The Train of Death
Migrants riding freights north from Central America risk their lives to reach the U.S.
Los Angeles Times reporter Sonia Nazario exemplifies the adage about “learning by doing.” In reporting a series that eventually won her paper two Pulitzer Prizes, Nazario spent five years hopping freight trains through Mexico, re-tracing the dangerous route from Honduras to the United States taken by a teenager named Enrique, who endured unimaginable hardship to reach his mother in the United States.
Thousands of parents and children make similar journeys each year, lacking the money to make it north from Central America except by clinging to the tops and sides of trains. Dodging Mexican immigration authorities, they must jump on and off the moving cars, which they call, generically, El Tren de la Muerte, the Train of Death.
Nazario's book based on the series, Enrique’s Journey, centers around an intimate portrait of Enrique and his mother, Lourdes, but it's also a larger story of broken families, poverty, and immigration, and the world of undocumented workers.
Nazario has been writing about social issues for more than two decades. In addition to the numerous awards she received for this series, she was a 1998 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug addicted parents, and a 1994 George Polk Award recipient for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California. Prior to working at the Los Angeles Times, she was a reporter at Wall Street Journal bureaus in New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. She recently spoke to Mother Jones by phone from her home in Los Angeles.
Mother Jones: What motivated you to write about the journeys of Central American migrants to the U.S.?
Sonia Nazario: In the late 1990s, one morning my housecleaner, who like me is Hispanic, told me about the four children she had left behind in Guatemala; how she hadn’t seen them in 12 years; how the youngest girl was one year old when she left. She left because her husband had left, and she simply couldn’t feed them. They would ask for food, and she couldn’t give it to them.
I was struck by the choice that women like my housecleaner make every day to walk away from their children and not see them for years on end in order to help them. I learned how often their children would become desperate to see them and would set off on their own to come find them in the United States. Some of them were as young as seven years old, coming up through Mexico the only way they could with no money, which was clinging to the tops and sides of freight trains. I thought it was an amazing story. I wanted to show how the face of immigration to the United States is changing. Most people think of illegal immigration as overwhelmingly male, and that has changed.
MJ: How did you meet Enrique and why did you think he was the best main character for the story?
SN: I knew that among the thousands of children who come into the U.S. alone without a parent each year that the average age of a child who’s caught is 15, and typically they’re boys. That’s what I was looking for. I knew that I couldn’t start in Central America and follow a child all the way up to Mexico because it would be too difficult and dangerous to stick with one kid. It would probably be impossible because they run from all these different dangers. I wanted to find a 15-year-old boy who had made it as far as the Mexico-U.S. border, but was still on the Mexican side, spend time with them and hope they reach their destination, debrief them on everything they had been through trying to make it through Mexico, and then go back and retrace their journey and try to flesh out the story in that way. So I starting calling all these churches and shelters on the Mexican side of the U.S. border, along these 2,000 miles, saying this is what I’m looking for, if you have somebody like that today. A nun at a church in Nuevo Laredo, which is across the border from Laredo, Texas, said, “Let me put this boy on the line,” and I spoke with Enrique. His story seemed typical, in terms of the harrowing things that I heard from so many children who had come up on the freight trains from Mexico. And he agreed to do it. He was very honest and forthright.
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My wife and I are missionaries in Sonora Mexico. We love and respect the Mexican people and their culture. I read your book and founf it facinating and could relate to many parts of it. If you ever consider doing an investigation on the prison system in Mexico we would be glad to provide you with information. I visit the men and my wife visits the women in the Puerto Penasco prison. There are 400 men and 12 women. The prison was not built to hold women but they are there anyway. One of the female prisoners was raped by two guards while in the prison infirmary. I'm sure you have heard many stories of horible things and our stories are just one of many. We are just a small group of people trying to do the best we can without any political ties or asistance and figure it does not hurt to ask! We have a web site www.manosdedios.org. Please consider looking at it when you have a chance. We will pray theat you will be able to continue to bring to light the conditions of the opressed.
Vaya con Dios, Dennis
HERE IS ABOUT THE JOURNEY OF A NORTH AMERICAN MIGRANT TO THE U.S. OR THE TRAIN OF HELL
Important note: Please undertand when I am saying
that Immigration and the VA or the MMH hospitals
killed my husband is the fact Immigration did not care
to apply their Immigration law concerning a married
couple and the VA hospital made worse his liver
condition and that the Massena Memorial Hospital
finally let him die. The result of all this mess is
his death. Thank you.
--- In apfn-1@yahoogroups.com
Marie Buchanan
wrote:
INTRODUCTION:
U.S. Immigration did not respect their own Immigration
rules because they were not supposed to separate us at
the borders because we were a married couple.
http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-130.pdf
Our couple was DESECRATED by Homeland INsecurity on
Nov. 3rd, 2004 and I wish this to be rectified.
They separated us for 19 months and as soon as I was
reunited with Ash, I was about to live the definitive
separation (so all we had on 24 1/2 months is 5 1/2
months) but thank God we will be reunited in Heaven
and no border guard to separate us again.
MESSAGE:
About The 14th amendment of the Constitution -
or the Journey of a North American Migrant to the U.S.
Short and sweet lesson. (and it's not because I'm
ignorant)
What is Patriotism?
It is to follow the ideals of the U.S. Constitution.
That law should be equal protection for everybody.
All men, women and children obey the law.
Why then the Immigration and border agents are not
following the Constitution?
The law must be obeyed for everybody including the
U.S. President, right?
Border and Immigration border guards are not
respecting it is what I can testify.
Is Homeland Security above the 14th Amendment or what?
Our couple was DESECRATED (the opposite of consecrated)
by Homeland
INsecurity on Nov. 3rd, 2004 and I wish this to be
rectified. My husband is dead and he was heartbroken
for 19 months and needed his wife to take care of him
because he was pretty sick. All we got on 24 1/2
(after our marriage) is 5 1/2 months. Is this the America dream? Change this for the American nightmare.
What we lived since Nov. 3rd, 2004 is AMERIKA. (k
for Nazism)
I am SICK of this life of being treated less than a
dog. And my husband? What they did to him?
They did NOT RESPECT HIM AS A U.S. CITIZEN NOR HIS
RIGHTS. I AM NOT
TAKING IT AND I WILL FIGHT UNTIL I'LL GET WHAT IS
APPROPRIATE FOR MY HUSBAND OR UNTIL I'D DIE.
http://360.yahoo.com/mariemartine1966
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/referendumcanada/
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/04/357154.shtml
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/how_to_face_this_new_world_order/
Sounds like the 14th amendment
of the Constitution does not exist for Immigrants - even the legal ones - nor the Geneva Convention.
We dealed with the SS type of border and Immigration
agents. They were not supposed to separated us at the
borders since we were HUSBAND AND WIFE.
They did NOT FOLLOW THIS LAW:
http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-130.pdf
I lived harassment at the borders on:
Nov. 3rd, 2004, December 2004 and December 2006.
The border agent wanted
to drop me in Canada like a garbage bag ONE DAY BEFORE
MY HUSBAND'S BURIAL ON DEC. 11TH, 2006. I truly felt
the way the border guard at the POE was phrasing his
words he almost dropped me in Canada so I cried and
yelled in the car and I said to Ashley's family: "THEY
WON'T EVEN LET ME BURY MY HUSBAND"!
TALK ABOUT DESECRATION !
Because the way he
was talking to me it is like I never had a husband,
like Ashley (Scottish male first name) never existed in my life but of course
without being that direct so but it is what his words
meant. (I wanted to show to Ashley's family where we
were FINALLY reunited, at ######) One of the persons
being with me in the car said: "This is harassment".
I am sick of it.
Marie M. Buchanan, M.Ps.
Researcher, Webmaster, Pastor-Assistant, Translator,
Writer
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/how_to_face_this_new_world_order/
http://360.yahoo.com/marielovesashley
==================================
Conclusion:
Armerica should care about an upright American Citizen, Reverend Ashley McDonald Buchanan, D.D., member of the prestigious Who's Who and permanent teacher, genius in electronics and computer science, poet and photograph who's rights were totally denied at the borders which end of life was a living hell because he did not see his cherished wife for 19 precious months. I don't want Ash to have pass through all this mess from the pit of hell (desecration of a couple) with the lawbreakers to go away with it like nothing happened. I think at this point the legal educated Immigrants from Canada and Mexico have no rights in the U.S. And that is why nobody seems to care about what happened to Ash & me. If I don't have rights in America, then why I am involved for America like a useful idiot since I have no rights to be heard as an upright citizen of this world?
Available for a good interview anytime at:
Mariemartine1966@yahoo.com
If illegal aliens would stay in their own countries, the "trains of death" would not be a problem. The pathetic conditions in the countries south of the U.S. border are the fault of the governments and citizens of those countries. Wake up!
Stephen Vanya, you are a complete moronic redneck, white trash, piece of [deleted]. You obviously don't know anything about the world so keep your stupid mouth shut. Idiot.
mather jones was a courageus woman
Stephen Vanya, you are a
Stephen Vanya, you are a complete moronic redneck, white trash, piece of [deleted]. You obviously don't know anything about the world so keep your stupid mouth shut. Idiot.
