smile to life

老大说这篇新闻是一个真人版的“小蝌蚪找妈妈”，可能会改变人的一生，英语四级的人可以基本阅读原文。所以我先存好，太长了，待我安排时间慢慢学习。

The Boy Left Behind

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

The boy does not understand.

His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do.

Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.

What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. "Mira, Mami." Look, Mom, he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.

Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is 5 years old.

They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7. Lourdes, 24, scrubs other people's laundry in a muddy river. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique's playground.

They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question. So she has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States and make money and send it home. She will be gone for one year, less with luck, or she will bring her children to be with her. It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still, she feels guilty.

The view through a fence at the home where Enrique lived with his paternal grandmother. Across the valley were his sister and the only phone on which they occasionall talked to their mother. Enrique ended the strained calls by saying "I want to be with you."

She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly.

Then Lourdes turns to her own sister. If she watches over Belky, she will get a set of gold fingernails from El Norte.

But Lourdes cannot face Enrique. He will remember only one thing that she says to him: "Don't forget to go to church this afternoon."

It is Jan. 29, 1989. His mother steps off the porch.

She walks away.

"¿Donde esta mi mami?" Enrique cries, over and over. "Where is my mom?"

His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique's fate. As a teenager--indeed, still a child--he will set out for the U.S. on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two-thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families. Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75% are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers' arms.

The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America. They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. The rest travel alone. They are cold, hungry and helpless. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States. A University of Houston study found that most are robbed, beaten or raped, usually several times. Some are killed.

They set out with little or no money. Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump on and off the moving train cars. Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart.

They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Often, they don't know where or when they'll get their next meal. Some go days without eating. If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel. At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks. They sleep in trees, in tall grass or in beds made of leaves.

Some are very young. Mexican rail workers have encountered 7-year-olds on their way to find their mothers. A policeman discovered a 9-year-old boy four years ago near the downtown Los Angeles tracks. "I'm looking for my mother," he said. The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before, guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived. He asked everyone: "How do I get to San Francisco?"

Typically the children are teenagers. Some were babies when their mothers left; they know them only by pictures sent home. Others, a bit older, struggle to hold on to memories: One has slept in her mother's bed; another has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes. One is old enough to remember his mother's face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick, how her dress felt as she stood at the stove patting tortillas.

Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers. In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although the women struggle to pay rent and eat in the United States, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem. Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.

 

 

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Confusion

Enrique is bewildered. Who will take care of him now that his mother is gone? For two years, he is entrusted to his father, Luis, from whom his mother had been separated for three years.

Enrique clings to his daddy, who dotes on him. A bricklayer, his father takes Enrique to work and lets him help mix mortar. They live with Enrique's grandmother. His father shares a bed with him and brings him apples and clothes. Every month, Enrique misses his mother less, but he does not forget her.

"When is she coming for me?" he says.

Lourdes crosses into the United States in one of the largest immigrant waves in the country's history. She enters through a rat-infested Tijuana sewage tunnel and makes her way to Los Angeles. She moves in with a Beverly Hills couple to take care of their 3-year-old daughter. Every morning as the couple leave for work, the little girl cries for her mother. Lourdes feeds her breakfast and thinks of Enrique and Belky. "I'm giving this girl food," she says to herself, "instead of feeding my own children." After seven months, she cannot take it. She quits and moves to a friend's place in Long Beach.

Boxes arrive in Tegucigalpa bearing clothes, shoes, toy cars, a Robocop doll, a television. Lourdes writes: Do they like the things she is sending? She tells Enrique to behave, to study hard. She has hopes for him: graduation from high school, a white-collar job, maybe as an engineer. She says she loves him.

She will be home soon, his grandmother says.

But his mother does not come. Her disappearance is incomprehensible. Enrique's bewilderment turns to confusion and then to adolescent anger.

When Enrique is 7, his father brings home a woman. To her, Enrique is an economic burden. One morning, she spills hot cocoa and burns him. His father throws her out. But their separation is brief. Enrique's father bathes, dresses, splashes on cologne and follows her. Enrique tags along and begs to stay with him. But his father tells him to go back to his grandmother.

His father begins a new family. Enrique sees him rarely, usually by chance. "He doesn't love me," he tells Belky. "I don't have a dad."

Maria Marcos looks at photos of grandson Enrique. As he began to rebel, she asked him: "Dont you love me? I am going to send you away." "Send me!" he said. "No one loves me."

For Belky, their mother's disappearance is just as distressing. She lives with Aunt Rosa Amalia, one of her mother's sisters. On Mother's Day, Belky struggles through a celebration at school. That night she cries quietly, alone in her room. Then she scolds herself. She should thank her mother for leaving; without the money she sends for books and uniforms, Belky could not even attend school. She commiserates with a friend whose mother has also left. They console each other. They know a girl whose mother died of a heart attack. At least, they say, ours are alive.

But Rosa Amalia thinks the separation has caused deep emotional problems. To her, it seems that Belky struggles with an unavoidable question: How can I be worth something if my mother left me?

Confused by all of this, Enrique turns to his grandmother. Alone now, he and his father's elderly mother share a shack 30 feet square. Maria Marcos built it herself of wooden slats. Enrique can see daylight in the cracks. It has four rooms, three without electricity. There is no running water. Gutters carry rain off the patched tin roof into two barrels. A trickle of cloudy white sewage runs past the front gate. On a well-worn rock nearby, Enrique's grandmother washes musty used clothing she sells door to door. Next to the rock is the latrine--a concrete hole. Beside it are buckets for bathing.

The shack is in Carrizal, one of Tegucigalpa's poorest neighborhoods. Sometimes Enrique looks across the rolling hills to the neighborhood where he and his mother had lived and where Belky still lives with their mother's family. They are six miles apart. They hardly ever visit.

Lourdes sends Enrique $ 50 a month, occasionally $ 100, sometimes nothing. It is enough for food, but not for school clothes, fees, notebooks or pencils, which are expensive in Honduras. There is never enough for a birthday present. But Grandmother Maria hugs him and wishes him a cheery "¡Feliz cumpleaños!"

"Your mom can't send enough," she says, "so we both have to work."

After school, Enrique sells tamales and plastic bags of fruit juice from a bucket hung in the crook of his arm.

"¡Tamarindo! ¡Piña!" he shouts.

After he turns 10, he rides buses alone to an outdoor food market. He stuffs tiny bags with nutmeg, curry and paprika, then seals them with hot wax. He pauses at big black gates in front of the market and calls out, "¿Va a querer especias? Who wants spices?" He has no vendor's license, so he keeps moving, darting between wooden carts piled with papayas.

Grandmother Maria cooks plantains, spaghetti and fresh eggs. Now and then, she kills a chicken and prepares it for him. In return, when she is sick, Enrique rubs medicine on her back. He brings water to her in bed.

Every year on Mother's Day, he makes a heart-shaped card at school and presses it into her hand.

"I love you very much, Grandma," he writes.

But she is not his mother. Enrique longs to hear Lourdes' voice. His only way of talking to her is at the home of a cousin, Maria Edelmira Sanchez Mejia, one of the few family members who have a telephone. His mother seldom calls. One year she does not call at all.

"I thought you had died, girl!" Maria Edelmira says.

Better to send money, Lourdes replies, than burn it up on the phone. But there is another reason she hasn't called. A boyfriend from Honduras had joined her in Long Beach. She unintentionally became pregnant, and now he has been deported. She and her new daughter, Diana, 2, are living in a garage, sometimes on emergency welfare. There are good months, though, when she can earn $ 1,000 to $ 1,200 cleaning offices and homes. Scrubbing floors bloodies her knees, but she takes extra jobs, one at a candy factory for $ 2.25 an hour. Besides the cash for Enrique, every month she sends $ 50 each to her mother and Belky.

It is no substitute for her presence. Belky, now 9, is furious about the new baby. Their mother might lose interest in her and Enrique, and the baby will make it harder to wire money and save so she can bring them north.

For Enrique, each telephone call grows more strained. Because he lives across town, he is not often lucky enough to be at Maria Edelmira's house when his mother phones. When he is, their talk is clipped and anxious.

Quietly, however, one of these conversations plants the seed of an idea. Unwittingly, Lourdes sows it herself.

"When are you coming home?" Enrique asks.

She avoids an answer. Instead, she promises to send for him very soon.

It had never occurred to him: If she will not come home, then maybe he can go to her. Neither he nor his mother realizes it, but this kernel of an idea will take root. From now on, whenever Enrique speaks to her, he ends by saying, "I want to be with you."

On the telephone, Lourdes' own mother begs her, "Come home."

Pride forbids it. How can she justify leaving her children if she returns empty-handed? Four blocks from her mother's place is a white house with purple trim. It takes up half a block behind black iron gates. The house belongs to a woman whose children went to Washington, D.C., and sent her the money to build it. Lourdes cannot afford such a house for her mother, much less herself.

But she develops a plan. She will become a resident and bring her children to the United States legally. Three times, she hires storefront immigration counselors who promise help. She pays them a total of $ 3,850. A woman in Long Beach, whose house she cleans, agrees to sponsor her residency. But the counselors never deliver.

"I'll be back next Christmas," she tells Enrique.

Christmas arrives, and he waits by the door. She does not come. Every year, she promises. Each year, he is disappointed. Confusion finally grows into anger. "I need her. I miss her," he tells his sister. "I want to be with my mother. I see so many children with mothers. I want that."

One day, he asks his grandmother, "How did my mom get to the United States?"

Years later, Enrique will remember his grandmother's reply--and how another seed was planted: "Maybe," Maria said, "she went on the trains."

"What are the trains like?"

"They are very, very dangerous," his grandmother said. "Many people die on the trains."

When Enrique is 12, Lourdes tells him yet again that she will come home.

"Sí," he replies. "Va, pues. Sure. Sure."

Enrique senses a truth: Very few mothers ever return. He tells her that he doesn't think she is coming back. To himself, he says, "It's all one big lie."

Lourdes does consider hiring a smuggler to bring the children but fears the danger. The coyotes, as they are called, are often alcoholics or drug addicts. Sometimes they abandon their charges. "Do I want to have them with me so badly," she asks herself, "that I'm willing to risk their losing their lives?" Besides, she does not want Enrique to come to California. There are too many gangs, drugs and crimes.

In any event, she has not saved enough. The cheapest coyote, immigrant advocates say, charges $ 3,000 per child. Female coyotes want up to $ 6,000. A top smuggler will bring a child by commercial flight for $ 10,000.

Enrique despairs. He will simply have to do it himself. He will go find her. He will ride the trains.

"I want to come," he tells her.

Don't even joke about it, she says. It is too dangerous. Be patient.

 

 

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Rebellion

Now Enrique's anger boils over. He refuses to make his Mother's Day card at school. He begins hitting other kids. He lifts the teacher's skirt.

He stands on top of the teacher's desk and bellows, "Who is Enrique?"

"You!" the class replies.

Three times, he is suspended. Twice he repeats a grade. But Enrique never abandons his promise to study. Unlike half the children from his neighborhood, he completes elementary school. There is a small ceremony. A teacher hugs him and mutters, "Thank God, Enrique's out of here."

He stands proud in a blue gown and mortarboard. But nobody from his mother's family comes to the graduation.

Now he is 14, a teenager. He spends more time on the streets of Carrizal, which is quickly becoming one of Tegucigalpa's toughest neighborhoods. His grandmother tells him to come home early. But he plays soccer until midnight. He refuses to sell spices. It is embarrassing when girls see him peddle fruit cups or when they hear someone call him "the tamale man."

He stops going to church.

"Don't hang out with bad boys," Grandmother Maria says.

"You can't pick my friends!" Enrique replies. She is not his mother, he tells her, and she has no right to tell him what to do.

He stays out all night.

His grandmother waits up for him, crying. "Why are you doing this to me?" she asks. "Don't you love me? I am going to send you away."

"Send me! No one loves me."

But she says she does love him. She only wants him to work and to be honorable, so that he can hold his head up high.

He replies that he will do what he wants.

Pool hall near Tegucigalpa's "Little Hell" area.

Enrique has become her youngest child. "Please bury me," she says. "Stay with me. If you do, all this is yours." She prays that she can hold on to him until his mother sends for him. But her own children say Enrique has to go: She is 70, and he will bury her, all right, by sending her to the grave.


Sadly, she writes to Lourdes: You must find him another home.

To Enrique, it is another rejection. First his mother, then his father and now his grandmother.

Lourdes arranges for a brother, Marco Antonio Zablah, to take him in.

Her gifts arrive steadily. She is proud that her money pays Belky's tuition at a private high school and eventually a college, to study accounting. Kids from poor neighborhoods almost never go to college.

Money from Lourdes helps Enrique too, and he realizes it. If she were here, he knows where he might well be: scavenging in the trash dump across town. Lourdes knows it too; as a girl, she herself worked the dump. Enrique knows children as young as 6 or 7 whose single mothers have stayed at home and who have had to root through the waste in order to eat.

Truck after truck rumbles onto the hilltop. Dozens of adults and children fight for position. Each truck dumps its load. Feverishly, the scavengers reach up into the sliding ooze to pluck out bits of plastic, wood and tin. The trash squishes beneath their feet, moistened by loads from hospitals, full of blood and placentas. Occasionally a child, with hands blackened by garbage, picks up a piece of stale bread and eats it. As the youngsters sort through the stinking stew, thousands of sleek, black buzzards soar in a dark, swirling cloud.

A year after Enrique goes to live with his uncle, Lourdes calls--this time from North Carolina. "California is too hard," she says. "There are too many immigrants." Employers pay poorly and treat them badly. Here people are less hostile. Work is plentiful. She works on an assembly line for $ 9.05 an hour--$ 13.50 when she works overtime--and waits tables. She has met someone, a house painter from Honduras, and they are moving in together.

Enrique misses her enormously. But Uncle Marco and his girlfriend treat him well. Marco is a money changer on the Honduran border, and his family, including a son, lives in a five-bedroom house in a middle-class neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. Uncle Marco gives Enrique a daily allowance, buys him clothes and sends him to a private military school.

Enrique runs errands for his uncle, washes his five cars, follows him everywhere. His uncle pays as much attention to him as he does his own son, if not more. "Negrito," he calls him fondly, because of his dark skin. Although he is in his teens, Enrique is small, just shy of 5 feet, even when he straightens up from a slight stoop. He has a big smile and perfect teeth.

His uncle trusts him, even to make bank deposits. He tells Enrique, "I want you to work with me forever."

One week, as his uncle's security guard returns from trading Honduran lempiras, robbers drag the guard off a bus and kill him. The guard has a son 23 years old, and the slaying impels the young man to go to the United States. He comes back before crossing the Rio Grande and tells Enrique about riding on trains, leaping off rolling freight cars and dodging la migra, Mexican immigration agents.

Because of the security guard's murder, Marco swears that he will never change money again. A few months later, though, he gets a call. For a large commission, would he exchange $ 50,000 in lempiras on the border with El Salvador? Uncle Marco promises that this will be the last time.

Enrique wants to go with him.

But his uncle says he is too young. He takes one of his own brothers instead.

Robbers riddle their car with bullets. Enrique's uncles careen off the road. The thieves shoot Uncle Marco three times in the chest and once in the leg. They shoot his brother in the face. Both die.

Now Uncle Marco is gone.

In nine years, Lourdes has saved $ 700 toward bringing her children to the United States. Instead, she uses it to help pay for her brothers' funerals.

Within days, Uncle Marco's girlfriend sells Enrique's television, stereo and Nintendo game--all gifts from Marco. Without telling him why, she says, "I don't want you here anymore." She puts his bed out on the street.

 

 

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Addiction

Enrique, now 15, gathers his clothing and goes to his maternal grandmother.

"Can I stay here?" he asks.

This had been his first home, the small stucco house where he and Lourdes lived until Lourdes stepped off the front porch and left. His second home was the wooden shack where he and his father lived with his father's mother, until his father found a new wife and left. His third home was the comfortable house where he lived with his Uncle Marco.

Now he is back where he began. Seven people live here already: his grandmother, Agueda Amalia Valladares; two divorced aunts; and four young cousins. They are poor. "We need money just for food," says his grandmother, who suffers from cataracts. Nonetheless, she takes him in.

She and the others are consumed by the slayings of the two uncles; they pay little attention to Enrique. He grows quiet, introverted.

He does not return to school.

At first, he shares the front bedroom with an aunt, Mirian Liliana Aguilera, 26. One day she awakens at 2 a.m. Enrique is sobbing quietly in his bed, cradling a picture of Uncle Marco in his arms. Enrique cries off and on for six months. His uncle loved him; without his uncle, he is lost.

Grandmother Agueda sours quickly on Enrique. She grows angry when he comes home late, knocking on her door, rousing the household. About a month later, Aunt Mirian wakes up again in the middle of the night. This time she smells acetone and hears the rustle of plastic. Through the dimness, she sees Enrique in his bed, puffing on a bag. He is sniffing glue.

Enrique is banished to a tiny stone building seven feet behind the house but a world away. It was once a cook shack, where his grandmother prepared food on an open fire. Its walls and ceiling are charred black. It has no electricity. The wooden door pries only partway open, and the single window has no glass, just bars. A few feet beyond is his privy--a hole with a wooden shanty over it.

The stone hut becomes his home.

Now Enrique can do whatever he wants. If he is out all night, no one cares. But to him, it feels like another rejection.

Nearby is a neighborhood called El Infiernito, or Little Hell, controlled by a street gang, the Mara Salvatrucha. Some MS have been U.S. residents, living in Los Angeles until 1996, when a federal law began requiring judges to deport them if they committed serious crimes. Now they are active throughout much of Central America and Mexico. Here in El Infiernito, they carry chimbas, guns fashioned from plumbing pipes, and they drink charamila, diluted rubbing alcohol. They ride the buses, robbing passengers.

Jose del Carmen Bustamente, above, and Enrique tried train riding when they were 16. They took buses through Guetemala to Mexico, thenhopped a freight in Tapachula. Jose was terrified. After they were caught, he chose to stay in Honduras.

Enrique and a friend, Jose del Carmen Bustamante, 16, venture into El Infiernito to buy marijuana. It is dangerous. On one occasion, Jose is threatened by a man who wraps a chain around his neck. The boys never linger. They take their joints partway up a hill to a billiard hall, where they sit outside smoking and listening to the music that drifts through the open doors.

With them are two other friends. Both have tried to ride freight trains to El Norte. One is known as El Gato, the cat. He talks about migra agents shooting over his head and how easy it is to be robbed by bandits. In Enrique's marijuana haze, train-riding sounds like an adventure.

He and Jose resolve to try it soon.

Some nights, at 10 or so, they climb a steep, winding path to the top of another hill. Hidden beside a wall scrawled with graffiti, they inhale glue late into the night. One day, Enrique's girlfriend, Maria Isabel Caria Duron, 17, turns a street corner and bumps into him. She is overwhelmed. He smells like an open can of paint.

"What's that?" she asks, reeling away from the fumes. "Are you on drugs?"

"No!" Enrique says.

He tries to hide his habit. He dabs a bit of glue into a plastic bag and stuffs it into a pocket. Alone, he opens the end over his mouth and inhales, pressing the bottom of the bag toward his face, pushing the fumes into his lungs.

Belky notices cloudy yellow fingerprints on Maria Isabel's jeans: glue, a remnant of Enrique's embrace.

Maria Isabel sees him change. His mouth is sweaty and sticky. He is jumpy and nervous. His eyes grow red. Sometimes they are glassy, half-closed. Other times he looks drunk. If she asks a question, the response is delayed. His temper is quick. On a high, he grows quiet, sleepy and distant. When he comes down, he becomes hysterical and insulting.

Drogo. Drug addict, one of his aunts calls him.

Sometimes he hallucinates that someone is chasing him. He imagines gnomes and fixates on ants. He sees a cartoon-like Winnie the Pooh soaring in front of him. He walks, but he cannot feel the ground. Sometimes his legs will not respond. Houses move. Occasionally, the floor falls.

For two particularly bad weeks, he doesn't recognize family members. His hands tremble. He coughs black phlegm.

 

 

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An Education

Enrique marks his 16th birthday. All he wants is his mother. One Sunday, he and his friend Jose put train-riding to the test. They leave for El Norte.

Agueda Amalia Valladares, left, and her daughter Rosa Amalia. After Enrique burglarized the family's home, Agueda Amalia wanted her grandson to leave.

At first, no one notices. They take buses across Guatemala to the Mexican border.

"I have a mom in the U.S.," Enrique tells a guard.

"Go home," the man replies.

They slip past the guard and make their way 12 miles into Mexico to Tapachula. There they approach a freight train near the depot. But before they can reach the tracks, police stop them. The officers rob them, the boys say later, but then let them go--Jose first, Enrique afterward.

They find each other and another train. Now, for the first time, Enrique clambers aboard. The train crawls out of the Tapachula station. From here on, he thinks, nothing bad can happen.

They know nothing about riding the rails.

Jose is terrified. Enrique, who is braver, jumps from car to car on the slow-moving train. He slips and falls--away from the tracks, luckily--and lands on a backpack padded with a shirt and an extra pair of pants.

He scrambles aboard again.

But their odyssey comes to a humiliating halt.

Near Tierra Blanca, a small town in Veracruz state, authorities snatch them from the top of a freight car. The officers take them to a cell filled with MS gangsters, then deport them. Enrique is bruised and limping, and he misses Maria Isabel. They find coconuts to sell for bus fare and go home.

 

 

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A Decision

Enrique sinks deeper into drugs. By mid-December, he owes his marijuana supplier 6,000 lempiras, about $ 400. He has only 1,000 lempiras. He promises the rest by midweek, but cannot keep his word. The following weekend, he encounters the dealer on the street.

The supplier accuses Enrique of lying and threatens to kill him.

Enrique pleads with him.

If Enrique doesn't pay up, the dealer vows, he will kill Enrique's sister. The dealer mistakenly thinks that Enrique's cousin, Tania Ninoska Turcios, 18, is his sister. Both girls are finishing high school, and most of the family is away at a Nicaraguan hotel celebrating their graduation.

Enrique pries open the back door to the house where his Uncle Carlos Orlando Turcios Ramos and Aunt Rosa Amalia live. He hesitates. How can he do this to his own family? Three times, he walks up to the door, opens it, closes it and leaves. Each time, he takes another deep hit of glue.

Finally, he enters the house, picks open the lock to a bedroom door, then jimmies the back of his aunt's armoire with a knife. He stuffs 25 pieces of her jewelry into a plastic bag and hides it under a rock near the local lumberyard.

At 10 p.m., the family returns to find the bedroom ransacked.

Neighbors say the dog did not bark.

"It must have been Enrique," Aunt Rosa Amalia says. She calls the police. Uncle Carlos and several officers go to find him.

"Why did you do this? Why?" Aunt Rosa Amalia yells.

"It wasn't me." As soon as he says it, he flushes with shame and guilt. The police handcuff him. In their patrol car, he trembles and begins to cry. "I was drugged. I didn't want to do it." He tells the officers that a dealer wanting money had threatened to kill Tania.

He leads police to the bag of jewelry.

"Do you want us to lock him up?" the police ask.

Uncle Carlos thinks of Lourdes. They cannot do this to her. Instead, he orders Tania to stay indoors indefinitely, for her own safety.

But the robbery finally convinces Uncle Carlos that Enrique needs help. He finds him a $ 15-a-week job at a tire store. He eats lunch with him every day--chicken and homemade soup. He tells the family they must show him their love.

During the next month, January 2000, Enrique tries to quit drugs. He cuts back, but then he gives in. Every night, he comes home later. He looks at himself in disgust. He is dressing like a slob--his life is unraveling. He is lucid enough to tell Belky that he knows what he has to do.

He simply has to go find his mother.

Aunt Ana Lucia Aguilera agrees. She and Enrique have clashed for months. Ana Lucia is the only breadwinner. Even with his job at the tire store, Enrique is an economic drain.

Worse, he is sullying the only thing her family owns: its good name.

They speak bitter words that both, along with Enrique's Grandmother Agueda, will recall months later. "Where are you coming from, you old bum?" Ana Lucia asks as Enrique walks in the door. "Coming home for food, huh?"

"Be quiet!" he says. "I'm not asking anything of you."

"You are a lazy bum! A drug addict! No one wants you here." All the neighbors can hear. "This isn't your house. Go to your mother!"

Over and over, in a low voice, Enrique says, half pleading, "You better be quiet."

Finally, he snaps. He kicks Ana Lucia twice, squarely in the buttocks.

She shrieks.

His grandmother runs out of the house. She grabs a stick and threatens to club him if he touches Ana Lucia again. Now even his grandmother wishes he would go to the United States. He is hurting the family--and himself. She says, "He'll be better off there."

 

 

Enrique's Journey | Chapter One | page 7 chapter one continued
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Goodbye

Maria Isabel, Enrique's girlfriend, finds him sitting on a rock at a street corner, weeping, rejected again. She tries to comfort him. He is high on glue. He tells her he sees a wall of fire that is killing his mother. "¿Por qué me dejó?" he cries out. "Why did she leave me?"

He feels shame for what he has done to his family and what he is doing to Maria Isabel, who might be pregnant. He fears he will end up on the streets or dead. Only his mother can help him. She is his salvation. "If you had known my mom, you would know she's a good person," he says to his friend Jose. "I love her."

Enrique has to find her. He sells the few things he owns: his bed, a gift from his mother; his leather jacket, a gift from his dead uncle; his rustic armoire, where he hangs his clothes.

He crosses town to say goodbye to Grandmother Maria. Trudging up the hill to her house, he encounters his father. "I'm leaving," he says. "I'm going to make it to the U.S." He asks him for money.

His father gives him enough for a soda and wishes him luck.

"Grandma, I'm leaving," Enrique says. "I'm going to find my mom."

Don't go, she pleads. She promises to build him a one-room house in the corner of her cramped lot.

But he has made up his mind.

She gives him 100 lempiras, about $ 7--all the money she has.

"I'm leaving already, Sis," he tells Belky the next morning.

She feels her stomach tighten. They have lived most of their lives apart, but he is the only one who understands her loneliness. Quietly she fixes a special meal: tortillas, a pork cutlet, rice, fried beans with a sprinkling of cheese.

"Don't leave," she says, tears welling in her eyes.

"I have to."

It is hard for him too. Every time he has talked to his mother, she has warned him not to come--it's too dangerous. But if somehow he gets to the U.S. border, he will call her. Being so close, she'll have to welcome him. "If I call her from there," he says to Jose, "how can she not accept me?"

He makes himself one promise: "I'm going to reach the United States, even if it takes one year."

Only after a year passes will he give up, turn on his heel and go back.

Quietly, Enrique, the slight kid with a boyish grin, fond of kites, spaghetti, soccer and break dancing, who likes to play in the mud and watch Mickey Mouse cartoons with his 4-year-old cousin, packs up his belongings: corduroy pants, a T-shirt, a cap, gloves, a toothbrush and toothpaste.

For a long moment, he looks at a picture of his mother, but he does not take it. He might lose it.

He writes her telephone number on a scrap of paper. Just in case, he also scrawls it in ink on the inside waistband of his pants.

He has $ 57 in his pocket.

On March 2, 2000, he goes to his Grandmother Agueda's house. He stands on the same porch that his mother disappeared from 11 years before.

He hugs Maria Isabel and Aunt Rosa Amalia. Then he steps off.

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER ONE

Scenes from Enrique's life in Honduras with his mother and sister, including his mother's departure: written from interviews with Enrique; his mother, Lourdes; his aunts Mirian Liliana Aguilera and Rosa Amalia; his maternal grandmother, Agueda Amalia Valladares; and his mother's cousin Maria Edelmira Sanchez Mejia.

Quotation in which Enrique asks his mother to look at things: from Lourdes and Maria Edelmira.

Lourdes' departing words to Enrique: from Lourdes and Enrique.

Enrique's reaction to his mother's departure: from his paternal grandmother, Maria Marcos. The boy's remarks asking about his mother come from Marcos.

Estimate that at least 48,000 children enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either parent: This total, for 2001, is reached by adding the following numbers, which are the latest available. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service says it detained 2,401 Central American children. The INS has no figure for Mexican children, but Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the INS detained 12,019 of them. Scholars, including Robert Bach, former INS executive associate commissioner for policy, planning and programs, estimate that about 33,600 children are not caught. For 2000, the total was 59,000.

Reasons children travel to the United States and information that many come in search of their mothers: from Roy de la Cerda Jr., the lead counselor at International Educational Services Inc., an INS-contracted detention shelter for unaccompanied minors in Los Fresnos, Texas. His information is corroborated by Aldo Pumariega, principal at the Bellagio Road Newcomer School; Bradley Pilon, a psychologist who counsels immigrant students in the Los Angeles Unified School District; and Rafael Martinez, director of Casa YMCA, an immigrant shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico.

Children bringing photos of themselves in mothers' arms: from Ralph Morales, pastor of the End of the Road ministry in Harlingen, Texas.

Estimate that half of Central American children ride trains without smugglers: from Haydee Sanchez, executive director of Youth Empowerment Services, a nonprofit Los Angeles group that helps immigrants; Olga Cantarero, a coordinator for the nonprofit Casa de Proyecto Libertad in Harlingen, Texas, which provides legal help to INS child detainees; and De la Cerda.

Details about travel through Mexico: from immigrant children in Mexico and the United States and from children in INS detention facilities in Texas and California. Included are Nazario's observations as she traveled with children on Mexican freight trains. The University of Houston study about violence to children is titled "Potentially Traumatic Events Among Unaccompanied Migrant Children From Central America" and was published in 1997.

Encountering children as young as 7: from Pedro Mendoza Garcia, a railroad security guard at a depot near Nuevo Laredo.

Remarks of 9-year-old boy searching for his mother who is in San Francisco: from Haydee Sanchez in Los Angeles. Police placed him in her care until she found his mother.

Typical age of children: from INS data and immigrant shelter workers in Mexico.

How children recall their mothers: from interviews with several of them, including Ermis Galeano, 16, and Mery Gabriela Posas Izaguirre, 15, questioned in Mexico on their way to find their mothers in the United States.

Enrique's life with his father: from interviews with Enrique; his paternal grandmother, Maria; his father, Luis; and his stepmother, Suyapa Alvarez.

Enrique's question about his mother's coming for him: from Maria.

Lourdes' journey and her early years as an immigrant: from her and members of her family.

Lourdes' remark about feeding another child: from Lourdes.

Grandmother Maria's assurance that Lourdes would be home soon: from Maria, confirmed by Enrique.

Enrique's father's new family and how he left Enrique: from Enrique, his father and his grandmother Maria.

Enrique's statement to his sister Belky about how his father did not love him anymore: from Belky and Enrique. Maria said Enrique said the same words to her.

Belky's reaction to Mother's Day and her mother's absence: from interviews with Lourdes, Enrique, Belky and his aunt Rosa Amalia.

Belky's commiseration with a friend whose mother left her behind: from Belky.

Enrique's life with his paternal grandmother: from her and Enrique and from Nazario's visits to the home of the grandmother and the home of Enrique's father, as well as her visits to the market where Enrique sold spices. The amount of money Lourdes sent Enrique each month came from Lourdes and was corroborated by Enrique, his grandmother Maria and his aunt Ana Lucia.

Happy birthday wish: from Maria.

Quotation from Maria urging him to earn money: from Maria and Enrique.

What Enrique shouted as he sold juice and spices: from Maria, confirmed by Enrique.

Words Enrique wrote on a Mother's Day card to his grandmother: from Maria, confirmed by Enrique.

Lourdes' infrequent calls and her life in Long Beach: from Lourdes and members of her family.

Quotation from cousin Maria Edelmira when Lourdes phoned after one year: from the cousin and confirmed by Lourdes.

Belky's reaction to having a new sister: from Belky, confirmed by Enrique and their aunt Rosa Amalia.

Enrique's phone conversations with his mother: from Enrique, Lourdes and her cousin Maria Edelmira.

Enrique's questions about when his mother would come home and his statements about wanting to be with her: from Enrique, confirmed by Lourdes.

Remarks from Lourdes' mother urging her to return to Honduras: from Lourdes and her mother, Agueda Amalia.

Lourdes' concern that she might have to return without money to build a house for her family: from Lourdes, confirmed by her mother. Nazario, accompanied by Lourdes' sister Ana Lucia, visited the white house with purple trim.

Lourdes' efforts to become a legal resident and her pledge to return for Christmas: from Lourdes, Enrique and Belky.

Promise by Lourdes that she would return for Christmas: from Enrique, confirmed by Lourdes.

Enrique's comments to Belky about needing to be with his mother: from Enrique, confirmed by his sister.

Questions Enrique asked about how his mother reached the United States and about Mexican trains: from Enrique.

Enrique's comments when he realized that Lourdes would not keep her promises to return: from Enrique, confirmed by his mother.

Lourdes' questions about risking her children's safety to have them at her side: from Lourdes.

Her realization that she could not afford a smuggler: from Lourdes. The smugglers' fees are from immigrant women and Robert Foss, legal director of the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles.

Enrique's quotation that he wanted to be with Lourdes and her reply: from Enrique and Lourdes.

Enrique's problems at school and with his paternal grandmother: from conversations with Enrique, Belky, their grandmother Maria and aunt Mirian.

Comments Enrique made standing on his teacher's desk: from Enrique and Belky, who was told of the incident at the time by Enrique.

Statement by teacher about being thankful that Enrique was graduating: from Enrique's aunt Mirian, who learned about the remark from Enrique and his paternal grandmother, Maria.

Remark by Maria urging Enrique to stay away from bad boys and his reply: from Maria, confirmed by Enrique. Maria's threat to send Enrique away and his response: from Maria.

Her plea for him to bury her: from Maria.

Description of the Tegucigalpa dump and its scavengers: from Nazario's observations and interviews with children at the dump.

Lourdes' life in North Carolina and her assertion that it was friendlier than California: from Lourdes.

Enrique's life with uncle Marco, Marco's death and Enrique's departure from his uncle's home: from Enrique, his uncle Carlos Orlando Turcios Ramos and his grandmother Agueda Amalia.

Quotation by uncle Marco asking Enrique to work with him forever: from Enrique; other family members confirmed that uncle Marco made such remarks.

Amount Lourdes spent on her brothers' funerals: from Lourdes.

Quotation by uncle Marco's girlfriend telling Enrique to leave: from Enrique. Other family members said Enrique recounted these words to them shortly afterward.

Enrique's question at his maternal grandmother's doorstep: from the grandmother, Enrique and his aunt Mirian.

Enrique's life with his maternal grandmother and life in the hut: from Enrique; the grandmother, Agueda Amalia; aunt Mirian; uncle Carlos; and aunt Rosa Amalia. Descriptions of the grandmother's home and the hut are from Nazario's observations.

Statement by Agueda Amalia that the family needed food: from Agueda Amalia.

Enrique's glue sniffing and his tears for uncle Marcos: from aunt Mirian, confirmed by Enrique.

Life in "El Infiernito": from Nazario's visit to the neighborhood accompanied by teacher Jenery Adialinda Castillo.

Enrique's drug habits: from interviews with Enrique; his sister Belky; cousins Tania Ninoska Turcios and Karla Roxana Turcios; girlfriend Maria Isabel Caria Duron; her aunt Gloria Cuello Duron; as well as Enrique's aunt Rosa Amalia, uncle Carlos, aunt Mirian and Enrique's friend and fellow drug user, Jose del Carmen Bustamante. Nazario accompanied Tegucigalpa priest Eduardo Martin on his evening rounds to feed glue-sniffing homeless children.

El Gato's description of train rides through Mexico: from Enrique.

Quotations by girlfriend Maria Isabel when she thought Enrique smelled like paint fumes: from her, confirmed by Enrique.

How Enrique tried to hide his drug habits: from Maria Isabel, Belky, aunt Mirian, aunt Rosa Amalia, uncle Carlos and aunt Ana Lucia, confirmed by Enrique. Ana Lucia said she called him "drogo."

Enrique's drug-induced hallucinations: recounting of the notion that he was being chased is from Maria Isabel and Enrique; that he saw gnomes is from Belky and Enrique; that he saw ants is from friend Jose and Enrique; that he saw Winnie the Pooh is from Jose and Enrique; that he couldn't feel the ground, his legs wouldn't respond, houses moved and the floor fell is from Belky and Enrique.

That his hands trembled and he coughed black phlegm: from Belky, confirmed by Enrique. Both are symptoms of glue sniffing, according to Harvey Weiss, executive director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, and Jorge Reaños, a caseworker at Agape Center, which treats glue-sniffing children in Honduras.

Enrique's attempt to reach his mother in 1999: from Enrique and Jose del Carmen Bustamante, his companion on the journey.

Dialogue between Enrique and a guard at Guatemala-Mexico border: from Jose, confirmed by Enrique.

Exchange with drug dealer and the jewelry theft: from Enrique, Belky, their cousin Tania, aunt Rosa Amalia and uncle Carlos. At Enrique's interrogation, quotations by Rosa Amalia are from Rosa Amalia, uncle Carlos and other family members present. Enrique's comments to the police that he did not want to commit the crime are from Belky, who heard the exchange after Enrique motioned her over to the police car. The words were confirmed by Enrique. The officer's questions about whether the family wanted to have Enrique locked up come from uncle Carlos, Rosa Amalia, Belky and Tania.

Enrique's deteriorating behavior: from Enrique, corroborated by Maria Isabel, Belky and other family members.

Aunt Ana Lucia's role as the breadwinner and her accusation that Enrique was an economic drain: from Ana Lucia and grandmother Agueda Amalia. Both said Enrique was hurting the family's reputation.

Arguing with aunt Ana Lucia: from Enrique, Belky, aunt Ana Lucia, grandmother Agueda Amalia, aunt Rosa Amalia, girlfriend Maria Isabel and Lourdes' cousin Maria Edelmira. The words spoken between Enrique and his aunt Ana Lucia are from the shared recollections of those present--Ana Lucia, Enrique and Agueda Amalia. In addition, Maria Isabel and Rosa Amalia heard large portions of the exchange.

Sentiment by Agueda Amalia that Enrique should leave: expressed to Nazario by the grandmother. She said she had expressed the same sentiment to Enrique before he left.

Enrique's hallucination about his mother's death: from girlfriend Maria Isabel. He described the hallucination to her as he was having it.

Enrique's question about why his mother left him: from Maria Isabel, confirmed by Enrique.

Enrique's shame: from Maria Isabel and his friend Jose del Carmen Bustamante, corroborated by Enrique.

Statement by Enrique to Jose expressing love for his mother: from Jose, confirmed by Enrique.

Sale of belongings: from Enrique, Belky and their grandmother Agueda Amalia.

Enrique's exchange with his father: from Enrique and his paternal grandmother, Maria, whom he told about the exchange moments afterward. The dialogue also was confirmed by Enrique's father, Luis.

Enrique's farewell to his paternal grandmother: from Enrique, his grandmother Maria and his father.

The words of Enrique's exchange with her: from Maria and Enrique.

His farewell to his sister: from Enrique and Belky.

The words of the exchange: from Belky, confirmed by Enrique.

Enrique's hope that Lourdes would accept him: from Jose, confirmed by Enrique.

Enrique's words that he would persevere for one year: from Enrique.

His departure: from Enrique, Belky, Maria Isabel and aunt Rosa Amalia.

 

 

Enrique's Journey | Chapter Two chapter two continued
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Badly Beaten, a Boy Seeks Mercy in a Rail-side Town
His quiet vow to villagers: 'I'm going to find my mom'.

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

The day's work is done at Las Anonas, a rail-side hamlet of 36 families in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a field hand, Sirenio Gomez Fuentes, sees a startling sight: a battered and bleeding boy, naked except for his undershorts.

It is Enrique.

He limps forward on bare feet, stumbling one way, then another. His right shin is gashed. His upper lip is split. The left side of his face is swollen. He is crying.

Near this spot in Las Anonas, Mexico, Sirenio Gomez Fuentes was startled to see Enrique, bleeding and nearly naked, stumbling toward him.

Gomez hears him whisper, "Give me water, please."

The knot of apprehension in Sirenio Gomez melts into pity. He runs into his thatched hut, fills a cup and gives it to Enrique.

"Do you have a pair of pants?" Enrique asks.

Gomez dashes back inside and fetches some. There are holes in the crotch and the knees, but they will do. Then, with kindness, Gomez directs Enrique to Carlos Carrasco, the mayor of Las Anonas. Whatever has happened, maybe he can help.

Enrique hobbles down a dirt road into the heart of the little town. He encounters a man on a horse. Could he help him find the mayor? "That's me," the man says. He stops and stares. "Did you fall from the train?"

Again, Enrique begins to cry.

Mayor Carrasco dismounts. He takes Enrique's arm and guides him to his home, next to the town church. "Mom!" he shouts. "There's a poor kid out here! He's all beaten up." Carrasco drags a wooden pew out of the church, pulls it into the shade of a tamarind tree and helps Enrique onto it.

Lesbia Sibaja, the mayor's mother, puts a pot of water on to boil and sprinkles in salt and herbs to clean his wounds. She brings Enrique a bowl of hot broth, filled with bits of meat and potatoes.

He spoons the brown liquid into his mouth, careful not to touch his broken teeth. He cannot chew.

Townspeople come to see. They stand in a circle. "Is he alive?" asks Gloria Luis, a stout woman with long black hair. "Why don't you go home? Wouldn't that be better?"

"I am going to find my mom," Enrique says, quietly.

He is 17. It is March 24, 2000. Eleven years before, his mother had left home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to work in the United States. She did not come back, and now he is riding freight trains up through Mexico to find her.

Gloria Luis looks at Enrique and thinks about her own children. She earns little; most people in Las Anonas make 30 pesos a day, roughly $ 3, working the fields. She digs into a pocket and presses 10 pesos into Enrique's hand.

Several other women open his hand, adding 5 or 10 pesos each.

Mayor Carrasco gives Enrique a shirt and shoes. He has cared for injured immigrants before. Some have died. Giving Enrique clothing will be futile, Carrasco thinks, if he can't find someone with a car who can get the boy to medical help.

Adan Diaz Ruiz, mayor of San Pedro Tapanatepec, the county seat, happens by in his pickup.

Carrasco begs a favor: Take this kid to a doctor.

Diaz balks. He is miffed. "This is what they get for doing this journey," he says. Enrique cannot pay for any treatment. Why, Diaz wonders, do these Central American governments send us all their problems?

Looking at the small, soft-spoken boy lying on the bench, he reminds himself that a live migrant is better than a dead one. In 18 months, Diaz has had to bury eight of them, nearly all mutilated by the trains. Already today, he has been told to expect the body of yet another, in his late 30s.

Sending this boy to a doctor would cost the county $ 60. Burying him in a common grave would cost three times as much. First, Diaz would have to pay someone to dig the grave, then someone to handle the paperwork, then someone to stand guard while Enrique's unclaimed body is displayed on the steamy patio of the San Pedro Tapanatepec cemetery for 72 hours, as required by law.

All the while, people visiting the graves of their loved ones would complain about the smell of another rotting migrant.

"We will help you," he tells Enrique finally.

He turns him over to his driver, Ricardo Diaz Aguilar. Inside the mayor's pickup, Enrique sobs, but this time with relief. He says to the driver, "I thought I was going to die."

An officer of the judicial police approaches in a white pickup. Enrique cranks down his window. Instantly, he recoils. He recognizes both the officer and the truck.

The officer, too, seems startled.

For a moment, the officer and the mayor's driver discuss the new dead immigrant. Quickly, the policeman pulls away.

"That guy robbed me yesterday," Enrique says. The policeman and a partner had taken 100 pesos from him and three other migrants at gunpoint in Chahuites, about five miles south.

The mayor's driver is not surprised. The judicial police, he says, routinely stop trains to rob and beat immigrants.

The judiciales--the Agencia Federal de Investigacion--deny it.

In San Pedro Tapanatepec, the driver finds the last clinic still open that night.

 

 

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Perseverance

When Enrique's mother left, he was a child. Six months ago, the first time he set out to find her, he was still a callow kid. Now he is a veteran of what has become a perilous children's pilgrimage to the north.

Every year, experts say, an estimated 48,000 youngsters like Enrique from Central America and Mexico enter the United States illegally and without either of their parents. Many come looking for their mothers. They travel any way they can, and thousands ride the tops and sides of freight trains.

They leap on and off rolling train cars. They forage for food and water. Bandits prey on them. So do street gangsters deported from Los Angeles, who have made the train tops their new turf. None of the youngsters have proper papers. Many are caught by the Mexican police or by la migra, the Mexican immigration authorities, who take them south to Guatemala.

Most try again.

Like many others, Enrique has made several attempts.

The first: He set out from Honduras with a friend, Jose del Carmen Bustamante. They remember traveling 31 days and about 1,000 miles through Guatemala into the state of Veracruz in central Mexico, where la migra captured them on top of a train and sent them back to Guatemala on what migrants call el bus de lagrimas, the bus of tears. These buses make as many as eight runs a day, deporting more than 100,000 unhappy passengers every year.

The second: Enrique journeyed by himself. Five days and 150 miles into Mexico, he committed the mistake of falling asleep on top of a train with his shoes off. Police stopped the train near the town of Tonala to hunt for migrants, and Enrique had to jump off. Barefoot, he could not run far. He hid overnight in some grass, then was captured and put on the bus back to Guatemala.

Thirteen-year-old David Velasquez, left, and Robert Gaytan, 17, wait to be jailed after they were caught in Tapachula, Mexico. The Guatemalans were headed for Los Angeles and North Carolina.

The third: After two days, police surprised him while he was asleep in an empty house near Chahuites, 190 miles into Mexico. They robbed him, he says, and then turned him over to la migra, who put him, once more, on the bus to Guatemala.

The fourth: After a day and 12 miles, police caught him sleeping on top of a mausoleum in a graveyard near the depot in Tapachula, Mexico, known as the place where an immigrant woman had been raped and, two years before that, another was raped and stoned to death. La migra took Enrique back to Guatemala.

The fifth: La migra captured him as he walked along the tracks in Queretaro, north of Mexico City. Enrique was 838 miles and almost a week into his journey. He had been stung in the face by a swarm of bees. For the fifth time, immigration agents shipped him back to Guatemala.

The sixth: He nearly succeeded. It took him more than five days. He crossed 1,564 miles. He reached the Rio Grande and actually saw the United States. He was eating alone near some railroad tracks when migra agents grabbed him. They sent him to a detention center, called El Corralon, or the corral, in Mexico City. The next day they bused him for 14 hours, all the way back to Guatemala.

It was as if he had never left.

This is his seventh try, and it is on this attempt that he suffers the injuries that leave him in the hands of the kind people of Las Anonas.

Here is what Enrique recalls:

It is night. He is riding on a freight train. A stranger climbs up the side of his tanker car and asks for a cigarette.

Trees hide the moon, and Enrique does not see two men who are behind the stranger, or three more creeping up the other side of the car. Scores of migrants cling to the train, but no one is within shouting distance.

One of the men reaches a grate where Enrique is sitting. He grabs Enrique with both hands.

Someone seizes him from behind. They slam him face down.

All six surround him.

Take off everything, one says.

Another swings a wooden club. It cracks into the back of Enrique's head.

Hurry, somebody demands. The club smacks his face.

Enrique feels someone yank off his shoes. Hands paw through his pants pockets. One of the men pulls out a small scrap of paper. It has his mother's telephone number. Without it, he has no way to locate her. The man tosses the paper into the air. Enrique sees it flutter away.

The men pull off his pants. His mother's number is inked inside the waistband. But there is little money. Enrique has less than 50 pesos on him, only a few coins that he has gathered begging. The men curse and fling the pants overboard.

The blows land harder.

"Don't kill me," Enrique pleads.

His cap flies away. Someone rips off his shirt. Another blow finds the left side of his face. It shatters three teeth. They rattle like broken glass in his mouth.

One of the men stands over Enrique, straddling him. He wraps the sleeve of a jacket around Enrique's neck and starts to twist.

Enrique wheezes, coughs and gasps for air. His hands move feverishly from his neck to his face as he tries to breathe and buffer the blows.

"Throw him off the train," one man yells.

Enrique thinks of his mother. He will be buried in an unmarked grave, and she will never know what happened.

"Please," he asks God, "don't let me die without seeing her again."

The man with the jacket slips. The noose loosens.

Enrique struggles to his knees. He has been stripped of everything but his underwear. He manages to stand, and he runs along the top of the fuel car, desperately trying to balance on the smooth, curved surface. Loose tracks flail the train from side to side. There are no lights. He can barely see his feet. He stumbles, then regains his footing.

In half a dozen strides, he reaches the rear of the car.

The train is rolling at nearly 40 mph. The next car is another fuel tanker. Leaping from one to the other at such speed would be suicidal. Enrique knows he could slip, fall between them and be sucked under.

He hears the men coming. Carefully, he jumps down onto the coupler that holds the cars together, just inches from the hot, churning wheels. He hears the muffled pop of gunshots and knows what he must do. He leaps from the train, flinging himself outward into the black void.

He hits dirt by the tracks and crumples to the ground. He crawls 30 feet. His knees throb.

Finally, he collapses under a small mango tree.

Enrique cannot see blood, but he senses it everywhere. It runs in a gooey dribble down his face and out of his ears and nose. It tastes bitter in his mouth. Still, he feels overwhelming relief: The blows have stopped.

He recalls sleeping, maybe 12 hours, then stirring and trying to sit. His mind wanders to his mother, then his family and his girlfriend, Maria Isabel, who might be pregnant. "How will they know where I have died?" He falls back to sleep, then wakes again. Slowly, barefoot and with swollen knees, he hobbles north along the rails. He grows dizzy and confused. After what seems to be several hours, he is back again where he began, at the mango tree.

Just beyond it, in the opposite direction, is a thatched hut surrounded by a white fence.

It belongs to field hand Sirenio Gomez Fuentes, who watches as the bloodied boy walks toward him.

 

 

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A Mistake

At the clinic, Dr. Guillermo Toledo Montes leads Enrique to an examination table.

Enrique's left eye socket has a severe concussion. The eyelid is injured and might droop forever. His back is covered with bruises. He has several lesions on his right leg and an open wound hidden under his hair. Two of his top teeth are broken. So is one on the bottom.

Dr. Toledo jabs a needle under the skin near Enrique's eye, then on his forehead. He injects a local anesthetic. He scrubs dirt out of the wounds and thinks of the immigrants he has treated who have died. This one is lucky. "You should give thanks you are alive," he says. "Why don't you go home?"

"No." Enrique shakes his head. "I don't want to go back." Politely he asks if there is a way that he can pay for his care, as well as the antibiotics and the anti-inflammatory drugs.

Migrants arrested in a dawn sweep at the Tapachula rail yard are behind bars before their probable deportation. Central Americans are sent back to the Guatemalan border on "el bus de lagrimas," the bust of tears. Making as many as eight runs a day, the buses deport then 100,000 passengers a year.

The doctor shakes his head. "What do you plan to do now?"

Catch another freight train, Enrique says. "I want to get to my family. I am alone in my country. I have to go north."

The police in San Pedro Tapanatepec do not hand him over to la migra. Instead, he sleeps that night on the concrete floor of their one-room command post. At dawn, he leaves, hoping to catch a bus back to the railroad tracks. As he walks, people stare at his injured face. Without a word, one man hands him 50 pesos. Another gives him 20. He limps on, heading for the outskirts of town.

The pain is too great, so he flags down a car. "Will you give me a ride?"

"Get in," the driver says.

Enrique does. It is a costly mistake.

The driver is an off-duty immigration officer. He pulls into a migra checkpoint and turns Enrique over.

You can't keep going north, the agents say.

He is ushered onto another bus, with its smell of sweat and diesel fumes. He is relieved that there are no Central American gangsters on board. Sometimes they let themselves be caught by la migra so they can beat and rob the migrants on the buses. In spite of everything, Enrique has failed again--he will not reach the United States this time, either.

He tells himself over and over that he'll just have to try again.

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER TWO
Experiences in Las Anonas: written from interviews with Sirenio Gomez Fuentes; Mayor Carlos Carrasco; Carrasco's mother, Lesbia Sibaja; San Pedro Tapanatepec Mayor Adan Diaz Ruiz; resident Beatriz Carrasco Gomez; and other villagers. Nazario visited the Fuentes home, the Las Anonas church and the mango tree where Enrique collapsed.

Enrique's requests to Gomez for water and pants: from Gomez and Enrique.

Exchange between Mayor Carrasco and Enrique about whether he fell from the train: from Carrasco and Enrique. Carrasco's shout to his mother: from Carrasco and his mother.

Questions Gloria Luis asks Enrique: from Luis. Enrique recalled that one of the townspeople asked these questions. His response that he was going to find his mother: from Enrique, confirmed by Luis and Mayor Carrasco.

Comments by Mayor Diaz criticizing Central American immigrants and their governments: from Mayor Carrasco, confirmed by Diaz. Diaz's debate with himself about helping Enrique: from Diaz, corroborated by Carrasco, who said Diaz voiced some of these concerns to him. Statement by Diaz to Enrique that he would help him: from Enrique, confirmed by Diaz and Carrasco.

Enrique's remark to Ricardo Diaz Aguilar, the mayor's driver, that he thought he would die: from the driver, confirmed by Enrique.

Ride to the doctor and encounter with the judicial police officer who Enrique says robbed him: from interviews with Enrique and Ricardo Diaz Aguilar, who took him to the clinic. Manuel de Jesus Molina, who in 2000 served as assistant to the mayor of Ixtepec, a nearby town, says Enrique's experience with the judicial police was common in the area. The denial that judicial police rob people is from Sixto Juarez, chief of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion in Arriaga, Mexico.

First six attempts: from interviews with Enrique and from Nazario's observations of other immigrants along the same route. She visited the spot near Medias Aguas where Enrique was stung by bees. She went to the Tapachula cemetery and the mausoleum where Enrique slept. Cemetery caretaker Miguel Angel Perez Hernandez and Mario Campos Gutierrez, a supervisory agent with the government migrant rights group Grupo Beta Sur, provided information about recent violence in the graveyard. The annual number of deportees from Mexico is from the National Migration Institute of Mexico.

Beating on the train: from interviews with Enrique and residents of Las Anonas and San Pedro Tapanatepec. Robberies in which immigrants are stripped and hurled from trains are commonplace, according to: rights group Grupo Beta Sur, whose officers occasionally patrol the trains; Father Flor Maria Rigoni, a Catholic priest at the Albergue Belen migrant shelter in Tapachula, Chiapas state; Baltasar Soriano Peraza, a caseworker at the shelter; and other immigrants who have been robbed on the trains by street gangsters. Railroad personnel and Mayor Carrasco estimated how fast the trains travel in the area.

Enrique's plea to gangsters: from Enrique, who recalled his words six weeks later. Suggestion by a gangster that Enrique be thrown off the train: from Enrique. His prayer that he be spared so he could see his mother again and his worry over how his family would know his fate: from Enrique.

Medical condition and treatment: from interviews with Enrique and Dr. Guillermo Toledo Montes, who treated him. Mayor Diaz provided the doctor's receipt detailing Enrique's treatment. Nazario visited the clinic and the police command post where Enrique slept. Words spoken between Enrique and Toledo: from the doctor and Enrique.

Money from sympathetic strangers in San Pedro Tapanatepec: from Enrique.

Exchange between Enrique and the driver he flagged down for a ride: from Enrique. Statement from immigration agents telling Enrique he couldn't keep going north: from Enrique.

The bus ride to Guatemala: from interviews with Enrique; immigrants on the bus; and Nazario's observations riding the bus to El Carmen, Guatemala, where the trip ends. How street gangsters rob riders is from Baltasar Soriano Peraza, the caseworker at the Albergue Belen shelter; Mexican immigration agent Fernando Armento Juan, who accompanies migrants on the bus; and migrants, including Carlos Sandoval, a Salvadoran, who said he was accosted by gangsters with ice picks.

 

 

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Defeated Seven Times, A Boy Again Faces 'the Beast'
As Enrique enters Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, he knows why immigrants call it "the beast." Bandits, street gangs and police will be out to get him. Even tree branches scraping the boxcars may hurl him from the train. But he will take those risks. He needs to find his mother.

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

Enrique wades chest-deep across a river. He is 5 feet tall, stoop-shouldered and cannot swim. The logo on his cap boasts hollowly, "No Fear."

The river, the Rio Suchiate, forms the border. Behind him is Guatemala. Ahead is Mexico, with its southernmost state of Chiapas. "Ahora nos enfrentamos a la bestia," immigrants say when they enter Chiapas. "Now we face the beast."

Painfully, Enrique, 17, has learned a lot about "the beast." In Chiapas, bandits will be out to rob him, police will try to shake him down, and street gangs might kill him. But he will take those risks, because he needs to find his mother.

When he was 5 years old, she left him in Honduras and joined hundreds of thousands of women from Central America and Mexico seeking work in the United States. An estimated 48,000 youngsters go north alone every year, many to search for their mothers.

This is Enrique's eighth attempt to reach El Norte. First, always, comes the beast. About Chiapas, Enrique has discovered several important things.

In Chiapas, do not take buses, which must pass through nine permanent immigration checkpoints. A freight train faces checkpoints as well, but Enrique can jump off as it brakes, and if he runs fast enough, he might sneak around and meet the train on the other side.

In Chiapas, never ride alone.

Santo Antonio Gamay, hoping to make it to Toronto, shows the fatigue and tension from 15 hours of riding a train. He has been arrested three times before and deported. In minutes, he will jump off to again try to outrun law enforcement officers.

In Chiapas, do not trust anyone in authority and beware even the ordinary residents, who tend to dislike migrants.

Once the Rio Suchiate is safely behind him, Enrique beds down for the night in a cemetery near the depot in the town of Tapachula, tucking the "No Fear" cap beneath him so it will not be stolen. He is close enough to hear diesel engines growl and horns blare whenever a train pulls out.

The cemetery is a way station for immigrants. At sunup on any given day, it seems as uninhabited as a country graveyard, with crosses and crypts painted periwinkle, neon green and purple. But then, at the first rumble of a departing train, it erupts with life. Dozens of migrants, children among them, emerge from the bushes, from behind the ceiba trees and from among the tombs.

They run on trails between the graves and dash headlong down the slope. A sewage canal, 20 feet wide, separates them from the rails. They jump across seven stones in the canal, from one to another, over a nauseating stream of black. They gather on the other side, shaking the water from their feet. Now they are only yards from the rail bed.

On this day, March 26, 2000, Enrique is among them. He sprints alongside rolling freight cars and focuses on his footing. The roadbed slants down at 45 degrees on both sides. It is scattered with rocks as big as his fist. He cannot maintain his balance and keep up, so he aims his tattered tennis shoes at the railroad ties. Spaced every few feet, the ties have been soaked with creosote, and they are slippery.

Here the locomotives accelerate. Sometimes they reach 25 mph. Enrique knows he must heave himself up onto a car before the train comes to a bridge just beyond the end of the cemetery. He has learned to make his move early, before the train gathers speed.

Most freight cars have two ladders on a side, each next to a set of wheels. Enrique always chooses a ladder at the front. If he misses and his feet land on the rails, he still has an instant to jerk them away before the back wheels arrive.

But if he runs too slowly, the ladder will yank him forward and send him sprawling. Then the front wheels, or the back ones, could take an arm, a leg, perhaps his life.

"Se lo comio el tren," other immigrants will say. "The train ate him up."

The lowest rung of the ladder is waist-high. When the train leans away, it is higher. If it banks a curve, the wheels kick up hot white sparks, burning Enrique's skin.

He has learned that if he considers all of this too long, then he falls behind--and the train passes him by.

This time, he trots alongside a gray hopper car. He grabs one of its ladders, summons all of his strength and pulls himself up. One foot finds the bottom rung. Then the other.

He is aboard.

Enrique looks ahead on the train. Men and boys are hanging on to the sides of tank cars, trying to find a spot to sit or stand. Some of the youngsters could not land their feet on the ladders and have pulled themselves up rung by rung on their knees, which are bruised and bloodied.

Suddenly, Enrique hears screams.

Three cars away, a boy, 12 or 13 years old, has managed to grab the bottom rung of a ladder on a fuel tanker, but he cannot haul himself up. Air rushing beneath the train is sucking his legs under the car. It is tugging at him harder, drawing his feet toward the wheels.

"Don't let go!" a man shouts. He and others crawl along the top of the train to a nearby car. They shout again.

The boy dangles from the ladder. He struggles to keep his grip.

Carefully, the men crawl down and reach for him. Slowly, they lift him up. The rungs batter his legs, but he is alive. He still has his feet.

 

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Getting Aboard

Enrique guesses there are more than 200 migrants on board, a tiny army of them who charged out of the cemetery with nothing but their cunning.

Arrayed against them are Mexican immigration authorities, or la migra, along with crooked police, street gangsters and bandits. They wage what a priest at an immigrant shelter calls "la guerra sin nombre," the war with no name. Chiapas, he says, "is a cemetery with no crosses, where people die without even getting a prayer."

All of this is nothing, however, against Enrique's longing for his mother, who left him behind 11 years ago. Although his effort to survive often forces her out of his mind, at times he thinks of her with a loneliness that is overwhelming. He remembers when she would call Honduras from the United States, the concern in her voice, how she would not hang up before saying: "I love you. I miss you."

Enrique considers carefully. Which freight car will he ride on? This time he will be more cautious than before.

Boxcars are the tallest. Their ladders do not go all the way up. Migra agents would be less likely to climb to the top. And he could lie flat on the roof and hide. From there, he could see the agents approaching, and if they started to climb up, he could jump to another car and run.

But boxcars are dangerous. They have little on top to hold on to.

Inside a boxcar might be better.

Four Honduran immigrants, above, run for cover after jumping from a train approaching a checkpoint in Tonala. They were later captured after residents tipped off authorities.

But police, railroad security agents or la migra could bar the doors, trapping him inside. If the doors closed accidentally, he might die. Migrants say temperatures inside climb to 100 degrees, and people kneel to ask God to stop the train. Some suffocate, and others stand on their bodies to reach tiny air holes above the doors.

A good place to hide could be under the cars, up between the axles, balancing on a foot-wide iron shock absorber. But Enrique might be too big to fit. Besides, trains kick up rocks. Worse, if his arms grew tired, or if he fell asleep, he would drop directly under the wheels.

Enrique settles for the top of a hopper. He holds on to a grate running along the rim. From his perch 14 feet up, he can see anyone approaching on either side of the tracks, up ahead or from another car. Below, at each end, the hopper's wheels are exposed: shiny metal, 3 feet in diameter, 5 inches thick, churning. He stays as far away as he can.

He doesn't carry anything that might keep him from running fast. At most, if it is exceptionally hot, he ties a nylon string on an empty plastic bottle, wraps it around his arm and fills the bottle with water when he can.

Some immigrants climb on board with a toothbrush tucked into a pocket. Others bring a small Bible with telephone numbers, penciled in the margins, of their mothers or fathers or other relatives in the United States. Maybe nail clippers, a rosary or a scapular with a tiny drawing of San Cristobal, the patron saint of travelers, or of San Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of desperate situations.

As usual, the train lurches hard from side to side. Enrique holds on with both hands. Occasionally, the train speeds up or slows down, smashing couplers together and jarring him backward or forward. The wheels rumble. Sometimes each car rocks the other way from the ones ahead and behind. El Gusano de Hierro, some migrants call it. The Iron Worm.

In Chiapas, the tracks are 20 years old. Some of the ties sink, especially during the rainy season, when the roadbed turns soggy and soft. Grass grows over the rails, making them slippery.

When the cars round a bend, they feel as if they might overturn. Enrique's train runs only a few times a week, but it averages three derailments a month, by the count of Jorge Reinoso, chief of operations for Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab, the railroad. One year before, a hopper like Enrique's overturned with a load of sand, burying three immigrants alive. Enrique rarely lets himself admit fear, but he is scared that his car might tip. El Tren de la Muerte, some migrants call it. The Train of Death.

Enrique is struck by the magic of the train--its power and its ability to take him to his mother. To him, it is El Caballo de Hierro. The Iron Horse.

The train picks up speed. It passes a brown river that smells of sewage. Then a dark form emerges ahead. "¡Rama!" the immigrants yell. "Branch!" They duck.

Enrique grips the hopper. To avoid the branches, he sways from side to side. All of the riders sway in unison, ducking the same branches--left then right. One moment of carelessness and the branches will hurl them into the air. Matilda de la Rosa, who lives by the tracks, recalls a migrant who came to her door with an eyeball hanging on his cheek. He cupped it near his face, in his right hand. He told her, "The train ripped out my eye."

 

 

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A Dreaded Stop

Each time the train slows, Enrique goes on high alert for la migra.

Immigrants wake one another and begin climbing down to prepare to jump. If the train speeds up again, everyone climbs back up. The movement down and up the ladders looks like a strangely choreographed two-step.

But slowing down at Huixtla, with its red and yellow depot, can mean only one thing: Coming up is La Arrocera, one of the most dreaded immigration checkpoints in Mexico.

Enrique has defied La Arrocera before. This time, he arrives in the heat of noon. Tension builds. Some migrants stand on top of the train, straining to see the migra agents up ahead. As the train brakes, they jump.

The train lurches sideways. Enrique leaps from car to car, finally landing on a boxcar. The train stops. He lies flat, face down, arms spread-eagle, hoping la migra won't see him. But several agents do.

"¡Bajate, puto! Get down, you whore!"

"No! I'm not coming down!"

There is no ladder all the way to the top. Maybe they won't come up after him.

"Get down!"

"No!"

The agents summon reinforcements. One starts to climb up.

Enrique scrambles to his feet and races along the top of the train, soaring across the 4-foot gaps between cars. As he runs, three agents follow on the ground, pelting him with rocks and sticks, an experience many immigrants say they have here. Stones clang against the metal. Enrique flees from car to car, more than 20 in all, struggling to keep his footing each time he leaps from a hopper to a fuel tanker, which is lower and has a rounded top.

He is running out of train. He will have to go around La Arrocera alone. It may be suicidal, but he has no choice. More stones ping off the train. Enrique scurries down a ladder and sprints into the bushes.

"¡Alto! ¡Alto! Stop!" the agents shout.

As Enrique runs, he hears what he thinks are gunshots behind him.

Except in extraordinary circumstances, Mexican immigration agents are barred from carrying firearms. According to a retired agent, however, most have .38-caliber pistols. Some of the shelter workers tell of migrants hit by bullets. Others tell of torture. Before long, Enrique will meet a man whose chest is pockmarked with cigarette burns. The man tells him that a migra agent at La Arrocera branded him.

In the scrub brush, though, Enrique worries less about agents than about madrinas with machetes. The name for these men is a play on words: These civilians help the authorities, as a madrina, or godmother, would, and administer madrizas, or savage beatings. Human rights activists and some police agencies say the madrinas commit some of the worst atrocities--rapes and torture--and are allowed by authorities to keep a portion of what they steal.

Enrique runs on. He crawls under a barbed wire fence, then under a double strand of smooth wire. It is electrified. At night, Guillermina Galvez Lopez, who lives at La Arrocera, hears the trains and, not long afterward, the piercing screams of immigrants, wet from the swampy grass, who run into the wire.

"Help me! Help me!" they wail.

Agents with Grupo Beta Sur, the Mexican government's migrant rights enforcement group, grab a suspect as he tries to flee in Chiapas state.

Ten times in 10 months, train riders have carried to her front door men and boys without arms, legs or heads. In 1999, Clemente Delporte Gomez, a patrolman with Grupo Beta Sur, the government's migrant rights organization, watched a young Salvadoran slip on railroad ties near La Arrocera. Train wheels cut him in two at the midriff. Delporte saw the Salvadoran's heart flicker three times. Then it was still.

Enrique knows he has plunged deep into bandit territory. At least three, maybe five swarms of robbers, some with Uzis, some on drugs, patrol the three-mile dirt paths that immigrants must use to go around La Arrocera, authorities say. They seem to operate with such impunity that Mario Campos Gutierrez, a supervisor with Grupo Beta, thinks the authorities collaborate.

Before taking these paths, migrants hide their money. Some stitch it into the seams of their pants. Others put a bit in their shoes, a bit in their shirts and a coin or two in their mouths. Still others bag it in plastic and tuck it into intimate places. Some roll it up and slip it into their walking sticks. Others hollow out mangoes, drop their pesos inside, then pretend to be eating the fruit.

Enrique figures he doesn't have enough money to bother.

Last time he sneaked past La Arrocera, he was lucky because he was careful. He stuck with a band of street gangsters. This time he is alone. He focuses on the thought that will make him run the fastest: "I cannot miss the train."

If he misses the one he just left, he knows he will be a sitting duck, waiting for days in the bushes and the tall grass until another one comes.

Enrique races so fast he feels the blood pounding at his temples. The grass, growing in three-foot tentacles, lassos his feet. He stumbles, gets up and keeps running. He passes an abandoned brick house. Half the roof is gone.

The house is notorious. Not long before, Grupo Beta had found a bed of bricks inside, covered with emerald green leaves from a plant that looked like a bird of paradise--and two soiled pairs of panties crumpled on the dirt floor. Women are raped here, most recently a 16-year-old assaulted repeatedly over three days.

Many are gang-raped, including a Salvadoran woman, four months pregnant, who was assaulted at gunpoint by 13 bandits along the railroad tracks to the south. Nearly one in six immigrant girls detained by authorities in Texas says she has been sexually assaulted during her journey, according to a 1997 University of Houston study. Some girls journeying north cut off their hair, strap their breasts and try to pass for boys. Others scrawl on their chests: "TENGO SIDA. I have AIDS."

Enrique does not stop. He reaches the Cuil bridge, where the railroad spans a 40-foot stream of murky brown water. This, migrants and Grupo Beta officers say, is the most dangerous spot. Bandits haul mattresses up into nearby trees, eat lunch and wait for their prey. As immigrants cross the bridge, the bandits drop out of the limbs and surround them. Other robbers hide along the tracks above and below the bridge, which is thick with bushes and vines. One fishes in the river or cuts grass with a machete, like a fieldworker, and whistles to the others to set a trap.

Just a month before, bandits ambushed five Salvadorans as they crossed the bridge at 4 a.m. They tried to run. The bandits shot one in the back. Four months later, three Salvadorans and a Mexican, all in their 20s, were killed. The Salvadorans, their hands tied behind them, were shot in the head. The Mexican was stabbed. All they had left was their underwear.

Enrique dashes across the bridge and keeps running. Mountains stand to his right. The ground is so wet that farmers grow rice between their rows of corn. He can feel heat and humidity rising from the loamy earth. It saps his energy, but he runs on.

Finally, he stops, doubled over, panting.

He is not sure why, but he has survived La Arrocera. Maybe it was his extra caution, maybe it was his decision to run, maybe it was his attempt to lie flat and hide atop the boxcar, which delayed his getting off the train and gave the bandits an opportunity to target migrants ahead of him.

He is desperate for water. He spots a house.

The people inside are not likely to give him any. Chiapas is fed up with Central American immigrants, says Hugo Angeles Cruz, a professor and migration expert at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Tapachula. They are poorer than Mexicans, and they are seen as backward and ignorant. People think they bring disease, prostitution and crime and take away jobs. Some cannot be trusted. People in Chiapas talk of being robbed by migrants with guns and knives. They tell of an older woman who welcomed an immigrant into her home and was beaten to death with an iron pipe.

Boys like Enrique are called "stinking undocumented." They are cursed, taunted. Dogs are set upon them. Barefoot children throw rocks at them. Some use slingshots. "Go to work." "Get out! Get out!"

Drinking water can be impossible to come by. Migrants filter ditch sewage through T-shirts. Finding food can be just as difficult. Enrique is counting: In some places, people at seven of every 10 houses turn him away.

"No," they say. "We haven't cooked today. We don't have any tortillas. Try somewhere else."

"No, boy, we don't have anything here."

Sometimes it is worse. People in the houses turn the immigrants in.

Enrique sees another migrant who has managed to make it around La Arrocera. He, too, needs water badly, but he doesn't dare ask. He is afraid of walking into a trap. To immigrants, begging in Chiapas is like walking up to a loaded gun.

"I'll go," Enrique says. "If they catch someone, it will be me."

He approaches a house and speaks softly, his head slightly bowed. "I'm hungry. Can you spare a taco? Some water?" The woman inside sees injuries from the train-top beating he took during his last attempt to go north. "What happened?" she asks. She gives him water, bread and beans.

The other migrant comes nearer. She gives him food too.

A horn blows. Enrique runs to the tracks. Other immigrants who have survived La Arrocera come out of the bushes. They sprint alongside the train and reach for the ladders on the freight cars.

Enrique climbs up onto a hopper. The train picks up speed.

For the moment, he relaxes.

 

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Staying Awake

The Iron Worm squeaks, groans and clanks--black tankers, rust-colored boxcars and gray hoppers winding north on a single track that parallels the Pacific coast. Off to the right are hillsides covered with coffee plants. Cornstalks grow up against the rails. The train moves through a sea of plantain trees, lush and tropical.

By early afternoon, it is 105 degrees. Enrique's palms burn when he holds on to the hopper. He risks riding no-hands. Finally, he strips off his shirt and sits on it. The locomotive blows warm diesel smoke. People burn trash by the rails, sending up more heat and a searing stench. Enrique's head throbs. The sun stings in his eyes, and his skin tingles. He moves around the car, chasing patches of shade. For a while, he stands on a narrow ledge at the end of a fuel tanker. It is just inches above the wheels.

He cannot let himself fall asleep; one good shake of the train, and he would tumble off.

Moreover, street gangsters, some deported from Los Angeles, prowl the train tops looking for sleepers. Many of the migrants huddle together, hoping for safety in numbers. They watch for anyone with tattoos, especially gangsters who have skulls inked around their ankles--one skull, police say, for every person they have killed. Their brutality is legendary. Immigrants tell of nine gangsters who hurled a man off their train, then forced two boys to have sex together or be thrown off too.

Some migrants nap on their feet, using belts or shirts to strap themselves to posts at the ends of the hoppers. Others struggle to stay awake. They take amphetamines, slap their own faces, do squats, talk to one another and sing. At 4 a.m. the train sounds like a chorus.

Twleve-year-old Dennis Ivan Contreras sleeps on top of a tank car rolling north through Mexico's Chiapas state. The Honduran boy was headed for San Diego, where he hoped to reunite with his mother. He was caught the next day and sent back to the Guatemalan border.

Today, Enrique is terrified of another beating. Every time someone new jumps onto his car, he tenses. Fear, he realizes, helps to keep him awake, so he decides to induce it. He climbs to the top of the tank car and takes a running leap. With arms spread, as if he were flying, he jumps to one swaying boxcar, then to another. Some have 4-to-5-foot gaps. Others are 9 feet apart.

The train passes into northern Chiapas. Mountains draw closer. Plantain fields soften into cow pastures. Enrique's train slows to a crawl. As the sun sets, he hears crickets begin their music and join the immigrant chorus.

The train nears San Ramon, close to the northern state line. It is past midnight now, and the judicial police are probably asleep. Train crews say this is where the police stage their biggest shakedowns. One conductor says the officers, 15 at a time, stop the trains. They grab fleeing migrants by their shirts. The conductor has heard them say: "If you move, I'll kill you. I'll break you in two." Then, "Give us what you've got, or we send you back."

At nearby Arriaga, the chief of the judicial police, or Agencia Federal de Investigacion, denies that his agents stop trains in San Ramon and rob immigrants. The chief, Sixto Juarez, suggests that any robbing is done by gangsters or bandits who impersonate judicial officers.

Enrique greets the dawn without incident. He puts Chiapas behind him. He still has far to go, but he has faced the beast eight times now, and he has lived through it.

It is an achievement, and he is proud of it.

 

 

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Acting Oaxacan

Around noon, he reaches Ixtepec, a southern crossroads in Oaxaca, the next state north, 285 miles into Mexico. As his train squeals to a stop, migrants jump down and look for houses where they can beg for a drink and a bite to eat. La bestia might be behind them, but most are still afraid. Two of them are too frightened to go into town. They offer Enrique 20 pesos and ask him to buy food. If he will bring it back, they will share it with him.

He takes off his yellow shirt, stained and smelling of diesel smoke. Underneath he wears a white one. He puts it on over the dirty one. Maybe he can pass for someone who lives here. He resolves not to panic if he sees a policeman, and to walk as if he knows where he is going.

He takes the pesos and walks down the main street, past a bar, a store, a bank and a pharmacy. He stops at a barber shop. His hair is curly and far too long. It is an easy tip-off. People here tend to have straighter hair.

He strides purposefully inside.

"¡Orale, jefe!" he says, using a phrase Oaxacans favor. "Hey, chief!" He mutes his flat, Central American accent and speaks softly and singsongy, like a Oaxacan. He asks for a short crop, military style. He pays with the last of his own money, careful not to call it pisto, as they do back home. That means alcohol up here.

He is mindful about what else he says. Migra agents trip people up by asking if the Mexican flag has five stars (the Honduran flag has, but the Mexican flag has none), or by demanding the name of the mortar used to make salsa (molcajete, a uniquely Mexican word), or inquiring how much someone weighs. If he replies in pounds, he is from Central America. In Mexico, people use kilos.

In Guatemala, soda is called agua. Here in Mexico, agua is water. A jacket is a chamarra, not a chumpa. A T-shirt is a playera, not a blusa. At one point, Enrique glances into a store window and sees his reflection. It is the first time he has looked at his face since he was beaten. He recoils from what he sees. Scars and bruises. Black and blue. One eyelid droops.

It stops him.

He was 5 years old when his mother left him. Now he is almost another person. In the window glass, he sees a battered young man, scrawny and disfigured.

It angers him, and it steels his determination to push northward.

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER THREE
Crossing the Rio Suchiate: drawn from interviews with Enrique, other immigrants who made the crossing and Nazario's observations as she crossed on a raft. Facing Chiapas state, "the beast": from Father Flor Maria Rigoni, a Catholic priest at the Albergue Belen migrant shelter in Tapachula, Chiapas.

Lessons about Chiapas: from Enrique, other immigrants and Father Arturo Francisco Herrera Gonzalez, a Catholic priest who helps migrants at the Parroquia de San Vicente Ferrer in Juchitan, Oaxaca state.

Sleeping in the Tapachula cemetery, running for the train and a boy's near-mutilation: from interviews with Enrique and from Nazario's observations at the cemetery of the ritual of running for the train. Train speed: from Jorge Reinoso, chief of operations for the Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab railroad, and from Julio Cesar Cancino Galvez, an officer of Grupo Beta Sur, the Mexican government migrant rights group, who is a former Tapachula train crewman. "The train ate him up": from Emilio Canteros Mendez, an engineer for Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab, confirmed by immigrants Nazario met on the trains. Shouted warning to the boy in danger: from Enrique.

The dangers of Chiapas: from interview with Father Rigoni. A war with no name: from Rigoni. Lourdes' statement to Enrique that she loved and missed him: from Lourdes, confirmed by Enrique.

Locked inside a boxcar: from migrant Darwin Zepeda Lopez, 22, who survived such an incident.

How a train feels and choosing where to ride, what to carry: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations and interviews with migrants while riding on two freight trains through Chiapas. Reinoso provided information about the age and condition of tracks in Chiapas and the frequency of derailments, one of which Nazario witnessed. Train nicknames: from immigrants, Grupo Beta Sur officers and former crewman Julio Cesar Cancino Galvez.

Avoiding branches: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations on top of a train when an immigrant was knocked off. What immigrants yell when they see a branch: from Nazario's observations. Enrique confirmed that the same occurred on his journey. Information about the migrant whose eye was ripped out is from Matilda de la Rosa, the resident of Medias Aguas, Veracruz state, who came to his aid. The statement from the injured immigrant also is from De la Rosa. Dr. Ronald Smith, chairman of the ophthalmology department at USC, corroborates the plausibility of such an injury.

"Two-step" on train ladders: from Nazario's observations.

Enrique's anxiety near La Arrocera: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations of other immigrants on two train rides through the checkpoint. Exchange at La Arrocera between Enrique and immigration agents: from Enrique. Other train-riding immigrants told Nazario that agents yelled similar things to them. Demand by agent that Enrique stop running: from Enrique.

Agents shooting at immigrants: from C. Faustino Chacon Cruz Cabrera, a retired immigration agent; Hugo Angeles Cruz, an immigration expert at Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Tapachula, Mexico; railroad employees who said they had witnessed such shootings, including Jose Agustin Tamayo Chamorro, chief of operations at Ferrosur railroad, and Emilio Canteros Mendez, an engineer for Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab; and immigrants who said agents had fired at them at La Arrocera, including Selvin Terraza Chan, 21, Jose Alberto Ruiz Mendez, 15, and Juan Joel de Jesus Villareal, 15. Hernan Bonilla, 27, showed Enrique and Nazario scars he said came from cigarette burns received from immigration agents in the area.

Madrinas: from Elba Flores Nuñez, former coordinator of Centro de Derechos Humanos Tepeyac del Istmo de Tehuantepec, a rights group; Reyder Cruz Toledo, police chief in Arriaga, Chiapas; Jorge Zarif Zetuna Curioca, former mayor of Ixtepec, and now a member of Oaxaca's state assembly; Mario Campos Gutierrez, Grupo Beta Sur coordinator; retired immigration agent C. Faustino Chacon Cruz Cabrera; and La Arrocera resident Guillermina Galvez Lopez.

Dangers at La Arrocera: from Enrique, other migrants, Grupo Beta Sur officers and immigration agent Marco Tulio Carballo Cabrera at the nearby Hueyate immigration station. Migrants pleading for help when they suffered electric shock: from La Arrocera resident Guillermina Galvez Lopez. How migrants hide their money: from immigrants Nazario met riding on the trains. Enrique's run around La Arrocera: from Enrique, Clemente Delporte Gomez, a former Grupo Beta Sur officer, and Nazario's observations as she walked around the checkpoint, witnessed two bandit chases and entered the brick house where women had been raped. Words Enrique used to inspire himself to run fast: from Enrique.

Strategies for preventing rape: from Grupo Beta Sur officers and Monica Oropeza, executive director of Albergue Juvenil del Desierto, a migrant shelter for minors in Mexicali, Mexico. The 1997 University of Houston study: "Potentially Traumatic Events Among Unaccompanied Migrant Children From Central America." AIDS warning that girls write on their chests: from Olivia Ruiz, a cultural anthropologist at Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, who researches the dangers migrants face riding trains through Chiapas.

Ambush at Cuil bridge: from Clemente Delporte Gomez and Grupo Beta Sur officer Jose Alfredo Ruiz Chamec.

Dislike of Central American immigrants: from migrants, professor Hugo Angeles Cruz and Tapachula residents, including Miguel Angel Perez Hernandez, Guillermina Lopez and Juan Perez. While riding trains through Chiapas, Nazario witnessed Mexican children pelting immigrants with rocks.

Derogatory words: from Juan Perez, who lives in front of the Tapachula train station and said he routinely hears neighbors address Central Americans this way. Various immigrants Nazario met on the train said they had been similarly taunted.

Begging for water: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations on the trains. Statements by those Enrique approached begging for food and water: from Enrique. Statement by Enrique that he would risk begging water near La Arrocera and the words he used when he was begging: from Enrique.

Heat and staying awake: from Enrique. Nazario witnessed immigrants doing similar things to stay cool and awake, including Reynaldo Matamorros, who strapped himself to the end of a hopper car to nap; Jose Rodas Orellana, who took amphetamines; and Jose Donald Morales Enriques, who did squats. Nazario rode on one train where a chorus broke out at 4 a.m.

Gangsters stalking immigrants: from Grupo Beta Sur officers; Baltasar Soriano Peraza, a caseworker at the Albergue Belen migrant shelter; and Nazario's observations on the trains. Information about gangsters forcing two boys to have sex together is from Jose Enrique Oliva Rosa and Jose Luis Oliva Rosa, 15-year-old twins who rode on a train where the incident occurred.

Judicial police shakedowns at San Ramon: from Emilio Canteros Mendez, an engineer on the Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab railroad. The denial that judicial police engage in such robberies is from Sixto Juarez, chief of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion in nearby Arriaga.

Threats and demands from judicial police at San Ramon: from railroad engineer Emilio Canteros Mendez. Some immigrants, including Dennis Ivan Contreras, 12, told Nazario that officers had made similar statements to them at San Ramon.

Enrique's attempt to sound Oaxacan: from Enrique. Other immigrants told Nazario they used the same tactic. Words Mexican officials use to determine nationality: from Enrique, other migrants and officials with Grupo Beta and the immigration agency.

Arrival and Enrique's activities in Ixtepec: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations as she rode the trains and retraced his steps in Ixtepec.

 

 

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Inspired by Faith, the Poor Rush Forth to Offer Food
Their generosity, they say, is 'what God teaches.'

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

From the top of his rolling freight car, Enrique sees a figure of Christ.

In the fields of Veracruz state, among farmers and their donkeys piled with sugar cane, rises a mountain. It towers over the train he is riding. At the summit stands a statue of Jesus. It is 60 feet tall, dressed in white, with a pink tunic.

The statue stretches out both arms. They reach toward Enrique and his fellow wayfarers on top of their rolling freight cars.

Some stare silently. Others whisper a prayer.

FOR THE RECORD Enrique's Journey--Chapter 4 of the six-part series, published Friday in Section A, described Teotihuacan in Mexico as an Aztec metropolis. The Aztecs adopted the site as a ceremonial ground and gave it its modern name, but it originated and peaked as a metropolis during the pre-Aztec period.

It is early April 2000, and they have made it nearly a third of the way up the length of Mexico, a handful of immigrants, riding on boxcars, tank cars and hoppers. Enrique is 17. He is one of an estimated 48,000 Central American and Mexican children who go to the United States alone every year. Many are searching for their mothers, who have left for El Norte to find work and never come back.

Many immigrants record in their Bibles the names of people who have helped them. They recite favorite prayers as they kneel beside the tracks. Enrique felt he had no right to ask God for help

Many credit religious faith for their progress. They pray on top of the train cars. At stops, they kneel along the tracks, asking God for help and guidance. They ask him to keep them alive until they reach El Norte. They ask him to protect them against bandits, who rob and beat them; police, who shake them down; and la migra, the Mexican immigration authorities, who deport them.

Many carry small Bibles, wrapped in plastic bags to keep them dry. On the pages, in the margins, they scrawl the names and addresses of the people who help them. The police often check the bindings for money to steal, the migrants say, but usually hand the Bibles back.

Some pages are particularly worn. The one that offers the 23rd Psalm, for instance: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

Or the 91st Psalm: "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."

Some migrants rely on a special prayer, "La Oracion a las Tres Divinas Personas"--a prayer to the Holy Trinity. It has seven sentences--short enough to recite in a moment of danger. If they rush the words, God will not mind.

That night, Enrique climbs to the top of a boxcar. In the starlight, he sees a man on his knees, bending over his Bible, praying.

Enrique climbs back down.

He does not turn to God for help. With all the sins he has committed, he thinks he has no right to ask God for anything.

 

 

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Small Bundles

What he receives are gifts.

Enrique expects the worst. Riding trains through the state of Chiapas, which immigrants call "the beast," has taught him that any upraised hand might hurl a stone. But here in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, he discovers that people are friendly. "It's just the way we are," says Jorge Zarif Zetuna Curioca, a legislator from Ixtepec.

Perhaps not everyone is that way, but there is a widespread generosity of spirit. Many residents say it is rooted in the Zapotec and Mixtec indigenous cultures. Besides, some say, giving is a good way to protest Mexico's policies against illegal immigration.

Not long after seeing the statue of Jesus, Enrique is alone on a hopper. Night has fallen, and as the train passes through a tiny town, it blows its soulful horn. He looks over the side. More than a dozen people, mostly women and children, are rushing out of their houses along the tracks, clutching small bundles.

Some of the migrants grow afraid. Will these people throw rocks? They lie low on top of the train. Enrique sees a woman and a boy run up alongside his hopper

"¡Orale, chavo! Here, boy!" they shout.

They toss up a roll of crackers. It is the first gift.

Enrique reaches out. He grabs with one hand, but holds tightly to the hopper with the other. The roll of crackers flies several feet away, bounces off the car and thumps to the ground.

Now women and children on both sides of the tracks are throwing bundles to the immigrants on the tops of the cars. They run quickly and aim carefully, mostly in silence, trying hard not to miss.

"¡Alli va uno! There's one!"

Enrique looks down. There are the same woman and boy. They are heaving a blue plastic bag. This time the bundle lands squarely in his arms.

"¡Gracias! ¡Adios!" he says into the darkness. He isn't sure the strangers, who pass by in a flash, even heard him.

He opens the bag. Inside are half a dozen rolls of bread.

Children race alongside a train in Chiapas state in southern Mexico. As migrants head north into Veracruz and Oaxaca, the displays of kindness toward migrants become more frequent.

Enrique is stunned by the generosity. In many places where the train slows in Veracruz, at a curve or to pass through a village, people give. Sometimes 20 or 30 people stream out of their homes along the rails and toward the train. They smile, then shout and throw food.

The towns of Encinar, Fortin de las Flores, Cuichapa and Presidio are particularly known for their kindness. These are unlikely places for people to be giving food to strangers. A World Bank study in 2000 found that 42.5% of Mexico's 100 million people live on $ 2 or less a day. Here, in rural areas, 30% of children 5 and younger eat so little that their growth is stunted, and the people who live in humble houses along the rails are often the poorest.

Families throw sweaters, tortillas, bread and plastic bottles filled with lemonade. A baker, his hands coated with flour, throws his extra loaves. A seamstress throws bags filled with sandwiches. A teenager throws bananas. A store owner throws animal crackers, day-old pastries and half-liter bottles of water.

A young man, Leovardo Santiago Flores, throws oranges in November, when they are plentiful, and watermelons and pineapples in July. A stooped woman, Maria Luisa Mora Martin, more than 100 years old, who was reduced to eating the bark of her plantain tree during the Mexican Revolution, forces her knotted hands to fill bags with tortillas, beans and salsa so her daughter, Soledad Vasquez, 70, can run down a rocky slope and heave them onto a train.

"If I have one tortilla, I give half away," one of the food throwers says. "I know God will bring me more."

Another: "I don't like to feel that I have eaten and they haven't."

Still others: "When you see these people, it moves you. It moves you. Can you imagine how far they've come?"

"God says, when I saw you naked, I clothed you. When I saw you hungry, I gave you food. That is what God teaches."

"It feels good to give something that they need so badly."

"I figure when I die, I can't take anything with me. So why not give?"

"What if someday something bad happens to us? Maybe someone will extend a hand to us."

 

 

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New Cargo

Enrique is hungry, but he fears that the half-dozen rolls from the food throwers might be all there is to his good fortune, so he stashes them for later.

In little more than an hour, the train nears a town: Cordoba.

The cargo is beginning to change. It is valuable and more easily damaged--Volkswagens, Fords and Chryslers. Security guards check the freight cars, catch every rider they can and hand them over to authorities. More important, says Cuauhtemoc Gonzalez Flores, an official of the Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana railroad, if a migrant falls and is injured or killed, it costs $ 8 a minute to stop the train, often for hours, until investigators arrive.

Riders sit atop a northbound freight train as it rolls through lush Veracruz state in Mexico. Enrique's experiences in Chiapas state taught him to fear the worst from people. Here, he was stunned by the kindness: people in many villages streaming toward the tracks with gifts.

A sewage stream appears by the tracks. Cordoba is getting close. The immigrants finish their water, because it is hard to run fast holding bottles. They tie sweaters or extra shirts around their waists. Enrique grabs his bag of bread. About 10 p.m., he smells a familiar cue: a coffee-roasting factory next to the red brick station. As the train slows, he leaps and flees.

He sits on a sidewalk one block north of the station. Two police officers approach.

His odds are better if he does not bolt. He tucks his bread into a crevice. He swallows his fright and tries to look unconcerned.

The officers, in navy blue uniforms, walk straight up to him.

He does not move, even flinch. Cops can sense fear. They can tell if someone is illegal. You have to be calm, he says to himself. You can't look afraid or hide. You have to look right at them.

Unlike food throwers, the police do not bear gifts. They pull out pistols.

"If you run, I'll shoot you," one says, aiming at Enrique's chest.

They take him and two younger boys, sitting nearby, to a cavernous railroad shed, where seven other officers are holding 20 migrants.

It is a full-scale sweep.

They line up the immigrants against a wall. "Take everything out of your pockets."

Only a bribe, Enrique knows, will keep him from being deported back to Central America. He has 30 pesos, about $ 3, that he earned lifting rocks and sweeping near the tracks in Tierra Blanca. He prays it will be enough.

One officer pats him down and says to empty his pockets.

Enrique drops his belt, a Raiders cap and the 30 pesos. He glances at his fellow migrants. Each is standing behind a little pile of belongings.

"¡Salganse! ¡Vayanse, ya! Get out! Leave!"

He will not be deported. But he pauses. He screws up his courage. "Can I get my things back, my money?"

"What money?" the officer replies. "Forget about it, unless you want to have your trip stop here."

Enrique turns his back and walks away.

Even in Veracruz, where strangers can be so kind, the authorities cannot be trusted. The chief of state police in nearby Fortin de las Flores will not comment on the incident.

Exhausted, Enrique retrieves his bag of bread, climbs onto a flatbed truck and sleeps. At dawn, he hears a train. He trots alongside a freight car and clambers aboard, holding his bread.

 

 

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The Mountains

The tracks, smoother now, begin to climb. It grows cooler. The train passes 60-foot stalks of bamboo. It rolls through putrid white smoke from a Kimberly-Clark factory that turns sugar cane pulp into Kleenex and toilet paper.

In Orizaba, the train changes crews. Enrique asks a man standing near the tracks, "Can you give me one peso to buy some food?" The man inquires about his scars. They are from a beating little more than a week ago on top of a train. He gives Enrique 15 pesos, about $ 1.50.

Enrique runs to buy soda and cheese to go with his bread. He looks north and sees snow-covered Pico de Orizaba, the highest summit in Mexico. Now it will turn icy cold, especially at night, much different from the steamy lowlands. Enrique begs two sweaters. Before the train pulls out, he runs from car to car, looking into the hollows at the ends of the hoppers, where riders occasionally discard clothing. In one, he finds a blanket.

As the train starts, Enrique shares his cheese, soda and rolls with two other boys, also headed for the United States. One is 13. The other is 17. Silently, Enrique thanks the food throwers again for the bread.

He relishes the camaraderie: how riders take care of one another, pass along what they know, divide what they have. Camaraderie often means survival. "I could get to the north faster alone," he figures, "but I might not make it."

Guatemalan Jorge Velasquez Felipe yells to hear his echo in a tunnel in the mountains outside Orizaba.

The mountains close in. Enrique invites the two boys to share his blanket. Together they will be warmer. The three jam themselves between a grate and an opening on top of a hopper. Enrique stuffs rags under his head for a pillow. The car sways, and its wheels click-clack quietly. They sleep.

The train enters a tunnel, the first of 32 in the Cumbres de Acultzingo, or the Peaks of Acultzingo. Outside is bright sun. Inside is darkness so black that riders cannot see their hands. They shout, "¡Ay! ¡Ay! ¡Ay! ¡Ay! ¡Ay!" and listen for the echo. Enrique and his friends sleep on. Back in the daylight, the train hugs a hillside. Below, a valley is filled with fields of corn, radishes and lettuce, each a different hue of green.

El Mexicano is the longest tunnel. For eight minutes, the train vanishes inside. Black diesel smoke hugs the tops of the cars. It burns the lungs and stings the eyes. Enrique's eyes are closed, but his face and arms turn gray. His nose runs black soot. Engineers fear El Mexicano. If a locomotive overheats, they must stop. Riders spring for the arched exits, gasping for clean air.

Back outside, ice forms on the cars. Riders ache and shiver. Their lips crack, and their eyes grow dull. They hug themselves. They pull their shirts over their mouths to warm themselves with their breath. When the train slows, they jog alongside to ward off the cold. As night falls, some of the older immigrants drink whiskey. Too much and they tumble off. Others gather old clothing and trash and build fires on the ledges over the wheels of the hoppers. Some stand in the warm plumes of diesel smoke.

At dawn, the tracks straighten and level out. At 1� miles above sea level, the train accelerates to 35 mph. Enrique awakens. He sees cultivated cactus on both sides. Directly in front rise two huge pyramids, the Aztec metropolis of Teotihuacan.

Then he sees switches and semaphores. Housing developments. A billboard for Paradise Spa. A sewage ditch. Taxis.

The train slows for the station at Lecheria. Enrique gets ready to run.

He is in Mexico City.

 

 

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Suspicion

The Veracruz hospitality has vanished.

One woman wrinkles her nose when she talks about migrants. She is hesitant to slide the deadbolt on the metal door of her tall stucco fence. "I'm afraid of them. They talk funny. They are dirty."

Enrique starts knocking on doors. He begs for food. In Mexico City, where crime is rampant, people are often hostile. "We don't have anything," they say at house after house, usually through locked doors.

Finally, at one house, another gift: A woman offers him tortillas, beans and lemonade.

Now he must hide from the state police, who guard the depot at Lecheria, a gritty industrial neighborhood on the northwestern outskirts of Mexico City. He crawls into a 3-foot-wide concrete culvert.

At 10:30 p.m., a northbound train arrives. From Mexico City onward, the rail system is more modern, and trains run so fast that few immigrants ride on top. Enrique and his two friends pick an open boxcar. If they are caught inside, it will be hard to escape, but they count on the scarcity of migra checkpoints in northern Mexico. The boys load cardboard to lie on and stay clean.

Enrique notices a blanket on a nearby hopper. He climbs a ladder to get it and hears a loud buzz from overhead. Live wires carry electricity above the trains for 143 miles north. Once used for locomotives that no longer operate, the wires still carry 25,000 volts to prevent vandalism. Signs warn: "Danger--High Voltage." But many of the migrants cannot read.

They do not even need to touch the lines to be killed. The electricity arcs up to 20 inches. Only 36 inches separate the wires from the tallest freight cars, the auto carriers. In railroad offices in Mexico City, computers plot train routes with blue and green lines, and at least once every six months the screens flicker, then black out. An immigrant has crawled on top of a car, been hit by electricity and short-circuited the system. When the computers reboot, the screens flash red where it happened.

Enrique climbs the hopper car. Carefully, he snatches a corner of the blanket and yanks it down. Then he scrambles back to his boxcar and settles into a bed that he and his friends have fashioned out of straw they found inside.

The boys share a bottle of water and one of juice. They plow through a heavy fog, and Enrique sleeps soundly--too soundly.

He does not sense when police stop their train in the middle of the central Mexican desert. Officers dressed in black find the boys curled under their blanket in the straw. They take them to their jefe, who is cooking a pot of stew over a campfire. He pats them down to check for drugs. Then, instead of arresting them, he gives all three tortillas and water--and toothpaste to clean up.

Enrique is astonished. The jefe lets them re-board the boxcar and tells them to get off the train before San Luis Potosi, where 64 railroad security officers guard the station. At midmorning, Enrique sees two flashing red antennas. The boys jump off the train half a mile south of town.

Until now, Enrique has opted to keep moving. But here the countryside is too desolate to live off the land, and begging is too chancy. He needs to work if he is going to survive. Besides, he does not want to reach the border penniless. He has heard that U.S. ranchers shoot immigrants who come to beg.

He trudges up a hill to the small home of a brick maker. Politely, Enrique asks for food. The brick maker offers yet another kindness: If Enrique will work, he will get both food and a place to sleep.

Happily, Enrique accepts.

Some migrants say Mexicans exploit illegals for a fraction of the going wage, which is 50 pesos, or about $ 5, a day. But the brick maker does better than that: 80 pesos. And he gives Enrique shoes and clothing.

For a day and a half, Enrique works at the brickyard, one of 300 that straddle the tracks on the northern edge of San Luis Potosi. Workers pour clay, water and dried cow manure into large pits. They roll up their pants and stomp on the sloppy concoction, as if pressing grapes to make wine. When the slop becomes a firm brown paste, they slap it into wooden molds. Then they empty the molds on flat ground and let the bricks dry.

The bricks are stacked into pyramids inside ovens as big as rooms. Under the ovens, the fires are stoked with sawdust. Each batch of bricks bakes for 15 hours, sending clouds of black smoke into the sky.

Enrique's job is to shovel the clay. At night, he sleeps in a shed on a dirt floor he shares with one of his friends from the train.

"I have to get to the border," Enrique tells him.

Should he take another train? Freight cars have brought him 990 miles from Tapachula near Guatemala. Is he pushing his luck?

His employer says he should ride a Volkswagen van called a combi through a checkpoint about 40 minutes north of town. The authorities won't stop a combi, the brick maker says. Then he should take a bus to Matehuala, and he might be able to get a ride on a truck all the way to Nuevo Laredo on the Rio Grande.

 

 

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The Trucker

Enrique collects his pay, 120 pesos. He spends a few on a toothbrush.

He hails a combi. It breezes through the checkpoint. He pays 83 pesos to board a bus to Matehuala. Outside the bus station, he sees a kindly looking man.

"Can you help me?" Enrique asks.

The man gives him a place to sleep. The next morning, Enrique walks to a truck stop.

"I don't have any money," he tells every driver he sees. "Can you give me a ride however far north you are going?"

One after another, they turn him down. If they said yes, police might accuse them of smuggling. Drivers say it is enough to worry about officers planting drugs on their trucks and demanding bribes. Moreover, some of the truckers fear that immigrants might assault them.

Finally, at 10 a.m., one driver takes the risk.

Enrique pulls himself up into the cab of an 18-wheeler hauling beer.

"Where are you from?" the driver asks.

Honduras.

"Where are you going?" The driver has seen boys like Enrique before. "Do you have a mom or dad in the United States?"

Enrique tells him about his mother.

A sign at Los Pocitos says, "Checkpoint in 100 Meters." The truck idles in line. Then it inches forward. Judicial police officers ask the driver what he is carrying. They want his papers. They peer at Enrique.

The driver is ready: My assistant.

But the officers do not ask.

A few feet farther on, soldiers stop each vehicle to search for drugs and guns. Two fresh-faced recruits wave them through.

A group of Central American men rest on and under cardboard next to the Rio Grande on the Nuevo Laredo side. The encampment is similar to the one Enrique found after he arrived in the Mexican city. He decided to stay in the camp while he planned his crossing.

Oblivious to chatter on the trucker's two-way radio, Enrique falls asleep. The driver clears two more checkpoints. As he nears the Rio Grande, he stops to eat. He buys Enrique a plate of eggs and refried beans and a soda, another gift.

Riding a truck, Enrique figures, is a dream.

Sixteen miles before the border, he sees a sign: "Reduce Your Speed. Nuevo Laredo Customs."

Don't worry, the driver says, la migra check only the buses.

A sign says, "Bienvenidos a Nuevo Laredo." Welcome to Nuevo Laredo.

The driver drops him off. With 30 pesos he has left, he takes a bus that winds into the city.

He has one more piece of good fortune. At the Plaza Hidalgo, in the heart of Nuevo Laredo, Enrique sees a man from Honduras whom he has met on a train. The man takes him to an encampment along the Rio Grande. Enrique likes it. He decides to stay until he can cross.

That night, as the sun sets, Enrique stares across the Rio Grande and gazes at the United States. It looms as a mystery.

Somewhere over there lives his mother. She has become a mystery too. He was so young when she left that he can barely remember what she looks like: curly hair; eyes like chocolate. Her voice is a distant sound on the phone.

Enrique has spent 47 days bent on nothing but surviving. Now, as he thinks about her, he is overwhelmed.

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER FOUR
Statue of Christ: written from interviews with Enrique and from Nazario's observation of other immigrants on a train passing the same statue. Information about religious items, Bible readings and how immigrants show their faith is from immigrants Marco Antonio Euseda, Oscar Alfredo Molina and Cesar Gutierrez. Nazario heard immigrant Marlon Sosa Cortez recite the prayer to the Holy Trinity as they rode on top of a train. Translations of the 23rd and 91st psalms are from the Holy Bible, King James version.

Oaxacans are friendlier: from interviews with Enrique and other immigrants, as well as Jorge Zarif Zetuna Curioca, an assemblyman in the Oaxaca state legislature and the former mayor of Ixtepec; Juan Ruiz, the former police chief of Ixtepec and now an Ixtepec police officer; and train engineer Isaias Palacios.

Exchange between food throwers and Enrique: from Enrique. The words are similar to those Nazario heard while observing food throwers in various towns and those she heard as food throwers in Encinar, Veracruz state, threw bananas and crackers onto a train Nazario was riding.

Food throwing: from Enrique, Nazario's observations on a train and interviews with food throwers in Veracruz. At Encinar: Angela Andrade Cruz, Jesus Gonzalez Roman, his sister Magdalena Gonzalez Roman and their mother, Esperanza Roman Gonzalez; Mariano Cortes, Marta Santiago Flores and her son Leovardo. At Fortin de las Flores: Ciro Gonzalez Ramos, his children Erika and Fabian and former neighbor Leticia Rebolledo. At Cuichapa: Soledad Vasquez and her mother, Maria Luisa Mora Martin. At Presidio: Ramiro Lopez Contreras and his son Ruben Lopez Juarez. The 2000 World Bank study: "The Effect of IMF and World Bank Programs on Poverty." Rural malnutrition information is from Mexico's 1999 national nutrition survey, conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica.

The food throwers' reasons: "If I have one tortilla, I give half away," from Maria Luisa Mora Martin, more than 100 years old, in Cuichapa, Veracruz. "I don't like to feel that I have eaten and they haven't," from bread maker Mariano Cortes, 43, in Encinar, Veracruz. "When you see these people, it moves you. It moves you. Can you imagine how far they've come?" from retired seamstress Angela Andrade Cruz, 71, of Encinar. "God says when I saw you naked, I clothed you. When I saw you hungry, I gave you food. That is what God teaches," from Angela Andrade Cruz. "It feels good to give something that they need so badly," from knickknack seller Jesus Gonzalez Roman, in Encinar. "I figure when I die, I can't take anything with me. So why not give?" from Esperanza Roman Gonzalez, 78, in Encinar. "What if someday something bad happens to us? Maybe someone will extend a hand to us," from Leticia Rebolledo in Fortin de las Flores, Veracruz.

Approach to Cordoba and its station: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations.

Train cargoes and cost of immigrant injuries: from Cuauhtemoc Gonzalez Flores, chief of accident investigations for the Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana railroad.

Robbery at Cordoba station: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations at the shed where it happened. Other immigrants gave accounts of similar robberies at Cordoba. Money earned in Tierra Blanca: from interviews with Enrique. Exchange between police in Cordoba and Enrique during the robbery: from Enrique. The chief of state police who would not comment is Marulio Martinez Meneses in nearby Fortin de las Flores.

Overnight in Cordoba and train ride to Orizaba: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations riding the same route. Words Enrique used to beg food in Orizaba: from Enrique. Camaraderie with others aboard the train, preparations for the cold to come: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations of other immigrants at Orizaba. What Enrique told himself after he reboarded the train: from Enrique.

Tunnels: from Enrique and switchman Juan Carlos Salcedo and observations by Nazario and photographer Don Bartletti as they rode through the tunnels on top of a freight train. Information on the danger of the El Mexicano tunnel is from Jose Agustin Tamayo Chamorro of the Ferrosur railroad. What immigrants yell as they ride through the tunnels: from Enrique, confirmed by Nazario's observations.

Train ride from Orizaba to Mexico City: from Enrique. Riding a train on the same route, Nazario and Bartletti observed what immigrants do to keep warm.

Hostility in Mexico City: from Enrique, other immigrants and residents near the Lecheria train station, including Margarita Lopez. Information about Lecheria is based on interviews with Enrique and on Nazario's observations of the neighborhood and the culvert where he waited for a train.

What Mexico City residents said as they rebuffed Enrique's pleas for food: from Enrique. Words by the woman who found immigrants dirty and frightening: from Lecheria resident Margarita Lopez.

Electrical lines: from Enrique and Cuauhtemoc Gonzalez Flores of Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana and from Nazario's observations at the railroad's computer center. Voltage and arc are corroborated by a U.S. National Electric Safety Code suggestion that rail personnel stay at least 3 feet away from such wires to prevent electrocution, according to Rich Falcon, head of the electrical committee of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Assn.

Mexico City to San Luis Potosi: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations while riding on a freight train along the same route.

Number of security officers at the San Luis Potosi station: from Marcelo Rodriguez, chief of security at the station for Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana.

Making bricks and Enrique's stay in San Luis Potosi: from Enrique and interviews with brick makers, including Gregorio Ramos, Jose Morales Portillo and Juan Perez. Enrique's words about persisting toward the border: from Enrique.

Trip to Matehuala: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations during a bus ride on the same route. Overnight in Matehuala and the exchange with kindly man: from Enrique.

Words Enrique used to ask for a ride: from Enrique. Reluctance to give rides to immigrants: from Modesto Reyes Santiago, a truck driver, and Faustina Olivares, owner of the No Que No diner, which is frequented by truckers.

Matehuala to Nuevo Laredo: from Enrique and from Nazario's observations as she rode in a similar truck between the cities.

Exchange between Enrique and the truck driver who gave him a ride: from Enrique. Words on signs: from Enrique, confirmed by Nazario's observations.

Enrique's arrival in Nuevo Laredo, the camp and thoughts about his mother: from interviews with Enrique two weeks later.

 

 

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A Milky Green River Between Him and His Dream
Enrique is stuck on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, watching, listening and planning. Somewhere on the other side, in the United States, is his mother.

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

You are in American territory," a Border Patrol agent shouts into a bullhorn. "Turn back."

Sometimes Enrique strips and wades into the Rio Grande to cool off. But the bullhorn always stops him. He goes back.

"Thank you for returning to your country."

He is stymied. For days, Enrique, 17, has been stuck in Nuevo Laredo, on the southern bank of the Rio Bravo, as it is called here. He has been watching, listening and trying to plan. Somewhere across this milky green ribbon of water is his mother.

She left him behind 11 years ago in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to seek work in the United States. Enrique is challenging the unknown to find her. During her most recent telephone call, she said she was in North Carolina. He has no idea if she is still there, where that is or how to reach it. He no longer has her phone number.

He had written it on a scrap of paper, but it blew away while he was being robbed and beaten almost four weeks ago on a freight train in southern Mexico. He did not think to memorize it.

Honduran Miguel Olivas looks over at U.S. agents warning him to move back toward Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Of the estimated 48,000 youngsters from Central America and Mexico who go north illegally on their own every year, many do not memorize telephone numbers or addresses. They wrap them in plastic and tuck them into a shoe or slip them under a waistband. Some of the numbers are lost, others are stolen. Occasionally kidnappers snatch the children themselves, find the numbers and call the mothers for ransom.

Stripped of phone numbers and destinations, many of the children become stranded at the river. Defeat drives them to the worst this border world has to offer: drugs, despair and death.

It is almost May 2000, nearly two months since Enrique left home the last time. He is a hardened veteran of seven attempts to reach El Norte. This is his eighth. By now, his mother must have called Honduras again, and the family must have told her that he was gone. His mother must be worrying.

He has to telephone her.

Besides, she might have saved enough money to hire a smuggler, or coyote, who can take him across the river.

He remembers one number back home--at a tire store where he worked. He will call and ask his old employer to find Aunt Rosa Amalia or Uncle Carlos Orlando Turcios Ramos, who had arranged his job, and ask them for his mother's number. Then he will call back and get it from his boss.

For the two calls, he needs two telephone cards: Fifty pesos apiece. When he phones his mother, he'll call collect.

He cannot beg 100 pesos. People in Nuevo Laredo won't give. Mexicans along the border, he notices, are quick to proclaim their right to immigrate to the United States. "Jesus was an immigrant," he hears them say. But most won't give Central Americans food, money or jobs.

So he will work by himself. He'll wash cars.

 

 

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A Refugem

The encampment he has joined is a haven for migrants, coyotes, junkies and criminals, but it is safer for him than anywhere else in Nuevo Laredo, a city of half a million and swarming with immigration agents, or la migra, and all kinds of police, who might catch him and deport him.

Enrique sleeps in an abandoned house on his way back to camp after a night of washing cars. He hoped to buy a phone card to call an old boss in Honduras. If his boss could reach his aunt and uncle, and if they knew his mother's number, and if they would call him back...

The camp is at the bottom of a narrow, winding path that slopes to the river. Each evening, without fail, he summons his courage and goes to the Nuevo Laredo city hall with a large plastic paint bucket and two rags. From a spigot on the side of the building, he fills the bucket. Then he goes to parking places across the street from a bustling taco stand. One of his rags is red. Each time someone arrives to eat dinner, he waves the red rag to guide the customer into a parking space, like a ground crew ushering a jetliner to a gate.

Usually there is competition. Two or three others immigrants set up their buckets along the same sidewalk.

Enrique approaches a woman driving a yellow Chevrolet Impala with chrome-spoke wheels. She is talking on her cell phone. May he wash her car?

She ends the call and declines.

A man and his young daughter drive up.

"May I clean your car?"

"No, son."

The woman with the Impala returns with her tacos. Enrique waits until traffic is clear, then waves his red rag and guides her out.

Suddenly, she reaches out her car window and presses 3 pesos into his hand.

Enrique approaches dozens of people, but just one or two say yes. By 4 a.m., when the stand closes, he has eked out 30 pesos, or $ 3.

 

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A Lifeline

The air around the taco stand fills with the aroma of barbecue. Enrique watches workers pull strips of meat from a vat, put them on large chopping blocks and cut them up. Customers sit at long stainless steel tables and eat. Sometimes, when the stand closes, the servers slip him a couple of tacos.

Otherwise, for his only meal every day, he depends upon Parroquia de San Jose, or St. Joseph's Parish, and another church, Parroquia del Santo Niño, the Parish of the Holy Child. Each gives food cards to migrants. One is good for 10 meals and the other for five. Enrique can count on one meal a day for 15 days. The cards are like gold. Sometimes they are stolen and turn up on a meal-card black market.

Each day, Enrique goes to one church or the other to eat. It is safe; the police stay away. Like clockwork, Leti Limon, a volunteer, swings open the double yellow doors at San Jose and shouts, "Who's new?"

"Me! Me!" men and boys cry out from the courtyard.

They rush to the door and jostle against it.

"Get in line! Get in line!" Limon is poor herself; she cleans houses across the river in Laredo, Texas, for $ 20 apiece. But she has helped to feed these immigrants for a year and a half, figuring that Jesus would approve. She issues the newcomers beige cards and punches the cards of those who enter. A parish priest counts 6% children.

Migrants bow their heads at Parroquia de San Jose while grace is said.

One by one, the migrants stand behind chairs at a long table. At the head is a mural of Jesus, his hands extended toward plates of tacos, tomatoes and beans. Above him are his words: "Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome."

The lights dim, and two big fans spin to a stop, so everyone can hear grace. Some who have not eaten in two or three days cannot wait; from behind their chairs, they grab at the tacos with one hand, bread with the other.

Chairs screech as everyone pulls them out at once. Spoons of stew touch lips before bottoms hit the seats. In a clatter of forks against plates, beans, stew, tomatoes, rice and doughnuts disappear.

 

 

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For permission to stay in the relative safety of the encampment, the leader, El Tirindaro, who is addicted to heroin, usually wants drugs or beer. But he has not asked Enrique for anything. El Tirindaro is a subspecies of coyote known as a patero, because he smuggles people into the United States by pushing them across the river on inner tubes while paddling like a pato, or duck. Enrique is a likely client.

In addition to smuggling, El Tirindaro finances his heroin habit by tattooing people and selling clothing that immigrants have left on the riverbank. Enrique stares as El Tirindaro lies on a mattress, mixes Mexican black tar heroin with water in a spoon, warms it over a cigarette lighter, draws it into a syringe and stabs the needle straight into a vein.

Besides migrants, the camp has 10 perpetual residents. Seven are addicts. They call heroin la cura, or the cure.

Also among the permanent campers are several immigrants who are stuck. One, a fellow Honduran, has lived on the river for seven months. He tried to enter the United States three times. Every time, he was caught. He has descended into depression and a life of glue sniffing.

Each time he tried to cross, he says, he went alone.

Enrique listens. They call him El Hongo, the mushroom, because he is quiet, soaking everything in.

Enrique is protected. Because he is so young, everyone at the camp looks after him. When he goes at night to wash cars, someone walks him through the brush to the road. They warn him against heroin. But leaving the camp scares him, and they give him marijuana to calm him down.

Car washing goes poorly. One night, he earns almost nothing.

The 15 days on his meal cards pass quickly. Now he needs part of his money to eat. Every peso he spends on food cannot go toward the phone cards. He begins to eat as little as possible--crackers and soda.

Enrique at his encampment along the Rio Grande. His companions there called him El Hongo, the mushroom, because he was quiet. Some talked about the proverty they came from and how they would rather die than go back.

Sometimes Enrique does not eat at all. Friends at the camp share their meals. One teaches him to fish with a line coiled on a shampoo bottle. The line, fitted with a hook, has three spark plugs at the end to sink it. Enrique swings the spark plugs around his head, then casts toward the middle of the Rio Grande. The line whirs as it spools off the bottle. He hauls in three catfish.

Even El Tirindaro is generous; the sooner Enrique can buy a phone card and call his mother, the sooner Enrique will need his services. When one of Enrique's meal cards is stolen, El Tirindaro gives him the unexpired card of a migrant who has crossed the river successfully. He knows that Enrique cannot swim, so he paddles him back and forth on the water in an inner tube to quiet his fears.

Enrique learns that El Tirindaro is part of a smuggling network. A middle-aged man and a young woman, both Latinos, meet him and his clients after they cross the river. Then they all drive north together, and El Tirindaro walks his clients around Border Patrol checkpoints, giving wide berth to the agents. After the last checkpoint, El Tirindaro returns to Nuevo Laredo, and the couple and others in the network deliver the clients to their destinations. The price is $ 1,200.

El Hongo listens as his camp mates talk about dos and don'ts: Find an inner tube. Take along a gallon of water. Learn where to get into the river, where not. They talk about the poverty they came from; they would rather die than go back. Enrique tells them about Maria Isabel, his girlfriend, and that she might be expecting.

Enrique talks about his mother. He says he is extremely depressed.

"I want to be with her," he says, "to know her."

"If you talk, it's better," a friend says.

But it gets worse. Enrique defends a friend against a street gangster and is spared a beating only by the intervention of another gangster from his neighborhood back home. Then his luck runs out with the authorities. He is arrested in town--twice, both times for loitering. Police call him a street bum and lock him up. In jail, the toilet runs over, and drunks smear the wall with its contents. Both times, Enrique wins his release by sweeping and mopping.

One night, as he walks 20 blocks back to the river from washing cars, it rains. He ducks into an abandoned house, finds some cardboard and places it on a dry spot. He removes his sneakers and puts them and his bucket near his head. He has no socks, blanket or pillow. He pulls his shirt up around his ears and breathes into it to stay warm. Then he lies down, curls up and tucks his hands across his chest.

Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. Wind wails around the corners of the house. The rain falls steadily. On the highway, trucks hiss their brakes, stopping at the border before entering the United States. Across the river, the Border Patrol shines lights on the water, looking for immigrants trying to cross.

With his bare feet touching a cold wall, Enrique sleeps.

 

 

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Mother's Day

It is May 14, 2000, a Sunday when many churches in Mexico celebrate Mother's Day.

Finally, Enrique has saved 50 pesos. Eagerly, he buys a phone card. He gives it to one of El Tirindaro's friends for safekeeping. That way, if the police catch him again, they cannot steal it.

"I just need one more," he says. "Then I can call her."

Every time he goes to Parroquia de San Jose, it makes him think about his mother, especially on this Mother's Day. In addition to the refectory, on the second floor are two small rooms where up to 10 women share four beds. They have left their children behind in Central America and Mexico to find work in El Norte, and they have found this place to sleep. Each could be his mother 11 years ago.

They try to ignore a Mother's Day party downstairs, where 150 women from Nuevo Laredo laugh, shout and whistle as their sons dance, pillows stuffed under their shirts to make them look pregnant. Upstairs, the women weep. One has a daughter, 8, who had begged her not to go. She asked her to send back just one thing for her birthday: a doll that cries. Another cannot shake a nightmare: Back home, her little girl is killed, and her little boy runs away in tears. Daily she prays: "Don't let me die on this trip. If I die, they will live on the street."

Enrique wonders: What does his mother look like now?

"It's OK for a mother to leave," he tells a friend, "but just for two or four years, not longer." He recalls her promises to return for Christmas and how she never did. "I've felt alone all my life." One thing, though: She always told him she loved him. "I don't know what it will be like to see her. She will be happy. Me too. I want to tell her how much I love her. I will tell her I need her."

Across the Rio Grande on Mother's Day, his mother, Lourdes, thinks about Enrique. She has, indeed, learned that he is gone. But in her phone calls home, she never finds out where he went. She tries to convince herself that he is living with a friend, but she remembers their last telephone conversation: "I'll be there soon," he had said. "Before you know it, on your doorstep." Day after day, she waits for him to call. Night after night, she cannot sleep more than three hours. She watches TV: migrants dying in the desert, ranchers who shoot them.

She imagines the worst and becomes terrified that she might never see him again. She is utterly helpless. She asks God to watch over him, guide him.

On the afternoon of the Mother's Day celebration, three municipal police visit the camp. Enrique does not try to run, but he is jittery. They ignore him. Instead, they take away one of his friends.

Enrique has no money for food. He takes a hit of glue. It makes him sleepy, takes him to another world, eases his hunger and helps him forget about his family.

A friend catches six tiny catfish. He builds a fire out of trash. It grows dark. He cuts the fish with a lid from an aluminum can.

Enrique hovers nearby. "You know, Hernan, I haven't eaten all day."

Hernan guts the fish.

Enrique stands silently, waiting.

 

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A Setback

It is May 15. Enrique washes cars. He has a good night and makes 60 pesos. At midnight, he rushes to buy his second phone card. He puts only 30 pesos on it, gambling that his second call will be short. If his old employer finds Aunt Rosa Amalia and Uncle Carlos and gets his mother's number, then it won't take many minutes to call his boss a second time and pick it up.

Enrique saves his other 30 pesos for food.

He and his friends celebrate. Enrique drinks and smokes some marijuana. He wants a tattoo. "A memory of my journey," he says.

El Tirindaro offers to do it free. He shoots up to steady his hand.

Enrique wants black ink.

But all El Tirindaro has is green.

Enrique pushes out his chest and asks for two names, so close together they are almost one. For three hours, El Tirindaro digs into Enrique's skin. In gothic script, the words emerge:

EnriqueLourdes.

His mom, he thinks happily, will scold him.

The next day just before noon, he stirs from his dirty mattress. He is hungry. Hours pass. His hunger grows. Finally, he cannot stand it. He retrieves the first phone card from the friend who is holding it, and he sells it for food.

After earning enough for a second phone card, Enrique got a tattoo of his and his mother's names.

Worse, he is so desperate that he sacrifices it at a discount, for 40 pesos. He saves a few pesos for the next day and uses all of his money to buy crackers, the cheapest thing that will fill his stomach.

Now he has gone from two phone cards to one, worth only 30 pesos. He regrets surrendering to his hunger. If only he can earn 20 pesos more. Then he will go ahead and phone his old boss and hope that his aunt or uncle will call back on their own, so he won't need a second card.

But someone has stolen his bucket. A friend at camp lends him one. He trudges back out to the car wash across from the taco stand. He sits on the bucket. Carefully, he pulls up his T-shirt. There, in an arch just above his belly button, is his tattoo, painfully raw.

EnriqueLourdes. Now the words mock him.

For the first time, he is ready to go back home. But he holds back his tears and lowers his shirt.

He refuses to give up.

 

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The Moment

He considers crossing the Rio Grande by himself. But his friends at camp warn him against it.

They talk about river bandits who kill, a man sucked under by a whirlpool, dogs at Border Patrol checkpoints that respond to German and can smell sweat, the 120-degree desert, diamondback rattlers, saucer-sized tarantulas and wild hogs with tusks. Some immigrants, dehydrated and delirious, kill themselves. Their leathery corpses sway from belts around their necks on whatever is sturdy and tall. Water jugs lie empty at their feet.

El Hongo listens. Finally, he decides against going alone. "Why should I die doing this?" he asks himself. Somehow, he will call his mother and ask her to hire El Tirindaro.

In Nuevo Laredo park, Enrique pulled a scrap of paper fromhis jeans and carefully unfolded it. Then he dialed his mother's number at a phone booth.

On May 18, he awakens to find that someone has stolen his right shoe. He spots a sneaker floating near the riverbank. He snags it. It is for a left foot. Now he has two left shoes. Bucket in hand, he hobbles back to the taco stand, begging along the way. People give him a peso or two. He washes a few cars, and it starts to rain. Astonishingly, he has put together 20 pesos in all.

That is enough to trade in his 30-peso phone card for one worth 50 pesos.

He will use the 50 peso card to call his old boss at the tire store. If the boss reaches his aunt and uncle, and if they know his mother's number, and if his aunt or uncle will call him back ...

It is May 19. Father Leonardo Lopez Guajardo at Parroquia de San Jose is known to let migrants phone from the church if they have cards. Each day, he serves as their telephone assistant. In flip-flops, he pads to the door every 15 minutes or so and summons someone for a return call.

In late afternoon, Enrique reaches his old boss with his request. Two hours later, the padre bellows Enrique's name. As always, word spreads through the courtyard like wildfire: Someone named Enrique has a phone call.

"Are you all right?" asks Uncle Carlos.

"Yes, I'm OK. I want to call my mom. I've lost the phone number."

Somehow, his boss has neglected to tell them this. Do they have it with them? Aunt Rosa Amalia fumbles in her purse. She finds the number. Uncle Carlos reads it, digit by digit, into the phone.

Ten digits.

Carefully, Enrique writes them down, one after another, on a shred of paper.

Just as Uncle Carlos finishes, the phone dies.

Uncle Carlos calls again.

But Enrique is already gone. He cannot wait.

When he talks to his mom, he wants to be alone; he might cry. He runs to an out-of-the-way pay phone to call her. Collect.

He is nervous. Maybe she is sharing a place with unrelated immigrants, and they have blocked the telephone to collect calls. Or she might refuse to pay. It has been 11 years. She does not even know him. She had told him, even harshly, not to come north, but he has disobeyed her. Each of the few times they have talked, she urged him to study. This, after all, was why she left--to send money for school. But he has dropped out of school.

Heart in his throat, he stands on the edge of a small park two blocks from the camp. Next to the grass is a Telmex phone box on a pole.

It is 7 p.m. and dangerous. Police patrol the park.

Enrique, a slight youngster with two left shoes, pulls the shred of paper from his jeans. They are worn and torn; he is too tattered to be in this neighborhood. He reaches for the receiver. His T-shirt is blazing white, sure to attract attention.

Slowly, carefully, he unfolds his prized possession: her phone number.

He listens in wonderment as his mother answers.

She accepts the charges.

Mami?"

At the other end, Lourdes' hands begin to tremble. Then her arms and knees. "Hola, mi hijo. Hello, my son. Where are you?"

"I'm in Nuevo Laredo. Adonde estas? Where are you?"

"I was so worried." Her voice breaks, but she forces herself not to cry, lest she cause him to break down too. "North Carolina." She explains where that is. Enrique's foreboding eases. "How are you coming? Get a coyote." She sounds worried. She knows of a good smuggler in Piedras Negras.

"No, no," he says. "I have someone here." Many smugglers deliver their clients to bandits. Enrique trusts El Tirindaro, but he costs $ 1,200.

She will get the money together. "Be careful," she says. Go to a hotel. Get the telephone number and the address of Western Union in Nuevo Laredo. She will wire money for a room.

"No," he says. He is camping by the river. But he will call back with the Western Union information, so she can send a little money anyway.

The conversation is awkward. His mother is a stranger. This is probably expensive; he knows that collect calls to the United States from back home in Honduras cost several dollars a minute.

But he could feel her love. He places the receiver in its cradle and sighs.

At the other end, his mother finally cries.

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER FIVE
Bullhorns: written from interviews with Enrique and Rio Grande camp dweller Hernan Bonilla. Words agent shouted through the bullhorn: from Bonilla, confirmed by Enrique.

Lost phone numbers: from Deacon Esteban Ramirez Rodriguez of Parroquia de Guadalupe in Reynosa, Mexico, and several immigrant children stranded in Nuevo Laredo, including Ermis Galeano and Kelvin Maradiaga. Migrant twins Jose Enrique Oliva Rosa and Jose Luis Oliva Rosa told of being kidnapped.

Enrique's plans for getting his mother's number and saving money to call her: expressed by Enrique to Nazario at the time.

Reluctance to help Central Americans: from Raymundo Ramos Vasquez, director of Comite de Derechos Humanos, Grupo 5 de Febrero, a human rights group in Nuevo Laredo, and Marco Antonio Valdez, a resident. Statement that Jesus was an immigrant: from Oscar Alvarado, caretaker for Parroquia de San Jose's migrant shelter, confirmed by Enrique and other immigrants.

The encampment: from Enrique and camp residents Hernan Bonilla, Miguel Olivas, Luis Moreno Guzman and Jorge Enrique Morales, as well as from Nazario's observations at the camp.

Washing cars: from Nazario's observations. Exchange between Enrique and the man who declined a car wash: observed by Nazario. The next day, Enrique told Nazario how much he had earned.

Meal cards: from Father Filiberto Luviano Mendoza at Parroquia del Santo Niño and volunteer Leti Limon at Parroquia de San Jose. Meal card black market: from immigrant Miguel Olivas.

Dinner at Parroquia de San Jose: from Nazario's observations at the church. The scriptural translation is from the New American Bible. Words of volunteer Leti Limon and the immigrants' response: from Nazario's observations. Father Leonardo Lopez Guajardo at Parroquia de San Jose calculated the percentage of the church's meals that go to children.

El Tirindaro, his heroin habit and protecting Enrique: from Nazario's observations and interviews with Enrique and camp residents Miguel Olivas, Hernan Bonilla and Omar Martinez Torres.

Life at the camp and efforts to help one another: from Enrique; Miguel Olivas; Hernan Bonilla, who shared food and taught Enrique to fish; El Tirindaro, who provided clothing and meal cards; and Jorge Enrique Morales, who gave Enrique bits of tacos.

Smuggling around checkpoints: from Enrique; camp dweller Omar Martinez Torres; and U.S. Border Patrol agents, who said the practice is common.

What Enrique and the camp dwellers talked about: from Enrique, Miguel Olivas, Hernan Bonilla and Omar Martinez Torres, as well as Nazario's observations at the camp. Enrique's words to a friend that he wanted to be with his mother and the response: from Enrique and fellow camp dweller Omar Martinez Torres. Enrique made the same statement to Nazario while in Nuevo Laredo.

Run-in with street gangster: from Enrique; Nazario also interviewed immigrants who said they were beaten or threatened with guns or knives by river bandits and street gangsters along the Rio Grande.

Jail: from Enrique, corroborated by Raymundo Ramos Vasquez at rights group Comite de Derechos Humanos, Grupo 5 de Febrero.

Abandoned house: from Enrique and photographer Don Bartletti's observations.

Phone card purchase and remark about needing one more: from Enrique.

Mother's Day: from Central American mothers, including Agueda Navarro, Belinda Caceres, Orbelina Sanchez and Lourdes Izaguirre, and Nazario's observations as they consoled one another. A mother's prayer to live: from Nazario's observations as she watched Lourdes Izaguirre pray.

Enrique's words about how long a mother should be away, his loneliness and his longing to tell his mother he loved her: Nazario's observations as he spoke with fellow car washers.

Lourdes' thoughts and actions after her son left home: from Lourdes, confirmed by her cousin Maria Edelmira Sanchez Mejia, with whom Lourdes spoke at the time. Enrique's words to Lourdes during their last phone conversation before he left Honduras: from Lourdes, confirmed by Enrique.

Enrique's encounter with police at the camp: from Enrique and Nazario's observations of similar incidents involving Enrique.

Glue sniffing: from Hernan Bonilla and from Nazario's observations.

Enrique's words to Hernan about eating: from Enrique.

Enrique's purchase of a second phone card: Nazario watched him earn some of the money and heard about the purchase from Enrique the next day.

Tattooing: from interviews with Enrique and Nazario's observations when he awoke in camp. His words as he described the tattoo as a memory of his journey: from Enrique at the time.

Enrique's sale of his second phone card and purchase of crackers: from Enrique. Theft of bucket: from Enrique. Nazario observed Enrique returning to the car wash with a borrowed bucket, inspecting his tattoo and lowering his shirt. She heard his refusal to give up.

Dangers at river and checkpoints: from immigrants Miguel Olivas, Hernan Bonilla and Fredy Ramirez; U.S. Border Patrol supervisor Alexander D. Hernandez and officers Charles Grout and Manuel Sauceda in Cotulla, Texas; and Nazario's observations.

Desert dangers: from interviews with immigrants Miguel Olivas, Gonzalo Rodriguez Toledo, Luis Moreno Guzman, Elsa Galarza, Leonicio Alejandro Hernandez, Mario Alberto Hernandez and Manuel Gallegos; U.S. Border Patrol agents Charles Grout and Manuel Sauceda and dog handler Ramon Lopez; and Nazario's observations while accompanying agents for three days on the Texas border. The General Accounting Office says at least 367 immigrants died crossing the southwestern border into the United States in 2000.

Enrique's words about dying: spoken by Enrique to Nazario.

Enrique's shoes and buying a 50-peso phone card: from Enrique at the time.

Father Leonardo Lopez Guajardo's assistance: from Sister Elizabeth Rangel, church secretary Alma Jimenez and Nazario's observations.

Enrique's call to his former employer and return call from uncle Carlos: from Enrique, uncle Carlos Orlando Turcios Ramos and aunt Rosa Amalia. Words during his telephone conversation with uncle Carlos: from Enrique, confirmed by uncle Carlos. The paper Enrique wrote the number on: observed by Nazario.

Enrique's call to his mother: from Enrique and Lourdes. The day after the call, Enrique quoted words from the exchange to Nazario. Lourdes confirmed the words to Nazario two weeks later.

 

 

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At Journey's, End A Dark River, Perhaps a New Life
Enrique's mother pays smugglers to get him across the Rio Grande and then to her in North Carolina. She cannot sleep. She has visions of him dead.

BY SONIA NAZARIO, TIMES STAFF WRITER
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BARTLETTI

At 1 a.m., Enrique waits on the edge of the water.

"If you get caught, I don't know you," says the man called El Tirindaro. He is stern.

Enrique nods. So do two other immigrants, a Mexican brother and sister, waiting with him. They strip to their underwear.

Across the Rio Grande stands a 50-foot pole equipped with U.S. Border Patrol cameras. In daylight, Enrique has counted four sport utility vehicles near the pole, each with agents. Now, in the darkness, he cannot see any.

He leaves it up to El Tirindaro, a subspecies of smuggler known as a patero because he pushes people across the river on inner tubes by paddling soundlessly with his feet, like a pato, or duck. El Tirindaro has spent hours at this spot studying everything that moves on the other side.

A young Honduran migrant rests on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

Enrique, 17, tears up a small piece of paper and scatters it on the riverbank. It is his mother's phone number. He has memorized it. Now the agents cannot use it to locate and deport her. She left him behind in Honduras more than 11 years ago and entered the United States illegally to seek work. In all, Enrique has spent four months trying to find her.

El Tirindaro holds an inner tube. The Mexicans climb on. He paddles them to an island in midstream. He returns for Enrique with the tube.

He steadies it in the water.

Carefully, Enrique climbs aboard. The Rio Bravo, as it is called here, is swollen with rain. Two nights before, it had killed a youngster he knew. Enrique cannot swim, and he is afraid.

El Tirindaro places a plastic garbage bag on Enrique's lap. It contains dry clothing for the four of them. Then El Tirindaro paddles and starts to push. A swift current grabs the tube and sweeps it into the river. Wind whips off Enrique's cap. Drizzle coats his face. He dips in a hand. The water is cold.

All at once, he sees a flash of white--one of the SUVs, probably with a dog in back, inching along a trail above the river.

Silence. No bullhorn barks, "Turn back."

The inner tube lurches along. It is May 21, 2000. Agents will catch 108,973 migrants in this area alone during fiscal 2000. The tube sloshes and bounces. Enrique grips the valve stem. The sky is overcast, and the river is dark. In the distance, bits of lights dance on the surface.

At last, he sees the island, overgrown with willows and reeds. He seizes the limb of a willow. It tears off. With both hands, he lays hold of a larger branch, and the inner tube swings onto the silt and grass. They have crossed the southern channel. On the other side of the island flows the northern channel, even more frightening because it is closer to the United States.

El Tirindaro circles the island on foot and looks across the water. The white SUV reappears, less than 100 yards away. It is moving slowly along the dirt trail, high on the riverbank.

Its roof lights flash red and blue on the water, creating a psychedelic sheen. Agents turn to aim a spotlight straight at the island.

Enrique and the Mexicans dive to the ground face-first. If the agents spot them and lie in wait, it could spell doom for Enrique. He is closer to his mother than ever. Authorities could deport the Mexicans back across the river, but they could send him all the way to Honduras. It would mean starting out for the ninth time.

For half an hour, everyone lies stone-still.

Crickets sing, and water rushes around the rocks. Finally the agents seem to give up. El Tirindaro waits and watches. He makes certain, then returns.

Enrique whispers: Take the others first.

El Tirindaro loads the Mexicans onto the tube. Their weight sinks it almost out of sight. Slowly, they lumber across the water.

Minutes later, El Tirindaro returns. "Get over here," he says to Enrique. "Climb up." He has other instructions: Don't rustle the garbage bag holding the clothes. Don't step on twigs. Don't paddle; it makes noise.

El Tirindaro slips into the water behind the tube and kicks his legs beneath the surface. It takes only a minute or two. He and Enrique reach a spot where the river slows, and Enrique grabs another branch. They pull ashore and touch soft, slippery mud.

In his underwear, Enrique stands for the first time on U.S. soil.

 

 

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Nearly Frozen

As El Tirindaro hides the inner tube, he spots the Border Patrol.

He and the three immigrants hurry along the edge of the Rio Grande to a tributary called Zacate Creek.

Get in, El Tirindaro says.

Enrique walks into the creek. It is cold. He bends his knees and lowers himself to his chin. His broken teeth chatter so hard they hurt; he cups a hand over his mouth, trying to stop them. For an hour and a half, they stand in Zacate Creek in silence. Effluent spills into the water from a three-foot-wide pipe close by. It is connected to a sewage treatment plant on the edge of Laredo, Texas. Enrique can smell it.

El Tirindaro walks ahead, scouting as he goes.

At his command, Enrique and the others climb out of the water. Enrique is numb. He falls to the ground, nearly frozen.

"Dress quickly," El Tirindaro says.

Enrique emerges from the Rio Grande in Texas after wading across. In the plastic bag is dry clothes. Before Enrique entered the water, he tore up a scrap of paper with his mother's phone number on it and scatter it on the bank. This time, he had memorized the number.

Enrique steps out of his wet undershorts and tosses them away. They are his last possession from home. He puts on dry jeans, a dry shirt and his two left shoes. It has been three days since his right one was stolen, and all he has been able to find is a second left shoe to replace it. He told his mother about it when he called her, but there was no time for her to send any money for a proper pair.

El Tirindaro offers everyone a piece of bread and a soda. The others eat and drink. Enrique is too nervous. Being on the outskirts of Laredo means they are near homes. If dogs bark, the Border Patrol will suspect intruders.

"This is the hard part," El Tirindaro says.

He runs. Enrique races behind him. The Mexicans follow, up a steep embankment, along a well-worn dirt path, past mesquite bushes and behind some tamarind trees, until they are next to a large, round, flat tank. It is part of the sewage plant.

Beyond is an open space.

El Tirindaro glances nervously to the right and left. Nothing.

"Follow me," he says.

Now he runs faster. Numbness washes out of Enrique's legs. It disappears in a wave of fear. They sprint next to a fence, then along a narrow path on a cliff above the creek. They dash down another embankment, into the dry upstream channel of Zacate Creek, under a pipe, then a pedestrian bridge, across the channel, up the opposite embankment and out onto a two-lane residential street.

Two cars pass. Winded, the four scuttle into bushes. Half a block ahead, another car flashes its headlights.

 

 

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Puffs of Clouds

It is a red Chevrolet Blazer with tinted windows. As they reach it, locks click open. Enrique and the others scramble inside. In front sit a Latino driver and a woman. Enrique has met them before, at a house across the river frequented by El Tirindaro. They are part of his smuggling network.

It is 4 a.m. Enrique is exhausted. He climbs onto pillows in back. They are like puffs of clouds, and he feels immense relief. He smiles and says to himself, "Now that I'm in this car, no one can get me out." The engine starts, and the driver passes back a pack of beer. He asks Enrique to put it into a cooler. The driver pops a top.

For a moment, Enrique worries: What if the driver has too many?

The Blazer heads toward Dallas.

Border Patrol agents pay attention to Blazers and other SUVs. Headlights tilted up mean there are people in the back, weighing down the vehicle, says Alexander D. Hernandez, a supervisor in Cotulla, Texas. Weaving means the load is heavy and causing sway. When the agents notice, they pull alongside and shine a flashlight into the eyes of the passengers. If the riders do not look over but seem frozen in their seats, they are likely to be illegal immigrants.

Enrique sleeps until El Tirindaro shakes him. They are out of Laredo and half a mile south of a Border Patrol checkpoint.

"Get up!" El Tirindaro says. Enrique can tell he has been drinking. Five beers are gone. The Blazer stops. Enrique and the two Mexicans, with El Tirindaro leading, climb a wire fence and walk east, away from the freeway. Then they turn north, parallel to it. Enrique can see the checkpoint at a distance.

Every car must stop.

"U.S. citizens?" agents ask. Often, they check for documents.

Enrique and his group walk 10 minutes more, then turn west, back toward the freeway. They crouch next to a billboard. Overhead, the stars are receding, and he can see the first light of dawn.

The Blazer pulls up.

Enrique sinks back into the pillows. He thinks: I have crossed the last big hurdle. Suddenly he is overwhelmed. Never has he felt so happy.

He stares at the ceiling and drifts into a deep, blissful sleep.

Four hundred miles later, the Blazer pulls into a gas station on the outskirts of Dallas. Enrique awakens. El Tirindaro is gone. He has left without saying goodbye. From conversations in Mexico, Enrique knows that El Tirindaro gets $ 100 a client. Enrique's mother, Lourdes, has promised $ 1,200. Clearly, this is all business, and the driver is the boss; he gets most of the money. The patero is on his way back to Mexico.

Along with fuel, the driver buys more beer, and the Blazer rolls into Dallas about noon. America looks beautiful. The buildings are huge. The freeways have traffic exchanges with double and triple decks. They are nothing like the dirt streets at home. Everything is so clean.

The driver drops off the Mexicans and takes Enrique to a large house. Inside are bags of clothing in various sizes and American styles, to outfit clients so they no longer stand out.

They telephone his mother.

 

 

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Lourdes

Lourdes, 35, has come to love North Carolina. People are polite. There are plenty of jobs for immigrants, and it seems to be safe. She can leave her car unlocked, as well as her house.

A gray album holds treasures: pictures of Belky, her daughter back home. At 7, Belky wears a white First Communion dress; at 9, a yellow cheerleader's skirt; at 15, for her quinceañera, a pink taffeta dress and white satin shoes. There are pictures of Enrique too: at 8 in a tank top, with four piglets at his feet; at 13 in the photograph at Belky's quinceañera, the serious-looking little brother.

Lourdes has not slept. All night, since Enrique's last call from a pay phone across the Rio Grande, she has been having visions of him dead, floating on the river, his body wet and swollen. She told her boyfriend, "My greatest fear is to never see him again."

Now a female smuggler is on the phone. The woman says: We have your son in Texas, but $ 1,200 is not enough. $ 1,700.

Lourdes grows suspicious. Maybe Enrique is dead, and the smugglers are trying to cash in. "Put him on the line."

He is out shopping for food, the smuggler says.

Lourdes will not be put off.

He is asleep, the smuggler says.

How can he be both? Lourdes demands to talk to him.

Finally, the smuggler gives the phone to Enrique.

"¿Sos tu?" his mother asks anxiously. "Is it you?"

"Si, Mami, it's me."

Still, his mother is not sure. She does not recognize his voice. She has heard it only half a dozen times in 11 years.

"¿Sos tu?" she asks again. Then twice more. She grasps for something, anything, that she can ask this boy--a question that no one but Enrique can answer. She remembers what he told her about his shoes when he called on the pay phone.

"What kind of shoes do you have on?" she asks.

"Two left shoes," Enrique says.

Fear drains from his mother like a wave back into the sea. It is Enrique. She feels a moment of pure happiness.

 

 

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Waiting

She takes $ 500 she has saved, borrows $ 1,200 from her boyfriend and wires it to Dallas.

In the house with the clothing, the smugglers wait. From the bags, Enrique puts on clean pants, a shirt and a new pair of shoes. The smugglers take him to a restaurant. He eats chicken smothered in cream sauce. Clean, sated, in his mother's adopted country, he is happy.

They go to Western Union. But there is no money under his mother's name, not even a message.

How could she do this?

At worst, Enrique figures, he can break away. Run.

But the smugglers call again.

She says she has sent the money through a female immigrant who lives with her, because the woman gets a Western Union discount. The money should be there under the woman's name.

It is.

Enrique has no time to celebrate. The smugglers take him to a gas station, where they meet another man in the network. He puts Enrique with four migrant men being routed to Orlando, Fla. They stay overnight in Houston, and at midday, Enrique leaves Texas in a green van.

Five days later, Lourdes' boyfriend gets time off from work to drive to Orlando, where Enrique has been staying with other migrants and waiting for him to arrive. Her boyfriend is handsome, with graying temples and a mustache. Enrique recognizes him from a video that his Uncle Carlos had brought back from a visit.

"Are you Lourdes' son?" the boyfriend asks.

Enrique nods.

"Let's go." They say little in the car, and Enrique falls asleep.

By 8 a.m. on May 28, Enrique is in North Carolina. He awakens to tires crossing highway seams: Click-click. Click-click. "Are we lost?" he asks. "Are you sure we aren't lost? Do you know where we are going?"

"We're almost there."

They are moving fast through pines and elms, past billboards and fields, yellow lilies and purple lilacs. The road is freshly paved. It goes over a bridge and passes cattle pastures with large rolls of hay. On both sides are wealthy subdivisions. Then railroad tracks. Finally, at the end of a short gravel street, some house trailers. One is beige. Built in the 1950s, it has white metal awnings and is framed in tall green trees.

At 10 a.m., after more than 12,000 miles, 122 days and seven futile attempts to find his mother, Enrique, 11 years older than when she left him behind, bounds from the back seat of the car, up five faded redwood steps, and swings open the white door of the mobile home.

To the left, beyond a tiny living room with dark wooden beams, sits a girl with shoulder-length black hair and curly bangs. She is at the kitchen table eating breakfast. He remembers a picture of her. Her name is Diana. She is 9. She was born in California, not long after Lourdes came to the United States, while she lived with a former boyfriend from Honduras.

Enrique leans over and kisses the girl on the cheek.

"Are you my brother?"

He nods. "Where is my mother? Where is my mother?"

She motions past the kitchen to the far end of the trailer.

Enrique runs. His feet zigzag down two narrow, brown-paneled hallways.

He opens a door.

Inside, the room is cluttered, dark. On a queen-size bed, under a window draped with lace curtains, his mother is asleep. He jumps squarely onto the bed next to her. He gives her a hug. Then a kiss.

"You're here, mi hijo."

"I'm here," he says.

 

 

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Conclusion

"The Odyssey," an epic poem about a hero's journey home from war, ends with reunion and peace. "The Grapes of Wrath," the classic novel about the dust bowl and the migration of Oklahoma farmers to California, ends with death and a glimmer of renewed life.

Enrique's journey is not fiction, and its conclusion is more complex and less dramatic. But it ends with a twist worthy of O. Henry.

Children like Enrique dream of finding their mothers and living happily ever after. For weeks, perhaps months, these children and their mothers cling to romanticized notions of how they should feel toward each other.

Then reality intrudes.

The children show resentment because they were left behind. They remember broken promises to return and accuse their mothers of lying. They complain that their mothers work too hard to give them the attention they have been missing. In extreme cases, they find love and esteem elsewhere, by getting pregnant, marrying early or joining gangs.

Enrique and his mother, Lourdes, embrace outside her mobile home in North Carolina. For weeks, perhaps months, reunited children and mothers cling to romanticized notions about how they should feel toward each other. Then reality intrudes.

Some are surprised to discover entire new families in the United States--a stepfather, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Jealousies grow. Stepchildren call the new arrivals mojados, or wetbacks, and threaten to summon the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport them.

The mothers, for their part, demand respect for their sacrifice: leaving their children for the children's sake. Some have been lonely and worked hard to support themselves, to pay off their own smuggling debts and save money to send home. When their children say, "You abandoned me," they respond by hauling out tall stacks of money transfer receipts.

They think their children are ungrateful and bristle at the independence they show--the same independence that helped the children survive their journeys north. In time, mothers and children discover they hardly know each other.

At first, neither Enrique nor Lourdes cries. He kisses her again. She holds him tightly. He has played this out in his mind a thousand times. It is just as he thought it would be.

All day they talk. He tells her about his travels: the clubbing on top of a train, leaping off to save his life, the hunger, thirst and fear. He has lost 28 pounds, down to 107. She cooks rice, beans and fried pork. He sits at the table and eats. The boy she last saw when he was in kindergarten is taller than she is. He has her nose, her round face, her eyes, her curly hair.

"Look, Mom, look what I put here." He pulls up his shirt. She sees a tattoo.

EnriqueLourdes, it says, across his chest.

His mother winces. Tattoos, she says, are for delinquents, for people in jail. "I'm going to tell you, son, I don't like this." She pauses. "But at least if you had to get a tattoo, you remembered me."

"I've always remembered you."

He tells her about Honduras, how he stole his aunt's jewelry to pay drug debts, how he wanted to get away from drugs, how he ached to be with her.

Finally, Lourdes cries.

She asks about Belky, her daughter in Honduras; her own mother; and the deaths of two brothers. Then she stops. She feels too guilty to go on.

The trailer is awash in guilt. Eight people live here. Several have left their children behind. All they have is pictures. Lourdes' boyfriend has two sons in Hondruas. He has not seen them in five years.

Enrique likes the people in the trailer, especially his mother's boyfriend; he could be a better father than his own dad, who abandoned him to start another family.

Three days after Enrique arrives, Lourdes' boyfriend helps him find work as a painter. He earns $ 7 an hour. Within a week, he is promoted to sander, making $ 9.50. With his first paycheck, he offers to pick up $ 50 of the food bill. He buys Diana a gift: a pair of pink sandals for $ 5.97. He sends money to Belky and to Maria Isabel Caria Duron, his girlfriend in Honduras.

Lourdes brags to her friends. "This is my son. Look at him! He is so big. It's a miracle he's here."

Whenever he leaves the house, she hugs him. When she comes home from work, they sit on the couch, watching her favorite soap opera, with her hand resting on his arm.

Over time, though, they realize they are strangers. Neither knows the other's likes or dislikes. At a grocery store, Lourdes reaches for bottles of Coke. Enrique says he does not drink Coke--only Sprite.

He plans to work and make money. She wants him to study English, learn a profession.

He goes to a pool hall without asking permission. She becomes upset.

Occasionally, he uses profanities. She tells him not to. Both remember their angry words.

"¡No, Mami!" he says. "No one is going to change me."

"Well, you'll have to change! If not, we will have problems. I want a son who, when I say to do something, he says OK."

"You can't tell me what to do!"

The clash culminates when Maria Isabel telephones collect and her call is rejected because some of the migrants in the trailer do not know who she is.

That was right, Lourdes says; they cannot afford collect calls from just anyone.

Enrique flares and begins to pack.

Lourdes walks up behind him and spanks him hard on his buttocks, several times.

"You have no right to hit me! You didn't raise me."

Enrique spends the night sleeping in her car.

In the end, however, their love prevails. Their differences ease.

Enrique and his mother are conciliatory at last. They are living in her trailer home to this day.

More than that, they might be joined by Maria Isabel.

One day, Enrique phones Honduras. Maria Isabel is pregnant, as he suspected before he left. On Nov. 2, 2000, she gives birth to their daughter.

She and Enrique name the baby Katherine Jasmin.

The baby looks like him. She has his mouth, his nose, his eyes.

An aunt urges Maria Isabel to go to the United States, alone. The aunt promises to take care of the baby.

"If I have the opportunity, I'll go," Maria Isabel says. "I'll leave my baby behind."

Enrique agrees. "We'll have to leave the baby behind."

 

 

Enrique's Journey

NOTES ABOUT SOURCES: CHAPTER SIX
1 a.m. departure: drawn from interviews with Enrique and migrant Hernan Bonilla, who witnessed the departure, as well as Nazario's subsequent observation of the staging area on the south bank of the Rio Grande and her observation of other crossings and pursuits by the U.S. Border Patrol. El Tirindaro's words to Enrique and the two Mexicans about getting caught: from Enrique. Other immigrants told Nazario this is a standard speech smugglers give immigrants before they cross the river.

Drowning in the river: from Enrique and other immigrants, including three at Parroquia de San Jose, which feeds migrants. The immigrants said they watched a youngster named Ricki drown in a whirlpool two nights before.

Number of immigrants caught: from a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service tally of illegal immigrants apprehended in the Laredo, Texas, area during fiscal 2000.

Crossing to the island, then to the United States: from interviews with Enrique and from Nazario's subsequent observation of the island from Enrique's crossing site on the south bank of the river. Instructions by El Tirindaro: from Enrique. Nazario retraced Enrique's steps on both sides of the river and went to the spot where he first touched U.S. soil. She retraced his run along Zacate Creek, past a sewage treatment plant and up an embankment into a residential area on the outskirts of Laredo.

Chevrolet Blazer and Enrique's ride to Dallas: from Enrique. His musings during the ride and the words El Tirindaro used to wake him: from Enrique. Spotting suspect vehicles: from Alexander Hernandez, supervisory agent for the Border Patrol at Cotulla, Texas, during a patrol along the same stretch of highway.

Bypassing the Border Patrol checkpoint: from Enrique and other immigrants who have walked around the checkpoint in similar ways and from Nazario's observations during a visit to the checkpoint. Agents' questions of motorists at the checkpoint: from Nazario's observations when she visited the checkpoint.

Enrique's knowledge of how El Tirindaro and his accomplices split smuggling fees: from Enrique, other immigrants and fellow camp residents Hernan Bonilla and Miguel Olivas.

Enrique's first impressions of the United States: from Enrique. The smugglers' house in Dallas: from Enrique.

Lourdes' life in North Carolina and her photos: from Lourdes, her boyfriend and other immigrants who lived with them. She showed Nazario the photos of her children.

Lourdes' statement that she feared she would never see Enrique again: from her boyfriend, confirmed by Lourdes.

Enrique's calls from Dallas to his mother: from Enrique, his mother and her boyfriend. Lourdes' demand that the smugglers put her son on the line: from Lourdes. Telephone exchange between Lourdes and Enrique when he was in Dallas: from Lourdes, confirmed by Enrique.

Money transfer, Enrique's meal, journey to Florida and his stay in Orlando: from Enrique and Lourdes. Exchange between Lourdes' boyfriend and Enrique as the boyfriend arrived in Florida: from the boyfriend, confirmed by Enrique.

Ride from Florida to North Carolina: from Enrique, Lourdes and her boyfriend and from Nazario's observations as she retraced the North Carolina portion of the trip. Enrique's questions on the drive home: from the boyfriend, confirmed by Enrique.

Reunification and conversations: from Enrique; his sister Diana; Lourdes; and Nazario's observations as Enrique retraced his steps into the house, into the kitchen, down the hallways and into his mother's room.

Exchange between Enrique and Diana: from Diana, confirmed by Enrique.

Exchanges between Lourdes and Enrique when they met and when he showed her his tattoo: from Lourdes, confirmed by Enrique.

Others living in Lourdes' home and the children they left behind: from interviews with Lourdes' boyfriend, the boyfriend's cousin and the cousin's wife.

Relationship between Enrique and his mother, including resentment by immigrant children because they were left behind: from Enrique and Lourdes, as well as Maria Olmos, principal of the Newcomer Center at Belmont High School, a school for immigrants in Los Angeles; Gabriel Murillo, a counselor at Belmont; and Aldo Pumariega, principal of the recently closed Bellagio Road Newcomer School in Los Angeles.

Enrique's job, earnings and purchases: from Nazario's observations.

The birth of Enrique's daughter: from Enrique, Lourdes and Enrique's uncle Carlos Orlando Turcios Ramos in Honduras.

Decision to leave the child behind: from Enrique, Lourdes and girlfriend Maria Isabel Caria Duron. Maria Isabel's words about her child: from Maria Isabel. Nazario also interviewed Maria Isabel's aunt Gloria Cuello Duron.

Enrique's statements about his child: from Enrique.