FifthColumn
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- Jan 11, 2011
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Father Alejandro Solalinde has spent the last five years running a shelter for undocumented migrants
Ixtepec, Mexico To protect the undocumented migrants in his flock, Father Alejandro Solalinde heads for the freight train tracks, flanked by two bodyguards toting automatic assault rifles.
This is how god's work must be done in southern Mexico, where human traffickers, organ thieves, and drug gangs prowl trainyards, looking for travelling migrants to capture, rape, rob or harass.
As night falls, the freight train - known as la bestia (or "the beast") - rolls by with dozens of people, mostly from Central America, waving as they ride on top of boxcars.
Solalinde and his guards run towards the train, offering tired migrants a warm meal and a safe place to sleep at a church-run shelter before they trek onwards to the US, or, as the travellers call it, 'el Norte'.
In 2010 alone, some 20,000 migrants were kidnapped, usually by drug cartels demanding ransom payments from their families, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission.
"A lot of people are afraid," says Jesus, 17, a migrant from Peru who didn't want to give his last name. He ran away from home at age ten, and lived in a cave outside of Lima, Peru's capital, "eating birds and doing whatever to survive".
Now Jesus is heading for the US, hoping to find decent work - without getting hurt or robbed on the way.
Dangerous roads
Violence against migrants seems to have intensified recently. On December 16, up to 50 migrants were kidnapped from the train in Oaxaca state, apparently by a drug cartel, with nine others captured on December 22.
"I've been on the road since August, since the 72 people were massacred in Tamaulipas," says Luis, an El Salvadorian, referring to a particularly brutal massacre of migrants in northern Mexico, allegedly committed by the Zetas drug gang.
"I'm still scared of taking the train, but I've got no money, so I have no other option. I'm just a poor illegal trying to get home," says Luis, who lived and worked in the US before being deported.
"The government should start protecting us, instead of going after us," he says, citing complaints that corrupt security forces extort money or sex from migrants.
Police frequently raid the train, deporting everyone they find, Father Solalinde says.
According to an April 2010 report from Amnesty International: "Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world," with migrants facing a "major human rights crisis".
The struggle to protect undocumented people like Jesus and Luis is usually relegated to the shadows, but it recently developed an overtly public dimension, with hundreds rallying in towns where the train passes through.
Read more at:
Surviving Mexico's migrant trail - Features - Al Jazeera English
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These people wave a bible and help Mexicans invade the US. Something should be done about those who claim to speak for God yet help destroy the American way of life by flooding the US with criminals from Latin America.
