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Meeting Danger Well South of the Border
About 20 minutes later the trio was standing on the opposite bank of the river, drying off with a towel supplied by a friendly Mexican woman. She watched from the doorway of her concrete-block hut as Vicente applied deodorant and Quintero carefully combed his hair. From this point forward, they knew, it would be crucial to blend in.
"Which way are you headed?" the woman asked.
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"We're going to walk to Arriaga, then hop on the train from there," Quintero answered casually.
The woman clucked her tongue. "Very dangerous," she said with a shake of her head. "Lots of thieves about."
The Train From Arriaga
About 160 miles farther north, at a shelter for migrants in Arriaga run by the local priest, a different set of Honduran friends were bent over a map of Mexico taped to the wall.
"My God, you mean we've only gotten this far!" Carlos Pineda, 22, exclaimed in dismay to Rafael Valencia, 18.
About 20 days earlier they had set off for the train station at Arriaga -- the southernmost terminus in Mexico -- from the same riverbank that Lobo and his friends had just reached. The slashes through each pocket of Valencia's jeans offered a hint at what the pair had endured since.
Their troubles began, they said, when six masked men wielding rifles and machetes ambushed them on a quiet stretch of the dirt path the two had chosen to skirt immigration checkpoints along the main road. "The bandits made us strip naked. Then they ripped through our clothes with their knives looking for money," Pineda recalled.
The thieves found 600 Mexican pesos -- about $50 -- that Pineda and Valencia, both bus drivers back in Honduras, had saved for the journey through Mexico. But the bandits missed an extra $7 that Pineda had stuffed down one of his socks. So he was still hopeful a few days later when he and Valencia met three Salvadoran women walking along the same path.
The prettiest had hair down to her shoulders and told Pineda she had left behind a 2-year-old girl, he recalled. She reminded Pineda of the wife and daughter he'd said a tearful goodbye to in Honduras.
Their conversation ended abruptly when seven men armed with pistols suddenly popped out of the foliage.
Once again the migrants were forced to strip. This time the thieves found Pineda's $7 stash, he said. One of them also stole Valencia's sneakers, leaving him with a pair that was too small and falling apart.
