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Everything Is Stories

The Shores of Acheron

Everything Is Stories

Everything Is Stories

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8606 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2024

⏱️ 97 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Forty years ago, military-backed death squads descended on Dora Rodriguez’ hometown as a civil war spiraled out of control in El Salvador. Forced to flee as a teenager and leave her family behind, Rodriguez began what she thought would be the only journey north through Mexico and into the harsh Sonoran Desert. In this episode, Dora recounts her harrowing start-stop passage across the desert, predatory smugglers that nearly cost her life, and an unlikely relationship with a man from the other side of the wall. *This episode has been edited from the original version for safety and editorial purposes. --- Produced by Clarke Tolton, Grace Heerman, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray. Sound Design by George Drake Jr. Music by Mike Etten Intro/Outro music by Anand Wilder For more about this story, including photos by Clarke Tolton, visit everythingisstories.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The comfortable way to deal with these stories is to say they are about them.

0:10.0

The way to understand these stories is to say they are about us.

0:14.0

No, no.

0:16.0

No.

0:18.0

The comfortable way to deal with these stories is to say they are about them.

0:22.6

The way to understand these stories is to know they are about us.

0:28.6

For those who may have previously heard this episode,

0:43.7

we have since edited the story from its original version

0:46.6

for safety and editorial purposes.

0:49.0

Thank you. We were talking to Jose, the guy that was crossing, and he was saying that it costs between

1:06.1

$7,000 and $20,000.

1:08.4

And I was like who has twenty thousand dollars

1:11.7

yeah well you know what most of the stories that I heard they sell everything

1:19.6

they have they get in debt big time and if they don't make it they go back with

1:27.1

that debt.

1:28.3

We have cases sometimes when we were having a lot of people,

1:33.0

the people being deported, and they have been deported four or five times,

1:38.7

and they were done.

1:40.3

You know, they didn't want to do this journey anymore.

1:43.2

And we had them in the phone with their families in

1:47.0

Guatemala or El Salvador or Honduras and they will be saying don't come you need to try it again

1:56.0

because we can you can come back we own all this. And you see men crying like a kid, but I can anymore. I will die. It's here. It's real. 262 miles of hot, dry, often mountainous terrain, and yet more and more migrants are still coming north.

...

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