Every year more than 400,000 Central Americans embark on a 3,000-mile-long journey through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. One in five of these illegal migrants are women—often single mothers with young children to support back home—who jump freight trains heading north in a desperate search for employment.
"They rape women, steal their money or kidnap them but one takes the risk," said Norma Humaña of El Salvador.
Humaña is one of the migrants profiled in the documentary, Mujeres en el Camino, produced with OSI support by Elfaro.net, a digital newspaper based in El Salvador. The film forms part of a larger multimedia project on migration undertaken by a team of reporters, photographers, and filmmakers.
Journalists documented the systematic victimization of migrants by criminal gangs at train stations—often in full view of the police or local authorities—where kidnappers will force migrants off freight cars and then hold them for ransom from their relatives in the United States. Other migrants fall under train wheels or die at the hands of common criminals.
"We found a humanitarian crisis hidden in the underbrush and between the train tracks among people who are not easy to identify," photographer Edu Ponce told CNN en Español. "It's a tragedy they themselves have to hide."
For the documentary on migrant women, Elfaro reporter Marcela Zamora and Israeli filmmaker Keren Shayo followed their trail for five months through El Salvador, Guatemala, and seven Mexican states, gathering more than 92 hours of footage.
Two of the women profiled in the film tell of being held for months by the Zetas, drug gangs that control the migrants' route through Mexico. Another two suffered assaults while they stowed away on freight trains, and a third lost her foot after being pushed off a moving car. A fourth woman shares how she was sold years ago to the owner of a bordello in Guatemala for 500 pesos (about US$50).
El Faro's work on migration has won prizes for journalism and human rights coverage from the University of Central America (UCA) and an award for its coverage of human trafficking from the Honduran National Forum for Migration (FONAMIH).
The team is taking its film and photography exhibit to Central America, Mexico, and the United States in April through July for a series of events held in collaboration with universities and nonprofit groups that study migration, as well as special screenings and workshops with governmental and private entities that work with the migrants themselves.