[dropcap size=big]M[/dropcap]eet Darwin, a kid in Tijuana with a dream. Darwin David Aguilar is 19 years old and a migrant waiting for his chance to request asylum in the North. He says a relative is waiting for him in San Bernardino, where he could find work, but eventually he’d like to live in Los Angeles.
He asks if SB is closer to TJ than LA is, so I draw a map for him on my notepad, showing that the distances are more like a triangle. Tijuana is the gateway in both directions.
Darwin is a native of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where the current migrant caravan began. But he wasn’t in it. He’s been here for a month. Darwin tells me his hometown is “beautiful, just like Tijuana,” but he had to abandon it. One day a group of Maras went to his house and told him he had to join their gang, or die.
“I didn’t know what they wanted from me, but they wanted me in the gang,” Darwin says. “They gave me just three days to think about it. And if I didn’t join them, they’d kill me.
“On the second day, I came here,” he explains. “On the third day, they went to my house to look for me, to kill me.”