They walked straight, without hesitation. Few spoke much. Their compass point was north, towards the United States. Their goal for the day was Pijijiapan. The town, 30 miles away, was the next stop on a trek by thousands in a caravan that has so enraged US President Donald Trump he has threatened to close the US-Mexico border and slash aid to Central America.
Honduran boys Adonai, 5, and Denzel, 8, set off from Mapastepec still fogged with sleep. No-one had a torch. Potholes were treacherous. Only the floodlights of the odd truck in the opposite lane of the highway helped them see a few feet at a time.
Within minutes, a young man lay on his back, hugging his knee to his chest. The single mother and her boys strode past, keeping pace with the long train of people. Her ultimate destination: Los Angeles, a city where she knows no one.
Trump, who campaigned against illegal immigration to win the US presidential vote, has seized on this caravan in the run-up to the Nov. Yet its members make up a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who every year flee violence and poverty in Central America for the United States.
Estimates on the size of the caravan vary from around 3, to more than double that. Some migrants have abandoned the journe y, deterred by the hardships or the possibility of making a new life in Mexico. Others joined it in southern Mexico. Escobar kneaded her shin. Agile and slight, she used to exercise regularly back home in the crime-wracked city of San Pedro Sula.
