Weeks after returning to teach in the United States, Jason realized his relationship with Kingston had become unhealthy. Over their months together, he paid for the repatriation of Kingston’s nephew’s body, a failed business venture, and daily expenses. Jason reflects that he abandoned his own fieldwork compensation rules with Kingston, becoming unable to refuse his requests due to a mixture of sympathy, guilt about privilege, and fear.

The distance provided perspective on Kingston’s relentless demands for money, which began a week after their separation. Kingston texted claiming he was at the border and needed funds to cross, then changed his story to say he was in Mexico City needing plane fare. He sent photos of a corpse, requesting burial money. Days later, he claimed to be moving migrants with babies and desperately needed cash for food and safety. Jason stopped responding to the escalating pleas.

Kingston then sent WhatsApp voice messages claiming he had been kidnapped by members of Mara Salvatrucha. Someone grabbed the phone and demanded money, threatening to kill Kingston. Jason grew suspicious, recalling Kingston’s story about a previous, brief kidnapping that his gang connections quickly resolved. The staged performance sounded unconvincing—Kingston asked Jason to call Andy and Snoop, fellow smugglers who were usually broke, rather than calling them himself.

The kidnappers sent more messages with constantly changing ransom amounts. They produced a brief video showing Kingston lying on a concrete floor with his hands and feet loosely bound while two hooded men kicked him gently. Kingston grinned during the performance. Jason notes the assailants’ exposed hands revealed they were Black, making it unlikely they would harm a fellow Garifuna community member, especially one as connected as Kingston. The poorly executed scheme resembled tactics Kingston used to extract money from clients’ families during actual migrations.

Jason ignored the messages. Days later, Kingston called claiming he was tortured for three days before paying the ransom, then asked for bus fare. Their relationship deteriorated. During sporadic contact, Kingston spoke increasingly about persecution and considered surrendering to Border Patrol. Jason returned to fieldwork in Mexico but concealed this from Kingston, avoiding places where they might encounter each other. When others mentioned Kingston’s name, they spat on the ground. Jason felt guilty for abandoning him but wondered if he was always just another client to exploit.

The chapter opens with Santos rejecting a cartel recruiter’s offer to join their organization, despite the promise of money and escape from poverty. In Mexicali, Santos explained to Jason that after they last parted, his Honduran roommates became involved with organized crime and repeatedly tried to recruit him. Though Santos refused, they succeeded with his older brother Marvin.

Marvin had been the family’s foundation—a decorated military veteran who became Santos’s father figure after their father’s death. Marvin left the army after nearly a decade, worked in an American factory in Honduras, and paid for the lawyer who freed Santos from prison. When Marvin’s marriage collapsed, he asked Santos to guide him to Mexico, believing his military training would allow him to work for a cartel briefly, earn money, and exit cleanly.

During a firefight, a bullet struck a flash grenade on Marvin’s tactical vest, causing an explosion that severely burned much of his body. Believing he was dying, Marvin begged Santos to visit. The cartel arranged for Santos to be flown to a remote mountain compound where their private doctors were treating Marvin. During this period, Santos sent Jason photos of farm work, concealing his true circumstances.

After Marvin began recovering with Santos as his nurse, Santos asked to leave. The cartel refused, stating he had witnessed too much of their operations and threatening to kill him if he attempted escape. For six months, Santos worked in their agricultural fields to avoid conflict. As Marvin regained strength, he confronted the cartel members, threatening lethal violence if they harmed Santos. He pleaded with the comandante that Santos had no involvement in their business and posed no threat. Days later, the cartel released Santos.

In present-day Mexicali, Santos shared a house with rotating migrants, performing construction work and occasionally scouting border crossing routes, though prison memories prevented him from attempting entry. His phone rang—it was Marvin calling from a Mexican prison, where he was serving time for murder. Jason briefly spoke with Marvin, who welcomed a future visit. The chapter concludes with Santos dancing in his living room, a moment recalling happier times in Pakal-Ná. Santos reflected that working for cartels means he had to constantly keep moving because stopping meant death.

Jason drove through Tapachula with Flaco, who tossed fireworks from the car window while requesting music. Flaco appeared significantly aged, with missing teeth, deep wrinkles, and marked by severe poverty. His previous partner and five-year-old son had sought asylum in the United States. He now lived with a teenage Honduran wife and their three-week-old daughter, unable to afford beer because all money went to diapers.

They observed Tapachula’s transformation—thousands of Haitian refugees populated the streets, having journeyed for months through South America. At a soccer stadium, hundreds of migrants waited in squalid conditions for government buses to relocate them. Jason reflects that the scene represents humanity’s global future: masses displaced by disasters, violence, and poverty seeking refuge in one of Mexico’s poorest states.

At a Puerto Chiapas restaurant, Flaco explained he had been trapped in Tapachula for over a year after surviving both COVID-19 and back-to-back hurricanes. Mexico City and Guadalajara had become too dangerous; his reputation as a smuggler made him a target even when inactive. His criminal record in the United States made crossing impossible, as he would face years in federal prison. At least in Tapachula, he could work legally with his Mexican residency card purchased from an immigration official for $1,500. He brought occasional groups from Honduras to southern Chiapas but mostly performed odd jobs.

Flaco described how smuggling had transformed over seven years. Migrants now traveled from Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti in addition to Central America. Cartels had dramatically increased fees and kidnapping frequency. Moving someone from Honduras to Houston once cost $7,000; it now cost $12,000 to $15,000. Previously, guides traveled free after paying a $400 total in bribes; now they had to pay $4,000 themselves while their clients paid the same amount. Flaco recounted a recent incident where a Garifuna guide was kidnapped in Veracruz and tortured with a cigar cutter, losing a finger despite being able to pay. When Jason showed him Kingston’s fake kidnapping video, Flaco dismissed it as performance, contrasting it with his own sister’s real kidnapping, which included terrifying footage of his two-year-old nephew with a knife at his throat.

Flaco stated he could not return to smuggling because he had to provide for his infant daughter, though Jason privately questioned this commitment, given Flaco’s seven abandoned children. They visited the dilapidated house where Flaco lived, sleeping on a concrete patio because he could not afford a room; their previous landlord evicted them the day after his daughter’s birth. At a shanty near the Río Coatán, Flaco outlined his dream of building a small house on unclaimed land where he could plant fruit trees and create stability for his family.

Jason received a text: A tractor-trailer carrying over 100 migrants had crashed in Chiapas, killing 54 people. He informed Flaco, who responded that the situation continued to worsen.

The chapter opens with a flashback to a church service in Honduras before Chino’s final journey to Mexico. When the pastor called for confessions, Chino felt compelled to approach. Using his legal name, Roberto, he wept and trembled as the pastor declared that a powerful demon possessed him. His sister, Marina, was summoned to assist as Chino publicly confessed his sins. The pastor afterward told Marina that death pursued her brother.

The narrative jumps forward to Chino and Jesmyn’s three-day bus journey from Palenque to Villanueva, Honduras. Marina welcomed them, noting Chino had transformed—he spoke of jobs, children, and a better future rather than displaying aggression. After two days, Chino’s pain from the stab wounds became unbearable. At the local Red Cross, staff immediately recognized he required emergency surgery and sent them to San Pedro Sula.

Marina described the Honduran public hospital as treating patients like animals rather than humans. Doctors determined Chino needed an operation but could not perform it for four days. The family had to rent a ventilator for $100, purchase all medical supplies, including syringes, and secure seven pints of blood before surgery could proceed. Jesmyn and Marina remained constantly at Chino’s bedside, praying and reading Psalm 91. Jesmyn shared her religious faith openly for the first time, and they made detailed plans for their future together.

Chino grew increasingly frustrated with the delays and neglect, begging Marina to transfer him elsewhere. She agonized over lacking the $825 needed to expedite his operation. Jason reflects that at this moment in Michigan, he remained unaware that such a sum could have saved Chino’s life.

After four days, Chino finally received surgery to repair his punctured lung. He returned optimistic, telling Marina he knew he would survive. However, by the next morning, his condition had deteriorated; fluid had moved to his other lung. The hospital lacked an available mechanical ventilator. A nurse manually pumped air while doctors told Marina a machine would cost $2,000 to purchase or could become available if another patient died. Unable to afford the equipment, the family watched helplessly.

Chino died at age 20 on August 21st. Marina recalled he was intubated and gasping for breath in his final moments. Both women had been praying in another room when a doctor informed them. Jesmyn could not initially believe it; when she saw his body, she thought he was merely sleeping. Marina reflects that despite the tragedy, Chino reconciled with God through a hospital pastor, repenting of all his sins and achieving peace before death.

At Chino’s wake, his body lay in a cracked coffin with embalming fluid staining his white shirt. Family, neighbors, and his grandfather Inocente gathered through the night. Chino’s young friends arrived drunk, screaming their grief and performing a mourning ritual they had memorized from burying too many peers. He was buried beside his brother Miguel in a cemetery increasingly filled with youth. At the grave, Jason experienced a flashback to receiving Jesmyn’s message in Michigan while sunlight warmed his feet and he stared at his neighbor’s lawn. He thought of Chino waving goodbye from the Pakal-Ná train tracks, consumed by guilt for having left while Chino remained behind.

During a university presentation about Chino and other smugglers, an audience member questioned why anyone should care about people who do terrible things and often die because of it. Jason considered the question but rejected offering simple answers or heroic narratives. Another attendee afterward criticized him for excessively humanizing smugglers.

Jason argues that smugglers are complicated individuals, but anger should target the larger systems creating clandestine migration rather than focusing solely on the criminals facilitating it. He connects Chino’s death to the recent deaths of 53 migrants who were cooked alive in a Texas tractor-trailer, noting that while smugglers bear responsibility, culpability extends to border enforcement policies and the global forces driving migration. Millions annually crossed borders illegally while seeking better lives and fleeing various forms of death, often relying on criminals for protection from dangers created by enforcement strategies. Global inequality sustained the smuggling industry.

As an anthropologist rather than a policymaker, Jason offers no satisfying solutions. He contends that human smuggling, while exploitative and violent, cannot be stopped because it is not the core problem. The fundamental issues are the monstrous injustices of capitalism that drive migration: poverty, political corruption, the drug trade, transnational gang violence, and climate change patterns disproportionately affecting the poorest nations. These forces make undocumented migration a survival necessity and create the smuggling trade as it is today. Border walls and security measures prove expensive and ineffective, merely fueling the smuggling industry. Wherever barriers are created, desperate people and enterprising smugglers will work through them at any cost.

The epilogue concludes with brief updates. Santos called from an Arizona truck stop, having successfully reached the United States. Alma texted photos from Alabama, where she and Papo were celebrating their daughter Dulce’s birthday. Jesmyn, now with a two-year-old daughter, reported losing everything to Hurricanes Eta and Iota.

A final flashback returns to Pakal-Ná. Jason photographed Chino and joked about him wearing a Brigham Young University shirt. Minutes later, Chino alerted him to an immigration raid. They ran toward the confrontation where migrants and smugglers congregated. Chino picked up a rock, smiled, and charged down the street screaming at the authorities to come get him.