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The Documentary Podcast

Assignment - August Central America

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.32.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2011

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Linda Pressly follows the migrants heading north through Guatemala into Mexico – despite the dangers of kidnap by the notorious Zetas gang.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

0:04.0

The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to bbcworldservice.com

0:10.0

slash podcasts.

0:14.0

Now all the BBC World Service assignment.

0:17.0

Hundreds of thousands of people travel through Mexico from Central America

0:21.0

in a bit to get to the United States every year.

0:24.0

It's always been a difficult journey but now Mexico's drug cartels make it extremely dangerous.

0:29.0

Linda Presley hears some of the migrant stories in Guatemala and across the border in Mexico.

0:35.0

This program contains descriptions of violence from the start.

0:41.0

We're just in the kitchen in the past, we're sent to Santa Elena and young men from Honduras have arrived here

0:49.0

and they've just wolfed down a meal.

0:51.0

We meet Johnny and Miguel, not their real names, in the north of Guatemala in Patent.

1:11.0

The Santa Elena Pastry Centre is a well known stop-off for migrants who too and froze through this region.

1:17.0

Johnny and Miguel are skinny and scared.

1:20.0

They're so badly shaken by their experiences across the border in Mexico that they've abandoned their journey

1:26.0

and are heading back home to Honduras.

1:29.0

Their dreams of getting to the United States were shattered when the Mexican goods train they were traveling on

1:34.0

was stopped by masked men.

1:37.0

He says the problem they ran into was with the organized crimes that set us,

1:45.0

which don't give you many options and you have to come back.

1:48.0

The setters are the bloodiest of Mexico's drug cartels and now their operations are expanding into Guatemala.

1:55.0

But organized crime isn't just interested in drugs.

...

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