✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Deadly human smuggling through Mexico thrives in ‘perfect cycle of impunity’ - ICIJ

icij.org · 2,131 words · saved by 1 readers

A new collaboration from ICIJ and media partners in Latin America, Europe and the United States documents nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys to the U.S. border under dangerous conditions. S ix days before Rafelín Martínez Castillo was sent flying from a trailer truck transporting him and 168 other migrants across Mexico, he was sanding wood in his cousin’s modest workshop in the Dominican Republic. The 31-year-old craftsman, his brother and cousin were working tirelessly to fulfill a large order of pilones, the popular mortar and pestle sets sold in souvenir stores and on roadsides in the Caribbean nation. “When I touched his hands the day we said goodbye, they were full of calluses and cuts from all the hours he spent sanding wood,” Martínez Castillo’s mother, Kenia Castillo, recalled during an interview in April 2023 at her house in Boqueron, a small, hilly region in the southern province of Azua. “I pleaded with him not to leave. I said we could get by eating rice and eggs if we had t

S ix days before Rafelín Martínez Castillo was sent flying from a trailer truck transporting him and 168 other migrants across Mexico, he was sanding wood in his cousin’s modest workshop in the Dominican Republic. The 31-year-old craftsman, his brother and cousin were working tirelessly to fulfill a large order of pilones, the popular mortar and pestle sets sold in souvenir stores and on roadsides in the Caribbean nation. “When I touched his hands the day we said goodbye, they were full of calluses and cuts from all the hours he spent sanding wood,” Martínez Castillo’s mother, Kenia Castillo,

Explore this link on the map →

related reading