A TRAIL OF HOPE AND FEAR
Photo by Ada Trillo, “Crossing the Suchiate River”
Migrants from Honduras cross the Suchiate River as they pass through Guatemala to Mexico. The Mexican government tear-gassed a group of 500 migrants who attempted to wade across the river into Mexico just days before. Despite this, the caravan persisted. This time they made it across the river and pushed on into Mexico.
BY ADA TRILLO
Over the past four years, I have documented the journeys of migrants and asylum seekers approaching the Mexican and U.S. borders as they flee the violence and poverty of Central America. During this time, the caravaners’ quest for both immediate safety and some kind of future for their families has put them in the media spotlight, but too often the coverage plays into the political theatrics that burden their fates and compound their miseries. The goal of my documentation is to show the migrants’ perspectives, to give them a voice in their own stories.
As a child of the border, I became interested in migrant stories at a young age. I was born in El Paso, but lived in Juarez while growing up and traversed the border daily to attend school in the U.S. When I was four, a woman named Amapola became one of my guardians after she was deported back to Mexico. She came to live with us as our housekeeper, but Amapola became a caregiver, a confidant and a second mother to me and my brother.
Amapola saw past my growing social anxieties and offered me friendship when my peers shunned me. I was distraught when she died not long after I graduated high school. I had lost a dear friend, but had also missed the opportunity to thank her for her unwavering love and influence.
I try to pay homage to her through my photography, which was shaped by bearing witness to her life and the lives of her peers along the border. I am inspired by the tenacity, determination and courage of those who try to change their lives despite their perilous circumstances. I focus on migrants and asylum-seekers in tribute to women like Amapola.
In 2018, I went aboard La Bestia to photograph those migrants from Mexico and Central America who ride the infamous freight train every year en route to the border. At each stage of the journey, migrants are subjected to extortion, theft, rape, and even murder if they fail to pay “protection” fees to the gangs and cartels that control the route north.
The caravans sprung out of a need to find safety in numbers while trying to flee desperate situations.
Gang members have been known to push migrants off moving trains if they’re unable to pay. Sexual violence, particularly against migrant women, is also commonplace. An overwhelming majority of those who ride La Bestia are subjected to violence and hundreds have died risking the journey. Since most of the victims are undocumented, most of the crime goes unreported.
A marginally safer alternative is to travel by caravan. The migrants who join caravans are moved to do so by the collapse of civil society at the hands of gangs and failed governments in Central America’s Northern Triangle–El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. I’ve walked with the caravans for years and have heard first-hand the harrowing tales of violence, especially targeting presumed minority groups. The caravans sprung out of a need to find safety in numbers while trying to flee desperate situations.
In January, 2020, I left Philadelphia, where I currently live, to join a caravan of approximately 4,000 migrants assembling at Central Station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Compared to previous caravans, this one was less organized. Unable to agree on the best route, it split into two groups. One headed for the immigration and customs center at the Western Guatemala border town of Cuidad Tecun Uman. The other made for the Eastern border town of El Ceibo. I walked with the latter group until it reached Guatemala.
Initially, I traveled with two women from Honduras. Eva is a single mother who aspires to reunite in the U.S. with a son she says her ex-husband kidnapped. She made the journey with her nine-month-old baby. The other woman, Conchita, is a former scavenger who dreamt of better job opportunities in the States. By the time we reached Guatemala City, six others had joined our group, including a young man named Darlin as well as Luis, an unaccompanied minor.
Many children were in our caravan. Their parents had traveled for miles with limited resources, often carrying their toddlers and infants, since they had no strollers. This took guts, because if you fell behind, you were in danger of being left behind. Some families managed to catch rides with locals, but doing so means that they put themselves at a greater risk of being kidnapped.
A shelter along the way provided minimal sleeping quarters and sanitary facilities to clean our belongings. Unfortunately, there were only eight beds. So, four children crowded each bed and everyone else slept on the floor. Dinner was rice, beans, a single slice of bread and coffee. The shelter, with limited resources, couldn’t provide breakfast in the morning. This was hard on younger families and children, most of whom traveled with the equivalent of 5-7 U.S. dollars.
In the morning, the group headed to the border to plead for passage into Mexico. The caravan organizers opened the day with the Lord’s Prayer. As they gathered to recite “Our Father”, there was hope that God would move the Mexican and American governments to grant safe passage.
Until recently, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had done just that, but he changed his tune when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs. Obrador has since deployed a new brigade, La Guardia Nacional, to keep Central American migrants from entering Mexico.
At El Ceibo, the Mexican foreign ministry’s director of special affairs, promised passage and temporary residence in a detention center an hour away in Villahermosa. We filed into buses 10 at time–women and children first. Once the buses were filled, though, the remaining men were left stranded at the border. Children were separated from their fathers who worried about how they could reunite with their families. After a brief stay in the detention center in Villahermosa, the women and children were deported back to Honduras without the opportunity to seek asylum, despite the promises from the director of special affairs.
I learned about this later. By then, I had already taken a bus to Tecun-Uman to join the other group of caravaners that had originally set out from San Pedro Sula. In Tecun-Uman, David, an 18-year-old traveling with friends, let me stay in his tent. We all pitched in to buy food for the group. The migrants told me that they had been tear-gassed twice while trying to cross. Now, they were awaiting an opportunity to cross the Rio Suchiate.
After two days of failed attempts, we sat by the edge of the river, contemplating our next move. Shelters were at maximum capacity, so I joined them in sleeping outside in the barren desert. The next morning, at three a.m., the group’s leader instructed us to head to the river and cross into Mexico.
Approximately 800 of us crossed the river on foot and managed to walk towards Ciudad Hidalgo. Sleep-deprived and tired after four hours of walking, we took a short break. We hadn’t rested long before we were suddenly surrounded by La Guardia Nacional troops. Everyone was forced onto buses, taken to detention centers, and deported back to Honduras within six days.
The Central American migrants started forming caravans because this incredibly vulnerable population sought safety in numbers. Safety, though, has come with a price. The large groups draw attention and are easy to monitor, control, and stop. Former caravan members, though, are still en route to the States, traveling in smaller groups that attract less official attention. The risks of being preyed upon en route are higher, but the desire to seek a better life is even greater.
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Ada Trillo is a documentary and fine art photographer who was born in El Paso, Texas, and grew up traveling between Texas and Juarez, Mexico. She has been awarded multiple awards and fellowships for her work focusing on the borders of inclusion and exclusion. adatrillo.com
This article was originally published by Red Canary Magazine.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
