In the eyes of the world, Wilton was a Nicaraguan migrant who had been abandoned in a semi-desert area in Texas.
The 10-year-old boy appeared earlier this month in a video that went viral in which he asked for help crying to a Border Patrol agent.
His image became a symbol of the first immigration crisis facing the Joe Biden government.
But her story reveals a greater tragedy: it begins with a flight with her mother, who was trying to escape the harassment and violence of her ex-partner, from the mountains of El Rama -on the Nicaraguan South Caribbean Coast-, and ends with a kidnapping on the northern Mexican border.
EL PAÍS traveled to the migrants' community of origin to reconstruct the story of mother and child.
More than 3,000 kilometers from the border between the United States and Mexico, in a deep embedded cattle community in El Rama, Socorro Leiva suffered a
shock
when she saw her grandson crying during prime time on a local newscast.
She was completely unaware that her daughter, Meylin Obregón Leiva, had migrated with the older of her two children to the United States.
The 66-year-old grandmother was taken aback.
“I was cooking dinner when my husband yelled in front of the television: 'Help, come on, go! That's the Meylin's son,' he told me.
Indeed, he was my boy.
In one hand he had a bundle and asked for help, ”Leiva told EL PAÍS at her home, located in the El Paraíso region, from where, according to her account, mother and son left to escape an abusive husband.
Both managed to reach the United States, but with the border closed to new asylum cases, they were almost immediately returned to Mexico and fell into the hands of a cartel that kidnapped them.
Shortly after, in Miami, Misael Obregón, Meylin's brother and Wilton's uncle, and who had helped the migrants finance the trip, received the first extortion call.
They asked him $ 5,000 per head.
He could only pay half the ransom and agreed with the mother that the 10-year-old boy should be crossed into the United States.
Released by his captors, the minor was found on April 1 by the border agent who recorded the video that went viral.
The despair of the migrant abandoned in the middle of the desert and asking for help moved the United States and Central America and became a symbol of the drama of the first migratory crisis faced by the Joe Biden government.
In the month of March alone, the Border Patrol has apprehended more than 172,000 illegal immigrants, mainly Central Americans.
This is the highest number recorded in a month in 15 years.
But most of those migrants have been expelled by title 42 of the United States Code invoked by Donald Trump for the pandemic and that Biden has maintained, with some exceptions such as unaccompanied minors, which have collapsed the US reception system .
Those who are returned, like Wilton and his mother, run the risk of falling into the hands of the mafias that profit from the undocumented in that area of the northern Mexican border.
An escape from gender violence
In his remote community of origin is the other part of the tragedy.
Meylin Obregón fled there on February 8 with her eldest son, Wilton, because she felt she had no options to live safely.
Five days before starting her migratory journey, the mother went to the Nicaraguan Prosecutor's Office to file a complaint against her former partner, Lázaro Gutiérrez Laguna.
"My daughter denounced everything ... In the statement she said that she did not want Lázaro to be after her, begging him or anything," says Leiva.
“The Prosecutor's Office gave an order for him to appear, but he did not appear.
The harassment continued and she told me that she couldn't stay at my house anymore.
I asked him why, if I am his mother and this is his house too.
'I know why I'm telling you,' he told me several times.
I felt that she was saying goodbye, but I did not think it would be so long. "
According to Leiva, her "daughter fled from a bad relationship", from a partner who was unfaithful to her, humiliated and mistreated her.
“I used to run my daughter from the farm every so often.
He rubbed women in his face;
once he threw the cows on him.
I'm not sure if he physically assaulted her, but that man could do anything to her.
She was returning to Lázaro's farm out of love for her children, but after twelve years of relationship, she couldn't take it anymore, ”says the grandmother.
In front of Socorro Leiva's house there is a billiard, where her daughter Meylin's husband used to harass her when she went to her mother's house seeking refuge.Carlos Herrera
Before her daughter went to the Prosecutor's Office, Leiva forced Gutiérrez Laguna to sign a letter before an evangelical pastor and a community leader from El Paraíso in which she promised not to mistreat her partner any more.
But it had no effect.
"She is very afraid of him," says Wilton's grandmother.
Meylin Obregón Leiva did not tell her mother much, but decided to entrust her suffering to her brother who lives in Miami.
Misael Obregón financed the irregular trip to end his sister's ordeal, without imagining that she would go to another hell at the hands of the mafias.
Now the woman is held captive in "a warehouse" with no precise place in northern Mexico, according to her brother, who has been able to speak with her.
The day EL PAÍS visited Socorro Leiva in El Paraíso, after a trip of more than 300 kilometers from Managua, the local news broadcast again gave her unpleasant news.
Leiva was told that her daughter was kidnapped by a 'coyote' mob.
In his community there is no electricity and the cell phone signal is barely perceptible.
Its only connection to the world is when batteries powered by solar panels are activated and power the small Sankey brand television.
"Oh my God!" Leiva said upon hearing the news anchor's account.
The grandmother put one hand to her chest and the other to her mouth to try to contain her crying.
It was impossible.
“Now only God with his power can deliver her.
In the hands of these people, anything can happen, ”he said.
"If here [in Nicaragua] there was a law that protected women, perhaps my daughter would not have left," he said.
Socorro Leiva watches the news with her daughter's news.
Carlos Herrera placeholder image
In an interview with local media, Lázaro Gutiérrez Laguna assured that he ended up with his ex-wife “due to relationship problems” and that he agreed with her that Wilton travel to the United States. But the grandmother denies it and says that the boy did not want to go with his father when he tried to take it from her by force a few days before Meylin left.
The other son of the couple did stay in Nicaragua with him.
In the midst of these versions, Vice President Rosario Murillo has taken the case of the minor abandoned at the border very seriously.
The government spokeswoman for Daniel Ortega has said that the Nicaraguan traveled "due to problems at home," leaving aside the allegations of gender violence, an endemic disease that this year has already claimed the lives of 19 women in that country. according to the Catholic NGO for the Right to Decide.
In addition, the first lady reported that her government has initiated efforts for the repatriation of the 10-year-old boy, who is currently in a shelter for unaccompanied minors in Brownsville, Texas.
Leiva, however, prefers that her grandson go with her son to Miami and that her daughter do the same if she manages to survive her kidnapping.
“In this country, not even when they kill [women] do they do anything.
It is in vain ”.
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