The smell of burning wood and plastic hits us as we step out of the van. Smoke from campfires meets the cloud of dirt kicked up by our tires, stinging our eyes and leaving a scratch in our throats. In the near distance, you can hear children splashing and playing in the Suchiate River, which separates Mexico \u2013 where we are \u2013 from Guatemala. <\/p>\n
We head toward the murky brown water, walking under tall, thick trees shielding us from the day\u2019s brutal sun. We\u2019re mindful of where we step, dodging scraps of cardboard used for beds and ducking under clothes hanging out to dry, careful not to intrude on someone\u2019s personal space or modest belongings. It strangely feels more like a community rooted here for centuries, rather than a migrants\u2019 campground. <\/p>\n
And after the assault on the senses, comes the assault on the mind and the heart. <\/p>\n
Stories abound from the people here, most originally from Venezuela, of why they left their homes and what they\u2019ve gone through so far on their journeys to Ciudad Hidalgo. The adults sometimes become emotional but more shocking is the calm, matter-of-fact, narration from the children. <\/p>\n
They had seen many dead people in the treacherous muddy jungle passage of the Dari\u00e9n Gap from Colombia to Panama, a group of young cousins tells me. <\/p>\n
\u201cI saw a woman, she had yellow hair and this part of her face was covered in blood,\u201d says 9-year-old Mathias, gesturing to his right cheek. <\/p>\n
I catch myself mid-interpretation from Spanish to English, realizing I am talking to children between the ages of 6 and 12 as they describe in vivid detail what they\u2019ve experienced along the way. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou get desperate in the jungle, you think you\u2019re going to die in there,\u201d Mathias says. <\/p>\n
His 12-year-old cousin Sofia adds: \u201cWe ran out of food. We were starving for a night. \u2026 We all lost weight.\u201d Her little brother Joandry lifts his shirt to show us his belly, as if to corroborate his sister and cousin\u2019s accounts. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hell,\u201d Sofia says. \u201cAnd every time you saw the end of the road, there was more to walk and we saw some dead people \u2026 lying on the ground.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hell,\u201d 6-year-old Joandry corroborates again, looking at me with eyes that have seen far more than most adults. <\/p>\n
The trauma from the trek they\u2019ve endured already, mixed with the shared dreams of making it to the United States, bond many of the people on the banks of the Suchiate, especially the kids. <\/p>\n
Sofia was the first to get our attention as she asks confidently and curiously what we\u2019re doing here. We tell her we\u2019re journalists. Her attention shifts to the water, and she excitedly points out to the river and one of the many rafts. \u201cThat\u2019s my dad!\u201d she tells us proudly. \u201cHe\u2019s helping others come across.\u201d <\/p>\n
A few feet away, sitting on the ground and leaning up against a tree is Sofia\u2019s mom, Susana. She\u2019s holding her 2-year-old son as Sofia\u2019s other younger siblings play close by. At first, Susana is more reserved \u2013 nodding for Sofia to answer our questions instead of her. But slowly she starts to open up, seemingly wanting to share their story. <\/p>\n
Still in conversation with Sofia and Susana, I sit down on a concrete step under an open-air structure used for storing goods that are illegally moved across the river from Mexico to Guatemala. Sofia sits next to me as we look out to the armada of rafts going back and forth, with dozens more chained up and ready to deploy. They\u2019re made of two large black inner tubes, tied together with rope and planks of wood across them to support goods and people. <\/p>\n
Sofia\u2019s dad, Jeandry, is one of the men who \u2013 like a gondolier on the canals of Venice \u2013 stands on the back with a long piece of wood steering the raft. At any given time, you can see across the river to Guatemala as up to a couple dozen migrants pile onboard and make the roughly 8-minute trip, illegally crossing into Mexico. Police are stationed a few hundred feet away, and the official crossing is within eyesight down river, but there\u2019s no enforcement along the border just a near-constant free flow back and forth. <\/p>\n
Sofia and her family say they took one of the rafts five days earlier. They\u2019ve stayed on the riverbank instead of immediately continuing north to save up money, with Sofia\u2019s dad working the rafts and the family asking for donations in the nearby town. <\/p>\n
As I pull out a microphone, and my team starts recording with their cameras, Sofia\u2019s siblings, aunt, uncle and cousins \u2013 who made the journey with them \u2013 crowd around. Little Joandry doesn\u2019t want to miss out and hurries over with shampoo still in his hair, cackling as his older sister tries to clean it out. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thinking about Philadelphia [or] Chicago,\u201d Sofia tells me, when I ask where in the US they\u2019d like to go. Her 9-year-old cousin, Mathias, chimes in, \u201cI\u2019m thinking about New York or Florida.\u201d Their parents look on, smiling as they\u2019d told me moments earlier they had no idea where they\u2019d end up; they just want to claim asylum and enter the US legally. <\/p>\n
The kids smile too as they talk about their dreams to go to school. Sofia and Mathias want to be doctors, though Mathias might also want to be a lawyer, he tells me. When I ask what it\u2019s been like traveling as a family, their faces turn expressionless for a moment. Solemn blank stares. <\/p>\n
The families have been on the road for nearly two months, having left Colombia, where they lived for the past six years. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to leave,\u201d Sofia says. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t stay poor there because every day we ate the same thing. There were times when we couldn\u2019t eat at all because there was no money.\u201d <\/p>\n
Before Colombia, the families fled Venezuela, to get away from the corruption and crime. \u201cAnd a bad economy,\u201d Joandry explains, taking the microphone out of my hand as if taking over the interview. <\/p>\n
As we talk and film, my team and I recognize a subtle difference in the migrants\u2019 tone here in southern Mexico compared with those who we\u2019ve met on multiple trips to cities bordering the US hundreds of miles farther north. <\/p>\n
For everything they\u2019ve been through, those in the south have yet to experience the extortion and threats from cartel-backed smugglers or the treacherous rides on top of freight trains. Looking at the parents\u2019 eyes, I can sense they have heard murmurs of what\u2019s ahead. Loved ones and friends have gone ahead of them and warned of the horrors. <\/p>\n
But they manage to strike a hopeful tone. \u201cIt\u2019s better than what\u2019s behind us,\u201d Mathias\u2019 mom tells us. \u201cWe don\u2019t go backwards; we move forward with God\u2019s blessings.\u201d <\/p>\n
As we thank the children and their parents for their time, Sofia and Mathias excitedly ask if we want to swim with them. \u201cI have to stay dry to work,\u201d I tell them. \u201cOK!\u201d they shout, sprinting toward the water like any other boisterous children, their trauma buried, for now. Each one echoes the other as we part: \u201cNos vemos! See ya later!\u201d <\/p>\n\n
The smell of burning wood and plastic hits us as we step out of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}