Editor’s note: These interviews were translated from Spanish through the journalist. Teen Vogue has hidden the last names of the resources for your privacy.
Valerie Samantha has just started walking alone. The 15-month-old is learning to take her first steps in an overcrowded migrant shelter in Tapachula, on the Mexico-Guatemala border. The shelter houses another 400 people in its bunk rooms, but lately houses about 1,200 migrants. men sleep in the hallways or under the trees in the courtyard.
Valerie’s mother, Jimena, known to her friends as Jime, is an 18-year-old migrant who tells Teen Vogue that she took her daughter in her arms from Nicaragua to Mexico 3 months ago. Now, during the day, Jime cleans the shelter. baños, which he says stink from overuse and run out of water. For this, he earns a little extra money, which he saves for holidays in the north or uses to buy bloodless soft drinks when it’s hot.
Children watching a movie in tapachula hostel
Valerie naps on a mat outside, but Jime will have to keep an eye on the child, because his ex, the baby’s father, is looking for them. “He’s a jealous user and we were arguing, so I broke up with Then he left us and went to the [U. S. ] border. But he realized he might have less difficulty crossing if he had a child with him,” Jime says. “So he’s looking to use his relationships at the shelter to take [Valerie] away from me.
As the baby grows, he unknowingly threatens his own safety and walks away when Jime is on his back. “I don’t like him walking or playing with other kids because I don’t know who’s talking to his dad,” Jime says. “People look at me funny and then I suspect. She’s friendly and likes to go through walks and meet people, but I’m afraid someone will take her. “
After 3 months in Tapachula, flushing the toilet every day and dining on meal after meal of rice with beans (and the rare dish of macaroni with red sauce), he has become the new general for Jime and Valerie. In the coming months, Jime and Valerie will leave the shelter and, they hope, the vigilance of Valerie’s father. Jime will plan his northbound toward the U. S. border. He will try to cross. Above all, Jime says, he’s looking for a position to raise her. child.
Attempts to migrate from Latin American and Caribbean countries to the United States reached record levels this year, with more than 1. 5 million people from more than a dozen countries apprehended at the U. S. -Mexico border between October 2021 and the end of May 2022. In May alone, more than 230,000 people were captured by the border patrol as they attempted to cross the border.
This organization includes tens of thousands of young children, pregnant women, older adults, homosexuals, and members of other potentially vulnerable organizations. They risked their lives traveling thousands of miles on foot and by bus to achieve protection and greater economic opportunity in the United States. Almost all pass through Tapachula to unload humanitarian visas from the Mexican government before continuing on their way. This procedure can take months.
Tapachula is a town that reveres the subject. Made of plastic or paper, in all the colors of the rainbow, almost each and every one of the users who walk through the central square of Tapachula help to keep a record full of the only documents that prove their existence. . Some who worry about the thefts tell Teen Vogue that they keep their documents in plastic bags inside their underwear.
During five months of visits to Tapachula this year, I met dozens of teenagers and other young people like Jime. They talk about the demanding situations of adulthood on the path of migrants and express a deep nostalgia for the familiarity of their lives, lives, in many cases, that they had to abandon at midnight or a few days in advance.
Jime and Heidy at the Tapachula Refuge
Many trips north begin with a threat. For Heidy, 15, the breaking point came after several members of her sprawling circle of relatives were killed by a gang extorting money from them, and her mother died of lung disease. Heidy left her home in Comayagua, Honduras, hoping she could move to the United States, find work, and start moving desperately needed money to her family. After Heidy leaves the shelter, she plans to travel to the northern border, crossing with the help of her aunt, who is a Mexican resident.
“I need to give my six siblings a better life in Honduras,” Heidy says. “I don’t know when I will see them again. ” Aside from his only backpack with private belongings, all he wants from his family is a tattoo on his chest with his mother’s call written in cursive print.
Heidy’s early perceptions of adulthood, as he approached her, were explained through overwhelming bureaucracy, men with dubious intentions, and insufferable warmth. the park for walking, where it is cooler. We are not celebrating anything here, however, one day I need to throw a big party, for my 21st birthday.
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Migrants announce next caravan in Bicentennial Park
Right now, however, Heidy can’t afford to plan for the long term. For several months, she worked as a housekeeper in Tapachula, but says she was fired when her employers discovered she was a minor. right now. “
For those traveling from South America, the adventure is longer and more dangerous. This organization includes tens of thousands of Venezuelans who lately travel some 4,000 miles through seven countries to the border with the United States. They will have to cross the terrifying no-man’s land that is the Darien Gap, a 60-mile stretch of jungle with no roads between Colombia and Panama. Migrants regularly spend between seven and twelve days there, following a river that meanders north. The terrain can trick, and dozens are lost and killed along the way, although the actual figure is probably higher. From the darkest corners of the jungle appear poisonous insects, snakes and teams of bandits who ask migrants for money or borrow vital documents, such as passports, as well as cell phones. According to the Panamanian government, more than 130,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap in 2021.
Fabian, 19, and Jose Orlando, 24, are from Caracas, but met in Tapachula. Now that you’ve crossed the Darien Gap, expect the rest of your adventure to be relatively easy. Start the walk with a group, but if you’re tired or something like that, they’ll leave and go without you,” says Fabian. “So everyone ends up following the river alone. I’ve never been so scared. “
Jose Orlando says he had to turn off his feelings for seven days and move on. “It’s dark and there’s noises extraños. la people have fallen into the river and drowned or got lost and couldn’t find their way. “
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In one of their first days in the jungle, Fabian and Jose Orlando say they were ambushed at other events by an organization of gunmen demanding $50. The thieves threatened to take away their passports and cell phones if they paid. The two young men opened their wallets to the bandits, who then retreated into the jungle.
Fabian and Jose Orlando plan to stay just a few days in Tapachula and leave with a migrant caravan. Activists are organizing caravans in Tapachula to help migrants unload visas from the Mexican government in a shorter time, so they can freely reach the border. Pending the departure date, Fabian earns additional money cleaning the glass sheets used for construction, and Jose Orlando makes fancy haircuts for the other migrants in the park for 40 pesos each, or about $2.
The two young men lived in Colombia for several years before attempting this trip. After wages fell due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, they say the north is the only viable option. Both dream of moving to the United States and one day opening small businesses. “I’m going to the U. S. I need to paint and know exactly how much I’m going to earn,” says Fabian. “[In Colombia and Mexico], someone will say they will pay you 80 pesos, and after making the paintings, they only give you 10. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
The map of Mexico through Fabián and José Orlando
This summer, if all goes according to plan, Fabian and Jose Orlando will attempt to cross the Rio Grande on foot and enter Texas. As they look at a map of Mexico spread out on a park bench, they talk about how to take shortcuts and get to the border sooner. “There are other people who depend on us,” Orlando said. I call my mom in Venezuela and she reminds me that I have to think about paintings first. “
Fabian and Jose Orlando learned from friends who have already arrived in the United States about towns and bus routes in Mexico, where thieves appropriate migrants or bring to light kidnappings in exchange for ransom. Fabian knows how to be wary of smugglers, even though they can promise an earlier arrival date and a quieter party worth several thousand dollars. “We don’t have a social life right now,” he says. All I can think about is crossing the border and finding a better future. Even if I looked for it, I couldn’t distract myself from it, because adventure consumes you.
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