This article titled “Migrants run Mexican gauntlet to make leap of faith to US” was written by Rory Carroll in Flores and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City, for The Guardian on Sunday 19th June 2011 17.49 UTC

Salsa music piped from the radio and the bus had a name, Teresita, but there was nothing jaunty about the young men with small backpacks who filed aboard in silence, avoiding eye contact.

Behind them was home, Honduras, ahead lay the United States, and in between was el brinco, the jump. Also known as Mexico. Not so much a leap as a roll of the dice.

The passengers were illegal migrants and they were bracing for perils which, as they travelled through northern Guatemala to the Mexican borderwards Mexico, could strike at any time: betrayal, kidnap, murder.

A landscape of stunted trees, cattle and the occasional police checkpoint passed with barely a word spoken on the crammed little bus. There was plenty to say but, as one passenger explained later, better to stay silent. “You don’t know who’s listening.”

Extortion by police, falling off a train and getting lost in the desert have always been risks, but the journey has become much worse since organised criminals started preying on travellers.

Fifteen Nicaraguans were shot and burned on a bus outside Guatemala City, allegedly because the driver was transporting cocaine without the permission of drug gangs. Mexico is the real danger: mass abductions, ransom demands, tortures, massacres.

The bus stopped at the San Pedro river, deep in a tropical forest once ruled by the Maya. The passengers piled out, forming groups of four or five. Canoes would take them to El Ceibo from where they would hike into Mexico. “You’ve got to be optimistic,” said Juan Colindres, 25, expressing hope over experience. Five times he had headed for the US and five times he was foiled in Mexico – robbed by police, robbed by his guide, deported.

Each time organised crime’s breath felt closer, he said. There was no safety in numbers. Armed gangs would stop trains with hundreds of migrants clinging to the roof and herd them into waiting buses. “Better to go in a small group so you can dodge a bit,” said Colindres, wriggling his hand.

But even small shoals get hooked. Some are sold to gangs by guides, others by fellow migrants known as enganchadoras. Others are handed over by corrupt police and immigration officials. With their backpacks and accents, migrants are easily identifiable.

Groups such as the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico find it profitable to demand ransoms from captive migrants’ relatives, especially if they are in the US. They recruit some hostages as footsoldiers.

Rumours circulated from about 2006 but the phenomenon exploded into public consciousness only last August when Zetas massacred 72 people – mostly Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadoreans – at an abandoned farmhouse in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas.

About 300,000 migrants pass through Mexico each year, the vast majority Central Americans, but keeping track of them is impossible, said Flora Reynosa, head of a state office in Guatemala City tasked with defending migrants’ human rights. Kidnapping had become a plague, she said.

Families trek to Reynosa’s little office to supply names of missing relatives. That morning a father had registered the disappearance of a son who left in February, with no word since.

Thelma Schaub, a psychologist in the office, said that families’ anguish often leads to neuroses, such as compulsively watching TV news bulletins in the hope of spotting loved ones.

Casas del Migrante, a network of church-funded shelters in the region, receives chilling stories.

Carlos Lopez, who runs one such centre in Guatemala City, recalled a Honduran who escaped from a farm in northern Mexico with more than 200 captive migrants. Those left behind, and whose ransoms were not paid, were dismembered by “the butcher”, a stocky killer who seemed to enjoy his work.

The brinco used to refer to the final jump into the US, but now also refers to running the gauntlet that Mexico itself has become.

It started a decade ago when authorities began intercepting migrants to reassure the US that an immigration accord with Mexico would not open floodgates from all Latin America. The crackdown but pushed the flow into the shadows.

Mexico’s declaration of war on the drug cartels in late 2006 triggered a brutal competition among gangs to stamp authority on their territories. All vulnerable groups were fair game, few more so than migrants. A few thousand dollars’ individual ransom added up, as victims multiplied, to a lucrative sideline.

Some of the most travelled routes passed through Zeta territories. When not doing its own dirty work, the organisation lent its fearsome name as a sort of franchise to smaller gangs.

A National Human Rights Commission report in 2009 documented hundreds of mass kidnappings involving about 10,000 people in a six-month period. Victims said police and immigration agencies colluded with gangs.

The Tamaulipas massacre is thought to have been a warning to human traffickers who tried to bypass the Zetas.

One survivor said three migrants accepted an offer to join the Zetas, for a ,000 (£615) weekly salary. The rest were blindfolded, ordered to lie on the ground and shot.

The outcry prompted a law in April guaranteeing migrants’ rights. But they remain subject to arbitrary detention and deportation.

The same month authorities freed hundreds of captives from safe houses, mostly in Tamaulipas. One group said it had been ordered off a bus by immigration officials and passed on to a gang.

It is a measure of Central America’s poverty and unemployment that so many still risk the journey.

“There’s nothing in Tegucigalpa [the capital of Honduras] for me. And there’s an excellent chance I’ll make it back to the US,” said Edwin Omar, 22, as he waited for a canoe by the San Pedro river.

He had been working as an interior decorator in Miami, Florida, before being deported seven months ago.

Coyotes – the name given to those who specialise in human smuggling – offer different “packages”.

For ,000 you are escorted from Honduras through Guatemala and Mexico to the US. Make it to the US border on your own steam and you pay ,500 for help with the final brinco. Prices include three attempts.

The El Ceibo crossing into Mexico has few official controls, reducing the risk of deportation, but is rife with Zetas. The El Carmen crossing is the reverse.

For many the journey is a rite of passage. Seven Honduran teenagers in a Guatemala City shelter said they left home on a whim but were now marooned, having used all their cash to bribe police at checkpoints.

Odanis Acuna, 35, a Cuban asylum seeker, warned them against Mexico. “I was robbed and stripped naked. I’m lucky to be alive.” Two of the teenagers are resolved to return home.

Even without predatory gangs, journeys can end in tragedy. Cristobal Tambriz, 17, lost his grip and fell under a train in central Mexico. It sliced off his lower right leg. The Red Cross is helping with a prosthetic limb but a bleak future awaits on the family’s dust-blown farm. “I wanted to send back money, now I won’t even be able to work here.”

Last September Laura Coc, 22, left the family’s hilltop house near Yesuj, outside Guatemala City, to join a brother and boyfriend in New Jersey. The family went into debt to pay a coyote 20,000 quetzals (£1,550).

Coc apparently died of sunstroke in the Arizona desert. No body has turned up, tormenting her mother, Maria, 50. “I want to bury her,” she said, crying. “I want my daughter home.”

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Republican Senator Jim DeMint is taking on the Obama administration’s outrageous Honduras policy. John Kerry attempted to stop DeMint from taking a trip to Honduras, but DeMint gave him a swift kick in the tookus.

Kudos to DeMint for raising a stink over Honduras. It’s disgraceful that President Obama chooses dictators over democracy.

Honduran President Roberto Micheletti has a great piece in The Washington Post explaining and defending the reasons former president Manuel Zelaya was removed from power.

The Obama administration’s reaction to the situation in Honduras is one of the most bizarre and shameful episodes to take place on the world stage in decades. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Obama is bullying a poor country like Honduras, because they refused to allow a Marxist president to seize control of their country the way Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela.

President Obama is an embarrassment to the free world and a disgrace to this country. He stands with dictators instead of democracy.

Fox’s Greta Van Susteren interviewed Roberto Micheletti last week.

(hat tip Conurls)

Obama’s despicable treatment of Honduras after they prevented a Marxist takeover by a Chavez stooge is an outrageous stain on our nation.

Obama is standing with his fellow Marxists, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, The Castro Brothers, and Evo Morales to step up the pressure on the democratic government of Honduras.

What a shame.

The Obama administration is continuing its assault on democracy in Honduras by revoking the visas of 4 Honduran officials:

The U.S. government said Tuesday it has revoked the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials, stepping up pressure on coup-installed leaders who insist they can resist international demands to restore the ousted president.

The U.S. State Department did not name the four, but a Honduran official said they included the Supreme Court magistrate who ordered the arrest of ousted President Manuel Zelda and the president of Honduras’ Congress.

This is nothing short of stunning. For a guy who doesn’t like to “meddle” in the affairs of other nations, Obama sure has taken to meddling in Honduras. The Honduran Supreme Court followed their own constitution by ordering Zelaya removed from office for ignoring the constitution and violating the rule of law.

He was attempting to replicate Hugo Chavez’s power grab in Venezuela and the people of Honduras said we don’t want that shit.

Shockingly, (or maybe not so shockingly) our president has taken the side of Zelaya, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro, and Hugo Chavez. I understand that Obama is himself a Marxist with great sympathy for leftist dictators, but it’s a f*cking embarrassment that he’s put our nation in the same camp as those thugs.

If Obama is successful in getting that Marxist gangster reinstalled as president of Honduras, it’s going to have a devastating effect on democracy in that part of the world — not to mention our credibility.

For a guy who loves to brag about “restoring the rule of law” from an allegedly lawless Bush administration, president Obama has done the very opposite by meddling in the political affairs of Honduras.

The president refused to “meddle” when Iranians were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran. The murderous Mullahs of the Islamo-Nazi regime in Iran were allowed to suppress demonstrators and steal an election while president Obama said nothing.

I actually thought in the beginning his measured approach to the protests was probably the right thing to do, but I think he should have become more forceful sooner. However, his Iranian response is certainly a matter for debate and many opposing views on the subject have merit.

Obama’s response to Honduras is a different matter. There is only one side to this issue and the president is clearly on the wrong side.

Unlike with Iran, it only took hours for Obama to take to the airwaves and condemn the ouster of would-be Honduran dictator Manuel Zelaya. He called the ouster “illegal” and demanded that Zelaya be put back in power.

Here’s why he was removed and why it was actually the most beautiful display of democracy ever seen in that part of the world:

President Zelaya is an ally of Hugo Chavez. Zelaya borrowed a page from the Chavez playbook in Venezuela by ordering a referendum on removing presidential term limits.

The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled the referendum unconstitutional and it was opposed by the congress and many in Zelaya’s own party. The Supreme Court said it’s flat out unconstitutional to hold such a referendum.

Zelaya didn’t give a damn what the Supreme Court said and ordered the referendum to be held anyway.

The high court then ordered the military and police not to participate in the referendum since it’s illegal. Zelaya then fired the top military chief and the defense minister when they refused to participate.

The Supreme Court reinstated both men and Zelaya promptly fired them a second time. He vowed to press on with his referendum and hold a vote Sunday.

On Sunday, just before dawn the situation came to a head. After the congress voted unanimously to remove Zelaya for “repeated violations of the constitution and the law” — the military was ordered to remove him.

He was seized from his bed with his family and placed on a plane to Costa Rica still wearing his pajamas.

The military could have taken over as they often do in that part of the world, but they did not. Immediately, the member of congress next in line to the president was sworn in. He will remain president until the next election in November.

The military removed the president in a manner consistent with Honduran law and democratic principles.

Not only is Zelaya a Marxist Chavez stooge, he’s also actively involved in trafficking cocaine to the United States.

So it’s absolutely stunning that president Obama continues to demand that Honduras reinstall a thug like Zelaya.

Is Honduras not allowed to protect their constitution? Should they just go along with Zelaya’s plan to make Honduras into another Commie dictatorship like Venezuela?

This story is not even close to being over and I think Obama will ultimately pay a heavy political price for siding with Chavez, Castro, Ortega, and the UN instead of with democracy.

I guess Obama’s reaction to this shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’s spent his entire political career breaking bread with people who think Castro is a hero.

Obama and his friends share a common ideology with leftist dictators and always have, I just didn’t expect his support for them to be so brazen.

It’s worth noting that Zelaya told the UN today that he will no longer attempt a referendum on term limits if he can come back to power.

Kudos to the Honduran government for not allowing their democracy to be turned into a dictatorship.

-Chris Jones