The journey that will bring Juan Jose Vasquez within steps of Pope Francis began with a text message that bore a single word: “Son.” The message was from Vasquez’s mother, whom Honduran drug traffickers had just kidnapped. It was the last thing she would say to him.
The next morning, news reached Vasquez in his home town that his parents’ bodies had been found along the side of the road some distance away. Both had been shot to death. Next came a flurry of media coverage, followed by threats of more violence against Vasquez’s family. A seed of an idea quickly bloomed into a realization. He had to flee. He had to get out of the country, get out of Central America, get to the United States — to Maryland, where he had family.
The story of Vasquez, now 18 and a sophomore at High Point High School in Beltsville, reflects that of thousands of other unaccompanied minors whose flight from violence in Central America led to an immigration crisis last summer.
But Vasquez’s journey will have a different ending. On Sept. 24, he’ll have the chance to meet with Pope Francis at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Washington.
At a time when the issue of immigration has become increasingly contentious in the wake of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s political rise, Catholic leaders hope Pope Francis will advocate for child immigrants during his American tour. Vasquez, who crossed two countries last year to arrive alone and penniless at the Texas border, belongs to a demographic that moved Francis to action.
In July last year, as tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the border, Francis called the situation a “humanitarian emergency” that “requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected.” The children, he said, had “migrated alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence: This is a category of migrants from Central America and Mexico itself who cross the border with the United States under extreme conditions and in pursuit of a hope.”
Now officials at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, who have organized Francis’s visit to St. Patrick’s, are orchestrating what could be the pontiff’s closest encounter yet with a face of that crisis. Vasquez’s story “represents thousands of other kids,” said Erik Salmi, the organization’s communications director. “It is painful to realize that Juan Jose’s horrifying life experiences as a young teenager are not unique.”
Just trying to be a normal kid
When people meet Vasquez, they have no idea of those experiences. Wire thin, with spiky hair and a shy grin, the teen is secretive about his past, not because he’s embarrassed but because he wants to be a normal kid. He takes English classes, plays midfield on a local soccer team and uploads selfie after selfie to his Facebook page. One of the few hints of his old life on that page is a photograph showing Vasquez leaning against a dirt bike on a sand-choked road in Honduras. Despite the nonchalance of the pose, his life at that point was fraying.
He was born in a single-story house along the Guatemalan border to parents who were little more than children. His mom, Rosa, was 15. His dad, Edgar, was 20. Theirs was an honest living, built around the Bible, church on Sundays and a business that produced cement blocks for area construction projects. “We ran it from our home,” Vasquez said. “Sometimes, I went with my dad to help him get sand, necessary for the making of the blocks, by a river nearby.”
Vasquez was not a strong student, so at the age of 12, he stopped going to school so he could learn the family business, which was booming. “My parents sold a lot [of blocks] and made good money,” he said.
But in a region defined by drugs and desperation, prosperity can make people vulnerable. The family’s business — with its cars and construction materials — made it a target for exploitation by gangs.
It’s difficult to determine when Vasquez’s parents were first forced into the drug trade. They didn’t tell their other relatives what was happening, and they didn’t tell their son.
“If my parents were having problems, they did all they could to keep them from us,” Vasquez wrote in a court filing provided by his attorneys. “Because I never heard them complain to me about any trouble.”
But by 2012, Rosa was calling her sister, Marta Vasquez, who now takes care of her nephew in Hyattsville. Rosa said she wanted to kill herself, Marta would later tell case workers with Catholic Charities. We need to get out of here, Rosa told her sister again and again. We need to get out of here.
“The family was definitely forced into this,” said Jenny Cachaya of Catholic Charities, who works with immigrant families. “If you’re threatened, or someone says they’ll hurt your family, you have no way out. If you refuse, they’ll kill your family. . . . They had their own business and they made those cement blocks that had those holes in the middle. They were forced to transport the drugs and hide them inside.”
In September 2012, Edgar and Rosa, who was pregnant, traveled to central Honduras. “Next thing I heard were rumors that my parents had been kidnapped during that trip,” Vasquez said. At some point, he looked down at his phone. There was a message from his mom.
“Son,” it said.
“I think she was trying to text me as she fought for her life, but that’s all the text said,” Vasquez later wrote in the court filing.
The newspaper stories were succinct. “After killing [the parents] they left their bodies on the road and tried to flee in the same vehicle,” in which authorities discovered 60 kilograms of cocaine.
Vasquez didn’t know what to do. He was 15 and suddenly found himself the head of a household that included his three younger siblings.
He tried to carry on the family business, but it attracted too much attention. “I started receiving text messages from unknown people asking me if I wanted to transport drugs hidden in the cement blocks that I sold so I could make a lot of money,” he said. “I never responded.”
The business soon failed, but that didn’t stop the messages. His grandfather, whose car had just been stolen, got a note saying that “if he wanted to see more blood, he could come try to get the car himself.”
Vasquez decided then to leave. If he disappeared, he thought, then perhaps the drug gangs would leave his family alone. So his grandfather gave him nearly $1,700, which he used to pay a young smuggler from Guatemala.
Vasquez was terrified. He’d heard horror stories about Mexico, where unaccompanied minors had disappeared. Every night over the two-week journey in 2014, he said, he and the other teens gathered. Together, hugging one another, they asked God for help.
“We asked Him to accompany us every moment on the roads, because the road is very dangerous, especially going through Mexico,” he said. “Of course it was Him who made it possible to get here.”
What to say?
That’s why Vasquez is so nervous about the chance to speak with Pope Francis. There are so many things he wants to tell him — that he’s a symbol for people like him, that his faith stewarded him through his dangerous journey, that he’s thankful — but he’s not sure he’ll have the courage to speak.
“Well, not anyone gets to meet the pope,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe this feeling.”
So on a recent Wednesday, Vasquez settled at a desk at the Latin American Youth Center in Hyattsville. He pulled out a piece of paper and started to write a letter to himself. Words sometimes get stuck in Vasquez’s mouth, and he thought maybe this would help. “You should know that you have many people who support you in whatever you want to achieve this year,” he wrote himself in Spanish. “At the end of the year, you’ll remember this and say, ‘Juan Jose, you achieved it thanks to your efforts and everyone who supported you.’ ”
And of course, he said, that includes Pope Francis.
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