In the light of feminist critical theory, this article explores the fear, rabies and desire involved in the migration transit of two Salvadorian women in the city of Tapachula, Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. An ethnographic method seeks to deepen the production of subjectivities in a context of human mobility, focusing on the contexts of social interaction linked to the transition of these Central American women to the border city. Both migrants lived in Mexico for more than four months until they managed to regularise their migration situation in Mexico to follow the US. It is proposed that fear, rabies and desire, at the same time as those of inequality, emerge as transformative forces to address the violence and vulnerabilities of migratory transit along the southern border.