The Making of a Passionate Immigrant Ally: a Delegation to Mexico

by Sarah Aldridge

At the beginning of my summer vacation, from May 12th - 21st, I traveled with a delegation from Appalachian State University to Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, Mexico, to study U.S. and Mexican immigration policies, and the effects that these policies have on the lives of ordinary people. I went into this experience having no clue of what to expect, and knowing very little of the issue of current immigration policies, and left with yet another country and people I have fallen in love with, and knowing much about a handful of related topics, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, indigenous Mexican farming techniques, and women’s weaving collectives. Above all, however, I made a connection with a place, a people, and an issue that I was not previously as passionate about.

This trip will be engrained in my memory forever, from my free afternoon trip to the local modern art museum and the realization that I can speak Spanish better than I believed, or the pan dulce that I loved so much at breakfast every day. One of the most amazing things about the itinerary that Witness for Peace put together for us for the ten days we were there was the human connection with a very human topic. So often, the people affected by immigration policies and reform, the D.R.E.A.M Act, and the increased border patrol are erased by mass media and a lack of knowledge to simply being a mass of people, nameless immigrants. 

Throughout our delegation, Witness for Peace made sure that we were meeting with and making connections with people staying at migrant shelters, with returned immigrants to America, and with the indigenous women and families who worked to decrease the migration out of their community. I know that as long as I live, I will never forget some of the people I met, from Jesus Leon Santos, the passionate and internationally acknowledged farmer in charge of CEDICAM, an organization that reintroduces indigenous farming techniques and local trade to an area ruined by the policies of NAFTA, to the university student that we joined for lunch, who had returned to Mexico after, despite excelling in American schools and making incredible grades, was unable to attend college because she was in “illegal” immigrant, and to my host mom in Teotitlan del Valle and her precious niece and nephew, whom I spent many enjoyable hours with pushing on swings, or watching Beauty and the Beast with in Spanish, while helping their mother cook dinner or discussing their father’s experiences growing up in the U.S. 

Not only has my time with Witness for Peace enriched my knowledge of immigration facts and figures, the stereotypes forced upon immigrants, and the true personal faces of immigration, but it has enriched the values that I find the most important in my life, which I believe any unbelievable experience should. The night before I returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, I wrote in my journal, reflecting for eleven pages. On the last two pages, I listed the values that were strengthened in me after all the meetings and dinners and day trips and shopping at indie bookstores, including the openness of my host family and all the speakers, the social awareness of everyone we met with on the trip, the adventurous spirit of all the friends I made at our hostel, the passion of our wonderful leader Maggie, and the beauty and tranquility and beautifully bustling city of Oaxaca. 

In addition to strengthening my life personally, my time in Oaxaca has enabled me to speak up more on behalf of immigrants who have been rendered faceless and nameless by our society, and educate future generations on the injustices of current immigration policies and the dangers and hardships that immigrants face, both in their home country and in the U.S., whether they arrive “legally” or “illegally.” At the summer enrichment program where I’ve taught this summer, we’ve read several books on immigration or with characters with hispanic heritage, and I’ve had the opportunity to speak with not only my class, but other classes as well about immigration policies and the things I learned through my time in Oaxaca. All in all, travelling with Witness for Peace changed my life, and definitely for the better. I’ll never forget the things I learned there, the experiences I had, and the person that I was during my ten days in Mexico.

Think Globally – Act Locally on Immigration!

By John Clark Pegg
Witness for Peace – Upper Midwest Board

As we enter into the final phase of our Upper Midwest speaker tour, Nancy Garcia from Oaxaca and Moravia de la O from our WFP International Team, spent the past few days in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. They were based in Duluth, Minnesota, a small city and regional center to a population of about 200,000 souls. Duluth, which considers itself a progressive and “friendly” city, boasts several excellent institutions of higher education, an advanced care medical center which services the surrounding region, the nation’s farthest inland international harbor, and a tourism industry which plays host to the entire Midwest. It is a beautiful little city, nestled on the side of steep hills overlooking the majestic Lake Superior (which holds 10% of the world’s fresh water). Since we are only about 100 miles from the Canadian border, Duluth also is home to a large, regional U.S. Border Patrol facility capable of housing up to 50 agents. Its agent in charge issued a statement saying, “We must ensure that we are cognizant of the fact that we have good partners that will help us protect our nation both within our communities and to the north in Canada.”

In addition to speaking events at three universities, WFP-UMW also sponsored another public forum on immigration. Nancy was joined by two Latino/as from the community to join in dialogue on issues facing migrants, including both the challenges they face when heading north in Mexico as well as the barriers and opportunities they encounter here in the States. As we put together this conference, we learned something significant about Duluth. For people of brown skin (and black), Duluth is not perceived as a “friendly” or “welcoming” city. Several Latino/as who were invited to attend our forum declined to come, as they were concerned about attracting the attention of authorities here. Our U.S. panelists reaffirmed from their own experiences the difficulties and challenges of life in Minnesota for immigrants. Clearly the extravagant funds we are spending to fund a massive buildup of agents in places with minimal security needs, construct massive walls, and contract with private companies to build and manage “detention” centers, is neither an effective, nor humane, nor just means of dealing with migration. We need to address the root causes of dislocation and migration, including a renegotiation of unfair free trade agreements to level the playing field and protect the rights of workers and the environment. We also need to reform our U.S. immigration policies to reflect the realities of our need for migrant workers and provide pathways for both legal work status and citizenship for those who choose. With this in mind, an excellent, brief and to-the-point video on the need for immigration reform can be viewed here:

Why the Merida Initiative Isn’t Working…and What We Can Do to Change it

by Stephanie Brewer, Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez (CentroProdh)

Recently, President Barack Obama announced his intention to deploy U.S. National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico Border. This US military response to Mexican crime may seem new, but the U.S. has been backing Mexico in an increasingly militarized response to crime for the past couple of years under the Mérida Initiative.

As you may know, since taking office in 2006, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón has unleashed a “frontal war” against crime, deploying nearly 50,000 soldiers throughout the country. The results of this military war have been nothing short of catastrophic for Mexico’s civilian population. Reports of human rights violations committed by the armed forces and reported to the National Human Rights Commission have increased nearly ten times, from 182 in 2006 to 1791 in 2009. These include arbitrary executions, forced disappearances, sexual abuse, torture and warrantless searches and detentions.

As documented in numerous cases by the National Human Rights Commission and by non-governmental organizations, the army arbitrarily detains civilians and tortures them in military bases, sometimes falsifying medical certificates to claim that the victims were not tortured, with the aim of eliciting information or confessions related to organized crime. Recurring methods of torture documented by the Commission and by civil society organizations include beatings and application of electric shocks to sensitive body parts. Those who denounce violations face threats and attacks.

Finally, the army operates without meaningful control by civilian institutions. No military human rights violation committed during this presidential administration has been tried by the competent civilian authorities, and the military courts, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior, have sentenced just one soldier to a term of 9 months for shooting and killing a civilian. Meanwhile, the federal government states that civilians killed in the crossfire or by the army are “collateral damages,” despite the fact that as of today, roughly 23,000 civilians have been killed since December 2006 in Mexico’s drug war; last year alone, nearly 10,000 people were killed.

To give one concrete example of the above, we can mention a case that we documented and represented in Center Prodh: the case of four civilians arbitrarily War on Drugs, shot by soldiers in Sinaloa state in March 2008. The four were riding in a car with other family members when a group of soldiers in another vehicle opened fire with no justification, killing the victims and injuring two other passengers. The military authorities immediately took over the investigation, guaranteeing that the victims’ family members will not have access to justice. One family member, the wife of one of the victims, took the case all the way to Mexico’s Supreme Court, but the Court ruled that she did not have legal standing to challenge the military’s assumption of jurisdiction over the case. Thus, the military remains judge and jury in any case of human rights violations that is investigated at all.

In light of the above facts, it is difficult to argue that Mexico is gaining anything by deploying its army to do the work of police. In this context, perhaps the more interesting question is: what does the United States gain by financially supporting the Mexican army through the current Mérida Initiative?

The answer, currently, is quite simply: nothing. Or perhaps, put more cynically, it risks loosing face before the international community for throwing its support behind armed forces that are increasingly known throughout the world as violators of human rights, and whose participation in policing tasks have gone hand-in-hand with skyrocketing levels of criminal violence.

Now let’s ask a different question: what could the United States gain from a thoughtful, holistic, results-oriented approach to reducing criminal violence in Mexico? First and foremost, the U.S. could gain credibility – and advance security – by addressing effectively the engine that drives drug trafficking and drug-related violence in Mexico: demand for illegal drugs in the United States. In this sense, redirecting funding from Mexico’s military to treatment clinics in the United States would certainly bring a much more efficient return than the current Mérida Initiative. The Obama administration recently signaled its intention to place greater emphasis on treatment-based and demand-reduction approaches, although it remains to be seen what degree of change we can expect. Along similar lines, the need for the U.S. to halt the flow of arms into Mexico (U.S. guns currently serve as the armory for drug cartels) cannot be overstated.

To the extent that the U.S. remains engaged in security cooperation programs with the Mexican military and police, the minimum standard for such engagement must be that the basic human rights requirements already built into the Mérida Initiative are respected. By banning the use of torture to obtain confessions and prioritizing police transparency and accountability,the United States acknowledged that human rights were under threat in Mexico. Yet the United States did not keep up to its own standards: last year Washington released the portion of the Mérida Initiative funds supposedly conditioned on progress in these areas despite an obvious lack of advances. This year, then, the U.S. has the chance to regain legitimacy in this area and have a potential impact on human rights by withholding the conditioned funds until true progress has been made.

In short, the most effective steps that the United States can take right now to reduce drug violence in Mexico are to treat the problem on its own side of the border and respect its own laws regarding foreign aid. This is not to rule out all possibilities of collaboration between the two countries in the future, but it’s time to prioritize effective strategies and to place human rights front and center, rather than letting them become the collateral damages of a drug war that is unwinnable on current terms.