Skip Channel4 main Navigation
MEXICO: THE LONGEST JOURNEY
This week’s Unreported World is a shocking expose of the harrowing three month, 3000km journey undertaken every year by thousands of Central American migrants desperate to reach the US.
Friday 24 November 2006 7.35pm
This week’s Unreported World is a shocking expose of the harrowing three month, 3000km journey undertaken every year by thousands of Central American migrants desperate to reach the US.
Friday 24 November 2006 7.35pm
Reporter Sandra Jordan and Director Nick Sturdee begin their journey at the Suchiate River, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Twenty four hours a day, migrants pay a few dollars to be ferried across aboard makeshift rafts and tractor tyres.
Once across, they have to survive what they call “la pesadilla mexicana” - the Mexican nightmare: evading immigration police and the armed gangsters and rapists who prey on the vulnerable migrants as they cross the country to reach the US border. Many risk their lives riding La Bestia - The Beast - a one-kilometer long freight train that starts off in Arriaga in Chiapas State.
In Arriaga the team meets Said. A Guatemalan by birth, he has lived in the US since he was three. His home, his job, his mother and his son are all in Houston, Texas. He says he’s been permanently deported for drunk driving and is traveling with his wife, Eugenia, who’s dressed like a man to try to avoid being raped on the journey. Eugenia was deported from the US for not having the right work papers. Now all they want is to get back to their five-year-old in Houston, and the only way back is to travel on La Bestia, then cross the desert in the north.
There is no timetable for the train. After five days’ waiting it finally arrives at night. By now the migrants, including girls as young as 12, have formed family groups to protect themselves from the unknown assailants who wait to attack the train. Jordan and xxx climb on board the rooftop and harness themselves on. The migrants have no such safeguards. Traveling through torrential rain, as the train jolts and shudders forwards and backwards; and battered by branches from the trees lining the track, many migrants fall under the wheels and some lose limbs or their lives.
Said’s group has two machetes and the team are told that they may have to fight for their lives. What, Jordan asks, do we do if someone tries to jump on our wagon? Kick him off to his death she’s told. The team hears voices and everybody fears that they’re gangsters trying to attack the train and kill, rape or rob the migrants. Luckily this time the train is moving too fast for them to jump aboard.
Dawn breaks and the train shudders to a halt. The locomotive has derailed and everybody is lucky that the rest of the train stayed on the tracks. The team leaves the train and the remaining migrants as they face several treacherous weeks riding to northern Mexico and the desert. Said tells Jordan that of the 40 people on their wagon, perhaps three will make it to the US and promises to stay in touch with the team by mobile phone.
The team then travel to Nogales in the Sonora desert. They meet Odelia. A Guatemalan, she was deported for letting her papers run out of date. Her two children, US born and American citizens, have been taken into foster care. She’s crossing the desert to get back to them.
Jordan and Sturdee are stopped by the police. ‘Do not go into those hills’, they’re told, ‘there are men there who will rob you and rape the women’. The team turn back as Odelia and her friends walk onwards into the hills. There’s still no word from Said.
Once across, they have to survive what they call “la pesadilla mexicana” - the Mexican nightmare: evading immigration police and the armed gangsters and rapists who prey on the vulnerable migrants as they cross the country to reach the US border. Many risk their lives riding La Bestia - The Beast - a one-kilometer long freight train that starts off in Arriaga in Chiapas State.
In Arriaga the team meets Said. A Guatemalan by birth, he has lived in the US since he was three. His home, his job, his mother and his son are all in Houston, Texas. He says he’s been permanently deported for drunk driving and is traveling with his wife, Eugenia, who’s dressed like a man to try to avoid being raped on the journey. Eugenia was deported from the US for not having the right work papers. Now all they want is to get back to their five-year-old in Houston, and the only way back is to travel on La Bestia, then cross the desert in the north.
There is no timetable for the train. After five days’ waiting it finally arrives at night. By now the migrants, including girls as young as 12, have formed family groups to protect themselves from the unknown assailants who wait to attack the train. Jordan and xxx climb on board the rooftop and harness themselves on. The migrants have no such safeguards. Traveling through torrential rain, as the train jolts and shudders forwards and backwards; and battered by branches from the trees lining the track, many migrants fall under the wheels and some lose limbs or their lives.
Said’s group has two machetes and the team are told that they may have to fight for their lives. What, Jordan asks, do we do if someone tries to jump on our wagon? Kick him off to his death she’s told. The team hears voices and everybody fears that they’re gangsters trying to attack the train and kill, rape or rob the migrants. Luckily this time the train is moving too fast for them to jump aboard.
Dawn breaks and the train shudders to a halt. The locomotive has derailed and everybody is lucky that the rest of the train stayed on the tracks. The team leaves the train and the remaining migrants as they face several treacherous weeks riding to northern Mexico and the desert. Said tells Jordan that of the 40 people on their wagon, perhaps three will make it to the US and promises to stay in touch with the team by mobile phone.
The team then travel to Nogales in the Sonora desert. They meet Odelia. A Guatemalan, she was deported for letting her papers run out of date. Her two children, US born and American citizens, have been taken into foster care. She’s crossing the desert to get back to them.
Jordan and Sturdee are stopped by the police. ‘Do not go into those hills’, they’re told, ‘there are men there who will rob you and rape the women’. The team turn back as Odelia and her friends walk onwards into the hills. There’s still no word from Said.
