Pages (100-130)
Dajiana Bunton
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| Enrique on top of the frieght trains |
In the next chapter of the book, it talks about the bandits and what they mainly do as Enrique keeps running from them. When Enrique got passed them before, he blended in as a street gangster. Bandits are scared of street gangster because they are mostly armed and dangerous. It is illegal for the bandits to carry fire arms their jobs are to get the illegal migrant and depart them back to their country.
The author talks about the women migrants get raped and sometimes killed by bandits. While Enrique runs past this hut he remembers stories others told him about a young girl getting rapped, sometimes ganged raped repeatedly. Some become pregnant and some are already pregnant. These women sometimes just give up and get departed or get put into women’s shelters. In these homes some commit suicide, some go insane, and some take showers for hours trying to cleanse themselves from the traumatic experience. A 1997 University of Houston study says one and every six migrant girls had been sexually assaulted her journey to the United States. Women trying to make the journey had heard of these things happening. Some cut their hair and strap their breast down with tape to make them appear like a boy. Some put a sign on their chest saying “TENGO SIDA” (I had AIDS) so that those types of things wouldn’t happen to them.
Enrique is still in hiding and is thirsty but knows that none of the residents would let him get anything. Most residents don’t like the migrants let alone trust them. Some who help them get robbed by knives or even at gun point. An elderly woman tried to give a migrant boy a place to stay and was beaten to death and robbed of everything. Another older man gave three Salvadorians a job killing chicken and not even a week had passed before they robbed him blind and slit his throat.
Reading this is very sad. First the rapping of innocent women to the elderly being robbed and killed. Because of the desperate migrants trying to make it the United States they think they have to kill, which isn’t the case. I’m wondering what Enrique’s family is thinking back home or if they are worried about his ware bouts
I hope you get to finish the book. You'll see that after his long ordeal (using problem-focused coping, a psychologist might say) he still has to work our all his emotions about his mother leaving in the first place.
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