Evelyn
Mexico, 2008
Berto Cabrera, the Mexican coyote hired to take Evelyn to the north, called his clients to the bakery at eight in the morning. When they were all assembled, they formed a tight circle holding hands and he raised a prayer to the heavens. “We are pilgrims in a church without borders. Grant us, Lord, that we travel with your divine protection against both attackers and guards. We ask this in the name of your son, Jesus of Nazareth.” All the travelers said amen, except for Evelyn, who was still sobbing and unable to speak. “Keep your tears, Pilar Saravia, you’re going to need them later on,” Cabrera advised her. He gave each of them their bus ticket, told them it was forbidden to look at or talk to each other, to make friends with other passengers, or to sit in window seats, because first-timers always did that, and the border guards paid special attention to them. “And you, my girl, are coming with me. From now on, I’m your uncle. Stay silent and with that moron’s face of yours no one is going to be suspicious. Agreed?” Evelyn nodded.
A bakery delivery truck took them on the first stage of their journey, to Tecun Uman, a border town separated from Mexico by the Suchiate River. There was a constant flow of people and goods across the river and the bridge linking the two banks. It was a porous frontier. The Mexican federal police tried half-heartedly to intercept drugs, weapons, and other contraband but ignored the migrants as long as they did not attract attention to themselves. Scared by the busy throng of people, the chaos of bicycles and tricycles, and the roar of motorbikes, Evelyn clung to the coyote’s arm. He had told the others to make their way separately to the Hotel Cervantes. He and Evelyn boarded one of the local pedicabs, a bicycle with a covered trailer for passengers that was the commonest form of transport. They soon met up with the rest of the group in the run-down hotel, where they rested overnight.
The next morning, Berto Cabrera took them down to the river, where there was a line of boats and rafts made from truck tires and a few planks. They were used to transport all kinds of goods, animals, and people. Cabrera hired two of these rafts, each pulled by a young man with a rope tied around his waist and propelled with a long pole by another man standing on it. In less than ten minutes they were in Mexico, where a bus took them to the center of Tapachula.
Cabrera explained to his clients that they were now in the state of Chiapas, the most dangerous area for migrants not protected by a coyote, because they were at the mercy of bandits, robbers, and police who could strip them of all they possessed, from their money to their sneakers. It was impossible to fool them, because they knew every hiding place, and even inspected people’s private orifices. As for police extortion, anyone who could not pay was thrown into a cell, beaten up, and deported. The greatest risk, the coyote told them, was the “godmothers,” volunteers who claimed to be assisting the authorities as an excuse to rape and torture; they were savages. People disappeared in Chiapas. They were not to trust anyone, civilians or officials.
They passed a cemetery, where solitude and the silence of death hung in the air. Then suddenly they heard the hiss of a train getting ready to set off, and the burial ground came to life as dozens of migrants who had been hiding there emerged. Adults and children appeared from among the tombs and bushes and started to run, jumping on stepping stones across the filthy water of a sewage canal, desperate to reach the railcars. Berto explained that the train was known as the Beast, the Iron Worm, or the Train of Death, and that some migrants would have to ride thirty or more such trains to cross Mexico.
“I won’t tell you how many fall off and are crushed by the wheels,” Cabrera warned them. “My cousin Olga Sanchez converted an abandoned tortilla factory into a shelter for people brought to her with arms or legs amputated by the train. She’s saved a lot of lives in her Hostel of Jesus the Good Shepherd. My cousin Olga is a saint. If we had more time we could go and see her. But you are traveling in luxury, you won’t be clinging onto trains, although we can’t catch a bus here. Can you see those guys with dogs checking documents and luggage? They’re from the federal police. The dogs can sniff out drugs and people’s fear.”
The coyote took them to a truck-driver friend, who for a suitable price installed them among crates of electrical goods. At the back of the container was a narrow space where they could sit huddled together, although they could not stretch their legs or stand up. There was no light and little air, and the heat was stifling. The truck threw them around so much they were afraid the crates would fall on top of them. The coyote, who was comfortably seated up in the cabin, had forgotten to tell them they would be kept prisoner in the back for hours, though he did warn them to ration the water and refrain from urinating, as there would be no relief stop. The men and Evelyn took turns to fan Maria Ines with a piece of cardboard and gave her some of their water rations, since she had to breastfeed her baby.
The truck took them safely as far as Fortin de las Flores in Veracruz, where Berto Cabrera placed them in a derelict house on the outskirts of the town. He left them jugs of water, bread, mortadella, soft cheese, and crackers. “Wait here, I’ll be back soon,” he said, and disappeared. Two days later, when they had run out of provisions and there was still no news of him, the group became split, with the men convinced they’d been abandoned, while Maria Ines argued they should give Cabrera more time because he had been so strongly recommended by the evangelicals. Evelyn had no opinion, but none of them asked her anyway. In the few days they had been together, the four men had become protective toward the young mother, her child, and the strange skinny girl who always seemed to be in a world of her own. They knew she was not really deaf and mute because they had heard her say a few stray words, but they respected her silence since it could be a religious promise or her final refuge. The women ate first and were given the best places to sleep in the only room that still had a roof. At night the men took turns to make sure one stayed on guard while the others rested.
AT DUSK ON THE SECOND DAY, three of the men left to buy food, and to scout around to determine how they could continue the journey without Cabrera. The other man stayed to look after the women. Since the day before, Maria Ines’s baby had refused to take any milk, and had cried and coughed so hard he could scarcely breathe. Unable to calm him, his mother grew increasingly anxious. Remembering her grandmother’s remedies in such cases, Evelyn soaked a couple of T-shirts in water and wrapped them around the baby until his fever had abated; Maria Ines meanwhile could do no more than weep and talk of returning to Guatemala. Evelyn walked up and down with the boy in her arms, cradling him with a lullaby she invented with no real words but full of the noises of birds and the wind, which eventually sent him to sleep.
Later that night the others returned with sausages, tortillas, beans and rice, beers for the men, and soft drinks for the women. After this feast they all felt more cheerful and started making plans to continue on to the north. They had discovered there were migrants’ houses along the route, and some churches that offered aid. They could also count on the Beta Groups, Mexican National Institute of Migration employees whose job was not to impose the law but to help travelers with humanitarian advice, and to rescue them and supply first aid in case of accidents. Most curious of all, said the men, was the fact that they did all this for free and did not take bribes. So the group was not completely unprotected. They had their meager funds, which they were prepared to share, and promised to go on together.
The following day they found that the baby had recovered his appetite even though he still had difficulty breathing and decided they would move on as soon as the heat dropped. There was no way they could take the bus, because it was very expensive, but they could ask truck drivers for a lift and as a last resort climb on board the freight trains.
They had already gathered their belongings and what was left of the food into their backpacks when Berto Cabrera appeared in a rented van, wreathed in smiles and loaded down with bags. They greeted him with a string of reproaches, which he countered in a friendly way, explaining he had to change the original plans because there was more surveillance on the buses and because some of his contacts had failed. In other words, they would have to hand out more bribes. He knew people at all the checkpoints along the route, who were paid a certain amount for each migrant. Their boss kept half, and the rest was distributed among his men, and so everyone was a winner in this squalid trade. Berto had to be very careful during the process, for if he came across an uncooperative patrol they would end up deported. There was a much greater risk of this with guards he did not know.
They could have made the journey to the border in a couple of days, but the baby’s fever returned and they had to take him to a hospital in San Luis Potosi. They lined up, took a number, and waited for hours in a room crammed with patients until finally Maria Ines was called. By this time the child was limp. He was attended by a doctor with dark fatigue lines under his eyes and wrinkled clothes, who diagnosed whooping cough and kept the baby there on a course of antibiotics. The coyote was furious, because this was ruining his plans, but the doctor was insistent: the baby had a very serious infection in the respiratory tract. Cabrera had to back down. He assured the disconsolate mother that he would return within a week and that she would not lose the money she had paid in advance. Maria Ines sobbed and accepted, but the rest of the group refused to go on without her. “May God grant the little one doesn’t die, but if he does, Maria Ines is going to need company in her grief,” they unanimously decided.
They spent a night in a run-down hotel, but the coyote complained so much about the extra cost that they ended up sleeping in a churchyard together with dozens of other migrants in the same situation. There they were given a plate of food, and were able to shower and wash clothes, but at eight in the morning they had to leave and were only allowed to return after sundown. The days seemed very long as they wandered around the town, always on the alert, ready to run. The men tried to earn some cash washing cars or on building sites without attracting the attention of the police, who were everywhere. According to Cabrera, the North Americans were providing the Mexican government with millions of dollars to stop the migrants before they reached the border. Every year more than a hundred thousand people were deported from Mexico on the aptly named Bus of Tears.
Since Evelyn could not speak even to beg and might fall into the hands of one of the many pimps who preyed on unaccompanied girls, Cabrera took her with him in his vehicle. Silent and invisible, Evelyn waited in the van while he conducted dubious deals on his cell phone and had a good time in seedy dives with women for hire. He would come staggering back glassy-eyed at dawn, find her curled up on the seat, and realize the girl had spent the whole day and night with no food or water. “What a sonofabitch I am!” he would mutter, and take her off with him to find somewhere open where she could go to the toilet and eat her fill. “It’s your own fault, dummy. If you don’t talk you’ll die of hunger in this crazy world. How are you going to survive on your own in the north?” he scolded her, with an involuntary hint of tenderness.
Four days later, Maria Ines’s baby was discharged from the hospital, but the coyote decided there was no way they could run the risk of taking him with them, because he might die on the way. The toughest part was still to come: crossing the Rio Grande and then the desert. He gave Maria Ines the choice between staying in Mexico for a while, doing whatever work she could find—which would be difficult, because who would take her on with a baby?—or returning to Guatemala. She chose to go back, and said goodbye to her companions, who had already become her family.
AFTER PUTTING MARIA INES and her baby on the bus, Berto Cabrera drove his clients toward Tamaulipas. He told them that on a previous trip he had been held up in a hotel doorway by two men in suits and ties who looked like officials and who stole his money and cell phone. From then on he was wary of the roadside hotels where coyotes and their passengers often stayed, because Mexican migration officials, the federal police, and detectives all had them in their sights.
They spent that night in the house of someone Cabrera knew, stretched out in a huddle on the ground under blankets from the van. The next morning they set off for Nuevo Laredo, the last stage of their journey in Mexico. A few hours later they found themselves in Plaza Hidalgo in the center of the city, together with hundreds of migrants from Mexico and Central America as well as all kinds of traffickers offering their services. Nine organized gangs of smugglers operated in Nuevo Laredo, each of them employing more than fifty coyotes. They had dreadful reputations: they stole, they raped, and some had links to gangs of thieves and pimps. “They’re not honest people like me. In all the time I’ve been in this profession no one has been able to say a bad word about me. I care about my honor, I’m a responsible person,” Cabrera told them.
They bought phone cards and were able to talk to their relatives to tell them they had reached the border. Evelyn called Father Benito but stammered so badly that Cabrera grabbed the phone from her. “The girl is fine, don’t worry. She says she sends greetings to her grandma. We’ll soon be crossing to the other side. Do me a favor and phone her mother and tell her to be ready,” he said.
He took them to eat tacos and burritos at a street stall and from there to San Jose Church to keep his promise to Father Leo, who he explained was as much a saint as Olga Sanchez. The priest often went without sleep, offering help at any time of the day or night to the endless line of migrants and other needy people, providing water, food, first aid, his telephone, and spiritual comfort in the form of jokes and edifying stories he made up on the spot. On every journey, Berto Cabrera passed by his church to give him 5 percent of whatever he had charged his passengers, less costs, in exchange for his blessing and prayers for his clients’ safety. As Berto said, roaring with laughter, this was his insurance, the quota he paid heaven for protection. Of course he also paid the Zetas cartel not to abduct his passengers. If that happened, the Zetas charged a ransom for each of them, which their families had to pay if they wanted to save their lives. Express kidnappings, they were called. As long as Cabrera could count on the saint’s prayers and paid the Zetas, he felt more or less reassured. That was how it had always been.
They found the priest barefoot, with his trousers rolled up and wearing a filthy T-shirt as he sorted edible fruit and vegetables from the overripe ones they were given at the market. The sweet smell of putrefaction from a big puddle of fruit juice on the floor attracted a cloud of flies. Father Leo was pleased to see Cabrera not simply for his economic contribution but also because he helped convince other coyotes to purchase this tremendous insurance guaranteed by the Lord.
Evelyn and her companions took off their sneakers, waded into the swamp of fruit and rotting vegetables, and helped rescue what could be used in the church kitchen while the priest rested in the shade for a while and brought his friend Cabrera up to date on the latest problems the North Americans had created. Now, as well as using night-vision binoculars and apparatus that could detect body heat, they had sowed the desert with seismic sensors that detected any footsteps on the ground. The two men commented on the latest “events,” a euphemism for the latest assaults. They also avoided using words like “gang” or “narco,” as they had to be cautious.
From San Jose Church, Berto Cabrera took them to one of the camps on the banks of the Rio Grande. These were wretched cardboard villages filled with tents, mattresses, stray dogs, and garbage, a temporary home to beggars, delinquents, drug addicts, and migrants awaiting their opportunity. “We’ll stay here until the moment comes to hop across to the other side,” he told them. His charges plucked up the courage to protest that this had not been the bargain: the woman in the bakery in Guatemala had promised they would sleep in hotels. “Have you forgotten we’ve already stayed in hotels? Here on the border you have to make do. If anyone doesn’t like it, they can go back where they came from,” retorted the coyote.
From the camp they could see the US side, guarded night and day by cameras, lights, and men in military vehicles, launches, and helicopters. Loudspeakers warned anybody venturing into the river that they were in American territory and had to turn back. In recent years the Americans had reinforced the border with thousands of guards equipped with the latest technology, but the desperate migrants always found a way to outwit the surveillance. Seeing the fear on his clients’ faces when they saw how broad and rough the greenish waters were, Cabrera explained that the only people who drowned were the idiots who tried to swim across or get pulled by a rope. Hundreds died this way every year, their bloated bodies eventually caught on the boulders, stuck among the reeds near the banks, or floating out into the Gulf of Mexico. The difference between life and death was information: to know where, how, and when to cross. And yet, as he warned them, the greatest danger was not the river, but the desert beyond. There the temperatures were so hellish they melted stones, there was no water, and they could be preyed upon by scorpions, wildcats, and hungry real coyotes. Getting lost in the desert meant they would die within a day or two. Rattlesnakes, as well as coral, moccasin, and darting indigo snakes, came out to hunt at night, the time when the migrants set off, because the daytime heat was lethal. They would not be able to use flashlights, as that would give their position away: they had to rely on prayers and good luck. Cabrera repeated that they were traveling in luxury and would not be abandoned in the desert at the mercy of the snakes. His own participation ended when they crossed the Rio Grande, but in the United States his colleague was waiting to lead them to safety.
The four men and Evelyn grudgingly settled into the camp beneath a makeshift cardboard roof that offered them some protection against the suffocating heat of the day and gave an illusion of security at night. Unlike other migrants, who slept wrapped in plastic bags and ate once a day in any nearby church, or earned a few pesos doing whatever work they could find, they had some money to buy food and bottled water. Cabrera meanwhile went to seek out an acquaintance, who he thought was probably lying drugged somewhere, to get them across the river. Before leaving he gave them instructions to stay together and not to let the girl out of their sight for a moment: they were surrounded by unscrupulous people, especially the users, who were capable of killing to steal their sneakers or backpacks. There was not much food in the camp, but there was more than enough liquor, marijuana, crack, heroin, and a wide variety of unnamed pills that could be deadly when mixed with alcohol.