No Way to Escape the Fear : Stress Disorder Grips Women Immigrants

Monica Celis was four months pregnant when she was raped repeatedly by the man she had hired to help her cross the border several months ago.

“He told me I could scream as loud and as long as I wanted and nobody would help me,” recalled Celis, now a mother of four.

Celis, a petite 5-foot-3, did scream while she attempted to fend off her attacker with her fists. But her cries merely echoed in the dark mountains and empty canyons between the United States and Mexico.

“I felt like my life was ruined,” Celis said, sobbed.

Today, Celis, who entered this country illegally, is among a growing number of Latinas who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder--a result of their border-crossing experiences.

These women brave the treacherous crossing, but, upon reaching San Diego, suffer emotional paralysis so overwhelming that most of them stop moving north toward Los Angeles. Instead, they remain within 10 miles of the border. Many are so afraid to go outside that they stay indoors day after day, according to the medical experts who treat them.

More experts now say that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--commonly associated with war veterans--also affects victims of disasters and violence, including earthquakes, plane crashes, assaults and rapes. They estimate that 1% of the general population suffers from the disorder.

In the first such study of Latinas who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, 20%--or one of every five--were found to be suffering from PTSD, said Dr. Rodrigo Munoz, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine who conducted the study.

“That is incredibly high,” Munoz said. “We have identified a population of individuals who are grossly maladjusted, who stay within 10 miles of the border, who have suffered degradation so extreme that we have trouble getting them to speak.”

As the diagnosis of PTSD gains greater acceptance, some psychologists say it is no surprise that Latinas crossing the border are found to have it. Experts believe that the high incidence can be attributed to the women’s vulnerability in the violence-ridden no-man’s land notorious for its rugged terrain, murders and robberies.

“It’s not necessarily crossing the border itself,” said Heidi Resnick, professor of psychiatry at Medical University of South Carolina’s Crime Victims Center. “People at first thought the disorder was fairly rare in the civilian population and that it was restricted to combat veterans. But recent studies show a much higher rate of traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder than previously thought.”

A number of women found to have the disorder were contacted for this story. Most refused to speak with a reporter, citing their fears. One woman, Umbelina, who is also here illegally, agreed to speak as long as her full name was not used.

In 1989, before the 29-year-old left Mexico, her husband hired a man in the United States to cross the border in his car with the couple’s then-6-month-old son. Neither she nor her husband knew the man to whom they entrusted their child.

“I was very, very scared,” Umbelina, a mother of three, said through an interpreter. “I felt like I was going to lose my son, like they’d steal the baby.”

Umbelina had spent her life in a village of 400, living with her parents. She left to join her husband, a construction worker in San Diego, because their infant was stricken with chronic bronchitis and diarrhea. They believed American doctors could heal the boy.

It was the first time Umbelina had ever journeyed beyond the tiny town. She traveled 48 hours by bus to reach Tijuana. There, as her husband instructed, she gave her son to the stranger. She waited in a phone booth until her husband called to say the baby had arrived.

Now, he urged her, it was her turn to cross.

Umbelina, a small, round woman with long black hair, paid $70 and 50,000 pesos (about $17) to two coyotes to shepherd her across the border with a small group. The group was turned back eight times by the U.S. Border Patrol.

On her final--and successful--attempt, she ran for 30 minutes, following the coyote into the night . Thirsty, hungry and tired, she fell. Landing hard on her stomach, she began vomiting.

The others in her group hoisted her to her feet and helped her scale a fence. Taking her by the arms, they rushed across a freeway full of cars--a perilous practice that last year claimed the lives of 14 illegal immigrants in San Diego County. On the other side of the highway, Umbelina suddenly realized this was it: She had reached America.

Today, Umbelina cannot escape her memories of the crossing or a gnawing fear of being caught by immigration officials and separated from her children. Constantly afraid, she rarely leaves her home.

As she describes her journey here, her voice is flat and her eyes seem almost glazed. She sits, scarcely moving, as though she has frozen. But asked about her life in America, she begins to weep, almost silently.

“I don’t feel like I belong here, but I don’t want to go back,” Umbelina said. “I don’t care anymore if the immigration police come or not. . . . Sometimes I feel so depressed that I cannot find meaning to life anymore.”

Today, Umbelina, a housewife, lives with her family in one room in a house in San Ysidro. Several other families inhabit the other rooms.

“I never imagined how it would be, but I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said. “I always thought everything was going to be better.”

Like Umbelina, most of the women found to have the stress disorder come from homes of poverty and scarce food. Many--like their male counterparts--came to the United States driven by a desire for a better life. But what they find here is often not the glorious world they imagined, Munoz said.

Most cannot speak English, and about half have gone to school through ninth grade; 10% had some college background, Munoz said. About 80% have children.

For his study, Munoz compared 200 Latinas who had recently crossed the border with 109 Latinas who are legal residents. Of the 200, he found 20% suffered from the disorder.

In the control group of 109, there were no cases of PTSD. These women had lived in San Diego an average of 11 years, having crossed the border more than a decade ago. Their family’s income averages $26,000, and 70% are bilingual, Munoz said.

Munoz saw the 200 Latinas after they visited the Logan Heights Family Health Clinic because of physical or mental problems.

The high incidence of PTSD may be slightly inflated, Munoz conceded, because he was examining a patient population that sought help for ailments. “Even so, it is too high,” he said.

Others, too, said the incidence of the disorder is cause for concern.

“It’s alarming,” said Dr. Hernando Bayardo, a local psychiatrist who has treated PTSD among his patients, Latino workers. “But I would expect to see a high prevalence on the border.”

When Munoz began his work in 1990, he was initially studying the incidence of depression in the two groups of women. To his astonishment, he began seeing numerous cases that fit the clinical description of PTSD.

“I was fascinated that I found a high proportion of a disorder that I considered to be rare,” said Munoz, who is also a board member of the Logan Heights Family Health Clinic and a trustee of the American Psychiatric Assn.

Umbelina and other sufferers of PTSD can be treated either with therapy or, in some cases, with medication. In treating the Latinas, Munoz found that he treats not only the disorder but the consequences of the women’s shattered dreams.

“Once you make it here, it’s like you’ve reached the promised land--you have what everybody in your village wanted. The reality is the opposite; you live in fear, you don’t have (immigration) papers, you are restricted in your ability to work, and you often feel completely alienated,” Munoz said. “Yet they know they cannot go back empty-handed, saying they have failed, so they have to stay and try.”

Over the years, the disorder has been given various labels, including shell shock, battle fatigue, traumatic neurosis and war neurosis. Of the 3.5 million American men and women who served in the Vietnam War, 700,000 to 800,000 suffer from PTSD, according to the American Psychiatric Assn.

In the United States, estimates of the number of victims vary tremendously. According to the American Psychological Assn., there are “hundreds of thousands” of sufferers. Based on population studies and crime rates, Resnick estimates that 4.4 million women living in the United States suffer from the disorder.

The symptoms of PTSD usually emerge several months or even years after the actual trauma. Those who suffer from the disorder have repeated flashbacks, in which they re-experience the traumatic event.

Sometimes they relive the experience so thoroughly that they actually reach a dissociative state, or carry out aspects of the event. A former soldier, for instance, might think he is patrolling the jungles when he is, in fact, prowling in a park.

At other times, these individuals have intense nightmares, insomnia or depression, according to medical experts. Some are hit with overwhelming onslaughts of emotions--tears that won’t stop, grief that’s all-consuming.

Veterans diagnosed with the disorder often avoid responsibilities because they believe their failures led to deaths in battle. Survivors of catastrophes, such as plane crashes, often feel guilty because they lived when others did not.

Some doctors, including Resnick, now believe that crime is more likely than disasters or accidents to lead to PTSD. Since many of the Latinas are victims of violence, Resnick said the diagnosis of the disorder among them is not surprising.

In Celis’ case, she crossed the border one night last spring, leaving Tijuana with a coyote and two other would-be immigrants. The coyote cautioned his small group, bidding them to heed him carefully as their lives would depend on him. He warned them about vicious bandits and the relentless U.S. Border Patrol. The small group walked silently in the dark.

When the coyote asked Celis to move away from the group, she thought he wanted her to help him look for border police. Some distance from the others, he told her that she would have to have sex with him or she would never arrive in the United States.

“I refused and started crying,” said Celis, speaking through an interpreter. “I wanted the immigration police to come. He told me there was nothing I could do and that nobody was going to help me.”

After the rape, Celis was terrified to stay in the dark underbrush. Though loath to follow her attacker, she numbly did. Reaching San Ysidro, Celis fled.

“I started running, running like crazy. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I knew one person here but I had no address,” Celis said.

Terrified, she boarded a trolley. A middle-aged Latino couple who sat next to her ended up taking in the young woman for the night.

After Celis found a place to live, she returned to Mexico to fetch her children. The prospect of a second border crossing terrified her, but she had no choice. Still pregnant, Celis shepherded her children--now ages 8, 5 and 2--across the border. This time she traveled alone, with no guide. And this time she suffered no mishap.

The months since she arrived have been painful. The life she thought would be easy has been wrought with difficulty. Often, Celis goes to churches, asking for food to feed her children. She’s haunted by nightmares and fears.

Today, she and her brood share a one-bedroom apartment in San Ysidro with another family. She cannot speak English. And she’s all but given up on her idea of becoming a nurse or a cosmetologist.

“I thought I’d have my own place to live, go to school, have a job, have a career,” Celis said. “I never thought it would be the best life in the world, but I didn’t think it would be the way it is now.”