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

by Óscar Martínez

Last Thursday, fifty-two undocumented Central American migrants were released after being kidnapped and kept crammed in the house for days. They were held by the commander of an estaca (Zeta terminology for squadron) who is said to run this small town of Gregorio Méndez. Two of the migrants who were traveling on top of the train passing through Gregorio closely escaped the fate of the fifty-two others when the conductor, Marcos Estrada Tejero, suspiciously decided to stop the train close to the ranch and fifteen armed men approached. Two days later, the two men ran into an army commander on patrol and told him what had happened. Soon twelve soldiers along with twelve state policemen from Tabasco and thirty state policemen from Chiapas suited up in search of the kidnapped migrants. The train conductor, who was located while driving another train outside of Veracruz, was arrested and accused of working with the same branch of Los Zetas later caught near La Victoria. One of Los Zetas’ chiefs, a Honduran named Frank Hándal Polanco, was arrested as well, but was seen leaving the police station in a taxi only an hour after his apprehension. There were eight others arrested in the joint military-state police operation, while at least seven, still armed with AR-15 assault rifles, escaped into the nearby mountains. On the ranch itself the officers found and confiscated nine-millimeter pistols and M-16 rifles. “The worst part is how they were treated,” one of the soldiers tells me. ...