The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail

by Óscar Martínez

Luis Flores who, as head of the IOMin Tapachula, leads community education projects in the area and case-manages Central American human trafficking victims. Here, he explains, migrant women are turned into a product. “They come having already been raped and abused. They come from dysfunctional families in which it was often their father or uncle who raped them. What many of them won’t tell you is that they knew they’d be raped on this journey, that they feel it’s a sort of tax that must be paid. According to the Guatemalan government, it’s estimated that eight of every ten Central American migrant women suffer some form of sexual abuse in Mexico. It’s six of every ten, according to a study done by Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies. They travel with that lodged in their minds, knowing that they’ll be abused once, twice, three times … Sexual abuse has lost its terror. That’s the vantage point from which to understand human trafficking. At a certain level, they know they’re victims, but they don’t feel that way. Their logic runs like this: yes, this is happening to me, but I took the chance, I knew it would happen.”