WUNRN
Full News Release: http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/12796ACAD9EE829DC125778C002A01F0?OpenDocument
UN
HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF CALLS FOR URGENT MEASURES
IN
THE WAKE OF LATEST KILLINGS IN MEXICO
27
August 2010
GENEVA -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi
Pillay, on Friday strongly condemned the killing of 72 migrants in the North of
Mexico. “I am deeply shocked about these killings, which highlight the critical
situation of migrants in the country,” she said.
According to government reports, on 24 August the Mexican Navy discovered a
site which contained 72 corpses, including 14 women, who had apparently been
executed by members of organized crime. The victims were reported to be
undocumented migrants from Central and South America......
Full News Release: http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/12796ACAD9EE829DC125778C002A01F0?OpenDocument
________________________________________________________________
HONDURAS MIGRANT WOMAN ROBBED &
BEATEN IN MEXICO
© James
Whitlow
Janeth Aminta Munoz of
___________________________________________________________________________
JESSICA OCHOA FROM EL SALVADOR RODE TRAIN OF MIGRANTS FROM MEXICO TO TRY TO REACH THE US - HER STORY CHANGED FROM HOPES & DREAMS TO INJURY & NIGHTMARE
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Jessica
Ochoa rode "Train of Death" from Mexico, in an effort to reach
the United States.
- Her
right leg was severed when she fell off.
- Ochoa
works at a restaurant in Mexico but still dreams of reaching America.
- Her
story was featured on CNN International.
Arriaga,
Mexico (CNN) -- The first thing you notice about Jessica Ochoa is her huge
brown eyes.
She's
a petite Salvadoran and was coming up to her 21st birthday when I met her in
the southern Mexican border town of Tapachula.
The
next thing you notice is her stiff walk. Her right leg was severed in February
2009, when she fell off a cargo train. The train's steel wheels did the rest.
By
the time she reached the hospital, doctors say, she'd lost almost half her
blood. What was left of her lower right leg and foot lay by the side of the
tracks in a sock and tennis shoe.
Like
thousands of other illegal migrants every year, Ochoa had been heading to
"El Norte," which in Spanish translates as "The North" but
means the United States.
Her
American dream was to work hard and gradually save enough to buy a
brick-and-concrete home for her mother to replace the tin shack where she lives
with the rest of the family in a working-class neighborhood of San Salvador.
Only
the poorest of the poor dare to ride aboard the lumbering cargo train that sets
out from the station at Arriaga, in southern Mexico, every couple of days or
so. They have little choice. This is a free though perilous ride, and they have
no money.
Most
of the migrants come from Central American countries like Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. They cling to the train that some call the
"Train of Death" and that others simply refer to as "La
Bestia" (The Beast).
From
Arriaga, it's about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) to Los Angeles, California
and about 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) to New York.
Hundreds,
maybe thousands, of migrants have died falling from the Beast, some of them
mutilated under its wheels. Many more have been robbed, raped or kidnapped.
Most
carry no bag at all and have only a few dollars for the bare essentials en
route.
When
Ochoa set out in February 2009, she said, she was carrying a single change of
clothing, $200 hidden in her shoe and a photo of her baby daughter, Kathi, whom
she had left behind.
The
day she left home, her mother, Dina, went to the hospital for surgery for
uterine cancer.
It
was about 1 a.m. when Ochoa and three friends boarded the Beast in Arriaga. She
made it through the night and the next morning. But by midday, she was badly
dehydrated.
She
asked her friends for a drop of water, but no one was carrying much. And before
she could drink, Ochoa recalls, she fainted and fell onto the train tracks,
under the grinding steel wheels.
Nobody
jumped down to help her; it was too dangerous, so she was left to her fate.
According to staff at the hospital in the small town of Juchitan, a passer-by
sent her to the hospital in a taxi.
Ochoa
says she doesn't remember anything between the time she fainted and two days
later, when she woke up in the hospital.
At
first, we never intended to focus on a single character for this edition of "World's Untold Stories: La Bestia."
We were aiming to concentrate on a small group of migrants as they headed to
the United States.
But
it became clear that Ochoa's story went far beyond the issue of illegal
immigration, took us further than the mere pursuit of the American dream. What
started out as a journey to overcome poverty became a journey to face her
demons.
Ochoa
is a young woman of contrasts. She is intelligent, and since recovering from
her accident, she holds down a job at a shrimp restaurant in Tapachula.
Yet
she was preparing to break the law to cross into the United States.
She's
normally bright and bubbly, ready to chatter about almost anything. But when
you talk too much about the accident, she's quiet and withdrawn.
Physically,
Ochoa looks a little frail. It's frightening to imagine her small frame crushed
by the Beast's grinding wheels.
But
mentally, she is tough. She's asking nobody for sympathy, and most significant,
she has not given up her dream of one day making it to America. To achieve
that, she knows she will probably have to cross illegally.
Her
ambition is on hold but not abandoned. She is too proud to return to live in El
Salvador. She has a promise to keep to her mother and is still determined to
buy her that house.
When
we drove to the railhead at Arriaga, Ochoa asked to join us. She hadn't been
back to look at the cargo train since her accident.
As
we walked toward the tracks there, Ochoa was joking and laughing, never
complaining about her somewhat ill-fitting artificial leg.
All
that changed at the station platform. She bit her quivering bottom lip,
fighting a feeling. Then a solitary, huge tear rolled down her face.
She
never spoke much, but her big brown eyes seemed to say it all: the feeling that
she had lost the best part of her life the day she lost her leg, the fear that
maybe she would never accomplish her dream.
The
fear that her mother, now in her 40s, would die of uterine cancer before she
could buy her that new home.
For
Ochoa and other illegal migrants prepared to make this journey, these are risks
and sacrifices on a grand scale.
The
American dream sounds grand, but for these people, it's the modest ambition to
get a job washing dishes, picking lettuce or carrying bricks for $5 or $6 an
hour.
The
real dream is not to earn cash for their own benefit, but to save and send
money home to parents, children, wives or brothers and sisters. To achieve
that, they're ready to go through hell and back.
Jessica
Ochoa's journey takes on a greater relevance amid the debate raging in the
United States -- especially Arizona -- about illegal immigration.
It's
a discussion that has split opinions between legal and illegal migration,
between setting and upholding immigration laws at the expense of racially
profiling the citizens of a multicultural society.
"World's
Untold Stories: La Bestia" may not resolve the specifics of that debate.
But it will certainly take you to the underlying core: a journey to explore the
aspirations of some of Latin America's poorest.
It
will introduce viewers to the "illegals" and the "wetbacks"
by name: Jessica, Miguel, Greville, Antonio and Elvin.
Many
are honest, hard-working people with the best intentions. But to achieve them,
they're ready to break the law.
Above all, they, like Americans, have their own hopes and
dreams.