"Which Way Home" on HBO last night was heart rending...

If you're leaving Honduras or you're leaving points in Central America, you can take buses. But then from Guatemala crossing into Mexico, that becomes a much more dangerous circumstance because it's illegal for people just to cross over, undocumented, into Mexico. Let's say you get to a southern city like Tapachula, there's a network of smugglers that may help you or help transport you north, maybe through buses or cars or vans. Let's say you don't have the money to pay them to take you - you basically wait for freight trains. You cross the border at Tapachula, you walk eight to ten days to get to Arriaga and there you wait for the train.

Now, once you get on a freight train, there's any number of things that could happen to you; you could have a relatively safe journey or you can fall under the train wheels and be decapitated, cut in half or have legs or arms cut off; you could be robbed from gangs or from corrupt police officials. There's any number of pretty horrible experiences that one can have along the train route. -- Ms. Rebecca Cammisa: Filmmaker, "Which Way Home". via