The Caravan of the Mutilated: Migrant Risk, U.S. Impunity

In the Spring of 2015, thirteen disabled Honduran men travelled to the U.S./Mexico border to demand that the United States recognize the desperate circumstances that eventually led to their loss of limbs. Having previously... [ view full abstract ]

In the Spring of 2015, thirteen disabled Honduran men travelled to the U.S./Mexico border to demand that the United States recognize the desperate circumstances that eventually led to their loss of limbs. Having previously journeyed atop, the popularly described, La Bestia cargo train through Mexico, these men fell beneath the train’s wheels losing not only arms and legs, but also their capability to labor when their injuries force them to return to Honduras. As members of the Asociación de Migrantes Retornados con Discapacidad (Association of Returned Migrants with Disabilities , AMIREDIS), these men describe the journey through Mexico as a “nightmare,” making them “victim[s] of the American Dream.”

This observation neatly encapsulates the contradiction between the aspirational imaginary that “pulls” many to immigrate to the United States, and the condition of violence and impoverishment that “push” Central Americans northward. In this essay, I will examine this contradiction through Honduran migrant testimonies in order to theorize how the U.S. role in rendering Honduras the murder capital of the world and, as a result, one of the largest sources of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. should be defined as a condition of transnational impunity. Consequently, The Caravan of the Mutilated’s prospective migrants reveal the new cultures of brutality that accompany hopes for the American dream modified for the deprivations of the neoliberal era—an era in which one dreams merely of being capacitated to labor, to be useful.