6Q

<pagelabeltag>

train jumping A DESPERATE JOURNEY

THE PALM BEACH POST

SUNDAY, NOV. 12, 2006

t was here in Tenosique, along this very stretch of tracks, that a few months earlier a plump and cheerful shoemaker named Raul Ordonez reached for the ladder of a swiftly moving oil tanker. Ordonez is 42, the father of three and part of a growing exodus of Central Americans who, in rapidly increasing numbers, have joined Mexicans in their quest to reach the United States. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people from this region battered by years of civil war and natural disasters slip across the Guatemala border into Mexico. And, of those, the poorest and most desperate men like Raul Ordonez resort to riding on the tops of the long cargo trains they call the beast. Where are they going? La tierra prometida. The promised land. The United States and jobs. Even word of the big, new fence dreamed up by the U.S. Congress and approved recently by President Bush does not stop the escalating flow. The trains are for the poorest of the poor, says Carlos Miranda, a migration expert in the southern state of Chiapas. If they thought they had any other choice, they would take it. Nobody knows precisely how many migrants ride the trains, but on certain days, in the most popular jumping towns Arriaga, along the southern Pacific Coast, and Tenosique, a modest farming village south of the Yucatan you will find hundreds, even thousands, of people waiting by the tracks. If they are lucky, they will hang on long enough to make it to Mexico City, where they switch lines in the massive train yards, and then in dwindling numbers head out again, pushing north to the U.S.

one destination: la tierra prometida

border, or as close as they can get. The risks are enormous: Migrants navigate a spidery network of aging rails the trains themselves sometimes jump the tracks through jungles and deserts and mountains, searing heat and icy rain. They face attacks by the bandits and gun-toting gangs that patrol the trains and must hop off and on at immigration checkpoints, risking limb and life each time. The trip can take weeks, or months, if travelers allow themselves stopovers to earn a few pesos for food. Why do they do it? Risk it all? Leave behind families and birthplaces, hometowns and churches not to mention any guarantee of personal safety to take a chance on the trains? And not just on a freight train. On top of a freight train. Or hanging on to the side of a freight train. The journey can be nearly impossible to comprehend. But spend some time here in southern Mexico visit the hospitals, the shelters, the train towns with their honey-colored sunsets and telltale pants legs decaying under the tracks and you begin to get the picture: Forty million people live in Central America, and nearly half are poor. This is why they come. In Honduras, 46 percent live in extreme poverty. In Guatemala, 130,000 lost their homes last year in Hurricane Stan. El Salvador is crippled by drought, and in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, the majority of the people have little or no work. This is why they come. Mexico tries to catch them detaining 240,000 last year. But this southern border is porous, and, says Mexicos immigration commissioner, Hipolito Trevino, we cannot stop them all. How many lose arms or legs along the way? Impossible to know not everyone is counted. Officially, 96 last year. Those are the numbers, but numbers do not have a heartbeat. Raul Ordonez does. He is an amiable soul. Soft-spoken but determined. In his tiny kitchen back at home, on the poor side of the river in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, he keeps an old turquoise sewing machine by the stove. It was once the machine of his dreams; he purchased it from a fellow who was traveling north (to the States, of course) so he could start up his shoemaking business. He had already learned to make both the uppers and soles, so he was optimistic until a few years ago, when cheap, imported shoes flooded the market, and, suddenly, nobody was interested in a poor cobblers product. Ordonez talked to his wife, Norma. She said, I know what you have to do, and I understand. He talked with his 17-year-old son, Emerson, who said, Well, then, I am going with you. And so it is here in Tenosique where, until the train-migrants came, all was quiet that the shoemaker stood by the tracks that cut through the glittery sugar-cane fields on a warm April day and reached for the ladder. And jumped. His hands were sweating. The tanker was the ninth car from the end. He felt himself slipping. There were eight cars left. Sounding like thunder, each one rolled over his legs. The journey continues >

Grupo Beta officer Hermenegildo Lopez takes a rough count of people crossing the border, asking migrants their names, ages and hometowns.

An emergency call led Abel Estrada of Grupo Beta out to the tracks, where he peers over a train bridge to look for an injured migrant. The Grupo Beta stations dotted throughout Mexico help hundreds of thousands every year.

Thirsty Central Americans trekking 35 miles from the Guatemala border (above) are grateful for the life-saving assistance Grupo Beta offers.

GRUPO BETA

For migrants, the only source of help on the long road north are the Grupo Beta officers who hand out water and safety tips and rescue injured travelers, like the train jumpers.
4