De Nadie, a documentary about the lives of Central American immigrants on their path to the U.S., speaks so many volumes as you see the real truths of what happens. This is the side of the story you don’t hear about. These immigrants leave their homes in hopes of living a better life. They have to face so many hurdles on the way to the border. The documentary followed several people, but in particular, a Honduran mother of four with a husband who was undergoing a surgery. Maria was her name. On her travels, she was taking the train with two of her friends. Mara Salvatrucha is a Mexican gang that controls the trains that go to the border. Immigrants are seen jumping onto the trains for a way to get to the border, but these gangs rob, beat, rape and kill people who do so. The police have no control over it whatsoever. Most of these immigrants say it is not hunger or dehydration or the cold that will kill them; it is Mara Salvatrucha. Mara Salvatrucha was able to catch Maria and her friends on the way to the border. They threatened to kill all three of them, and three of the gang members pined Maria down and raped her as they held a gun to her head. This is just one of the thousands of cases of harassment and abuse. Almost none of them are reported.
The police are not much help and in fact they can be dangerous too. Some police forces have robbed and injured immigrants, and if you report it then you will be deported back to home country and nothing will be done. The four thousand kilometers to the border are unforgiving and only a few make it to the border. If you can take the bus rather than the train then you have a higher chance of living, but the bus is expensive and the majority of these people cannot afford it. Despite Mara Salvatrucha and the police, the trains are dangerous themselves. Immigrants die or lose limbs jumping on and off the trains. The documentary featured a young boy who had just lost one of his arms attempting to get onto a train. The immigrants experience little to no help on their travels. There was a community of women, La Patrona, who would hand out food to the travelers on the trains, but it is so dangerous because the trains are traveling so fast and many will do anything for food. So, some people fall off the trains and seriously hurt themselves while trying to grab the food from the women of La Patrona. It is sad that the stories and truths of these immigrants are not talked about enough. Myself, I had little knowledge of the journey that these immigrants go through just to get to the border. I hope something can be done to this terrible reality and awareness can be raised especially in the U.S.
One reply on “ERA #5: De Nadie”
The struggles that the immigrants you mentioned face really mainly points to two things. The first is that the conditions of the countries these people are coming from have to be so terrible that they are willing to risk their lives to find a new life in America. This brings me to the second point of that these immigrants can definitely be useful to America’s labor force. If these people are lucky enough to make it across the border in one piece they will be more strong willed because of it. These experiences will likely make them willing to do almost anything to make these new lives work, including working low wage jobs.