Las Patronas: The Mexican women helping migrants

The Romero Vazquez sisters have been helping migrants for almost two decades

Will Grant, BBC Mundo, 31 July 2014

Nineteen years ago, the Romero Vazquez sisters were standing at the side of the railway tracks with their grocery bags, waiting to cross.

Little did they know that the approaching train would change their lives.

"We'd gone to buy bread and milk for breakfast," Norma Romero remembers, nodding towards a small yellow store on the other side of the tracks.

"As it came past, a group of people on one of the wagons shouted at us: 'Madre, we're hungry'. Then another group passed by and shouted the same thing: 'Madre, we're hungry'."

"So we threw them our bread, and then our cartons of milk."

That simple, instinctive act of kindness by the young girls was to lead to the creation of Las Patronas, a charitable organisation which has helped tens of thousands of Central American migrants over the past two decades and which was awarded Mexico's most prestigious human rights prize last year.

The village of La Patrona lies in an otherwise forgettable corner of the eastern state of Veracruz…