There is an area of Enrique's Journey where Enrique considers boarding a boxcar in Tapachula. During this section the author, Sonia Nazario, deviated a little from Enrique's story and took the time to describe to the reader an experience from another migrant. His name was Darwin Zepeda Lopez, and he explained the hazards of being locked in a boxcar. He said that smugglers who had mistaken him for a patron of their services herded him and other clients toward several open boxcars. Once Zepeda and roughly forty others were loaded into a single car, the smugglers locked the boxcar from the outside to avoid suspicion. The following quote is taken from Zepeda's description of the boxcar:
"It was April 2000 in southern Mexico, and the outdoor temperature was climbing past 100 degrees. Inside, the car was turning into an oven. As the train rolled north, the migrants drank their water bottles dry. The air in the car turned rank with sweat. Zepeda could hardly breathe. People began screaming and shouting for help. Some knelt and pleaded with God to stop the train... After four hours, he says, a woman with asthma begged for water, then slumped to the floor, unconscious. Others pried open her mouth and tried to give her the few drops they could find. Finally, they left her for dead. Some stood on her to reach the highest airholes" (Nazario 69).
The first time I read this passage, I was immediately reminded of an experience I had a year ago, while traveling to Mexico with my godmother, Elizabeth Villanueva, and her family. We had stopped right by a gas station, but instead of going inside to use the bathroom or buy something to eat, my godmother and her daughter proceeded to walk right past where my godfather, Papa Boni, was filling the car with gas. Intrigued, I followed them into a dusty lot near some train tracks, perhaps twenty feet away from the edge of the gas station. What I saw when I reached them confused me a good deal. Mama Elizabeth and her daughter had halted right before what appeared to be a sort of shrine. The ground was strewn with jugs and bottles of water, some of them full, some of them empty. There were more containers than I could count. There were also large, brightly painted crosses standing upright, their bottoms rooted firmly in the dry earth, in addition to white, unlit candles. I asked Mama Elizabeth what all this was supposed to be about, and she told me very solemnly that a few years ago, a group of about thirty migrants from El Salvador had died of thirst inside a train car that had gotten too hot. She said that the jugs of water scattered about the lot were put there over the years by passersby who had known what had happened, and wanted to provide the dead migrants with water, when they had none as they were dying.
This experience made me think about how much we take water for granted, as well as many other resources that we are provided with. It also made me think about how desperate these people must have been, and how much courage they must have had to make such a perilous journey in search of a better life. So I ask you now, do you have any memories that have made you appreciate or feel more aware of the luxuries that we have in the United States?
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