This is the story of an undocumented mother whose son was born while she was being held hostage by coyotes.

For a mother, a child represents happiness and pain. For María, a young undocumented immigrant mother, her baby is the price of her eagerness to get to this country.

The child was the product of a rape by a coyote and, in spite of the fact that he was born on U.S. soil, she has no documentation at all for him; she was held captive from the time she gave birth until her husband paid the ransom, almost three months afterwards.

It all began back in Cañar, Ecuador, when her husband, Pedro, decided to travel to the United States.

"Since he was out of a job and he was hearing so many stories about how well you could live here, he took out a loan and managed to get to this country," recounts María, who expressly requested we not reveal her identity. "We were very scared. We didn't want the same thing to happen to us like what happened to the mother and her baby, who was born on January 1st; they were deported because they were undocumented," she explains to us.

María, 22, and her husband, 21, come from a very poor Andean family. She tells us they met at a fiesta when they were 14 and 16, and that since then they have never wanted to be apart.

"When Pedro got to this country he found work in construction, and very soon after that he insisted that I come too, so he got in touch with a coyote to take me from the town to the ship," continues María, who is being helped by the Ecuadorian International Center Inc. to get an official identity for the little boy.

"Everyone warned me it was dangerous, but I didn't listen, so I left my little three-year-old girl with my mother and took my chances. Ay, if I had known what was going to happen to me, I'd never have done it," she says, trying to console herself.

María tells us how the coyotes picked up around 40 people in Cañar, with several women among them. From Cañar they crossed the Andes to get to the Ecuadorian coast.

"We traveled three days by road until we got to the place where a boat was supposed to pick us up. They told us we would wait for it in the middle of the mountains. And that's what we did, broken up into groups. I was with the women. That same night they raped me; some of the women ran away and some were able to defend themselves. The next morning the coyotes disappeared and abandoned all of the travelers.

"We got back to our home towns however we could, and when I got back to Cañar I realized I was pregnant. I didn't tell my husband until five months later. When I did tell him, he told me to come just so the child could be born in the United States.

"This time the coyotes made us travel by airplane, and so my husband went deeper in debt to friends and relatives, and paid them $14,500. We went to Guatemala via Colombia and from Guatemala by car to the Mexican border. I was seven months pregnant so it was hard climbing in and out of cars and trucks, walking a lot, always hiding. They gave us food, but sometimes they couldn't," she notes.

"Finally, we got to the border at a place called Altar Sonora. From there we were driven to Phoenix, something like 15 people, three of us women, crammed into a closed van, lying on the floor and almost without oxygen. But after a stop, we still had to travel in the same manner all the way to Los Angeles. Those seven hours seemed like days, especially to me," she recalls.

"A little before we arrived my pains started. I stood it as best I could and only told the other two women what was happening; they gave me apple tea, and I bit on a towel so the coyotes wouldn't realize what was going on, but as soon as we got where we were going my water broke," she recounts.

"The house where we arrived had several doors, and the room where they put us had its windows covered with planks of wood. My son was born that very night. The two women who had been on the journey with me helped me out, and the woman who worked as the housekeeper in that house served as the midwife. I had to wrap my little boy up in the towel and a few rags they gave me. That's how I was for several days, because they let everyone else go as soon as they had paid the fee they'd agreed to, but they didn't let me go, nor my baby either," she continues.

"I stayed in that house with my baby for more than three months, and there were guards day and night. No doctor came to attend to my baby boy, and he wasn't vaccinated either. My husband had to send the diapers, the baby bottles, the milk and everything you need for a baby. I could only breastfeed him for two months because my milk dried up, maybe because I was having nightmares and crying a lot. Finally, when my husband got the money together and paid the coyotes, we got out and were able to come to New York," she says.

"Once we got to this city I took the baby to the doctor, and recently he got his shots. But the worst part of it was that I couldn't prove that my son had been born in the United States. He's more than two years old now, but he's not an Ecuadorian, and he's not a North American either."

An appeal on behalf of the little boy

Martha Zambrano, the executive director of the Ecuadorian International Center, Inc., tells us that Elmhurst Hospital referred the family, especially the little boy, to the Center so they might be able to help them.

"We have gone to different agencies, social, political, legal and so forth, but nobody has found a way out of this. We even went to Hillary Clinton's office when she was a senator. We've gone to law schools, we have knocked on so many doors, but nobody has been able to do anything. The little boy's case is in a legal limbo, a dead end street because, like his mother says, he's not from here and he's not from there either. The organization is advocating for this little boy, and to relieve the mother's pain," Zambrano concludes.