they said they’d call immigration. I just wanted to go home.
“I studied for five years for my bank job but I know in America it will be worthless. I will clean, work in a factory, hopefully find two or three jobs, anything to pay for my mom’s treatment.”
Darwin Yovani Lopez, 20, left the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa in a hurry with his pregnant girlfriend Yessi Yolani Garcia, 21 and 10-year-old brother Angel.
The couple inadvertently witnessed five Mara Salvatrucha 13 gang members murder a young woman outside of their house, which left Darwin, who worked in a hardware store, with stark choices: “I could enter the gang and run with them which would have involved terrible things I don’t want to do, or they would kill me. So we abandon our house and left in five days; I hear the maras have taken it over.”
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Darwin Lopez with girlfriend Yessi Garcia and brother Angel Lopez. |
The family left Honduras with $250 and arrived in Saltillo penniless after travelling over 1,600 miles on seven buses over the course of a month.
They paid bribes of $15 to $40 to several police and immigrations officers en route and are now waiting for a call from Darwin’s mother, who left Honduras for the United States in 2005, to confirm she’s saved $3,000 to pay the coyote.
Yessi, who is seven months pregnant and uncomfortable, feels like time is running out.
“I can’t run or even walk very fast but we have to get to the border while I am still pregnant so that immigration will help me and Angel stay in the US, we know they have to help us," she said. "I really didn’t want to leave my family, this is my first baby and I miss my mother, but what choice did we have?”
Angel, who has now missed three months of school, scoots around the safe house pestering everyone for sweets and lightening the mood with his clowning around.
“I am scared of being kidnapped by the bad guys and being separated from my brother," he said. "But I want to see my mom, and I think my brother can protect us, he’s like my dad.”
Editor's note: Since this story was reported, Doris, Angel and Yessi have made it over into the United States, while Darwin remains in wait at the border.
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