As midnight approaches, the dark train yard appears almost empty and lifeless. The streetlights cast long, spooky shadows across the tracks.
Yet, as time passes, first impressions fade as one begins to detect occasional flurries of activity behind the box cars on the sidings. Sure enough, as a train horn sounds in the distance, the yard comes alive. From the shadows and side streets, hundreds of illegal Central American immigrants emerge and begin jockeying for the best seats atop the tanker roofs and between the cars.
It is here that the ride begins on the so-called train of death to the United States. Many will return without their money, their limbs or their lives.
“We rely on God to protect us,” said a Honduran, 20, whose band of wide-eyed friends carry little more than a bag of tortillas for the long trip.
For Central Americans fleeing poverty back home, the train is the easiest and cheapest route to the American dream. They have just crossed into Mexico over the Guatemala border, and Texas lies less than 1,000 miles away.
Few of them make it.
Arrests, assaults, abuses
Many are arrested by Mexican agents on patrols or at random checkpoints. At least half will be assaulted, either by bandits or corrupt police, officials say. And stories are legion about abuse of women along the way.
Others are horribly maimed when they nod off and fall from the tanker car roofs. Or when thieves toss them off for fun. Or when they try to reboard after a police checkpoint and their grip on the ladder fails as they run along the tracks.
“When you don’t get a good grip, your feet arrive first,” said Hector Tulio, 40, and he knows firsthand.
Tulio, a father of five, has lived for three months at the Jesus el Buen Pastor del Pobre y del Migrante shelter in Tapachula. He is waiting to see whether the shelter director can raise $3,400 for a pair of prostheses to replace the legs he lost beneath the train.
Many of the newly legless end up at the shelter in the care of Olga Sanchez, who has cared for them ever since she overcame a battle with cancer 13 years ago.
Sanchez, 46, says about 30 arrive each month at the shelter, which is built for 15. While most used to be accident victims, she said that in the past three years, the majority have been victims of bandits and mara gangs, Central American thugs who prey on immigrants.
Among the 29 in her care this month were seven amputees, most of whom had lost parts of both legs. Another was recovering from five bullet wounds. The most recent arrival had a machete wound down to the bone in his right forearm.
Mauricio Martin Lopez, 17, a Guatemalan, said he fell asleep atop the train. He had been at the shelter for a month as Sanchez tried to raise $4,200 for his prostheses.
The shelter is a sad, idle place, except when Tulio plays the guitar in the evenings, or when the smiling Sanchez swings through the door after one of her all-day outings to solicit funds.
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As Sanchez sorts through a stack of photos of the patients, she finds one of Tulio when he first arrived, bloody bandages around his not-yet-amputated lower legs, his toes poking out. Seeing the photo agitates Tulio, and he begins nervously twisting a bandanna around his wheelchair arm as he fires off a stream of thoughts and words about God and accepting fate except he didn’t know he would have to lose all his mobility, but it’s OK now, he has forgotten his anger, he insists.
The man with the five bullet wounds, Jorge Ramirez, 44, announces he would never take the train.
“Because of fear,” he says, motioning with the edge of his open palm across his leg as if slicing it off, only to quickly look up, embarrassed under the hard gazes of the amputees sitting around him.
In the train yard, the immigrants collect in little clutches, planning where best to scramble onto the rolling freight train.
For an hour or so, several local police vehicles circle the yard like sharks. They don’t approach, though, possibly because of the presence of Grupo Beta, the government’s immigration patrols that watch over the migrants and warn them of the dangers.
A quick roundup
Minutes before the train arrives, the state police show up, rifles pointing, and arrest 30 of the immigrants, as the others scamper temporarily back into their hiding places. The 30 are carted off to be deported the next day by bus.
Then the freight train is rolling through, carrying a load of sugar for McAllen, Texas, and the immigrants are scaling the ladders and hanging off the sides. The scene resembles old sepia-colored photographs of soldiers on the move during the Mexican Revolution.
As the train picks up speed, a middle-age woman runs stumbling over the ties, frantic to catch up to the rest of her party already on board.
She makes it.