Honduran family that fled violence hopes for a better life in Miami
Whenever Wendlin Girón recalls the days a single banana was all she could buy to feed her four kids, her eyes water.
The three girls and the boy, all under 10 years old, took turns biting the fruit, passing it to one another in silence, following the mother’s order to avoid revealing their accent in Mexico.
“And sometimes we didn’t have anything to eat,” says 33-year-old Girón, now sobbing.
Such was the about 2,000-mile journey the family shouldered about six years ago when, fleeing violent gangs, they abandoned their home in Honduras and migrated to the U.S. They’re now staying at the Miami Rescue Mission shelter, and this holiday season, they’re sharing their heartbreaking story, hopeful that the community will lend them a hand.
The family’s torment began on the eve of the fourth birthday of the daughters Suamy Yulieth and Suamy Lizbeth.
At the time, Girón worked as a welder and her husband, 34-year-old Gerson Banegas, as an electrician — both decently profitable jobs — so they decided to build a house in the San Francisco neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. That way, they would finally move out of Girón’s father’s place and give their children a home of their own.
To celebrate their daughters’ birthday, the parents organized a surprise party. They bought balloons and toys, and hid everything in their car. That night, however, thieves stole it.
Girón went outside after the noise alarmed her and heard one of them say, “Kill the witness!” She recognized him immediately: he was the same man who raped her at 14. “I felt really scared,” she said.
Shortly after that, as Girón strolled down the neighborhood street holding her 1-year-old son Uziel’s hand on their way to buy tortillas, a group of attackers hit them, covered their mouths and forced them into a car.
The criminals tucked a gun in the baby’s mouth and interrogated the mother: “Where does your husband work? Whose cars is he driving?”
Girón struggled to explain the company Banegas worked for lent him the cars. The kidnappers told her her family didn’t fit in there anymore. “We don’t want to see you here. Go away,” Girón remembers they said.
She begged her husband to move but Banegas insisted they stayed, considering their half-completed construction on their home.
But ultimately, they moved to another neighborhood — Brasilia — where everything worsened.
They opened a convenience store which they called “Las Gemelas”, or “The Twins,” so that Girón could stay at home to take care of the children. A few days after opening, a man casually stopped by, pointed a gun at them and informed them that from that day on he would collect 500 lempiras every week —or about $20 nowadays— in the name of the MS-13 gang.
That’s known as the “war tax” in Honduras: If you want to operate a business, you must give the local delinquents a cut. Or face the consequences.
The gang member then demanded more money. And then, other gang members charged them too. Soon, the Banegas could no longer pay the high fees and closed down.
If that had been the end of the criminal impact in their lives, maybe they would still live in Honduras. But it was not.
The gang members started breaking into their house in search of money. It happened so often, the parents trained the kids to hide under the beds as soon as they heard the thugs banging on the door.
Girón couldn’t stand it anymore. She implored her husband for the family to leave the country.
Neighbors warned them of the dangers, and each time, Girón explained: “If they are going to kill us there, it is going to be at once, not like here in Honduras, where they are torturing us.”
With a map of Central America and Mexico in their pocket and a few grand they got from selling everything they could, they set out to travel on their own, without a “coyote.” That worked until a few members of the fierce Los Zetas cartel in Hermosillo, in northern Mexico, stopped them and told them that they would let them live if they returned to their home country.
The Banegas backtracked, crossed the border to Guatemala again, but refused to give up.
They were sleeping in the parking lot of a hotel in Veracruz in southern Mexico one night when a man made an offer they could not refuse: $9,000 dollars to take them all to their final destination.
Two dreadful months later, the family arrived at the Texas border, where an immigration officer told the children not to be scared because no one would harm them anymore.
After that, they spent a few years in the small town of Foley in Alabama, where they lived with a relative and worked in construction. But the lawyer they hired to process their immigration case lived in Miami, so about a year ago, they made their way down to Florida. They stayed with another relative for a bit here until about six months ago, when they left after a disagreement.
In July, after hundreds of sleepless nights, their asylum papers finally arrived in the mail. The parents are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Banegas children, despite it all, still hold their chins up. And this Christmas, like the past six or so, they don’t expect to get any gifts but their mom is hoping they will receive some anyway.
A few weeks ago, Girón asked what they would like and the four children stared back at her, perplexed.
“They have no recollection of me ever asking what toys or gifts they want, so they were confused,” Girón said. They finally whispered it.
Roxana, 12, confessed she would love a camera. The twins, 10, wondered if they could get a bike and a doll. Uziel, 8, said he longs for a Nintendo Switch.
As for the parents, they would both benefit from having a computer to take online classes at Miami Dade College and learn English. Girón would also use the device to someday become a Certified Nurse Assistant.
“My soul breaks when we go to stores, and I see them spying on something,” she said. “But they never ask me for anything.
“They just look at me and say, ‘Some day, right, mom? Maybe some day you’ll be able to buy us that.”
How to help
Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@<code_dp>miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.)
This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
