Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions

by Valeria Luiselli

Rapes: eighty percent of the women and girls who cross Mexico to get to the U.S. border are raped on the way. The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precautions as they begin the journey north.

Abductions: in 2011, the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico published a special report on immigrant abductions and kidnappings, revealing that the number of abduction victims between April and September 2010—a period of just six months—was 11,333.

There is the story of Las Patronas, the group of women in Veracruz who, years ago, started throwing bottled water and food to the migrants aboard La Bestia and are now a formal humanitarian group.

And President Peña Nieto—the most well-groomed, cynical, and sinister boy among the subservient Latin American bullies doing the grunt work—has earned his place as the continent’s new deporter-in-chief: since 2014 he has deported more Central Americans each year than the United States, more than 150,000 in 2015.