National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month

January

National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month

One group who have comprised a large part of the victims of such actions as human trafficking is immigrants. People of our border region especially have heard many cautionary tales of coyotes and the dangers that immigrants face during their journey.

All of these stories should be remembered like all aspects of history to be learned from. One such story is an incident which occurred in Sierra Blanca, TX in 1987:

A headline that reads "18 found dead in boxcar" was splashed across the local papers on the morning of July 3rd, 1987. Of the 19 men that entered the train's boxcar in an El Paso railyard the previous night, one man was found alive in the morning. The sole survivor was able to survive through a small hole that had been pierced in the floor of the nearly airtight cargo holder. Over the following weeks, the papers memorialized the victims through interviews with family members and biographies. Men who were on a last trip to earn money for their family never made it to their destination, and instead their families and friends were left the task of identifying their bodies.

If you are interested in reading the article of July 3rd, 1987 or the articles that followed, they can be accessed through the:

• El Paso Times Microfilm
• El Paso Herald Post Microfilm
• Southwest Vertical File on Immigrants - 1987 - current