For six months, two photojournalists from El Faro followed the experiences of women whose lives have been touched by migration. Women being displaced; women without documents; women headed north; women surrounded by the violence of Central America; and women who, in searching for a better life, have lost body parts. The result was a photography exhibit where women migrants are front and center. As part of this project, El Faro solicited an essay by Eileen Truax, a Mexican journalist with extensive experience covering migration, and author of the books Dreamers, An Immigrant Generation's Fight for Their American Dream; and Mexicanos al grito de Trump, historias de triunfo y resistencia en Estados Unidos (Mexicans Shout at Trump, Stories of Triumph and Resistance in the United States) The following is adapted from her essay:“You hear about men who work for a better future, even though in El Salvador and Honduras, four out of every 10 homes have a woman as head-of-household. You hear about the Central American men migrating to the United States, when half of those 3 million migrants are women. In stories told of migration, the female experience is often ignored: the women who make the decision on their own to migrate, who assume the role of providers in their families, who send remittances, who take care of their own children from afar, and who arrive to another country to take care of other people’s children. People forget that if the future is feminine, it is because migration is too.  The path that runs between Honduras, El Salvador, and the United States—passing through Guatemala and Mexico—is sown with stories of women who have crossed borders, and not just physical ones. The rupture of personal borders, the triumph of willpower over fear, and the resistance to the many forms of endless violence are present in every step of the migrant’s journey. But we must be careful never to forget that these women are so much more than refugee women who have suffered and lived through traumatic experiences. There is also joy among them.Far from rendering these women into perennial victims, recounting their stories of pain must serve as a reminder that every person exists in all of their humanity. Suffering is not what defines these women. It might, however, help us understand them better, and help make crossing all those borders worth the pain.” *Translated by Laura Weiss These photos are part of the exhibit “Women Who Migrate. Portrait of the eternal journey in Mesoamerica,” produced by El Faro in collaboration with Doctors of the World, with support from the Xunta de Galicia. The traveling exhibit has been shown in Tapachula (Mexico) and Tegucigalpa (Honduras), and will continue its tour in 2020.

https://elfaro.net/en/202004/el_salvador/24294

{"cms-image-000033436-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33436","name":"cms-image-000033436.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033436.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033436.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033436-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Marta is 27 years old and Salvadoran. She is from San Vicente but now lives in Puerto El Triunfo, in the department of Usultán, where she has sought refuge in her maternal grandmother’s home. Ten years ago, her step-brother raped her, and she became pregnant. The sexual violence continued for years. In 2017, she fled her home, and with the help of the local organization Colectiva Feminista (Feminist Collective), reported her brother to the authorities. He is now in prison, accused of raping a minor. Marta graduated from high school in 2018. Today, she takes care of her 10-year-old daughter and supports her grandmother with a small food business that she set up on the side of a highway. Photo by Víctor Peña. &lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033437-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33437","name":"cms-image-000033437.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033437.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033437.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033437-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Thara is 25 years old and was raised in Comayaguela, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. After living for years as a sex worker, she fled the threats she faced for being a trans women in a community torn by a dispute between the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha 13 gangs. Two years ago she decided to stop her journey to the United States and permanently remain in Tapachula. She continues to work as a sex worker in one of the most violent thoroughfares of this border city. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033438-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33438","name":"cms-image-000033438.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033438.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033438.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033438-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Marisol Amador during a beauty treatment class in downtown San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The 19-year-old Honduran was deported from Chiapas, Mexico, in May of 2019. She was migrating to the United States because she couldn’t find work, but was detained by immigration agents in Tapachula, Chiapas. Five months ago, she started taking this course along with 20 other young women who receive support from the NGO Operación Bendición (Operation Blessing). Three of her classmates were also deported back to Honduras. Photo by Fred Ramos.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033439-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33439","name":"cms-image-000033439.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033439.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033439.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033439-jpeg","text":"&lt;p&gt;In October of 2018, an exodus arose from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Among a majority of men, hundreds of Salvadoran and Honduran women of all ages were part of this regional human phenomenon known in this region as &#8220;caravans,&#8221; which laid bare the poor governance of the northern triangle countries of Central America. Thousands of migrants took to the highways, embodying the flow of migration to the United States that has occurred clandestinely for decades. Crossing through Mexico, migrants suffer assault, robbery, rape, torture, kidnapping, trafficking and murder. Ana Rafael is 33 and Salvadoran. Her husband, Luiz Martínez, is 30. Their son, Fernando is two, while Gabriela, the oldest, is 11.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;In the photo, they are hitchhiking on the Mexico 190 freeway to get to Juchitán de Zaragoza, in the state of Oaxaca. They were part of the third caravan of people who felt they were drowning in their country, driven out by violence, lack of work, corruption, gang violence and organized crime. Having already crossed two borders, they waited for someone to drive them a few kilometers ahead, to get them closer to the third, and final border. In El Salvador, they lived off of what Luis made as a street vendor, but Ana says that gang members stole his merchandise twice, and that’s why they decided to migrate. Like thousands of other Salvadorans, they traveled to Guatemala to join another group that had left Honduras on October 12—the caravan that dominated the front pages of international newspapers for several days. Photo by Fred Ramos. &lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033440-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33440","name":"cms-image-000033440.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033440.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033440.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033440-jpeg","text":"&lt;p&gt;Deysi Reyes is from San Salvador, and on Thursday, November 8, 2018, she took advantage of two hours of rest from the caravan in the town of Pijijiapan, in the state of Chiapas, to bathe in the river. At the time, she was 18-years-old and pregnant with her second child. She and her husband crossed Mexico on foot with an eight-month-old baby. Deysi went into labor a month later, on December 5, in a healthcare clinic in Mexicali, along the border with the United States. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033441-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33441","name":"cms-image-000033441.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033441.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033441.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033441-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;On November 2, 2018, one of the caravans, which had left San Salvador three days earlier, crossed the Suchiate River and set foot in Mexico. Before that, its roughly 3,000 members had waited for almost four hours on the Rodolfo Robles bridge, which connects Tecun Umán (Guatemala) and Ciudad Hidalgo (Mexico), where the Mexican authorities tried to convince them to register themselves to make way for an orderly entry. The group doubted the officials’ promises, and broke out into shouted arguments, yelling and pushing. Most wound up jumping in the river to cross the imaginary line that separates Guatemala from Mexico. The few hundred who chose to register themselves at the migration checkpoint were deported to their home countries within weeks. Crossing the Suchiate with no one’s permission was the caravan’s first big victory. Even though they were tired, they celebrated as if their goal was much closer than it was, and as if the power of the group made them invincible. The group arrived together in Mexico City on November 12, 2018, though afterwards its members dispersed. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033442-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33442","name":"cms-image-000033442.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033442.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033442.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033442-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Roberta García is Maya Ch’orti’—an indigenous group whose territory overlaps all three Northern Triangle countries— 51 years old, and president of Proyecto Cosecha (Harvest Project), in the Pitahaya canton of Camotán, Chiquimula, Guatemala. She teaches women how to plant vegetables, to help generate an independent economy within the community. She would like to leave, to migrate, but she doesn’t have enough money. Photo by Fred Ramos.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033443-jpeg":{"feat":"1","sort":"33443","name":"cms-image-000033443.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033443.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033443.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033443-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Mary Salgado is 45 years old and Honduran. On January 5, 2017, she left to begin her journey to the United States. A single mother of five, she believed that she would find a job there to support them. After 25 days en route, she was kidnapped in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico, and forced to work as a prostitute. Two months later she escaped, and managed to take the train alongside other migrants headed towards Orizaba. She says that she dressed as a man to not draw attention to herself and to avoid getting raped. In the area known as La Arrocera ( in Veracruz, and not the notoriously dangerous migrant corridor of the same name in Chiapas) a rumor spread among the migrants that there were immigration agents further ahead. Terrified, she jumped off the train, but slipped, and the wheels cut off both her legs. She was deported, and is now one of the leaders of an organization in Tegucigalpa called Conamiredis that supports returning Hondurans with disabilities in Honduras. Most have lost a body part in accidents on the train tracks. Photo by Fred Ramos.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033444-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33444","name":"cms-image-000033444.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033444.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033444.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033444-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;María García is 23 years old. She poses with her 11-month old son, who was diagnosed with malnutrition at the clinic in Camotán. &#8220;They told me that I have to give him vitamins,&#8221; she says. She also would like to go to Mexico, or to the United States, but says she is too poor to migrate. Photo by Fred Ramos.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033445-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33445","name":"cms-image-000033445.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033445.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033445.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033445-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Camotán is located in a dry corridor, a zone of extreme weather vulnerability that crosses Mesoamerica from north to south, where the weather pattern alternates between devastating tropical storms with raw droughts. Seasonal migration to harvest zones is typical in Camotán, and the town is a permanent source of migrants to Mexico and the United States. In this image, a girl waits while a local mill processes her corn. Photo by Fred Ramos. &lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033446-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33446","name":"cms-image-000033446.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033446.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033446.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033446-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Margarita Román, 55 years old; Dora Alicia Linares, 56; Aracely Landaverde, 50; and Virginia Linares, 80, rest for 10 minutes, heft up their corn-kernel filled sacks, and then return to walking down the highway that leads to the Garita Palmera beach, in the town of San Francisco Menández, in the department of Ahuachapán, El Savlador. They are on their way back home to colonia San José. Every other day, the four women cover some seven kilometers to get to a plot of private land where corn is harvested. They glean what’s left over—the fallen kernels that the cutters leave behind on the floor. They each collect about 25 pounds, or 12 kilos, and return, loaded up, another 7 kilometers back home. Each work day, the fruit of their labor adds up to around 4 dollars, which they use to buy the bread, sugar and coffee that they live on. According to data from the Director-General of Migration, San Francisco Menéndez is the second-highest migrant-sending municipality in the country for women, just after the municipality of Santa Ana. Aracely, who walks third in the line, has four brothers, two of whom live in Los Angeles and New York. She says she’s never received any help from them. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033447-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33447","name":"cms-image-000033447.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033447.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033447.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033447-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;For 20 years, Yolanda Ramírez has been the health advocate of the canton of Santa Cruz, 90 houses of adobe and tile alongside the Cerrón Grande reservoir, in one of the most hidden corners of the municipality of San Luis del Carmen, in Chalatenango, El Salvador. The last time she saw her daughter, Ana María, was on April 24, 2007. Twelve years later, she still doesn’t know where she is. She would have been 32 on October 12. &#8220;She had her birthday, because in my heart she is still alive,&#8221; Yolanda says. In 2007, Ana María had left for the United States, and called her mother three days later from a place Yolanda no longer remembers the name of. After that, nothing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;In December 2016, through the Comité de Familiares de Migrantes Fallecidos y Desaparecidos, COFAMIDE (Committee of Family Members of Deceased and Disappeared Migrants), Yolanda filed a claim with the Mexican Office for External Support, at its embassy in El Salvador. Now Ana María is included in Mexico’s National Victims Registry list. Yolanda has not stopped searching for Ana María. In 2018 she joined the caravan of Central American women who are looking for their disappeared children in Mexico. She did not find answers. In 2019, she participated in a new caravan of mothers who left on November 12 to travel across the entirety of Mexico. &#8220;As long as I am healthy, I will search all over the world until I find her,&#8221; she states.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033448-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33448","name":"cms-image-000033448.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033448.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033448.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033448-jpeg","text":"&lt;p&gt;Jessica is 40 years old and was born in El Salvador, in the Dolores colonia of San Salvador. She migrated intending to go to the United States, but has had Mexican residency for two years. During this time, she has hosted other trans women headed north in her Tapachula home. She says that she lived for a few years in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, but she returned to Tapachula because, she says, prostitution is more profitable here. She is considered a madam. Before going out tonight, she helps Gisel put on her makeup on the back patio of the dwelling they share. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033449-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33449","name":"cms-image-000033449.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033449.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033449.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033449-jpeg","text":"&lt;p&gt;Dayrén is Cuban and 41 years old. Originally from Camagüey, she sold a plot of land and pulled together $4,000 to pay a coyote to take her and her husband to the United States. Her two children stayed on the island, in the care of their grandmother. From Cuba, they traveled to Nicaragua and had gotten up to Guatemala City when their guides abandoned them. They decided to go on without them. They took buses and walked—and say the Guatemalan police extorted them 16 times on their way to the Mexican border. Now they live in Tapachula, in the last room of a tenement building. He works in construction and plumbing jobs. On November 15, 2019, Mexico issued the couple a humanitarian visa, which allows them to work and live freely anywhere in Mexico for a year. After, they hope to get refugee status in Mexico. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033450-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33450","name":"cms-image-000033450.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033450.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033450.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033450-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Gisela is 24 years old and Honduran. She was traveling to the United States with her family, but, fearing the Mexican government’s new anti-immigration policies, has decided to stay in Tapachula. The violence in Honduras drove her out in June 2019. She recounts that a group of assassins in her hometown, Trujillo, in the department of Colón, threatened to kill her after a family dispute. One of her nieces was abused by her partner; Gisela’s husband tried to stop it, and then the threats began. Now she says that she feels trapped in the middle of her journey north, but she refuses to return to Honduras. She lives with her husband and their two children in a 9-square-meter room where they pay $60 dollars a month, in a tenement building filled with migrants passing through, in the heart of the city. The price went up with the new caravans; a few months before, the same room cost $40. There, she has found a community alongside other Central Americans and some Cubans. Together they are in hiding, waiting for the policies to change. One day they would like to continue on towards the United States. Photo by Víctor Peña.&lt;/p&gt;"},"cms-image-000033451-jpeg":{"feat":"0","sort":"33451","name":"cms-image-000033451.jpeg","link":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033451.jpeg","path":"https://elfaro.net/images/cms-image-000033451.jpeg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000033451-jpeg","text":"&lt;p dir='ltr'&gt;Daniela is 16 years old and was born in the village of El Guayacán, on the edges of the Lacandón reserve, in the heavily-forested department of Petén, Guatemala. She is slowly working towards the United States. She says that she escaped from discrimination by her own family for being a trans woman. This photograph was taken on June 5 in the La 72 shelter, in the municipality of Tenosique, in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. A few days later, Daniela continued walking. By the end of October, she was in another shelter, 850 kilometers away. Photo by Víctor Peña. &lt;/p&gt;"}}

Interpol Tied Nuevas Ideas Legislator to Money Laundering and Human Trafficking

How Los Angeles Taught the Mara Salvatrucha to Hate

Wisconsin Dairy Industry Relies on Undocumented Immigrants, but State Won’t Let Them Legally Drive

Fred Ramos y Víctor Peña

https://elfaro.net/images/cache/1200x630/crop/images%7Ccms-image-000033443.jpeg

Log in

Log out

My Profile

Recover password

I forgot my password

Register account

Register

Name

Subscribe

Support

See More

Politics

Transparency

Inequality

Impunity

Historical Memory

Violence

Gangs

Organized Crime

Culture

Migration

Environment

Education

Support Independent Journalism in Central America

El Faro English is the best independent journalism on Central American current affairs. Enter your email to receive our weekly newsletter in your inbox:

Suscribe to

Our Newsletter

Todos los martes y viernes recibe las noticias más relevantes de la semana y recomendaciones.

Suscríbete a

El Faro en minutos

Todos los lunes Julie López, periodista de El Faro en Guatemala, interpretará para ti la información de valor de la semana.

Notas de Guatemala