The route northward passes through El Naranjo, a Guatemala jungle town where I rode in a little boat that puttered along the flat water of the Umacinta river, past tall ceiba trees and the largely apathetic Mexican border patrol.
And it ends in places like Compton, where there's a white stucco box of a house with the roof painted ominously black and bars on the windows. Until recently, two quiet Latinos lived there, waving to the neighbors and barbecuing on the front lawn while they held more than two dozen people hostage inside.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, August 05, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 39 words Type of Material: Correction
Immigrant smugglers: The Hector Tobar column in Tuesday's Section A about the smuggling of immigrants from Latin America to a house in Compton misspelled the name of the Usumacinta River, which forms part of the Mexico-Guatemala border, as Umacinta.
This is the trail immigrants follow to enter the United States illegally. It's more than 2,000 miles long, and crazy things happen at nearly every stop.
In my years as a foreign correspondent for The Times, I walked small stretches of the route -- on the abandoned railroad tracks of Tenosique, Mexico, and in the rail yards of Ecatepec, just outside Mexico City. I've seen vistas of great beauty -- the Sonora desert, for example, and the rust-colored hills south of Tombstone, Ariz.
The people you meet at these places have left behind families in the villages and cities of Central America and Mexico. They are desperate, self-deluded and courageous all at once. Those qualities make them pure gold for corrupt officials and various criminal enterprises, big and small.
They pay small bribes or "fees" to boat operators, local "guides," truck drivers and policemen to pass through Mexico. And then thousands of dollars to smugglers who say they can get them around the high-tech obstacles at the U.S. border. Those smugglers are transforming the trail into a journey of intimidation and horror.
The mostly black residents of Dern Avenue in Compton got to witness the chaotic end to one of these journeys last week.
"I've seen a lot of strange things on this block -- I've seen people shot," a young musician told me. "But I've never seen anything like that."
The stucco box was a drop house for immigrant smugglers. The people inside -- about 30 residents of Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador -- had already paid thousands of dollars to get as far as Compton. Now the smugglers were demanding more money from their families.
They were locked in three rooms and held at bay by a pit bull, according to agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their ranks included two boys from Ecuador, ages 7 and 9.
None of the neighbors had any inkling what was going on. The two guys renting the house seemed normal enough. "They were friendly," said Alma Jackson, 60.
