On Riding a Death Train

Toribio Lopez, sitting on a bench in front of the Hidrogas Plant, Calle Ocotepec Colonia Maravillas, Cuernavaca, Mexico, April 17, 2010.

“The freest way to travel is by train.” That’s most of what I got from Miguel when I met him at Carniceria Reyes on Avenida Guerrero, one of those butcher shops in the middle of the market district, about seven blocks from the border. He was a butcher, a short, stocky man with a silver moustache that ended near the wrinkles on the outside of his mouth, creases impressed by decades of sun and smoke. He told me a lot of stories, all of which made me depressed, and then he told me the one about his daughter and how she took off from Chiapas in early May to get to Nuevo Laredo at the Texas-Mexico border, about halfway between Brownsville and Eagle Pass if you clock it right. Story went that she took off with a gallon jug of water and a cloth full of tortillas fresh from the comal, those clothes, “on her petite, brown body” and a machete. “She didn’t take any pictures,” he said, “just a few of those plastic cards the color of Camel Filter hard packs with the saints and their corresponding prayers on the back, all of them St. Christopher’s on the front even if he’s not a real saint anymore.” It got me wondering why she needed so many prayers of the same saint. I got my answer, but that’s a story for another time. She brought those things north along the migrant line, “from Tijuana to Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros to Oaxaca, to the southern most reaches of Honduras,” and imagine that, guey, about thirteen hundred miles of stretch.

When I imagined traveling at first the idea felt tangible, going that long. Concepts like those don’t register with you right away, numbers and pain and the quantity of both. Numbers were invented to numb us. Any idiot could tell you that. More than a thousand miles of stretch sounds nothing like days and days of bloody nightmare. So, Miguel drew me the rest of the picture.

He took a Faro in his hand and held it between his index and middle finger, ran the rest of his hand through his slick black hair and stared at me for a minute.

“What,” I said and he let out something airy and compressed, a laugh or a scoff and then he pulled out a religious candle with La Virgen from behind the counter and lit it. “It’s that bad huh?” I said and he looked at me with those oily eyes and said “Yeah, friend, it’s that bad.” He slammed the candle hard on the table between us and buried his black moustache in the glow of the flame, cigarette between his lips, and he inhaled deeply. “I wish they could all be firsts of the day,” he said and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.

“You know those kill you,” I said.

“Hey, my grandfather lived to see eighty! You wanna know how?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He minded his own fucking business. Si tienes una pucha, puedes hacer las reglas. Fumalo, guey, fumalo,” he said. Miguel was the kind of guy that always liked to remind you that you didn’t have a vagina if you really didn’t and that you should remember that when you cross. He was nicknamed El Veterano, one of those guys who crossed the border literally thousands of times between the forties and the time I met him. He was old, within the bald one’s grasp to be certain, but overtly strong enough to take a Faro. El Veterano was famous and to be famous in a town like Nuevo Laredo is a feat unto itself, a harder gig than New York if you really want to know the truth. Just to give you an idea, Nuevo Laredo, like most border towns, isn’t the kind of town you set up shop in unless you’re working for the Maquiladora, those small sweat-shops...