translated from Spanish: Migrate in high heels to NY in search of a life away from the gang

– what why flee from Honduras?
Lorraine, 30-year-old transsexual woman born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and was among the first to arrive on Saturday to the shelter that the Government of the city of Mexico installed in the Iztacalco Mayor to attend 5 thousand 500 people of the caravan migrants Repeat the question that makes a journalist, and a shirt that lets you expose the navel and shoulders fits.
-There are many reasons why flee my country – responding while he toys with a lipstick between the fingers of one hand, and the other holds a bag with more paintings that someone donated along with a Parisian style beret covering her head , and that leaves you with a tuft of reddish, curly hanging over the right eyebrow hair.
Read: Migrants will decide in Assembly will cease when the CDMX to go to USA.
Then Lorraine observes in silence his large feet.
Brings them full of cuts and wounds that have left him more than thousand 800 kilometers that separate his country from the Mexican capital, and which went through alternating walks under the heat, rain, and dehydration, with sections on bus and some ‘raites’ in private cars.
-Do you know? -He says suddenly. I’m fed up.
Fed up, chewing each word with rage, street and prostitution which has been find explains.
Tired of not being able to walk without receiving insults and kicks, pedrada, for being transsexual.
Fed up with having to “silver, silver, and more money” to gang members, and the threat of death hacked to death if it does not.
Fed up with gangs. Of the ms13 does. 18 neighborhood. And tattoos that mark people as if they were goods owned by them.
Fed up of not being free.
Why, when friends spoke to him of a caravan that was preparing to leave Honduras last October 13 heading to United States to ask for refuge, Lorraine not two thought it is times.
-When they said that we were going to come care for reporters, religious, and defenders of human rights, I said to myself: Lorraine, you have to go in this caravan! You have is no more here! Pendeja vos stays – says now with a laugh that it wrinkle slightly nose in half of a face of white skin, thick lips, and a few sharp cheekbones.
Read: The Central American rejection is racism; they are not a threat and do not come to take away anything the rush by splitting with the caravan was such, that could not or prepare the minimum for a journey of thousands of miles to Tijuana, on the border of Baja California. In fact, Lorraine says now fun fitting above the waist tight jeans pants, only had time for two things: one, receive the blessing of his mother to “go out and confront the unexpected” on a road full of assault, extortion, rape, and a long list, as it is the migration route that passes through Mexico to reach the United States.
And two, put on their inseparable high heel shoes.
-I left with a zapatillon who had a heel of this size – he says forming a huge ‘C’ – with the index finger and thumb of your right hand. And well, with them I walked much, I ran behind the truck, until the heel broke I was barefoot, and I hurt my feet. But it doesn’t matter. Now I will suffer a few days, but I know that you I will have the fortune to reach United States. And, then, I can buy all the shoes you want.
But that, perhaps, will be in the future.
The road that has traveled from Tegucigalpa has caused wounds on their feet. Photo: Elizabeth Cruz Larios.Ahora, Lorena takes three days in the hostel of the city of Mexico, resting on a mat in the bleachers of the stadium cement Jesús Martínez ‘palillo’.
Here, the conditions for more than 5 thousand people are not, of course, the best. But Lorena is not complaining. On the contrary, feels grateful and lucky. She received food, clothing, bath, few anticipated that remain rather small, and medicine to fight respiratory infections that are intensified by the contrasting climate of the city of Mexico, where dawn with intense cold, then it gets hot, and with the first the twilight star back down the temperature.
Even so, it is uneasy.
Like many other migrants, the Honduran does not know what his next move will be, or how it will give it, if again alternating “raites” with walks, if government authorities will provide them bus, or, again, they will fail them, as the Governor of Veracruz, Miguel Ángel Yunes, who last Friday, November 2 offered transport to the capital aboard of 150 buses, and when it comes to the truth broke back claiming that there was a ‘mega cut’ of water in the city.
-We feel cheated. First they believed us. All applaud. We cry. We sing. We said: the Government of Mexico is good. But then, they told us: you know what? Surprise! There are no trucks, so walking him. It was a huge disappointment. I saw many people with tears in their eyes, with much pain of seeing mothers with children, and having to walk many kilometers.
At this point in the interview, Lorraine leaves to run a several second pause to reflect.
With both hands clung to his bag of paintings, sullen admits that, at times, “in one of those crazy moments that happen to one mind”, have you thought about leaving the Caravan and return back to their country.
But then you look again large feet. Denies head. And encourages herself by saying that no, that already is very close. That hardly you separate it 24-hour bus trip to Tijuana. Although, on the other hand, lands his thoughts on the floor, if no one helps them with transport, then those 24 hours can become months of road on foot.
-We are again in uncertainty – sighs resigned. Here in the caravan all say, they say, and say, but everything is uncertain. Now, for example, it is rumored that the Government if we put buses. But, the truth, I’m tired of so many lies. I, until it is above the bus saying ‘Tijuana’, and won’t believe anyone.
Free, at last Tijuana. The word which is pronounced these days in the capital hostel with more enthusiasm. The last Mexican city before moving to United States soil and apply for the coveted shelter.
However, in the hostel nobody cheats are. Migrants know that it will be very difficult for United States and, above all, President Donald Trump and his Government to accept their applications for asylum. Rather the opposite. In his latest statements, Trump said that the caravan will be if received, but by the National Guard, soldiers, and even by brigades of American citizens that will block the passage of the undocumented.
Lorraine is also which does not deceive. And less after having gone through the carp that the Institute for women in migration (IMUMI) installed in the hostel, where a group of volunteers informed of your rights as a migrant and refuge seeker, but also about the risks and the enormous difficulties of the process.
-I heard one of the lawyers, and right now I have more fear, the truth. I feel as if, instead of Trump, were with Hitler, because you speak of it have a detainee in a prison called ‘The cooler’ because it makes much cold (detention centres of short stay the service of customs and border protection of States United has spread in the vicinity of the southwestern border between US and Mexico). And I say to me: well, but if we have been sick and exhausted from walking, how will we put in a cooler?
Lorraine says that it is not relying on Mexican police or agents of the National Institute of migration (INM), since the Mexican Government showed them two faces, one, that of sympathetic and tolerant, authorities provided a mega Hostel in the capital of the country , and another that of the Government that sent federal police to stop its passage.
-First, help us. And they can suddenly turn everything. So we do not know if the Government of Mexico is on our side, or the side of the United States.
In any case, return to Honduras is not an option, he stressed. Now or never.
-If I go to the United States, as do not go out – insists Lorena meets Parisian beret. And if they do not give me asylum, I will seek the way to enter either way.
Once inside, the Honduran is clear: will seek “some cousins” at the border. They will help to settle the first few days, or perhaps weeks, or months. And then, when you regain forces and some ‘silver’, it will launch for the East Coast.
-New York – he says with black eyes wide open, on the edge the tears. That’s my big dream, know Nu yor sity. Put an aesthetic, stroll the streets, take lots of pictures. And then, look at the statue of liberty, and shouting: Finally I am free!
 
 

Original source in Spanish