Tracks of their Tears
Reporter Christine Evans and photographer Gary Coronado of The Palm Beach Post take us on an incredible journey to Southern Mexico with "Train Jumping." Evans and Coronado detail the terrifying chances Mexican and Central American migrants take, often at the cost of their lives or limbs, to jump on a train and travel to the United States. Evans uses potent details to make her scenes vividly real as this description shows:
A 10-minute ride on a wooden raft, pulled by men with rippling back muscles, takes you across the skinny Suchiate River to Mexico. You can fit everything onto these rafts — 1,000 packages of ramen noodles, fat men on cellphones, live chickens, cases of contraband soda — as the 5,000 entrepreneurs who do business here know. Somewhere a stereo blasts Funkytown, the eight-minute version, with a perfectly appropriate lyric: Gotta move on.
Coronado's slideshows are some of the most powerful I've seen. Be sure to click on "Angel of the Tracks" to learn about a woman who has helped thousands of maimed migrants repair their lives.