La Bestia- dangerous route to a better future

https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/2691527 

          Traveling through Mexico to reach the Mexico-U.S. border is considered more dangerous than illegally crossing it. Many people don't finish this long journey. "La Bestia" or "the death train" is a network of cargo trains used by immigrants from Central America's countries like Guatemala, Honduras and EL Salvador to cross Mexico, get to the border and finally enter the U.S. on foot. It is often migrant's only hope to avoid Mexican check points and not to be send back home before reaching their destination. However, on the top of the train danger lurks around every corner. The risks of using it as human transportation are described in video report Mexico: the train of nightmares. According to it freight trains are not prepared for human travelers. Immigrants are sitting on train's roofs with nothing to hold on. Not only that they can easily fall off the train- it happen especially when they fall asleep exhausted by this long journey, but immigrants are also targets of extortion, kidnapping, rapes and even recruitment practices for the gangs (France24English). 

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21618786-mexican-authorities-block-infamous-route-north-taming-beast

          What pushes people out of their native countries to risk their lives and ride on a top of the death train? Probably the fact that their lives back home became "so violent it's hard to understand the gradations between bad and worse"(Jamison 58). We all have our fears but we can't compere them to life under a constant fright. Can you imagine what they go through? Can you imagine that "even when people get together for dinner, somewhere private, they wouldn't focus on what their lives had become: scared to go drinking, scared to go to work, scared to catch a bus or buy a pack of cigarettes or cross the fucking street" because "it's impossible to speak (...) when you are still in the middle of it" (Jamison 58). Maybe it's poverty that looks like "kids that are so thin, the kids that have sores all over because they don’t eat"(McGraw). Because of these reasons immigrants don't have a choice but to swallow their fears, hop on a train, and hope for a safe journey that will result in a better life in the U.S.A. What would you do if you were in this situation?

https://wearemitu.com/mitu-world/mexican-sports-newspaper-says-to-send-salvadoran-soccer-team-to-the-death-train/attachment/screen-shot-2016-09-02-at-2-48-31-pm/

Words cited

Jamison, Leslie.The empathy exams: essays. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014. Print.

McGraw, Mike. “Poverty in Central America pushes residents to risk the trip north.”Kansascity, www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article296295/Poverty-in-Central-America-pushes-residents-to-risk-the-trip-north.html. Accessed 10 May 2017.

France24english. “Mexico: the train of nightmares.”YouTube, YouTube, 23 Mar. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHDsyOpuyNw&t=316s. Accessed 10 May 2017.