The Boy Who Hid from Death

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A Salvadoran migrant boy, Dani, dries off after bathing at a public water fountain next to the municipal market in Tapachula, in southern Mexico, on the night of November 4, 2018, where the largest caravan of Salvadoran migrants had stopped.

Many migrants made their way to that dark corner of the market to clean themselves, amid a massive movement of people who left their countries in Central America and other distant lands to head north together.

More than seven years later, the caravans have long since ceased to exist. Amid a crackdown on migrants in the United States, the new Trump administration has imposed severe restrictions on asylum. According to official figures from last week from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), very few migrants manage to cross the border today. Very few like Dani.

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Dani was haunted by many hells at age 13. His father, a gang member, was murdered when he was one year old; his mother was arrested when he was four; his maternal grandmother threw him out onto the street. From the age of eight, he lived amidst drugs and alcohol, sleeping in the shacks of the San Miguel municipal market and earning a few coins as a porter.

MS-13 threatened him with death. He attempted suicide. He fled. He blended into the crowd of Salvadorans who made up the migrant caravan. They all left San Salvador on October 31, 2018. He was accompanied by Víctor, a 21-year-old friend who had rescued him from the streets but who had also fled El Salvador due to the same threats.

Dani wanted to reach the United States to find work and apply for asylum. It was his only way to save himself. He knew this clearly at age 13.

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I followed him for seven days of his journey through Mexico. We said goodbye at a shelter in Arriaga, on the border between the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. A few days later, I looked for him at a migrant shelter in Mexico City, near the Basilica of Guadalupe, but he had left the day before. I also looked for him in Tijuana, calling out his name at every shelter I entered to photograph other migrants.

I wanted to follow his path. I wanted to understand more, to delve deeper into the story of the boy who overcame that horror. It wasn’t possible. Dani disappeared; he didn’t respond anymore.

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Two years ago, while reporting in the municipality of Osicala, in the Salvadoran department of Morazán, a man was driving through the streets in a rickety vehicle to buy scrap metal. It was Manuel, one of six migrants traveling in Dani’s group. He and four others gave up halfway and returned to El Salvador.

I asked him if he had any news about Dani and Víctor. “They made it; they crossed into California,” he replied. Dani would be about 21 now. I still hold out hope of finding him.