Two brothers from Nicaragua rehearsed the technique for jumping onto a moving train and hiding on the underside of rail cars with a belt lashed to the frame to escape notice by the gangs. “That way,” they explained, “even if you fall asleep, you won’t die.”
At least 11,333 foreign migrants were reported kidnapped between April and September last year, most of them Central Americans, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.
Many migrants just disappear. No place is dreaded more than the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, controlled by the Zeta mafia, where 72 migrants were massacred last year on a ranch an hour south of Texas, and where at least 193 bodies have been recovered from mass graves since April, including many still unidentified travelers pulled from buses and bludgeoned to death with a sledge hammer.
Six Mexican immigration agents in Tamaulipas were arrested after victims identified them from photographs and said the officers had handed them over to members of the Zetas.
The attacks have sunk Mexico’s reputation as a defender of immigrant rights. Stung by the criticism, Mexican President Felipe Calderon promised Central American leaders that his government would protect their citizens, and Mexican lawmakers approved stiffer penalties for corrupt officials.
Desperation and danger
In recent weeks, soldiers have freed hundreds of kidnapping victims from stash houses along the northern border. More than 700 migrants were detected this month inside trucking containers, their crammed, ghostly silhouettes detected by police in the southern state of Chiapas who were looking for illegal guns with sophisticated X-ray scanners.
Mexican authorities are investigating reports of another mass kidnapping last week in the state of Veracruz, where armed men allegedly stopped a freight train in a rural area and loaded their vans with 80 migrants, including women and children.
Jorge Rivera, a 25-year-old Honduran staying at Gonzalez’s shelter, said he was snatched off a freight train last year by kidnappers, who beat him with a board to get his family’s phone number. He escaped after six days, then turned himself in to Mexican immigration officials and begged to be sent home.
With his wife pregnant and no job, Rivera said he was desperate and set out on his second attempt in early June, carrying $100 in his wallet and another $20 in his shoe. Guatemalan police robbed most of his meager stash, he said.
Kidnappers were waiting on the Mexican side. They chased him into a pool hall, where police arrested him, giving him temporary protection in the jail. A kindly taco vendor then steered him to the shelter.
“I don’t know whether to turn back or keep going,” Rivera said, his eyes welling up. “What do you think I should do?”
Researcher Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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