Nightmare on Good Friday

Friday April 4th, 1980.
Agua Azul Train Station- Guadalajara

Crowds of people are waiting to board a train. They wait impatiently to board the "Vacacionista" train that would take them to the Port of Manzanillo, Colima and to its pristine white sand beaches.

Among those people is my mother, her 2 cousins and my two brothers, 14 and 13 years old at the time.

The topic of conversation among some of the people waiting to board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico train Number 3870 is that Roman Catholic fanatics in the rural heartland of Jalisco state have protested the running of trains through their villages on Semana Santa, Holy Week.

They believe Holy Week is for people to attend church and remember the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ before he was crucified. Its no time to spend at the beach, frolicking, and getting drunk. Thats tantamount to blasphemy.

Articles of the protestors threats have appeared in Guadalajara newspapers, but they are in the back pages, Tapatio society pays no attention to the die-hard old school Catholics who live in the country.

The passengers board the train finally. Its past 5pm on April 4th, 1980. Good Friday. By morning they will have arrived at Manzanillo for some fun in the sun.

My mom and brothers and her cousins take their seats, the kids sitting by the windows. They joke and drink from some bottles they have brought on the trip. The cars are full of people and some kids sit on the floor. The train seems overcrowded.

The train chugs out of Agua Azul station and heads south. Past Chapala and its environs, Villa Corona , Zacoalco, Sayula, Zapotiltic and Tuxpan, 35 stations await them before reaching Manzanillo.

Nearing the town of Atenquique in southeastern Jalisco, the train enters a long tunnel, exits and enters a even longer one.

What the engineer sees when exiting the last tunnel horrifies him.

The bridge ahead is burning. Half of the wooden trestle has already collapsed and the rest will not support the weight of the two locomotives and the rest of the passenger cars full of men women and children.

In a split second and with no regard to his own safety he manages to uncouple the passenger cars behind me and applies the emergency brakes hard.

The engineer along with his two locomotives and his crewmen, along with 12 stowaways fly off the burning trestle and into a 300 foot ravine, the engines tumbling on the rocky ledges and exploding into a fireball in the shrubery below. No one survives the plunge. 15 bodies lay in the twisted wreckage.

As the engines plunge, the sudden application of the brakes cause the passenger trains to screech and jerk to a stop. The sudden stop makes 5 of the passenger cars to jump the rails inside the tunnel and overturn, tossing horrified passengers about like rag dolls inside the metallic coffins on wheels.
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My mom is thrown to the floor of the car, which ends up tilting on one of its side, leaning on the wall of the tunnel. She cant find my brothers in the darkness, the lights have gone out but she can see orange glows outside the broken windows: Flames.

Spilled diesel and brake fuel has ignited, starting fires and filling the tunnel with smoke. Frantic and screaming passengers jump out the windows and run out of the tunnel to where they still see a bit of light. My mom manages to find my brothers, one of whom, Miguel, has grabbed a random suitcase in the chaos and has foolishly carried with him the whole way out. She meets up with her cousin who is carrying her other cousin, who has fainted. She has a heart condition and the crash caused her to pass out. She is uninjured.

My mom, who lost her shoes in the crash, now realizes her feet are burned and they are all covered in soot. As they exit the tunnel they see villagers from Atenquique have driven or climbed up the hill. The crash was heard all the way to the town.

In a few minutes, the Mexican Army arrives to survey the scene and help in the rescue effort. Ambulances from Ciudad Guzman and Atenquique arrive to transport the injured to local clinics. Those severely injured will have to be flown back to hospitals in Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta or Manzanillo. The Army cordons off the area to prevent looting.

My brother Miguel finally looks thru the suitcase he picked out in the darkness. It happens to be their own, and the one with their money.

My mother burned feet and all, along with her cousins and sons, decide that no train derailment and deadly sabotaging of the rails will stop them from going on vacation. They reach Atenquique and hop on a bus to Ciudad Guzman then hop on another that finally takes them to Manzanillo.

The brave engineer was credited with saving many lives that night by uncoupling the train. Had he not, the entire passenger train would of plunged into the ravine and the death toll would probably be in the hundreds.

The persons responsible for the sabotaging of the rails were never caught and the accident was soon forgotten.