I arrived in Tuxtla Gutierréz, Chiapas, Mexico around midnight. As I sat in the back of a taxi, exhausted, the driver says “a girl like you shouldn’t be traveling alone, it’s dangerous.” It wasn’t the first time I had heard this. Gender-based violence is wide-spread in Latin America, a 2016 survey shows that out of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 14 are from Latin America and the Caribbean. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the window. Jokingly, I said that my parents had always told me the same maybe driving me to do quite the opposite, he laughed and said “entonces eres una chingona.”
The Suchiate River divides Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, Mexico and Tecun Umán, Guatemala. A bridge connects these two cities, but you see the most movement underneath, where makeshift tire rafts are pushed back and forth all day without the vigilance of immigration officials or navy officers or the protocol of customs. The rafts often transport Central American migrants, many making the perilous journey North.