This is the first in a five-part series detailing the arduous journey of one illegal migrant into the United States. Young Ramón Zepeda left a desperate life on the streets on a city in northern Nicaragua on a two-year, 2,400-mile journey to a better future in the U.S. In part one, we see the young Ramón and the events that forced him into making the desperate decision to attempt the trip north.

Even years later, as he began the difficult crossing into a more hopeful future in the United States, Ramón would still think of his mother. He never understood why she did the things she did. Why she beat him with a leather belt. Why she scarred him with burning sticks of fire. Why she slapped him so hard that he fell to the floor. Or why, on a warm spring morning in 1989, he watched in silence as she bargained him away.

Did she blame him for his father's absence? Perhaps she blamed him for their meager hut made of mud and sticks Chinandega, a town in the roughest terrain of Nicaragua, in the shadows of the San Cristóbal Volcano. No matter. At six years old, he fetched a good price: A Citizen wristwatch, worth a handful of pesos. As his mother turned him over, she did not look at him. This was only the beginning act in a long-staged play of cruelty and abuse, but the little boy who was born Santos Ramón Zepeda Campos did not know it yet. How could he? His mother said nothing to prepare him. She did not even kiss him goodbye.

He was sold into slavery to an old Nicaraguan woman who told him to call her Doña Elena. She and her sons tended a farm, just outside the hubbub of Chinandega. They had corn and beans and cattle, which they sold at the local markets. Ramón had small but strong hands, and he did his share of the work. It reminded him of life with his mother and 11 brothers and sisters, farming land owned by their family.

Here, he slept in a corner. Dona Elena loved him, he knew. But she loved her two grown sons, Chelo and Felip more. They were blood. They all lived in a single-room mud house, with a dirt floor and cardboard roof. Ramón feared Chelo and Felip. Sometimes, they pitted him in fights with their nephews, human cockfights of sorts. If he lost, Chelo and Felip would beat him. Even when his bruises throbbed with pain, Ramón would still get up every morning and head to the fields, using a machete to cut the corn.

For two years, he earned his keep. Doña Elena was demanding, but she gave him stability, a routine. But the routine shattered when Doña Elena suddenly died of a heart attack. With her gone, he knew he could not stay with people who never wanted him in the first place. At eight years old, he was on his own.

Alone on the streets of Chinandega, he tried to avoid the other homeless children gathered in the park beneath the concrete monument to Rosa Sarmiento, the mother of Rubén Dario, one of Latin America's most famous poets. Ramón had no choice but to beg for food. A prosperous coastal city in the northwest corner of Nicaragua, Chinandega had one of the busiest ports in the country. Most people turned him away, but some took pity on him. The nice ones gave him centavos, pennies to buy food. He slept in the park until he found a better spot, in the crook of a doorstep outside a dentist's office.

There were other dangers besides starvation. Roving gangs searched for street kids, to bully, to steal from. The Cholos, the Vatos Lacos — whenever he saw them he ran, racing down side alleys and darting past the closed markets at night. They found him one morning, asleep on his doorstep. They punched and kicked him. They beat him furiously, until he collapsed. When he recovered, he was without a home again — the doorstep was no longer safe.

If the earth is cruel, he told himself, perhaps the heavens will be kind. He found a tall tree on the outskirts of town. In it he fashioned a hammock, tying together a pair of pants and a shirt. Secure high above the cement sidewalks and above the searching eyes of the gangs, Ramón took stock of where his young life had led him. He had escaped the madness of his mother. He had left the cruel home of Doña Elena. He was alone, but that was okay as long as no one bothered him. He had clothes and shoes, which he tied to the branches so they wouldn't be stolen in his sleep.

His luck changed a few months later when he met Daniel Orriante. Daniel took him home to meet his mother, Isabel. The family fed him. They bought him an empty shoeshine box, and Daniel helped him find polish and rags. Now, instead of begging, Ramón could work for a living.

He began to make more friends on the street, where he became known as el mudito, because he said so little people thought he was mute. People gave him more when they thought he couldn't speak, so he kept up the fiction. Working on the streetcorner, he often made 20 pesos a day. He spent two pesos every day to take a bath at the market. He might be poor, but he insisted on being clean. He bought his lunches from restaurant counters, then sat on his shoeshine box so nobody would take it.

In the evenings, Ramón returned to the safety of his tree. Late one night, a gang spotted him among the leaves. They pulled him down like a frightened monkey and beat him. After six months living in the tree that had protected him, Ramón was flung back to the cold streets of Chinandega. He would never sleep in the tree again.

For five years, Ramón spent days shining shoes and nights searching for a safe place to sleep. Abandoned cars were the best, when he could find them. The Cholos found him when he was 13 and beat him with chacos. The pipes were tied together with chains, and they savaged his young body. He was taken to a hospital, where he stayed for two weeks. Even today, when he looks in the mirror, Ramón still sees the scars of that horrible night: His left eye is smaller than the right. When he smiles, only the right side crinkles with joy. The left is flat and frozen.

When he left the hospital, Ramón grew more indignant at the cruelty around him. He not only feared the gangs, but the police as well. They did nothing to stop the beatings. They were just another, more powerful bunch that would hunt him, beat him, and rob him. Then he got on their bad side. He tried to be a hero and intervene when he saw police shaking down younger kids, but the cops beat him and told him to get lost.

Then, in December 1998, three policemen confronted Ramón, threatening to kill him if they saw him again. His mother was gone. His mud hut was gone. His doorstep was gone. His tree was gone. Where else could he go? Chinandega was not safe anymore; in fact, none of Nicaragua was. That's when the idea hit him — go to the United States.

So, haunted by his mother and his difficult past, Ramón begins his 2,400-mile journey. He doesn't know how he will get there, but the two American dollars worth of pesos he got for his shoeshine box will help. Walking in a pair of shoes that can hardly contain the growing feet of a teenage boy, he carries only the clothes on his back. On the way out of town, he tries to keep track of his steps. But he loses count.

Tomorrow: On The Road