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

by Óscar Martínez

Migrant women play the role of second-class citizens. And they are an easy target. That was made very clear to us a couple days ago when we visited the migration offices of Tapachula and spoke with Yolanda Reyes, a twenty-eight-year-old who has lived here illegally since 1999. She made a life for herself in Tapachula and tried to live normally, but, even after so many years, something wouldn’t ease her mind: she was still an undocumented Central American woman. She’d just gotten legal residency the day we met her, after a long process of filing a complaint against her partner, a Chiapan police officer who, in a crazed tantrum, slashed her eleven times (four times in the face) with a machete. “Whore, you fucking whore, you’re going to learn, you’re just a fucking Central American and you’re not worth a thing!” Those are the words she remembers.