Jose #1: Part 2

The coyote had sent him and two others in a different bus, as the minivan where the original group was travelling was packed to the brim. This is problematic, because as the immigrants make their way across Mexico the coyotes must pay a tax to allow for the passage of individuals further north. The head of this operation, unnamed, is one who knows each coyote by name and face.

This was Jose's first time travelling north, and as such there was no way he could know what to expect, unless by chance he ran across others in his youth who could relate with truth and accuracy the hardships of the ever changing terrain.

It was in Reynosa where several armed men stopped the bus he and the two paisanos were riding. They began asking for credentials: passports, visas, IDs. Jose and his company, coming from a small village in Honduras, knowing they were embarking in an essentially clandestine course, failed to carry any form of identification on their persons. They were asked to get off the bus. One of the two paisanos, extremely afraid, broke off running. He was soon chased down and beaten with the butt of the gun, hauled back bruised and bleeding, to be carried off with Jose and the other man in a Toyota truck to some unknown location.

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