2005-03-03
Victims of the "Beast"
Tapachula, Mexico: For the adolescents, the freight train that leaves Tapachula may be the shortest route to the United States, but it's also the most dangerous. At midnight, the Chiapas Mayab company's railway train that transports sugar, oil, or cement to the center of Mexico and further on to the American border rattles through. Officially, the train takes no passengers, but its departure is watched, desired, dreamed of every night by hundreds of illegals.
Crouched in the undergrowth, they jump towards the train as it passes by, hanging on to the ladders and hauling themselves up onto the platforms. For some, this train is "the beast," a maleficent animal that devours migrants along its path. Wilbert, a seventeen-year-old Salvadorean, prefers to call it "the Devil."
Stretched out on a bed in the "Jesus the Good Pastor" refuge, a Tapachula institution that takes care of amputees, he shows what "the Devil" has done to him: his two legs were cut off, one above the knee, the other below, and have given way to two stumps covered in bandages. "I had succeeded in getting on, but after a few hours, the train was stopped by the police," he relates. "I jumped off, I hid with a group of migrants and we walked to the village of Acapetahua. They didn't find me. The next day, at three o'clock in the morning, another train passed by that village. One of our companions unfortunately came out of hiding too soon and the engineer saw us ... he accelerated. Twice I tried to catch a car without success. The third time, I got hold of a ladder, but I didn't know where to put my feet. I let go ... and I landed on the rails."
Every night, these accidents bring their share of truncated bodies and crushed corpses to the region's hospitals. A transfusion of five bags of blood was necessary to save Wilbert, who will have to spend almost a year convalescing before he can envisage a return to his country. Like all the other illegals, he knew "the beast's" traps, but that did not dissuade him.
"For those who can stand the trip, but can't afford a coyote - which is the case for many adolescents - the train is the only way to get north," explains Father Flor Maria, an official at the Migrants' House of Tapachula. For taking the train is one thing, you still have to stay on it: "Don't imagine us comfortably stretched out in a box car," jokes 16-year-old Marcos, condemned to a wheelchair after the loss of his left leg. "You have to stay perched on top of tank cars for days, in the cold, in such noise that you have to scream to make yourself heard. You can neither eat nor drink once your provisions are exhausted; you can't sleep for fear of falling."
A vigilance all the more vital since the train the last few years is regularly held up by the Maras, gangs of extremely violent youths from Salvador and Honduras, where they have been declared outlaws. "They come aboard in groups of twenty and thirty and go from wagon to wagon to ransom the passengers," Marcos continues. "They know that we're carrying money to pay for the trip, so they don't dither: they haul you out, they strip you and swing you without hesitation onto the rails."
