Forty Days in the Desert - by David Wanish

“Forty days in the desert” describes Jesus at the start of his ministry and the Christian community during Lent.  For me, henceforth, it will also bring to mind migrants who make a dangerous journey through Mexico to the United States.  I learned on a tour with the organization Witness for Peace that the trip for those who start in southern Mexico or Central America can take one to two months and often includes walking through treacherous stretches of desert.

A tiny swath of the huge Mexican desert.

The delegation I attended, based in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, included a visit to a Church-sponsored migrant shelter which offers food, medical care, and helpful information to those desperately trying to attain a better life for their families.  Some of the most common needs they have include replacements for their worn-out shoes, and treatment for their legs, which are badly blistered and cut from walking many miles through sharp plants in the wilderness.  Some die, and some disappear on the way.

The delegation arrives at COMI, the migrant shelter in Oaxaca, Mexico.

They leave mostly for economic reasons.  I believe their homelands are what Pope Francis had in mind when, in his recent apostolic exhortation, he described an economy of exclusion.  “Masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized:  without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape” (The Joy of the Gospel #53).  

Pope Francis

The people of Oaxaca whom we visited have felt excluded from decisions that affect them, including the negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement, now 20 years old.  This resulted in more exclusion:  a removal of agricultural support and even the loss of the Constitutional protection of their communally-owned land. The latter has enabled foreign companies to buy their land and has often led to exploitation of people and resources.

For many, the only option is migration.  Our group had the opportunity to stay in a city where most families have at least one member who has migrated to the US.  While migrants send remittances home, their absence leads to further problems for their communities, like an imbalance of men and women (most migrants are male) and the separation of family members.

A view outside of the Teotitlan del Valle, a 
town near Oaxaca. Many of its citizens live in the U.S.

The pope observed that economic exclusion is sustained by a “globalization of indifference,” where suffering of neighbors no longer moves us (The Joy of the Gospel, #54).  Let us be awakened!  The migration rate of Latinos northward is a sign that the scales of justice are out of balance.  Let us in compassion reach out to them, and in solidarity seek to learn more about why they are here.

A wall at COMI shelter: "Justice for Migrants."

For information on joining a delegation to Mexico: http://witnessforpeace.org/section.php?id=108

Tales of Migration and Detention

by James Hutter, james.hutter@gmail.com

(This blog entry is part of a series. Click these links for Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3)

Our visit to San Francisco Tetlanohcan had been a powerful experience for many varied reasons. We saw first hand the effects that migration has had on the community – the loss of family members and the economic impact on the town. We also learned about the

group CAFAMI (Centro de Atencion a la Familia Migrante Indigena) and their efforts to share the tales of migrant families and to reverse the trend of migration. Yet, one particular event still stands out in my mind. One afternoon we had a few moments to meet with residents of Tetlanohcan to hear their personal tales of migration and their thoughts on immigration policy as a whole...

“I am the mother of 7 children in the U.S. My first went in 1990 and I have not seen him since.”

This was the first statement we heard as we gathered in a group to share stories of migration and detainment. The experience quickly turned into a highly emotional session in which residents of San Francisco Tetlanohcan tearfully told us their deeply personal tales. So impactful were these stories that many of us simply sat agasp. While we listened to tales of loved ones that had left home to migrate to the United States, it became clear to the delegation that some of the people in attendance had personally attempted to cross the Mexico-United States Border. It also became clear that a few of them had not had papers to do so.

“I tried to visit my family in the caravan through many states and the desert. I remember seeing all the crosses and thought about all of those that died and how they may have died.”

“One man on the caravan had the sad job of finding bodies. He looked for families or family members that were missing.”

The migration is not easy and it ventures through remote areas often in the vast desert. While the people leading the caravan may take different routes to avoid Mexican or U.S. Border Patrol, it is hard for migrants not to notice the sad markers from past travelers.

Travelers that survive the desert still have a high probability of being captured at the border. And while they all surely realize that they have broken the law in attempting to cross the border, almost none of them are prepared for the treatment they receive from U.S. Border Patrol agents if captured.

One woman told us that she was detained and never given any real information about her status or what Border Patrol had in mind for her. Would she be sent back quickly? Would she be imprisoned? Would something even worse happen to her? It was only after being detained for several days that Border Patrol informed her that the car she was traveling in had no license plates (hence their suspicion) and that she would be forced to testify against the smuggler who had brought her across the border. This was unsettling since many of the “Coyotes” (smugglers) now have Mexican drug cartel affiliations; testifying against a cartel member could be a death sentence. Her last hopes of safety faded even further as her Border Patrol captor told her and fellow captives that they were...

“Bitches. Fucking Mexican pieces of shit.”

A few other tales were shared and it became clear that many detained migrants are treated as less than human.

Our obvious questions were “Why are people are leaving in droves, and why would they would risk taking a potentially deadly journey?” One person responded,

“Both Governments are responsible for this... What good is educating people when there are no jobs?”

            While many felt that the U.S. has an unfair immigration policy for neighboring Mexico, there was a sense among some in the audience that the Mexican government is also responsible and has let their own people down. Both governments have failed to modify trade policies that have negatively impacted farmers in rural areas, and have depressed these regions. It's no wonder that people want to leave and look for work in new areas. And once people in the town have hit the lowest point of desperation and bravely decide to go elsewhere, their families are left to think...

“'We've lost them. We don't know if they are alive or dead. We don't know if border patrol has left them to die.”

Questions from Cuba--guest post by Emma Tai

Witness for Peace is grateful to Emma Tai for contributing this post to the WFP blog. Emma lives in Chicago, where she works as a community organizer and researcher. She participated in the Sustainable Communities delegation to Cuba with Witness for Peace in May 2014.

In Cuba, perhaps more than any place I've ever been, I felt acutely the tensions between the different versions of history. Each version has its own agenda (although the official version of the U.S. government has exponentially more money and power behind it), and each leads to its own interpretations of what’s happening in the present moment.

Our hosts in Cuba acknowledged this upfront, cautioning us that, “in Cuba, there are two answers to every question.” So instead of authoritatively summarizing the top three lessons learned from the Witness for Peace delegation in which I participated, I’ll be writing a series here about the key questions—and the many possible answers—that I’m still grappling with.

Question #1: The Blockade
In one of our first exchanges, our Cuban hosts told us that it is possible to tell United States history without mentioning Cuba, but that it’s not possible to tell Cuban history without talking about the U.S. My first question in this occasional series keeps the focus on the main policy that defines U.S.-Cuba relations today: the U.S. trade embargo. What is the impact of the U.S. embargo, and what would happen if it ended?

Popular sentiment against the U.S. blockade is strong in Cuba (photo: David Zucchino)

The impact of the U.S. embargo, or the “bloqueo” (blockade), as it’s referred to in Cuba, depends on who you ask. Below, I've paraphrased just a sample of the analyses that we heard or read while on our delegation:

• “The blockade has cut us off from access to life-saving medical technologies, and innocent people have suffered and died as a result.” – Cuban senior
• “Medications are exempted from the embargo. If regular Cubans don’t have access to medical technology, it’s because the government is too poor to buy them, because socialism doesn't work.”  - U.S. government official
• “The U.S. embargo is a failed human rights policy, because it targets the whole population’s access to basic rights like food, clean water, and health care, and gives the Castros an excuse to crack down on dissidents.” – Cuban scholar
• “Sanctions work against dictatorships. Just look at South Africa and Iraq.” – U.S. government official
• “As a result of the embargo, Cuba has created the world’s largest working model of organic, diversified, local agriculture that doesn't rely on global agribusiness for oil and chemicals.” – U.S. environmental studies scholar 
• “The U.S. blockade is driven by the Castros’ political opponents, who have largely emigrated to Miami. That is why their overwhelming interest is in undermining Cuban sovereignty with regime change. But the regime has not changed even as our political and economic systems have, and now President Obama has a historic opportunity to change a counterproductive policy.” – Cuban journalist

The people I spoke with had grim memories of the “Special Period,” the years following the fall of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the U.S. blockade through the 1992 Torricelli Act, which cut off food and medicine imports, and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which effectively created international sanctions by penalizing foreign companies for trade with Cuba. In the early years of the Special Period, Cuba lost 98% of their oil imports and 75% of their food imports.

The country has made a remarkable recovery since then; the resourcefulness of the many responses to the Special Period consistently inspired me. From improving access to food through diversified local growing to defending coastal communities from tropical storms through community-based evacuation plans to the development of a universal primary health care system that emphasizes prevention and early treatment, the Cubans have done much with very little. We have a lot to learn from these successes.

Backyard permaculture projects are part of a strategy to offset the loss of food imports due to the U.S. blockade (photo: David Zucchino)

But I don’t want to understate the effects of the U.S. blockade. Our interpreter, Alberto, reminded me that most people in Cuba were “very, very poor.” The effects of economic isolation—high consumer prices, low salaries, shortages of important goods—have been felt for over twenty years now. I met a young man whose day job was a government engineer, but who drove a cab at night to make ends meet. Ariel, our guide, chose not to study engineering because that job would only pay him 120 pesos (about $6) a month. He skipped college and went straight into the higher-paying, semi-privatized tourist sector. His son is now entering medical school; Ariel told us that he just hopes that the economy improves by the time his son finishes in 2020.

Opening up trade with and through the U.S. is seen as a necessary first step to gaining access to life-saving medical technologies, lowering consumer prices, and increasing salaries and incomes. And yet, as economist Gladys Hernandez shared with us, there is a very real concern that the intrusion of private economic interests will erode the “social gains of the Cuban revolution”: the elimination of illiteracy and homelessness, excellent universal health care, an extensive social support network (including youth programming and senior care), and basic income parity.

Income inequality is already on the rise in Cuba, thanks to increasing levels of privatization under the Raul Castro administration. Recent reforms allow the sale of homes and the formation of private restaurants to cater to tourists and higher-income locals. The higher-paying jobs in these new private sectors, particularly in tourism, tend to accrue to young, light-skinned, English-speaking Cubans. The Obama administration’s allowance of remittances has also contributed to rising income inequality; Cubans who have family sending them remittances from abroad tend to be better off than those who do not.

Permaculture in action (photo: Jordan Goldsmith)

Despite these concerns, every single Cuban I met wanted the blockade to end. One senior told me of the children she knew who had died of cancer because of Cuba’s limited access to medical technology. She then said that her greatest fear for the future of Cuba was that the blockade would not be lifted. Cuban journalist Alfredo Prieto believes that the Cubans can grow the economy on their own terms once trade is opened. “We have replicated the mistakes of the U.S. and we have replicated the mistakes of the Soviets,” he told us. “We want to make our own mistakes.”

I share the hope of our Cuban hosts when envisioning a future without the blockade. But unlike the people I met in Cuba, I can put pressure on the legislators who control this policy. I will be contacting them to let them know why the trade embargo is a failed and inhumane policy and to encourage them to lift it. I encourage you to do the same.

Look up your legislators here.