Cage of Gold

The itch must be terrible. Every day Central Americans are bombarded with the same message from the media and their peers, "The US is a paradise. Money flutters around; if you can just get there, it will fall into your hands." I imagine the idea seeps into their subconscious. It's tough to think of anything but the United Moneybags of America. Central America starts to look like some form of hell compared to the shiny pictures in their heads.

A shaggy man in a cube-truck gives me a ride and explains his plans to go to America. This job pays the bills, but to him it's not enough. He's going as a mojado, he says, using a term for illegal immigrants referring to being wet from crossing the Rio Grande. He knows the dangers; he's been to the states before. He has relatives there who are earning far more than they could in Honduras. I ask: will he go with a coyote? These are the people who will take a large chunk of your savings in exchange for smuggling you all or part of the way north. He crinkles his nose and shakes his head; he's just going to ride trains. I swallow.

He knows the danger. Train-top riders risk amputation from falls, discovery by officials who take all they have and/or send them home, violent gang-members who beat them and take their belongings and leave them to die, starvation and dehydration. The journey can take months, and require you to stop and earn money for survival. Just riding the trains is treacherous, clinging to the tops of the trains despite exhaustion, anticipating branches and thugs and la migra, migration police. Many are jailed in Mexico until their families can raise the money to get them out.

In training I helped some workers on a farm stringing up tomatoes. Soon after, they decided to try and make it to the states, but called from a Mexican jail.

I've heard so many stories of people whose family members are in the States. A few are building the lives they dreamed of, but many who made it are still struggling in a strange place. So many promise their wives or kids they will be back in a year or two, once they've made enough money, but end up stuck in a cycle of earning and spending that never lets them get ahead. Julieta Venegas has a catchy song about a family of illegal Mexican immigrants in the US in which she declares that golden bars don't mean it's not a prison.

The stories that stick in my mind are of those who failed. The truck-driver remembers the stories of glory and riches. It rings of the prospectors in my hometown, Fairbanks Alaska, during the gold rush. Just a few success stories are enough to keep the people flowing.

I can understand poor urban-dwellers who own no land and see no hope of getting a good job when they are allured by the promise of the US. But the driver of the cube truck is doing well for himself; he has a lot to lose. I ask if he has any kids. A boy, he says. I try to convince him that being there for his kid is much more important now than sending him money.

I feel the familiar ache of guilt, simply for being from circumstances most of the rest of the world envies. The ride ends and I wave 20 lempiras his way, about $1, but he won't accept it. I thank him, wish him good luck, and swing down out of his rig. I just hope on his trip people will be this generous to him.

Another man who pulls his tired trap to the side of the road to offer me a ride turns out to be a (self-proclaimed) legend. He is a coyote. According to him, he is a hero in his community for the money he has donated, all of which he has made from this lucrative secretive business. He's enigmatic; he seems almost benevolent but not quite, almost slimy but not quite. I restrain myself to keep from asking the hundred questions swirling through my mind. I want to know how he smuggles people, how much it costs, how many people he takes each year, how did he get into the business, just how dark is this business, what's his success rate, etc. Instead I nervously answer questions about the fiancé I have just invented. As I clamber out of the beater, I thank him and hope out loud we shall meet again, and hope inwardly I'll get to grill him with all my questions next time.