Thread: As migration pattern changes, Mexican women adjust methods of service

As migration pattern changes, Mexican women adjust methods of service

• Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, Mexico, Franciscan Br. Tomas Gonzalez Castillo and Norma Romero Vasquez walk the railway line in La Patrona, Mexico, Feb. 14. (CNS/David Agren)

David Agren Catholic News Service | Feb. 21, 2015 Immigration and the Church


LA PATRONA, MEXICO Norma Romero Vasquez watched a freight train roll by her residence on a recent Saturday, and she checked to see if any migrants were perched on top.

"There's one," she yelled, motioning for a friend farther up the line to pass food and drink to the lone rider.

The migrant, sunburned and wearing shorts and a hoodie, grabbed the bagged lunch with an outstretched hand. He was the only one to pass that day.

It's drastic decline from six months earlier, when hundreds of Central Americans huddled aboard northbound trains in attempts to reach the U.S. border.

Nowadays, "they're mostly arriving on foot," said Romero, whose team of 14 women, known as "Las Patronas," still serve them and even offer a spot to sleep.

For 20 years, Las Patronas have tossed meals to migrants riding atop trains passing through their hamlet of cane and coffee farmers in Veracruz state, 175 miles southeast of Mexico City.

Las Patronas named themselves for their hometown -- La Patrona -- and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the national patroness. The women started out with scant resources, but their work has won national awards and international attention. Their work also has contributed to changes in attitudes toward migrants in Mexico, where people have not always welcomed their southern neighbors, despite the fact that the country sends so many its own citizens to the United States.

"There are more people aware now ... that a migrant is not a person coming here to do harm. It's someone who is trying to get ahead and help their family," Romero said, adding that some of those riding the rails will contact her after arriving to give thanks -- even though they never met.

"They look for us and ask, 'Why would you give us something to eat?' I always say to them, 'Because you're my brother.' "

Priests and religious attending the Feb. 14 20th anniversary celebration called the women examples of Christian charity and compassion, who always shared what they had, even in times of hardship.

"They're a reference, when speaking of migration and service to migrants," said Fr. Prisciliano Peraza Garcia, director of a migrant shelter in Altar, near the Arizona border.

"These people know that what little they have, they have to share it," said Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, who celebrated an anniversary Mass along the railway lines in La Patrona. "The solidarity that exists between the poor is something extraordinary."

After the anniversary Mass, the women cut cake and answered a crush of requests from reporters -- such is the sensation of 14 peasant women who have become minor media celebrities in Mexico.

Las Patronas started in 1995, when Romero recalls being asked by migrants walking the railway lines for food, though she confessed not knowing anything about migration and confused the people atop the trains with joyriders. The opportunity to serve migrants, she said, was an answer to prayer.

"I said, 'Please show me the road so that I can serve you,' " she recalled praying.

The women prepared meals in pots over open flames and passed out bagged food to outstretched hands. When food was hard to find, the women picked mangos.

Their work started being noticed, leading to donations from students, universities and local businesses, which would send over day-old pastries and bottled drinks.

Las Patronas won the 2013 National Human Rights Award, and Romero rebuked President Enrique Pena Nieto in person for a recently approved energy reform and an ongoing neglect of the countryside. But Romero downplays the attention she receives and credits her colleagues and God for their accomplishments.

"This project is not only mine. It's God's," she said. "It is not something we expected, but it completely changed our lives."

Changes in Mexican immigration enforcement are preventing migrants from climbing onto the northbound train -- known as "La Bestia" for the way it maims riders -- through a government initiative known as the Southern Border Project.

The initiative aims to make the southern border safer, according to the Mexican government, and establishes order in an oft-neglected part of the country. The plan was presented after the child migrant crisis last summer, when thousands of unaccompanied Central American minors tried to travel through Mexico to reach the United States.

"The child migrant crisis was a watershed moment," said Fr. Alejandro Solalinde, director of the Brothers of the Road migrant shelter in Oaxaca state, for the way it brought increased enforcement, along with detentions and deportations.

Critics, including Solalinde and the operators of Catholic-run shelters, say the plan makes migration more dangerous by forcing migrants onto new routes, where they are easily extorted or kidnapped by criminal groups as they attempt to avoid the authorities.

"The Southern Border Project is not about making immigration safer," he said. "It's about making it invisible."

Solalinde sees most migrants now arriving on foot, with 90 percent reporting some sort of injury or having fallen victim to crime along the way.

Since the Southern Border Project was introduced, Franciscan Br. Tomas Gonzalez Castillo has seen only a minor drop in numbers arriving at his shelter near the Mexico-Guatemala border. But he has seen attempts by migrants to avoid the authorities and a new crop of smugglers starting to offer services -- even if they don't offer anything of value.

"We're receiving people that were lost in the jungle," said Gonzalez, director of the shelter La 72 in Tenosique, in Tabasco state.

The directors of shelters in southern Mexico recently discarded a policy of limiting stays by migrants to three days, "because they arrive extremely tired," Gonzalez said.

Honduran migrant Jose Daniel Sanchez Barahona, 18, arrived in La Patrona after walking most of the distance from Palenque, 375 miles away in Chiapas state. He said he once jumped off the train after criminals carrying baseball bats demanded $100 to stay aboard.

Many of the migrants traveling with him "turned themselves in to immigration officials," he said.

With fewer migrants riding the rails, Romero has shifted her approach. She opened a shelter to attend to those walking the railway line and arriving on bus and now feeds around 50 migrants per day on the trains -- down from the more than 1,000 meals Las Patronas used to prepare daily.

She plans to continue with her project, but hoped to see the day "people did not have to migrate."

http://ncronline.org/blogs/immigrati...ethods-service

Oh that is just ridiculous. Throwing meals to migrants like they're some kind of hero going off to war? When all they're doing is coming here to steal jobs that belong to someone else, to uproot someone's life in another country, to rob our services and benefits, all so they can make more money than they can in their home country? That's no different than a thief, unsatisfied with his day job, robbing homes to have a better life. I have no respect for these people and I have absolutely no respect for anyone who supports them.

Originally Posted by Judy

Oh that is just ridiculous. Throwing meals to migrants like they're some kind of hero going off to war? When all they're doing is coming here to steal jobs that belong to someone else, to uproot someone's life in another country, to rob our services and benefits, all so they can make more money than they can in their home country?

That's it all right.

The wealthy in Mexico have been dumping their poor people on us for so many years that those people *believe* that it's their right to undercut Americans. So on the one hand we have the wealthy treating us with contempt, because in their eyes we are contemptible weaklings. On the other hand, we have Mrs. Vasquez, believing that there's nothing wrong with other Latinos sneaking in to the United States.

All of this is happening because we do not have a government which has any interest in protecting its own people.
***********************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Originally Posted by vistalad

That's it all right.

The wealthy in Mexico have been dumping their poor people on us for so many years that those people *believe* that it's their right to undercut Americans. So on the one hand we have the wealthy treating us with contempt, because in their eyes we are contemptible weaklings. On the other hand, we have Mrs. Vasquez, believing that there's nothing wrong with other Latinos sneaking in to the United States.

All of this is happening because we do not have a government which has any interest in protecting its own people.
***********************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Absolutely! That's it in a nut-shell. We have a country with a government that refuses to protect its own citizens and even conspires with other nations through both immigration and trade policies which coupled with our income tax system are destroying the United States. They were doing a relatively fair job of concealing the damage until some of us could actually see it on the ground and said "whoa, what is happening to the United States economy", now it's plain as day to everyone, it's as obvious as the Bush and Clinton names behind it, and alas, these traitors are actually convinced that the American People will elect a Bush in one primary and a Clinton in the other, ensuring there's no change or correction to their devious and dangerous policies.

Oh no, this can not be allowed. There can be no Bush or Clinton on the General Election ballot in 2016, or if there's a Clinton, then the non-Bush Republican candidate must be very very good, highly electable and instead of focusing on "Latino" votes, focused on all voters, especially women voters who are now the majority in the United States, the largest voting bloc out there.

Sonora hostels raided in search for migrants

From left, Hondurans Rudy Velásquez, 21, Giovani Pineda, 29, and Marlo Méndez, 25, bide their time in Altar, Sonora.

1 hour ago • By Perla Trevizo

Mexico deportations
Number of deportations from Mexico 2014
Total: 107,811
Guatemala: 42,808
Honduras: 41,661
El Salvador: 19,800
Minors (unaccompanied/accompanied): 18,169
2013
Total: 80,902
Guatemala: 30,231
Honduras: 33,079
El Salvador: 14,586
Minors (unaccompanied/accompanied): 8,577

ALTAR, Sonora — Mexico’s increased immigration enforcement to stop Central Americans before they reach the United States is being felt here, a small cattle-ranching town and one of the last stops for migrants heading north.

Federal officials are increasingly looking for immigrants, including inside stash houses or hostels that house the border crossers in the Altar area, local residents and migrants said.

Rudy Velásquez, a 21-year-old Honduran, said he barely escaped a raid a few weeks ago.

Government officials entered the hostel where he was staying, but the migrants’ guides had been tipped off, he said, and all of the Central Americans had been moved to another location.

Altar is one of the last staging areas for immigrants trying to cross the border illegally through Arizona. The main square is lined with shops where border crossers can get everything they need for the journey, including backpacks, socks and camouflage clothing. The side streets are full of signs announcing the “casas de huesped” or hostels where they can rent a bed.

Last year, there were more than 104,000 deportations from Mexico of Central Americans from the “Northern Triangle” region — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — representing an increase of 34 percent from 2013.

The government crackdown, which started last year, was triggered by the so-called border surge in the United States, when nearly 140,000 unaccompanied minors and single parents with children were detained in fiscal year 2014.

The vast majority of these immigrants came from the same three Central American countries.

Increased immigration enforcement under pressure from the United States was first felt in the south of the country, said Sonja Wolf, a Mexico-based researcher working on migration, security, street gangs and drug policy in Mexico and Central America.

There’s always an ongoing effort to prevent migrants from going further north, she said, but it has been much more pronounced since July, the peak of what President Obama called a humanitarian crisis.
In Altar, Martha Lanza, a nun who helps run the local migrant shelter, said migrants started talking about government officials going after them earlier this year.

“They would come here and ask, ‘Can migration come get me here?’” she said. “They were scared.”

Lanza doesn’t know which government entity has been involved.

Officially, Wolf said, only federal police or, if requested, the military can assist with migration operations. But in practice, the municipal and state police also play a role, she said.

For Velásquez, the young Honduran, having to run and hide from Mexican immigration officials started as soon as he crossed the Guatemalan border.

He has already been deported from Mexico twice, the last time in December.

“We had been walking all day along the side of the road in Oaxaca when we saw the migration vans,” he said from the migrant shelter in Altar.

He tried to hide, he said, but they caught up with him.

By this point, he had traveled for more than a month, a trip that was taking much longer because immigration agents were “everywhere.”

There were times they had to stay hidden or in the same place for five days because officers were constantly patrolling the area.

“We couldn’t even sleep. It was hard” Velásquez said.

As soon as the bus arrived in Honduras with him and other deportees, he immediately turned around and took another bus to Guatemala City.

The idea behind increased enforcement is that migrants will be deterred and stay in their countries of origin.

“But over the years, it’s been evident that migrants are not deterred,” Wolf said, “simply because the conditions in their countries are very difficult.”

When they find obstacles such as checkpoints or increased operations on the train tracks, they find other routes.

They walk for weeks along the sides of the roads from one city to another, as Rudy and Marlo Méndez, another Honduran at the Altar shelter, did.

Instead of deterrence, Wolf said, Mexican migration controls are pushing immigrants into more isolated and dangerous areas, where it’s easier for criminals and corrupt government officials to prey upon them.

Velásquez has been in northern Sonora for more than a month now trying to get across without success.

His wife and infant son came last year from San Pedro Sula — one of the world’s most violent cities — as part of that surge. Now it’s his turn.

http://tucson.com/news/sonora-hostel...2911a86a3.html