Santiago Álvarez only remembers the fit of laughter he gave him while 'The Beast' ran over him.
He felt no pain.
Nor fear.
He felt nervous and because of the nerves, he says, he started laughing.
He had fallen between the rails of the train and waited for it to move away, without moving.
"I felt skinny there, because the rails are wide," he says.
When he saw the machine a few meters away he thought: “If I run, I'll catch up”.
Then came the worst seconds of his life.
He tried to get up and a terrible pain tore through him.
He saw his right leg: it was shattered because the huge freight train, used by thousands of Central American migrants as a means of transportation on their journey from Mexico to the United States, had run over it.
Santiago fainted.
Santiago tells his story sitting on a plastic chair in his home in Matapalo, a community in the Honduran department of Choluteca, which borders Nicaragua.
A dusty hamlet, with narrow alleys, with cows, pigs, chickens and emaciated dogs that lie under the trees to endure the midday heat, a damp and sticky suffocation.
Santiago is a shy man, rather sullen, as the inhabitants of rural areas of Central America tend to be: slow speech, monosyllables, distrustful looks.
As he talks, he picks up the right part of his pants and shows his consequences: he wears a prosthesis that has replaced the leg mutilated by 'The Beast'.
The accident occurred in 2004. He decided to migrate to the United States when some cousins told him that they were going to leave Honduras, a country plagued by violence, corruption and the apathy of the political class.
"I said: I'm going to try, to see what God says," says Santiago.
He and his relatives crossed Central America with almost no setbacks.
In Mexico, in the State of Veracruz, they boarded the freight train.
It was August 2.
“We were happy because we were already up there,” he says.
The migrants travel on the roofs of the cars, which they climb on when the train slows down.
The plan was going well, until the train stopped at a crossroads and men armed with machetes climbed into the cars.
Migrant thieves.
As the machine continued on its way, the newcomers ran over the cars brandishing their machetes.
Santiago did not realize what was happening until he heard the cry of a young man, who had been shot in the back.
“I panicked and ran away.
A guy was chasing me, I saw that he was close.
I managed to jump two cars, but when I turned around I noticed that he was closer to me.
It was at that moment, looking back, that I went down and fell in the middle of the rails.”
It was two in the afternoon and a light rain was falling.
"That's where the dream ended," says Santiago.
It was two in the afternoon and a light rain was falling.
"That's where the dream ended," says Santiago.
It was two in the afternoon and a light rain was falling.
"That's where the dream ended," says Santiago.
03:44
The amputees of 'The Beast'
Prosthetics and orthotics laboratory of the Vida Nueva Foundation. Video: Nayeli Cruz
It is the same dream that thousands of people try to achieve every year.
The figures of the Secretary of the Interior of Mexico are eloquent: between 2013 and 2019, more than 820,000 Central American migrants were captured in the country.
Many, like Santiago, see their hopes dashed either because they are captured and deported, because they die from the violence of criminal gangs or the abuses of
coyotes,
because they suffer injuries during their journey or simply disappear without a trace.
Santiago's family in Matapalo considered him dead, because that's what the cousins said, who did come to the United States.
Santiago tells it with rancor, his face tenses.
He woke up in a Veracruz hospital, though he doesn't remember how he got there.
"I just remember I saw a person grab me, I think it was God who grabbed me," he says.
When he woke up he no longer had his leg.
"I felt powerless, everything was over for me, I felt that I was no longer good for anything, I was no longer worth it, well."
From the hospital they transferred him to a shelter for migrants, where there were other people with serious injuries, and a month later he was with his family in Honduras.
Sitting on the porch of his home in Matapalo, Santiago recounts a spiral of tragedies: he first decided to return to Mexico to get a prosthesis, which was given to him by a human rights organization.
He stayed in Nuevo Laredo, where he was robbed along with other companions by men from the Zetas, one of the most dangerous and bloodthirsty criminal gangs in Mexico.
“Those bastards got us out of the car we were in, beat us and poured gasoline on us.
Supposedly they were going to set us on fire, but they found no matches.
So they hit us with the butts of the guns,” he says.
After recovering in a local hospital, he decided to follow the route to the United States and cross the Rio Grande.
“I was carrying the prosthesis in a bag, because I was afraid it would get wet,” he says.
But the current was strong and he had to cling to the branches of a bamboo.
He had to drop the prosthesis.
Thus, dragging himself, he managed to cross the river, but he was already desperate.
He then turned himself in to the authorities, who deported him to Honduras.
In his country, he sought the support of an association that helps migrants and managed to get a new prosthesis thanks to a program supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Santiago has gotten a job as an assistant in a laboratory for the Ministry of Health, for which he earns 9,000 lempiras a month (about $360), money that, he says, is not enough to support his wife and son, Dylan, eight years old.
He has rebuilt his life, but he is still not over the trauma.
"At least I'm alive," he says.
"It was a miracle".
Hopes pinned on a prosthesis
Santiago found support in the New Life Comprehensive Rehabilitation Foundation, which emerged in 2003 with the idea of helping amputees by landmines, victims of the armed conflict in Nicaragua, where a bloody civil war broke out in the 1980s, leaving dozens of thousands of dead and wounded.
"Some people entered Honduras and on their way they lost some of their members," explains Reina Estrada, in charge of the Foundation.
When the demining of the border area between the two countries was completed, under the supervision of the Organization of American States (OAS), the organization turned its support to another tragedy: the growing number of migrants who returned with one of their limbs amputated after their attempt. to arrive in the United States.
The backs of 'The Beast' were for them one of the best options to advance quickly, but the routes have changed over time.
"We have identified a decrease in the use of the train due to the increase in insecurity," says Lorena Guzmán, regional coordinator of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
"Added to this is the increase in arrests due to the migration policy of the Government of Mexico and the excessive use of force by the authorities," she adds.
Guzmán explains that migrants are forced to find new routes that are more dangerous, in areas controlled by organized groups that assault, kidnap and extort them.
The train, however, is still an option and each year adds more victims.
The day we visited Fundación Vida Nueva, the headquarters was buzzing with activity.
It is located in Choluteca, in a stifling windowless mansion where the temperature rises to boiler levels.
Huge fans stay on all the time to try to dissipate the heat.
Here Estrada works with a small team that includes a Nicaraguan psychologist, a young man who runs the administrative part and two key figures: the orthopedist Walter Aguilar and his assistant, Yenser Pineda, who are in charge of manufacturing the prostheses that will be delivered in a workshop. to migrants.
In the workshop they have the necessary materials and equipment to prepare these devices that represent a new life for Hondurans who have suffered an amputation.
Today, several of them are waiting for Aguilar to review them;
that is, that he analyze the conditions of the stumps, check that the wounds have healed well, take the measurements and set a date for them to return for their prosthesis.
Or, on the contrary, to check the already old prostheses, which some of these men have destroyed because, driven by misery, they submit to arduous work in construction or in the fields.
“Remember you can't carry that much weight.
You put a lot of pressure on the prosthesis,” Aguilar fondly reproaches one of these men, who wears his in poor condition.
"I have to work," he replies.
"I have to eat".
In charge of selecting people who can access the program is Cinthia Gómez, a health field officer for the ICRC in Honduras.
She reviews the medical information that comes to her from shelters, humanitarian organizations and even the Honduran Foreign Ministry.
“It depends on the need of the person.
If it is very serious, you can automatically enter the program, ”she explains.
“We check if there is a real need due to poor wound healing, due to an infectious process or due to the need for some surgical intervention.
Then we pass the person to an orthopedist and many times to surgeons, until the limb is completely healed.”
That's when patients enter rehab.
So Gómez passes the cases on to Vida Nueva or Fundación Teletón, another of the organizations with which the ICRC works in Honduras.
Among those walking through the Foundation this morning is a young, dark-haired, solid, with a radiant smile and curious eyes.
It is Francis Espinoza Reyes, 21, who had to migrate due to the violence that threatens young Hondurans, mainly because of the gangs that assault, extort and recruit young people to join the gangs.
Francis left in 2019, when he was 18 years old.
He had managed to cover the north of Central America and a good stretch of Mexico, but misfortune fell on him in Monterrey, the great Mexican industrial city.
"We were already on the train and two of the people who were traveling next to me stole the things I was carrying and threw me off the train," he says.
The machine destroyed part of his right foot when he fell.
The young man remembers that an ambulance took him to a local hospital and when he woke up the diagnosis was terrifying: the doctors recommended amputating the leg.
“I did not accept that they amputate me, because nothing else had broken the bottom part [of my foot] and I did not want them to cut me.
When they did, he didn't want them to bring me here [to Honduras], because I felt sorry for people to see how he came back.
That was the hardest thing to get over,” Francis explains, and his gaze trails off.
He spent a lot of time depressed: Francis thought he was a burden, worthless.
Depression affects at least 64% of migrants who have been detained in Mexico, according to a 2018 study by five organizations.
The situation is more dramatic for those who have suffered traumatic events like Francis.
The support of his family, he says, was fundamental in rebuilding his life in Honduras.
He was able to access the ICRC program and later his brother supported him to buy a motorcycle taxi, with which he earns a living in the department of Lempira, in the west of the country.
“Yes, it has cost me to get used to [the prosthesis], because it is not the same as having two legs, but it is worse to walk with crutches, because with them I cannot lead a normal life,” he explains.
The shelter of mutilated migrants
Not all migrants who have suffered an amputation on their way to the United States want to return to their countries.
Many of them stay in Mexico, cared for in shelters and hoping to try their luck again at some point.
One of those shelters is the one run in the city of Celeya, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, by Ignacio Martínez Ramírez, an unconventional evangelical pastor, willing to help whoever knocks on the doors of his enclosure, whoever they may be.
In his hostel, people sign up for theater classes, they can freely listen to music and are not subject to any dogma.
That is why other pastors criticize him.
To them he is a lost sheep.
Martínez shelters 31 migrants, 13 of them mutilated.
Most of these (80%, says the pastor) are from Honduras.
This summer morning the hostel is a merrymaking.
It is a two-story building, with a large patio below, where a teacher prepares a play with migrants.
They wear white masks and each one repeats from memory the part that touches him.
Others are lying on their bunks, glued to their cell phones, while the women who have traveled the route with their children take care of the children.
At lunchtime everyone will share the tables and then a real party will come: loudspeakers with tropical music at full volume.
"Celaya is a place of obligatory passage for migrants and I felt that the authorities were not attending to this forgotten population," says Ramírez.
“We started first by bringing them food to the banks of the train tracks.
So he asked for help from local organizations, his fellow church members, local people and in 2015 he set up the shelter, with the idea that migrants would have a place to sleep, shower and eat in the middle of their journey through Mexico.
But the idea became something bigger and today this building is practically the house of dozens of migrants who have seen their dreams shattered.
Here they receive care, understanding and support from the ICRC program, which finances the prostheses made in a workshop of the Guanajuato Institute for People with Disabilities (INGUDIS).
There they also receive rehabilitation and specialized care.
In this shelter lives Evert Rodríguez, 24 years old, a chubby young man, somewhat grumpy, who does not hide his frustration at the bad move of fate.
"That cut my wings, it stalled me," he says, sitting in a wheelchair.
The boy had his left leg amputated and he still has not been able to access a prosthesis, his great hope to leave the shelter and rebuild his life.
Rodríguez also left Honduras to escape the gangs.
"If you don't want to be a violent person, then go out, partner," he explains.
"I don't want to go back to my country, I don't want to have problems," he stresses.
In that flight from violence, Ramírez fell from 'The Beast'.
He had taken the train in Orizaba, in the State of Veracruz, at six in the afternoon.
“We went up without problems, but my backpack got stuck on one of the stairs of the wagons,
I wanted to let her go but I fell and the train went through my leg.
I am a brave person and I tied the wound with shoelaces”, affirms the young man.
In his state, he had not realized the magnitude of what had happened.
He was rescued by residents of the area, who took him to a nearby hospital, but due to his condition, the center's authorities decided to transfer him to the General Hospital of Veracruz.
At this point in his narration he makes a grotesque grimace on his face and lets out the rancor he has towards the doctors at that center.
“They did a crappy [bad] job for me,” she says.
"Go figure!
They did the operation so badly that the tendons turned out badly.
I've been like this for 14 months and they have to do another operation.
All so rubbish, crap.
Bitch, it's a trauma, brother, ”she laments.
"If I at least had movement in that leg, because I don't even have that, I tell you I already had the prosthesis, but since they did it so badly... It just makes me want to..." She bites her lips.
Shut up.
He cannot move his affected leg, so he has to be operated on again.
It is the option to access a prosthesis and with it a new life.
Around him his friends talk.
Those who hope to receive the prosthesis from him soon carry crutches.
Those who already have them joke and play with each other.
"What I want is to have mine," says Evert.
"I like to work.
I know what agriculture is, growing coffee, beans.
Yes, my job is agriculture.”
He looks down.
He rests his head on one of his hands, while he moves his right leg.
The other remains still, does not respond.
Curse 'The Beast'.
Curse her luck.
"But I'm brave," she says at last.
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