Millions of migrants passing through Mexico have risked their lives riding north on the cargo trains known as La Bestia. That number has dropped since Trump returned to office, but few believe US-bound migration is gone for good
Photographs by Mads Nissen/Panos Pictures
Any migrant passing through Mexico comes to know la Bestia – the Beast. The ominous term refers to the cargo trains that glide and clank through the immense and remote Mexican countryside before arriving at the US border.
For decades migrants have hitched rides on these trains, bundling on when they slow down, then huddling for shelter from wind and sun, and scattering at the sight of police or immigration officials. At one point, perhaps half a million migrants took these trains each year.
Atop the wagons, with little to hold on to, some fell to their deaths or had limbs severed on the tracks. But for migrants without money or visas, it seemed to be the only way north. And riding the Beast could be the final step in their odyssey to America and everything they hoped to find there.
Jean Carlos Vera, 28, from Venezuela, hangs from a wagon. To him, the US means opportunity and freedom from the dictatorship in his homeland
It is much quieter since Donald Trump returned to the White House. The numbers arriving at the US-Mexico border had been falling for months under Joe Biden as, ahead of the election, his government pressured Mexico to stem the flow of people. Mexican officials ramped up checkpoints on the Beast.
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But then Trump banned asylum claims and sent thousands of soldiers to the border. The number of migrants passing through Mexico slowed dramatically. Some people even turned round and headed home.
Yet few believe US-bound migration is gone for good. And when it does return, so will images like these of the Beast and its passengers on their way to the border.
Volunteers from charity, Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) throw bottles of water to migrants on board the freight train
Families get some rest on a wagon loaded with iron ore. Two fathers have rigged a shelter for the children from an advertising banner
Jean Carlos Rivero, 41, from Venezuela plays with his five-year-old daughter Jeannella Isabela
Jesus, 10, in a loaded wagon with iron pellets. He and his family are hoping to reach to US after a gang attacked their home in Ecuador
Cartel members use a rope ladeer to orchestrate an illegal border crossing for migrants near El Paso, Texas
Ruled by drug cartels, Ciuadad Juarez, where the Beast terminates, is racked by murder and violence
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