The dream and the nightmare of the Central American migrants

During his tour of Mexico, several of the migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are extorted, abducted, murdered and subjected to all kinds of abuses by authorities, narcos and mafias. If despite the enormous risk they are still trying to reach the US How is the place from which they flee?

The Central American isthmus, that bridge that unites Colombia and Mexico in the space between the two tropics, has become the largest human corridor on the planet since Richard Nixon criminalized cocaine. According to the UN, 16 of the 25 most dangerous countries talk through that narrow piece of land. And three of them - El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala - in the area known as the "Triangle of Death", concentrate the highest rate of homicides.

The American writer Francisco Goldman, known for his essays on political assassinations in Central America, went so far as to say that Dracula is the best book written about Guatemala. In 2015, a report by Amnesty International (AI) showed that the homicide rate in the country of Miguel Angel Asturias was 35 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in Honduras the number rose to 93.

Between 2004 and 2009, El Salvador was the most violent territory on the planet. The small country of 20 thousand square kilometers had a rate of 60 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants.

The worst came last year, when alarms soared in Roque Dalton's homeland: 108 homicides per 100,000 people, according to AI, who concluded that a person in El Salvador is 25 times more likely to be killed than if he is in USA In Chile - always with AI data - the number of murders per 100,000 inhabitants is three.

Jon Lee Anderson, acclaimed American chronicler and author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, wrote that Central American migration to the United States. Is "the most terrible of wars".

If asked to Carlos Dada - director of the newspaper El Faro de El Salvador - by a hyperonym to explain the situation of Central Americans migrating to the United States, he, from the prologue of Migrants that do not matter, Salvadoran journalist Oscar Martínez, Responds: "The most vulnerable nomads in the history of humanity".

The high levels of violence in Guatemala and especially in Honduras and El Salvador force thousands of people to escape, who no longer only mobilize to reach "the American dream", but flee from the nightmare of their own neighborhoods and cities . A mixture of need and insecurity that could aggravate the immigration crisis after the triumph of Donald Trump and what, for them, are disturbing announcements: he wants to deport undocumented citizens with judicial records, which are estimated to be around 3 million.

Escape

There are those who migrate because in Central America half of the population lives below the poverty line. There are those who migrate to reunite with relatives. And there are those who, because of fear, escape. In Nicaragua, for example, 39% are poor.

In half a decade, the number of asylum applications in the so-called "Triangle of Death" increased by 597%, from 8,052 to 56,087.

That's not all. To complicate the Central American drama, when they cross Mexico - with the United States as their final destination - they are extorted, abducted, murdered and subjected to all kinds of abuses by authorities, drug traffickers and mafias such as Los Zetas, a group created in 1999 by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (imprisoned since 2003 in the US) with some elite military - some even passed through the School of the Americas - deserted to form that side that is now considered a cartel that since 2007 added to its activities kidnapping Of undocumented immigrants.

The difficulties increase even more if the transport par excellence of the Central American without papers is like stowaway, above a train, that is called "The Beast", where the wagons of a ton of weight and the steel wheels have chopped legs, arms And Heads.

Father Alejandro Solalinde, creator of the migrant shelter "Brothers on the Road" - which receives about 20,000 people a year in the Mexican city of Ixtepec, explains it differently: "If despite all these dangers they keep coming, How will the place from which they flee! "

The place from which they flee

"North Central America - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - is a corner of the world where the generation I belong to has never known peace," says Oscar Martínez.

"We have been the repository of different world stupidities," Martinez says. Here was the last intention to maintain two predominant ideas in the world and experienced with all of us, for example, when the United States thought that deporting their problems could eliminate them.

Martínez, recognized in the circuit of chroniclers for his work on migration and gangs, raises an idea and warns: "We are a region with a social gap such that you think it is an irrefutable failure. The-who-have-many, who are the ones who govern the country with historical surnames, do not understand a fuck what happens in the communities that have little. They do not understand what a gang is, nor are they interested in doing so. "

Vicious circle

In the late 1970s, before there were gangs such as Mara Salvatruchas (MS13) and Barrio 18 (M18), Central America had migrants and the United States a rigid social order system.

"The United States and its policy of social segregation led many people to have self-protection when they felt persecuted by a state and not protected by a state. So, these groups, to defend themselves in that violent ecosystem, learned that doing so implied occupying territorial tactics, "explains Martínez.

According to the author of The Migrants who do not matter, El Salvador is "a very violent society, very unequal, and above all we are a society that has little future. So when you live in the middle of a pit full of shit and you think that hardly a next day they are going to clean, because that generates that many people try to climb that grave and to leave ".

The Beast's Bite

Most of the Central American migrants are mobilized on foot, in the middle of the same territory that inhabited the Mayan civilization, because they do not have the resources to bribe the authorities in the checkpoints and to get way to the wall with the United States. In addition, as they flee from the authorities, they are not only attacked by common thieves and corrupt police, but it is complicated to give with official data.

Tapachula and Tenosique are the preferred border points to cross to Mexico. There, the Central American migrants travel large sections on foot or in rickety buses on routes with more curves than a gut. When Hurricane Stan struck the Mexican south in 2005, it not only destroyed the railroad tracks, but also forced migrants to enter even more northern villages, such as Arriaga, where they can make direct contact with the railroad tracks.

There they wait for the "Beast" to leave and they climb and travel hung to shorten distance with the American border. This is how they end up at the next station, waiting for the next train to come out to repeat the operation.

According to Martínez, the migrants board on average eight trains to cover about five thousand kilometers in about a month.

On the way, the grills on the back of the wagons look like a refugee camp, but also a Russian roulette wheel: the journey can last for weeks and falling asleep can mean falling off the train, losing a limb by mutilation or death. That is why in Mexico there are shelters specialized in attending people mutilated by the train. The bite of "The Beast" is called.

In 2012, Mexico reported that about 400,000 Central American undocumented migrants crossed their territory to reach the United States. But there are undocumented people who remain invisible to the authorities and an undetermined number of dead without identity.

"The migrant never sells it as a raped woman or a man who slips working in the United States to get paid less than the hourly minimum," Martinez says. The ideological construction of the migrant translates into a good music team, a Los Angeles Lakers jersey, or a hero who will save the family economy. "

To get an idea, the journalist says that the predominant profile of the Central American migrant is "men between 15 and 40 years old, but more and more women, minors and entire families appear."

There are currently fences and walls in 1,080 of the 3,185 kilometers of border between Mexico and the United States. Trump's plan is to extend the wall in 2,066 kilometers at a cost of $ 20 billion.During his campaign, he said he would force Mexico to pay for the construction of the wall by imposing new taxes on its products and avoiding the sending of remittances to force the government of that country to pay.

What happens to the Central Americans of the "Triangle of Death"? According to EFE, 20% of Honduras' GDP comes from remittances from migrants. In the case of El Salvador, it represents 16.4% and Guatemala 10%.

Not only do States benefit from remittances. In 2009, the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico published a report entitled "Immigrant kidnappings in Mexico", where they interviewed migrants in transit who had left a kidnapping condition for six months. That document found that Los Zetas had raised $ 25 million.