The Mexican-American border has marked off fiercely differing political beliefs in this country for years. For Central American immigrants, however, the space they must travel to get to that border is a real no man’s land, overrun by corrupt police, gang violence, and extreme poverty. It is the narrative space that Sin Nombre covers and which Joel Bleifuss investigates here.
Slide 1: The world of Sin Nombre
Guillermo Villegas (left), Paulina Gaitan (center) and Gerardo Taracena in Sin Nombre
The world, in all its harsh reality, of undocumented immigrants like the Honduran teenager Sayra in Sin Nombre, is not the chaotic creation of random fate.
The desperate people that leave their homes and illegally cross borders do so for good reasons. The organized criminals who terrorize them on their journey were not born thugs. The officials that prey on their vulnerability are not corrupt by nature. The Americans who detain and deport those who slip through the fortress walls are not uncaring people.Â
Each year, tens of thousand of Central Americans leave their families in the hope of gaining successful, if illegal, entry into the United States. Between their home countries and their dreams of a better life in the U.S., lies Mexico.
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