El Tren de la Muerte

Smugglers often pay train conductors to stop for migrants, and Salas has had her fair share of confrontations with the train companies. "Two weeks ago a woman was standing by the tracks, handing her 4-year-old to someone on the train before getting on herself, and because she didn't have money to pay, the driver pulled out and left her," Salas tells me. The horrified mother told nearby villagers, who told Beta, and soon Salas and her agents were racing after the train to rescue the toddler. The driver finally stopped after several hours, she says, and they returned the child to the mother.

In Central America "you have a situation where a few families live extremely well, spend little on education and health care, pay little tax, and basically have unfulfilled obligations to their downtrodden," says George Grayson, a Mexico expert who teaches at the College of William and Mary. "The absence of Mexico's border certainly makes life more difficult for the U.S. and its law enforcement agencies, but there are steps we should be taking. We can't simply abandon our border; otherwise you'd have 25 percent of the world in the United States."

Back in Tenosique, on a Monday a little after 7 a.m., Salas calls our hotel. "¡Viene el tren!" she says. Minutes later we're running along the tracks. We cross a bridge over a waterway and come face to face with the Honduran teens we met the day before. They greet us with smiles and pose for the camera with tough-guy stares. The train has rounded a corner and chugs toward us, its headlights resembling enormous glowing eyes. "¡Camello!" yells the tall man in the blue bandanna, the one looking forward to the pretty girls in Missouri. "Come over here! Five on this side, five on the other!" They split and wait on each side of the tracks. The train is almost here. "Be careful," warns an older migrant. "If it's going too fast, there will be others." Russet, gray and white boxcars glide past with hordes of people standing on top. When the train is past, the 10 guys remain on the tracks. "It went too fast!" one says. They take off in a run, hoping the train will slow. We sprint after them. "¡Se detuvo!" one screams. "It stopped!" Dozens of people clamber onto the caboose, and I realize it was likely Laredo who paid off the driver. "Hurry, hurry, get on!" one man standing on the train yells to the running Hondurans. They make it just in time. All 10 climb aboard and the train moves forward, inching toward El Norte. I lean on my knees, catching my breath, and watch the waving teenagers grow small in the distance.

"Are you OK?" Elias' mother asks him as he stands at a phone booth. Friends of his have told her where he has gone.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he says.

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm fine, Mamá."

"Why did you leave like Marvin did, without telling me?"

"I didn't want you to worry." She agrees to wire him the $1,000 deposit for Martin, the coyote. She'll take it from the cosmetics store, another addition to Elias' debt. He'll continue north without Pedro, who doesn't have enough money to pay a smuggler and plans to take his chances on the train all the way to Texas.

The rest of the journey seems endless. From the beginning the trip has depended on luck, but riding the trains required hustle and cunning as well. Now, Elias feels helpless, packed like a 2-by-4 into a covered pickup with a dozen other migrants, including a 17-year-old who joins Elias for laughter and a series of dirty jokes. After what seems like forever, they climb out of the vehicle and swim across the Rio Grande near Laredo, then file into a small house in the Texas desert. Martin went home before they crossed the river, so Elias is in the hands of the coyote's associates. Eight days pass with some 30 people stuffed in the little shack, sitting and sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the stifling heat. Once a day, a bowl of chicken is passed around as more migrants arrive and others are led out to traverse the desert.