Jose Mirabal first tried to come from Honduras to the U.S. 15 years ago, but didn’t make it. Like many before and since he boarded La Bestia or “The Beast”—an infamously dangerous network of cargo trains that wends north across Mexico. In 2006, Mirabal fell from the train and had to have his foot amputated. He returned to Honduras with a prosthetic.
But 2020 was a hard year. COVID-19 strained businesses and health care systems in Honduras, and in November two hurricanes struck the country, leaving thousands of people homeless. So in 2021, Mirabel decided to try his chances again—once again traveling to Mexico and boarding La Bestia. He’s 40 now, and the journey is harder on his body. He doesn’t dare take off his prosthetic because he doesn’t want to risk it getting stolen, he says, and if he needed to run away quickly, he wouldn’t have time to put it back on.
“Not all of us run with the same luck,” Mirabal says, speaking in Spanish from Coatzacoalcos, a city in Mexican state of Veracruz. He’s traveling with his cousin. “Some of us run with good luck, and others unfortunately run with the bad luck. My cousin and I, thank God, have been moving day and night…and so far nothing bad has happened to us.”
Freelance photographer Yael Martínez documented Mirabal and several other migrants’ journeys from Honduras, through Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border this year. He photographed them crossing the Mexican state of Veracruz and ending in Reynosa and Matamoros, Mexican cities across the border from McAllen and Brownsville, Texas, respectively.
Source : time
