Redemption aboard "La Bestia"

The "beast" to which I am referring in the title is the name that is colloquially given to the train that runs from the south of Mexico to the border with the United States, and it encapsulates an awareness of the threats and dangers that are encountered by hundreds of thousands of immigrants as they venture from Central America to the land of eternal hopes and dreams, the United States.

This train, and the way it and the sage of immigration as well as the outcast and marginal groups that arise to accompany this process, is in evidence in the 2009 film "Sin Nombre". I had a chance to see this film yesterday, and it was an absorbing but also a very frightening film.

It details the saga of a gang member by the name of Caspar who live in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. His gang is the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, a gang that has seen explosive growth in the last two decades and has cast a long shadow throughout the region.

I first heard about this gang in the late 1980s when I was coversing with a Salvadoran immigrant in my former place of employ. He was a cleaner and I was an engineer, and he quite amiably told me about his experiences as a recent immigrant. The Maras were known even back then as a particularly violent group, having been formed by Central American youths in response to the gang culture they encountered as practiced by Mexican-American gangs. It was supposedly a protective organization, but it quickly moved to criminal enterprises, and it was seeped with a sense of radical rebellion against the outsider status of all relative newcomers.

This gang established a foothold in the McArthur Park area of downtown Los Angeles, within walking distance of the famous landmarks and skyscrapers of the area, and it was to quickly spread throughout the region, as well as establishing footholds in other American cities. With the deportation of criminal gang members, it was also to flourish in Central America, and it has seized on the smuggling of immigrants as a lucrative side business.

In this film, we are introduced to Caspar, a young man who seems somewhat bitter and who appropriately bears a tattoo of a tear under one eye. He manages to convince a young boy of about twelve years old to join the gang, and helps to initiate him. The boy is an innocent character who seems to be looking for a nurturing figure, and it is apparent that he is seduced by the idea of companionship. He quickly receives the nickname of "Smiley", and he looks up to Caspar as a mentor, even helping him as they murder a captive member of another gang.

The crux of the conflict lies in what is an inevitable process, which is that wherein the bond between the two will be dissolved by the corrosive culture of the gang. This culture, while seeming to offer the possibility of cohesion and companionship for all outcast members of this society, is also one that is characterized by brutal authoritarianism, and the leader, a man bearing frightening tattoos throughout his body as is the case with many members of this gang, is a particularly vicious thug. The companionship is rooted in a culture of war, in the desperate struggle for survival, and in such a culture there is little room for empathy with others. It is a culture that degrades its members, and this will be the case with Smiley, the boy who has joined.

The impetus for break will reside in the murder of Caspar's girlfriend by leader of the gang. It will prompt Caspar to rebel, and in the midst of a typical episode of robbery of the migrants as they travel on "La bestia", he will have a change of heart. He will murder this leader in retaliation, and from then on his journey will take the contours of a form of spiritual regeneration, while at the same time recognizing that he will be subject to reprisal. He is, in effect, a "dead man walking".

It is supremely affecting to see the struggles of this stream of migrants. They wait hopefully on the tracks, and they suffer immensely, being exposed to the elements, suffering from hunger and thirst, and frequently falling victim to accidents while riding on the train. Dismemberment and death are common for these immigrants, and in addition many of them are caught and deported, as well as being robbed, both by the authorities as well as by common criminals such as the members of the Maras. They are part of a human exodus that is supremely vulnerable, and their struggles and their dignity are much in evidence. People yearn for better opportunities, and the societies as well as the systems that produce these streams of human dreamers can't help but be indicted. As the uncle says to his niece, Zoraya (or Zayda), there is nothing for her in her hometown.

What ensues is a pursuit where the migrants try to reach the border while Caspar tries to avoid his fate. He is being pursued by the Maras, and it is a virtual certainty that he will be caught, and yet, he undertakes to help Zayda and her family as he continues to ride on this train. Little does he know that Smiley has sworn to kill him as well, in order to ingratiate himself with the gang, and we know that there will be a fateful encounter between the two before the film is over, in which we will reflect on how human bonds are so easily forged as well as, achingly, broken.

In the end, Zayda reaches her destination, and Caspar fulfills his destiny as well. We can't help but view this as a journey of redemption, with the promise of a new beginning at the end, as Zayda begins her new life in the United States. We are also left to reflect on the millions of stories brought by so many migrants, and of how this process of migration is tantamount to an ordeal of self-regeneration. From such suffering we are imprinted with the memory of pain, despair, but also of hope that continues to motive all the disempowered peoples of the worlds, those who are seeking a new chance at redemption.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011