{"id":7075,"date":"2020-03-18T10:50:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T14:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7075"},"modified":"2020-03-18T10:50:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T14:50:21","slug":"migrants-at-us-mexico-border-must-get-past-cartels-before-their-long-journey-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7075","title":{"rendered":"Migrants at US-Mexico Border Must Get Past Cartels Before Their Long Journey Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"
Undocumented migrants climb on a train known as \u2018La Bestia\u2019 in Las Patronas town, Veracruz state, Mexico, Aug. 9, 2018, to travel through Mexico and reach the U.S. Ronaldo Schemidt\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every train car in \u201cLa Bestia<\/a>\u201d \u2013 The Beast \u2013 is a world unto itself, with all the good and evil that entails. Ariel saw the worst of this world when he witnessed, helplessly, as eight people raped one of his fellow train passengers, a young girl, in July 2019.<\/p>\n

Ariel \u2013 not his real name \u2013 had nearly arrived at Altar, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, after a long journey. La Bestia is the freight train migrants use to get from southern Mexico to the U.S. border when they can\u2019t afford a bus ticket or a smuggler and they want to avoid the immigration checkpoints<\/a> of \u201cla migra.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a violent way to travel. According a study published last year, one out of every four migrants who traveled across Mexico between 2009 and 2015 suffered physical violence<\/a>. The violence ranges from street assaults, beatings with wooden boards by cartel enforcers \u2013 a punishment known as a \u201ctableado\u201d \u2013 to extortion at gunpoint. Others disappear in the desert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ariel was anxious and distressed arriving to the migrant shelter in Altar where I met him last summer. He said he felt guilty for not helping the girl who was raped, but he was afraid of being thrown off the train or even murdered by her attackers. A fall from the train can mean death too, or injury and mutilation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Border business<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent weeks talking to migrants like Ariel who had reached this point of their journey during my sociological field research<\/a> in two northern Mexican towns in Sonora state: Altar, a village of about 8,000; and nearby Caborca, a sizable city of about 100,000. Many, but not all, of them were Central American.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
A young man who was thrown from the Bestia train after he defended his pregnant wife from harassment. Laura Carrazco, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n

The United States may be in sight from these border towns, but the trip is far from over. That\u2019s because passage from Sonora to the border is entirely controlled by organized crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Regional buses don\u2019t stop in Altar there anymore<\/a>, and local taxi drivers usually won\u2019t make the 60-mile trip to the Arizona border<\/a> because local gangs have threatened them, even burned their vehicles.<\/p>\n

So once a migrant arrives in Altar, he\u2019s not leaving without paying a fee \u2013 usually somewhere between US$4,000 and $8,000. That\u2019s a stratospheric sum for migrants, who might earn $150 to $300 a month<\/a> back home.<\/p>\n

Those who cannot pay the price may be able to earn their passage by \u201ctaking a backpack\u201d \u2013 transporting drugs.<\/p>\n

Backpacking is not free, I was told: Migrants may pay gangs up to $100 for the right to smuggle a backpack of contraband. And one backpacking trip as a \u201cdonkey\u201d may not suffice. To earn the right to stay in the U.S., these migrants reported, they may have to make several trips.<\/p>\n

Young migrants with no money, no plan and no U.S. connections to help them across the border are usually used by organized crime as \u201cdots\u201d \u2013 lookouts. The \u201cdots,\u201d kids as young as 12 to 17 years, act as the eyes and ears of organized crime in Altar. They are stationed at the local bus stop to report all departures and arrivals.<\/p>\n

In the maps that migrants make in workshops organized by the psychologist of the Community Center for Attention to Migrants and the Needy<\/a>, Altar appears both as the end of a long road and as the beginning of a new one to the United States.<\/p>\n

Violent journey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Migrants who are also women face different horrors.<\/p>\n

Practically all of the women and children I met at Mexico\u2019s northern border arrived in one of the caravans<\/a> that began forming in 2018 to help migrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala travel more safely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But some women do take the dreaded La Bestia train. The journey, already dangerous, is much riskier for them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sexual assault is the almost inevitable fate of women on La Bestia. Many women take contraceptives, assuming that they will be raped, according to psychologists at the Altar Community Center. Others say they avoided cleaning themselves when they get their periods on the train, hoping the smell of menstrual blood would make them repugnant to attackers.<\/p>\n

I spotted a girl I\u2019ll call Karina on the edge of the train tracks in Caborca. She was traveling with a man. When I asked if he was her boyfriend, she answered, \u201cHe is my train boyfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of the young girls who rode La Bestia told us they met guys on the trip who\u2019ve became their \u201cboyfriends.\u201d This, I realized, is a form of self-protection: At least this way they have sex with only one person.<\/p>\n

Women traveling with children nearly all arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in migrant caravans. They are generally concentrated in the bigger border cities like Nogales, Tijuana and Matamoros.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where they must wait for their asylum applications to be processed<\/a> in the United States due to a Trump administration policy called \u201cRemain in Mexico<\/a>,\u201d launched with the agreement of the Mexican government in January 2019.<\/p>\n

In Nogales, in Sonora state, a few blocks from the border, I met a migrant I\u2019ll call Mar\u00eda, who comes from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. She\u2019s been waiting for three months with her two children, ages three and five, she says. Maria is number 2088 on \u201cthe list,\u201d a queue of thousands of asylum-seekers self-managed by the migrants themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Almost none will be welcomed back into the United States<\/a>. On average, 85% of Central American and Mexican asylum applications were rejected last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Migrants make profits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Migrants may be poor, but they are good business in northern Mexico.<\/p>\n

Migrants pay to rent rooms from families who\u2019ve turned their home into a \u201cguest house.\u201d Migrants patronize small local shops that sell water canisters and camouflage suits.<\/p>\n

Some villagers even charge migrants between 200 and 600 Mexican pesos \u2013 about $10 to $30 \u2013 to access money sent by their relatives via Western Union and other money transfer services. As undocumented migrants, they lack ID to withdraw funds.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The feet of a 54-year-old Mexican migrant after eight days of trying to cross the desert, in Altar, Mexico, August 2019.<\/span>
\nPaola D\u00edaz<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the decade since the North American Free Trade Agreement<\/a> \u2013 now known as USMCA \u2013 came into effect, export agriculture has developed in Sonora. Formerly, these jobs were filled by day laborers<\/a> from southern Mexico, who would come north for the harvest seasons to pick the grapes, nuts, potatoes, cucumbers and asparagus sold in U.S. supermarkets.<\/p>\n

Now, vans cruise migrant shelters, guest houses and the train tracks of La Bestia migrants looking for workers to take out to the ranches of the Mexican countryside.<\/p>\n

The daily wage for these gigs sounds appealing: Temporary farm workers are supposed to be about 200 Mexican pesos \u2013 about $10 \u2013 to work from Monday to Saturday, 6 a.m. to 1 or 2 p.m.<\/p>\n

But agricultural workers are charged to cash their paycheck, and the cost of all food consumed during working hours is deducted from their pay. Many complain that their employers never paid them or paid them much less than agreed.<\/p>\n

For one 17-year-old Honduran I met on the train tracks in Caborca, who was a farmer back home, it was worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coffee you drink at Starbucks is what I used to grow for less than $7 a day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rehumanization<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even in the midst of such dehumanizing circumstances, I saw hope in some migrants\u2019 small daily practices.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Women exchange pedicures at the improvised refugee camps in Matamoros, along the US-Mexico border. Laura Carrazco, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Central American woman works in a \u201cbeauty center\u201d she set between two chairs despite the overcrowding and filth of the refugee camp in Matamoros, giving pedicures to earn a living while waiting for her number to come up on \u201cla lista.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other women and men, in retelling their migration experiences during workshops at a shelter in Altar, recognized their own capacity to survive, to resist, to keep on living.<\/p>\n

This article was written with the collaboration of Laura Carrazco, a psychologist at the Community Center for Migrant Assistance in Altar, Sonora.<\/em>\"The<\/p>\n

Paola D\u00edaz<\/a>, Investigadora en la Escuela de Altos Estudios en Ciencias Sociales CEMS- EHESS- Francia y en COES- Chile (Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies), Diego Portales University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every train car in \u201cLa Bestia\u201d \u2013 The Beast \u2013 is a world unto itself, with all the good and evil that entails. Ariel saw the worst of this world when he witnessed, helplessly, as eight people raped one of his fellow train passengers, a young girl, in July 2019. Ariel \u2013 not his real…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/312153\/original\/file-20200127-81357-djbikc.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Migrants at US-Mexico Border Must Get Past Cartels Before Their Long Journey Ends","footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-borders-commerce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7077,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7075\/revisions\/7077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}