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train jumping A DESPERATE JOURNEY

THE PALM BEACH POST

SUNDAY, NOV. 12, 2006

even a fence wont stop them

town, the eight-minute version, with a perfectly appropriate lyric: Gotta move on. Stop by here on a Sunday morning, and youll find the local priest, Ademar Barilli, saying Mass at the sea-green church that rises like a miracle on the edge of town. As the director of the local House of the Migrant shelter, he is an expert of sorts on the growing migration and the hundreds of thousands of people who attempt to cross the Guatemala border on their way to the States each year. Only a fraction, he says, perhaps 4 or 5 percent, will actually make it. Barilli calls them economic refugees, truthfully poor. Not just chasers of the famous American Dream. Even if the United States builds the biggest fence in the world, he says, they will still come. But they will have to alter their route, because the hurricane that destroyed so many homes and livelihoods in Central America last October driving even more people north also wiped out the train tracks just across the river in southern Chiapas, Mexico. The entire path of the migration changed, Barilli says. If people cross here, they must now walk 300 kilometers (186 miles) to Arriaga to catch the train, and along the way, there are many dangers. Or, they must be adventurous and find a new route altogether. The entire length of Guatemala is now the new frontier and even a more perilous one. Raul Ordonez discovered as much when he traveled by bus and boat through Guatemala, arriving at El Ceibo, a wild, tarp-covered market city (knock-off Izod shirts, $8; guns, negotiable). From there, he scaled the grassy hills, crossed the border and dropped down into Mexico. The closest town was Suenos de Oro. Dreams of Gold. It was not an omen.

or decades, the most popular crossing spot into Mexico was a crazy Guatemala border town called Tecun Uman, otherwise known as the Little Tijuana of the south. The kid standing hawkeyed on the river bank has a machete, and it is not for cutting cane. The man in the shadows has a gun, and it is not tucked in his waistband. Here, the story goes, a thousand prostitutes do business in the little hotels, and the local banks suggest, politely, that all patrons check their firearms at the door. Mosey down to the river. A 10-minute ride on a wooden raft, pulled by men with rippling back muscles, takes you across the skinny Suchiate River to Mexico. You can fit everything onto these rafts 1,000 packages of ramen noodles, fat men on cellphones, live chickens, cases of contraband soda as the 5,000 entrepreneurs who do business here know. Somewhere a stereo blasts Funky-

BOCA DEL CERRO, MEXICO

Hundreds of Central American migrants head north over the Usumacinta River atop dozens of tanker cars. They are headed for Mexico City and then, they hope, the United States.

legless, tiptoeing past the virgin

t is an early summer day, and the man who now lies without his legs in the little hospital in Emiliano Zapata has plenty of dreams, but it would be a stretch to say they are made of gold. What he really has are practical aspirations: He would like to build a small home for his family, so he and Norma and their three boys will no longer have to crowd into Normas fathers home, a collection of ramshackle rooms stacked up a mountainside like childrens blocks; he would like to educate their sons, which means buying books and pencils; he would like to start a business of his own, perhaps a cheese and butter stand, since it seems unlikely shoemaking will work out. Expenses like these in a country like his can break a man. But Ordonez has decided he will not let them. He is not a typical migrant, if there is such a thing. He is a round-tripper. He traveled to the States once before, in 2004, riding the back of the beast all the way up to Nuevo Laredo, where he crossed into Texas and promptly found himself on the wrong side of a migrant smugglers gun. The U.S. government recruited him as a witness, a job he took seriously, although he was scared, and for several months he labored, with the governments blessing, on the cleanup in Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He still keeps his red-and-white hurricane operations badge in his wallet to prove it. It was never my intention to break the law, he says of his undocumented excursion into the United States. But a man has to feed his family. The case fizzled federal agents could not find the smugglers and when Ordonez dutifully checked in with U.S. immigration, he learned that his permission to stay had expired. By Valentines Day, he was on his way back home. Where everything was just the same. To tell you the truth, I was a little depressed. Because here I am, back in my own country, and I still dont have anything. So he did the only thing he could think of: head north again. On the train. If you ask, he will describe everything that happened that day how he had twisted his ankle running from immigration, how he was a bit plump, and along the tracks people like to say, a note of worry in their voices, that a fat man cant jump. But he would rather not live it all again. There are worse places to be than the little 30bed hospital where he ended up. So many people without arms and legs pass through it that the kindly staff has developed a

special protocol, taking up collections to buy a suitcase for a migrant who doesnt have one, then dipping into their own pockets to fill it with clothes. Sometimes, they even ask the community for donations to buy a patient a prosthesis, which, as odd and cruel as it sounds, is considered a luxury in this part of the world. Some of them cry when they leave, says Juan Cruz Olan, the affable hospital sub-director. Here, they have been cared for. But out there? Who knows? This is a different world. Thats obvious the moment you cross the threshold. In the sala de espera, the waiting room, a 3-foot Virgin is the main attraction. People light candles in front of her, drop plastic flowers at her feet, prop expensively enlarged photos of their loved ones by her side. The sub-director settles into a chair at a small, round table in his office. He waves in a social

worker. Mother Teresa, she says, introducing herself. My nickname! Files are delivered. Shuffled through. The doctor shakes his head. We just had three amputados, he says. But two escaped. Escaped? Thats right, he says, a small smile on his lips. They got tired of waiting for immigration to collect them, so what they did was, they propped each other up, like so, with their arms, and then they hobbled out on the two good legs they had between them. Right past the Virgin. Through the glass doors. And out into the street. Holding hands. Could such a thing happen in America? he asks. I didnt think so. The journey continues >

TECUN UMAN, GUATEMALA

Men with rippling back muscles make their living pulling homemade rafts across the Suchiate River. This used to be one of the most popular crossing spots.