Ex-migrants help other survivors of journey north

[The Northerner]

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Hiding in the bushes, 17-year-old Marcelo Larin watched in terror as attackers raped a fellow migrant, a Guatemalan woman, near her naked, unconscious and machete-wounded husband.

Larin wasn't the only witness to the violence that day more than five years ago in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Other Central American migrants were also quietly waiting out the attack until they could rescue the Guatemalan couple. They finally helped the pair to a nearby highway and loaded them into a passing police car.

Larin is now back in his native El Salvador where he goes by the handle "Marcelo the Migrant" and spreads an urgent message to others thinking of trying their luck in the U.S.: Don't go, at least not without legal permission.

"When I'm in the schools, I talk as a kind of prevention," said Larin, now 22. "It's difficult to find opportunities in El Salvador, but there are some."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-migrants-help-other-survivors-journey-north-153832082.html