The agency was run by the owner of a bakery who had a sideline in smuggling people across the border. She was proud of the fact that none of her clients had ended up being trafficked, kidnapped en route, or murdered; none of them had fallen or had been pushed from a train. She could offer some degree of security in a fundamentally risky business. Taking what safety measures she could, she left the rest to the Lord, who took care of his subjects from his kingdom in the heavens. She charged the usual price smugglers demanded to cover the risks and costs, plus her own commission. Communicating with these coyotes on her cell phone, she would monitor their trail, always knowing which point of their journey her clients had reached. According to Nuria, she had not lost anyone so far.
Father Benito went to see the woman, who turned out to be in her fifties, wearing thick makeup and with gold everywhere: on her ears, around her neck and wrists, and in her teeth. The priest asked for a reduction in the name of God, appealing to her better nature as a Christian, but she avoided mixing faith with business and would not budge: they had to pay the coyote part of his fee in advance, plus the whole of her commission. The rest was to be paid by the relatives in the United States, or by the client—with interest, of course. “Where do you think I can find that amount of money, se?ora?” asked the Jesuit. “From your church’s collection,” she said sarcastically. In the end this was not necessary, because the money Miriam sent was enough to cover Andres’s burial, the agent’s commission, and 30 percent of the coyote’s fee, with an IOU for the rest once Evelyn arrived safely. This debt was sacred: no one could avoid paying it.
The people smuggler chosen by the baker to help Evelyn Ortega was someone called Berto Cabrera, a thirty-two-year-old mustached Mexican with a beer paunch. He had been doing this for more than a decade and had made the trip dozens of times with hundreds of migrants. When it was a matter of people he was totally honest, although with other contraband his principles were more flexible. “Some people look down on what I do, but I’m performing a social service. I look after people, I don’t take them in animal trucks or on top of trains,” he explained to the priest.
Evelyn Ortega joined a group of four men who were heading north in search of work, together with a woman with a two-month-old baby who was going to join her boyfriend in Los Angeles. The baby would be a hindrance on the journey, but his mother had pleaded so earnestly that in the end the agency’s owner relented. The clients met in the back of the bakery, where each was given fake identity papers and warned about the adventure they were about to embark on. From that moment on they could only use their new names; it was better for them not to know the other passengers’ real ones. Head bowed, Evelyn did not dare look at anyone, but the woman with the baby came over and introduced herself. “My name now is Maria Ines Portillo. What about you?” she asked. Evelyn showed her identity card. Her new name was Pilar Saravia.
Once they had left Guatemala they would be Mexicans. There was no going back, and they had to obey the coyote’s instructions without fail. Evelyn would be a student at a supposed school for deaf and mute children run by nuns in Durango. The other migrants learned the Mexican national anthem and some commonly used words that were different in the two countries. This would help them pass as authentic Mexicans if they were arrested by the migration police. The coyote forbade them to address people with the word “vos” as they did in Guatemala. To anyone in authority or in uniform they were to use “usted” as a precaution and out of respect; with others they could employ the informal “tu.” Since Evelyn was meant to be mute, she was to say nothing at all. If the authorities questioned her, Berto would show them a certificate from the fictitious school. They were told to dress in their best outfits and to wear shoes or sneakers rather than flip-flops, as it would make them look less suspicious. The women would be more comfortable in pants but should not wear the torn jeans in fashion at the time. They would need to take sneakers, underwear, and a thick jacket; that was all that would fit into a bag or backpack. “You have to walk through the desert. You’re not going to be able to carry much. We’ll change your Guatemalan quetzales for Mexican pesos. Your transport costs are covered, but you’ll need money for food.”
Father Benito gave Evelyn a waterproof plastic envelope containing her birth certificate, copies of the medical and police reports, and a letter attesting to her good character. Someone had told him that this would help her gain asylum in the United States, and although this seemed to him a very remote possibility, he did not want to fail from lack of trying. He also made Evelyn memorize her mother’s phone number in Chicago, and his own cell phone number. As he embraced her, he gave her the few banknotes he had.
Concepcion Montoya tried to stay calm when she bid her granddaughter farewell, but Evelyn’s tears spoiled her good intentions and she ended up weeping as well.
“I’m very sad you’re going,” she sobbed. “You’re my angel and I’m never going to see you again . . . little one. This is the last pain I have to suffer. If God gave me this destiny there must be a reason.”
At this, Evelyn uttered the first complete sentence she had spoken in many weeks, and the last she would say for the next two months.
“Just as I am going, Grandma, so I will return.”
Lucia
Canada, 1973–1990
The night before, shaken to the core by Evelyn’s story, Richard told her how sorry he felt about the suffering she had undergone. He was well aware of the violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America, but this firsthand account gave a face to that horror. When Richard had mentioned that Lucia too had once been a refugee, Lucia said her own experience could not be compared to what Evelyn had endured. Yet the girl wanted to know more.
When her life as a refugee began, Lucia Maraz had just turned nineteen and had been enrolled at the university to study journalism. They heard nothing more about her brother, Enrique, and over time, despite all their efforts to locate him, he became just one more among all those who had vanished without a trace in Chile. Lucia spent two months in the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago, waiting for a safe-conduct that would allow her to leave the country. The hundreds of guests, as the ambassador insisted on calling them to lessen the humiliation of their being asylum seekers, slept on the floor wherever there was room, and lined up at all hours outside the embassy’s few bathrooms. In spite of the military surveillance outside, several times a week more fugitives managed to find a way in over the wall. Lucia had a newborn baby thrust into her arms, brought into the grounds hidden in a basket of vegetables in a diplomatic car, and was asked to look after him until the parents could join them.