Based on the book "No more walls. Exclusion and Forced Migration in Central America",
by Prof. Carlos Sandoval García.
10% to 12% of the total population has migrated in Central America.
That is four times the migration percentage worldwide.
Their main destination is the United States.
HOME IN A FOREIGN LAND
I never thought I would see my country like this,
and I never thought I would be one of the ones suffering on the road,
but here I go.
And we are working people.
But, ¿why do they do that?
Because of the government.
The government we have doesn't care about poor people.
That brings you down,
and the opportunities, well,
they're not for everyone nor the same for everybody.
And that's why we have to come, it's not because we want to.
The right not to migrate.
In this society, where there are oppressors and the oppressed,
where there are victims and victimizers,
we discovered that migrants
were at the most extreme level of vulnerability.
Their stories are about tragedies,
about hunger, about violence, about social abandonment.
They realize
they don't exist for their countries.
"Welcome to the Cuarto Pueblo village".
In the region of Ixil, in the towns and villages
of Santa María Nebaj,
San Juan Cotzal and San Gaspar Chajúl, there were violent deaths of human beings,
rapes, and leveling of villages.
This obliged the Maya-Ixil group to leave in order to save their lives.
In 1977 the oil companies
tried to enter, and the oil company came in without the cooperative's permission.
Organization here is very strong, since it is made up of 5 cooperatives.
The land is ours, it has its title.
We organized, thousands of people
and we said, listen,
we will not allow the oil company.
So the first massacre happened,
they killed the 16 people who were working in the cooperative,
who hadn't done anything, who didn't have
weapons or anything, just their notebooks and pencils.
They were murdered.
So I came over here, with my family, over here in my house,
I came here and I got my mom, I got my brothers, I got my wife, and we left
without knowing where we were going.
Before, I had a store, and I had some horses
but the military took the horses,
so now I have nothing.
Not even a glass in the store, nothing.
When the massacre of 1982 happened,
on the 14th of March,
then all the people left for the mountains.
People, old people, children, and all went looking for a place to stay.
From 1983 to 1996, we started leaving.
I didn't leave until early 1996.
Here we can see the names of the martyrs.
All of this is the same!
Bones, dust, from them.
Here is my poor father,
my brothers, who were murdered, all of these bones are theirs.
Who of the children of the wealthy are here? None.
They are the children of the poor.
But there must be justice done.
There must be recognition of
not only the material wounds,
but also the social reparations,
and the state has not made those reparations possible.
For the stated reasons, the judges believe that the conduct of the accused,
José Efraín Ríos Montt,
amounts to the crime of genocide
and for that he must be sentenced accordingly.
By this definition, we, the judges, have opted
to sentence him to 50 years in prison without pardon.
[Applause]
12 days later the sentence was annulled by the Constitutional Court of Guatemala.
Ríos Montt is still unpunished.
The "leveled land strategy" by the military government resulted in:
200 000 people murdered, 50 000 missing and 1 million took refugee in Mexico.
Political goodwill doesn't exist in Guatemala.
The government has some political motivations, but for their own families,
for their own party, right?, not for the wellbeing of the people.
The lives of rural people are sad.
And option do they have? Migration,
and that is the best option they have, so people leave, women, men, families,
they go looking for what to do.
[MONS. ARNULFO ROMERO'S VOICE] In the name of God, then,
and in the name of this people that has suffered,
and whose laments rise to the sky louder with each day.
I beg you…
I ask you...
I order you in the name of God
to stop the repression!
Conflict started in the 1970's,
but history books say the war began with the murder of Monsignor Romero.
If they murdered who was the voice of the people, why would they not kill the people? So...
a lot of people who were indecisive before
went to the mountains to fight against the regime.
[RADIO] This is Venceremos (We Will Overcome) Radio transmitting
the official voice of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.
The United States government earmarked $1.4 billion annually
to combat leftist movements in Central America.
During these twelve years
almost 70 000 Salvadorians died.
They were murdered.
The vast majority were civilians
who had nothing to do with the war directly.
This was breeding ground
for migration, right? Here no one leaves because they want to:
it's almost a mandatory in order to improve your life.
Here is just a small sample
of the many people killed during the armed conflict.
There are 30 000 names.
Independence Festivities. 15th of September, 2015.
[LOUDSPEAKER] Now the President of the Republic is leaving...
The people who massacred, the people who murdered, and were proven to have done so,
the people who
committed crimes against humanity… nothing happened to them.
On the contrary: as of 2015, they live with total impunity
and some even have legal inmunity
as they're sitting in the Parlament.
"Evil has deep roots in El Salvador, and if it's not healed completely
names will always change, but evil will remain".
In this country, violence is a structural problem.
We now have homicide rates
as high or higher than during the war.
After the war, other reasons to migrate emerged, namely
to flee the violence.
Here the population is tormented
by violence, more than any other issue.
Since 1994 onward, "fledgling" factories began to open
that would only operate for a few years and then fly away.
Usually the woman would be the one who worked. She would leave at 6 in the morning.
Children were left alone in these slums.
I'm talking about small children, they would leave school, I saw them...
And this coincides with the arrival
of hundreds of Salvadorians who were expelled from the United States
because over there in Los Angeles they belonged to something that we hadn't heard of here
called "the gangs".
So they came and found themselves in very favorable conditions
to start working all these kids, adolescents and teenagers,
from poor sectors.
The two biggest gangs, the strongest ones that still exist,
called Barrio 18 and the Salvatrucha Gang,
are trying to control the territory,
control trading activities, stores, businesses...
Even the trucks that distribute Coca Cola, cigarettes, water,
everything that comes into the neighborhood
has to pay a bribe. And if they don't pay it, the gangs kill them.
Over there bribes are the way of life.
There, your life matters the same as the bullet from a gang member's gun.
There, the police say: "Don't put your trust in us because we can't do anything.
There are only 8 of us at this post, and over there are 60 gang members."
Possibly more armed than the officers are.
Here the situation became critical due to gang's violence, right?
Too many gangs here and everywhere.
Wherever he would go to sell vitamins
they made him pay taxes on it.
And if he didn't sell a lot, if he sold only a little,
he still had to to pay them something from what he sold,
even if he didn't have money.
And so because he was afraid of what could happen to him, he decided one day,
on September 3rd, 2013,
to leave this place and go to the United States.
I have 5 children and their father has been missing for 2 years.
During the 1970's not too many people migrated.
In the 1980's migration grew, but not considerably.
It was after the peace treaties, after the war ended,
it was from mid-1990's to this day,
during the 2000's,
that El Salvador started to migrate
by hundreds, 700 or 800 people per day
try to cross the border
with all the suffering that comes with it.
During my time in Central America
I have come to realize that these migrants don't matter, they're disposable.
not just in El Salvador, but in Honduras and in Guatemala also.
These people don't matter to them.
For me as a woman in a rural area,
the Earth for me is like my mother.
The Earth gives us life, if there is no earth, there is no life,
and the majority of rural women live from farming, from the crop that the land produces.
So the land is like the fundamental element for the lives of rural families.
We farmers fight to defend the territory,
to recuperate land that was previously designated for agricultural reform,
but that Rafael Leonardo Callejas' government
sanctioned under the agricultural modernization law.
This allowed farmers to be stripped of their…
of their property, of their land.
Presently, there are three landowners in the area,
so the territory came to belong to only a few people.
To this day, a large number of palm trees have been planted
because that is the state's policy,
which the government has been carrying out in the rural sector.
Unfortunately, we have been forced to cultivate the African palm
because this drains the water sources.
The African palm uses 70% to 80% of the water
and some of the sources have disappeared, they have run dry.
Nowadays, we farmers have been trying to buy the land back from the state
and right as we were negotiating
palm increased in price,
to the point where it cost as much as 4500-4700 (Lps.) per ton,
just as we were coming to an agreement in the negotiations.
Currently, palm has decreased in price so much that now it is between
1200-1000 (Lps.) per ton, and it is possible that it will get as low as 700
lempiras per ton. That's something
that will not work,
rural workers won't be able to pay the plantation,
they won't be able to pay for the land,
It's barely enough to pay for interests.
But we are all looking at this as a strategy of the current government
because they are implementing the same tactics
that was used in the 90's, when Rafael Leonardo Callejas was in power.
That's what led to the dismantling of the cooperatives and to the emigration of many people.
(NEWSCASTER 1) "The conflicts over land continue in Honduras..."
(NEWSCASTER 2) "…the violent eviction that caused the deaths of three farmworkers…"
(NEWSCASTER 3) "Violence increases in Bajo Aguán against the farmworkers..."
(NEWSCASTER 4) "...Those affected claim law enforcement officials are complicit in this..."
Given the repression that has happened in the rural sector,
the Permanent Human Rights Watch of Aguán took form,
to defend the right to hold land, which many of us have been criminalized for
simply because we are working as the defenders of human rights.
So, all these situations sometimes cause people
to make the decision to migrate to another country,
in this case we should mention the United States as the country where
most of the people try to go.
Some people migrate because they are being persecuted and watched;
others because they have death threats,
and they think that going somewhere else will allow them to survive,
and some people migrate from rural areas to cities
looking for a better life. But a better life over there is a lie.
That's the current reality in Honduras,
because the repression and persecution come from the government itself.
"Welcome to the Garifuna Community of Barravieja. 1950-2008".
We have 150 families in Barravieja,
and we survive on fishing
and agriculture.
Back in the time before INDURA took away our lands,
we also survived on agriculture, but now it is just from fishing.
[TV ADD FROM INDURA RESORT]
INDURA is an oligarchic project.
Supposedly it was a governmental program
that was supposed to develop the country's tourism,
and it was supposed to be good for us, to bring us education for our children,
and it was going to bring us a higher quality of life.
The problem is that these people want to strip us of our land,
they want to take away what's left of the land that we have now,
because they already took the majority of it.
There are many hectares of land, more than 200 hectares of land that they have monopolized.
We were left with... from the 80 blocks of land we had,
we were left with 43.23 blocks of land.
And they're waging, bringing war to us, waging war against us
to strip us of our land.
[Shooting]
[Arguing]
The entire process of taking away our land is violent,
because when they came, they brought machinery, they brought
contingencies of soldiers.
And they had there with their arquebuses, their pistols, their AK's…
and us with nothing, right?, armed only with the word of God.
They did their job, taking everything out of the houses,
and threw it all on the street.
You can see how they have left us, and yet still they are
accusing us of being usurpers of the land, saying we are intruders ex officio.
All of us in the community were sued,
and spent almost two years showing up to sign, even after the trial.
There were a few early trials that came out in favor of us, because we have documentation
that this is the ancestral land of the Garifuna,
so the decision was in favor of us.
Now there is another trial, and a few more still pending... we are always waiting.
This problem, the issue of eviction, harms the children.
There are children so traumatized who can't see any policeman or soldier
without them saying that they have come to throw us out.
There are children who do not want to go to school because they think that getting back
they will find soldiers and their things strewn outside of their houses or outside of Barravieja.
There were mothers who had to leave and migrate away from the country,
pursuing the American dream, suffering awful things, away from here, on the border,
just because of this problem.
Many people have left from here, uh!,
a huge number of people have fled,
But, why does this happen?
These people can't subsist anymore.
They are even prohibiting us from fishing.
How can you prohibit the Garifunas from fishing
if the Garifunas have always lived by the sea?
Because for the Garifunas mainly... the life of the Garifunas is a life of fishing.
Not long ago, my son left
with a grandson of mine, his nephew.
They left, but thank God,
they made it.
Because there have been young people from the community who have died
searching for this dream, this American dream.
We are citizens, man, we're Garifunas, we've been here for more than 218 years.
If they thought it would be easy to take the land from Barravieja,
like they took part of the land from the Tornabé community, and part of the Barravieja land,
this little bit that they have not taken, we will never let it go.
[Afrocaribbean music]
Huehuetenango is one of the biggest sections of Guatemala.
Today, there are a million and a half people,
plus another million who live in the north.
We have a history of migration.
There was an influx in migration towards the north
due to the the internal armed conflict,
because there has been a lot of aggression in the Huehuetenango territory,
and since 2008, there has been conflict
in relation to the hydroelectric projects.
Why is there this confrontation?
We live in peace here.
The people who want to make our lives impossible are the ones who want to take our resources
and take the resources from our territory
because there's an interest in privatizing water.
And the hydroelectric companies are one way to privatize that water.
In the 2000's
we began to feel more pressure on the territories that the companies are interested in.
Only in the northern parts of Huehuetenango, in eight municipalities
of the towns Q'anjob'al, Chuj and Akateko,
there are eight projects connected to a Spanish company:
Hidralia Ecoener.
We realized that a necessary tool to defend the territory was
a collective decision
and a collective response.
In 2006 we started the community consultations.
This began to make us vulnerable.
they began to harass us, they began to threaten us,
to bribe some of the leaders...
This resulted in the companies starting to
to work with private security companies,
which were also controlled
or had ex-military owners.
So there is a connection between the Army Staff,
Army Intelligence,
and private security companies
to control the local leadership.
The World Organization Against Torture conducted an investigation at the national level
and the case of Santa Cruz Barillas is here,
and the criminalization of the community leaders,
wich resulted in so many having to leave the country
to go to the United States
because they are being persecuted and criminalized.
We think that we, in this territory,
have the necessary capability
to live better,
but they will not allow us to.
So that is another struggle that we have,
and that we are fighting every day:
that they let us be so we can live better.
I am from San José del Golfo,
where we are invaded by foreign companies
that came to impose mining projects,
and the most worrying thing is that they are fully endorsed by the current governments.
[Protesters Riots]
La Puya's resistance,
has perhaps been more recognized or more visible,
because we are less than 18 kilometers as the crow flies from the city,
but we know that this is a fight that many villages in Guatemala face,
where the mining and hydroelectric companies are located.
And this reality has made it so that
we find ourselves persecuted, criminalized, and also
that we hold onto life by a thread.
That the president and the Minister of Energy and Mines granted them a license
does not mean that because they authorize it
we are going to let that be, no!
We have to tell them that the ones in charge here are the people,
[Applause]
not them!
That what we are defending here is life,
our lives, and the lives of our children.
Since I started the resistance in 2010,
I began to investigate the projects,
and the threats began.
When I found myself with two guys on a motorcycle in front of my car,
going at a very slow velocity.
It was a matter of seconds, but I had already heard the gunshots.
I think I wanted to turn back, I don't know,
it was a very narrow road.
That's when I realized that I was hurt.
The bullet had entered
between two ribs,
and it grazed my kidney, liver, and right lung.
Those are the consequences
for the defenders of human rights. Those are the consequences
for the people who defend territory and life.
And I do not hold anyone else responsible for this than the big projects.
[Protesters Riots]
[PEOPLE] Yes to life, no to mining! Yes to life, no to mining!
It never seems just to me
having to leave our communities
and our countries
because of the transnational corporations.
I, personally, have seen in our communities
and in other areas of the country where the companies are,
that the only option that people have is to leave
because they have stolen their land,
because the people have no peace,
because they are so afraid that at any moment they can get killed.
My husband had to leave the country because of this.
He had to migrate to the United States because of this.
Because before I was attacked, he was kidnapped,
and they infused him with so much fear
that he decided to leave,
emigrate to the United States, live illegally in the United States,
to protect his own life, and perhaps he also thought
to protect ours.
But a home was broken,
and this is so hard because no one mentions it.
In the United States he's just a mother immigrant,
but they don't know his real story.
I don't think that any immigrant wants to leave
and abandon their family and children.
There are so many homes that are totally defenseless
because of this immigration,
but no one says it's them, it's our governments and the multinational corporations
that are stealing our live and our peace.
The humanitarian crisis of Central America
keeps growing.
It is clear to us, of course,
that so long as the structural problems that cause migration
in Central America as well as in Mexico
do not disappear,
we will not see an end to the migration flow.
The one that goes to Guatemala it's about to arrive; departs to Guatemala
to try to make the goal one sets out to achieve when leaving from here.
But you also expose yourself to so many things: you might get assaulted,
you might get kidnapped, you might be killed. Anything can happen.
You expose yourself to so much risk.
But as they say, well: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
But you also risk losing your live.
[Train whistle and rails]
[♪ ♫]
Only we know how it goes.
Many times we have to run from Border Patrol because they are following us.
Yes, I saw bodies
sprawled on the railroad tracks.
It's horrible.
Some of them are kidnapped by Los Zetas, they take them,
and kill them.
Some of them drown.
All of that just for crossing this damn river, for trying to fulfill a dream.
The Right to Have Rights
In the first place we saw the guards of the train
passing almost as
executioners for the migrants.
The railroad in Mexico is now privatized.
Before, it was a parastatal entity,
but today the railroad is licensed to companies
not to transport passengers
but only for goods.
And they acted in horrifying ways.
That's when I began to realize that this was induced,
that the treatment of migrants in such ways had to do
with control over their passage to the United States.
[♪ ♫]
It is most difficult in Palenque, Tierra Blanca, Orizabal, and Zelaya.
There, you get assaulted, and the security guards who work on the train track
they also assault you.
[Man playing]
So I was traveling on the train and they robbed me and beat me.
It was at dawn,
around five in the morning.
Some people found me and took me here.
The train guards gave us water, they provided us with water.
Later on they came back to us and told us: "Walk on this side, don't walk on the other side",
and they made us walk into the area where we got kidnapped.
[♪ ♫]
It's incredibly dangerous.
Like I said, one risks one's life.
Wherever you go, you see things,
so many things, that make you... I don't know.
All you can do is cry from seeing so many injustices.
Before we got to where the train station was,
there they raped a woman.
She was around 30-35 years old, and they raped her.
She was traveling with her husband.
They took away her two children...
This woman was coming from Honduras, she was coming with her two children,
and she could only cry.
After all of this, when I was coming from Orizabal,
there I found the husband of that woman,
he came with the two children,
he told me he had spoken with her and that she was in Honduras,
they had deported her. She had turned herself in because they had left her in such bad shape,
her body...
They had left her really beaten up,
they had cut her with machetes, the same people who had raped her.
That's how dangerous it is on the trains right now, they are killing people,
more-so the women,
whether they come alone, or they come with their husbands, their partners,
it doesn't matter!
They beat them with sticks, with bats,
or they throw them from the top of the train.
"Don't you know how to fly?" they ask them, and they throw them from the roof, "well, fly then".
[Train rails]
I don't know him that well,
all I know is that his name is Carlos and he's from Honduras.
It was the third time that this man had come,
and they pushed him when he was getting on the train.
They pushed him when he was getting on a train carriage,
and the backpack he carried got tangled in one of the hooks
that hold the carriage,
so we got stuck under the train; his foot was cut off.
[♪ ♫]
Along with all this, there are innumerable aggressions from police,
disappearances of migrants,
muggings, beatings, you know.
But
at the same time
there is also organized crime,
and since 2008 we have started to realize
that migrants have been disappearing
through kidnappings.
I was 20 kilometers from the border
when I greeted some people, thinking they were immigrants, but no.
They told me "We are Los Zetas",
"You are under arrest", they said.
I told them, "Hey! I'm just going to the Immigrant House", I said,
"No", they told me, "there's no Immigrant House here for you", they said,
"either you are bringing money, or you're coming with someone, or you've already been reported
or you pay".
So I asked them... I asked them how much they charged.
They told me that they charged
6,000 and 5,000 [USD$].
I told them, "No, I don't have family".
"We're going to hold you prisoner", they said to me,
"in case you're from the other gang".
So they held me at this place,
they held me in the forest.
I was in captivity for four days,
uhm... tortured,
electric shocks,
asking for telephone numbers, and I…
and I told them, "I don't have any".
They threatened to kill me,
and they even had a chainsaw that they said they were going to kill people with, but thank God,
some of us got the courage to take action and run away.
[♪ ♫]
I divide the presence of organized crime
into three areas of killing,
but the north and the northeast are the worst areas of terror.
It has become a land
of this human tragedies.
The "massacre of the 72",
in 2010,
the massacre of Tamaulipas Two
in 2011,
where we found 193 bodies,
brutally massacred by organized crime.
In 2012
the Cadereyta massacre,
49 human torsos,
with which
organized crime
in some way is saying "let them get this message".
[Shoe polishing]
In 2009, we had registered
9,700 abductions
carried out by organized crime,
with a profit of 25 million dollars.
When we brought the report to President Calderón
titled "Welcome to the kidnapping hell",
he told us through a representative:
"9,700...
abductions…
is not enough…
for the State to do something...
for the migrants…
bring me more".
[♪ ♫]
The United States and Mexico are a coalition.
Mexico acts slavishly
through a deception that they swallowed for some reason:
"If you slow down...
this starving caravan of people,
I will let your Mexicans enter".
But something terrible was also happening
for Mexican migrants:
before the very eyes of the Mexican state
the United States continued building the wall.
[Wind sound]
There's been a radical change lately
coming from the National Institute of Migration.
Before, they didn't persecute migrants,
before, they didn't deport so many migrants.
Sometimes there were migrants who were in violent situations here
and we had to bring them to Migration so that they could be deported
because their lives were at risk,
and sometimes we fought so they could return home.
For me, my personal opinion,
is that the United States injected a lot of money
into the National Institute of Migration
in such a manner that now they have transportation,
they have more personnel, and so on.
That is to say that I think there was
a strong investment from the United States and a lot of political pressure.
When I entered the state of Chiapas, a state that has a lot of immigration enforcement,
two bicycles passed by the immigration guard station
without any issues.
And that was where I thought
of my bicycle,
and thanks to God, from Chiapas to here [Saltillo, Cohauila] it has been my
my passport.
It has been really...
really difficult, because sometimes the...
the cold, the hunger, and the heat...
have almost...
discourage us, but…
but we have drawn strength
from where there is none, as they say.
Of course, the Mexican government plays a huge part in this!
In the first place,
because it refuses to give documents to people that would allow them
not to travel on the roofs of trains,
not to travel through inhospitable places.
That's the first thing, that there are no documents.
Second, they grant impunity to all types of criminals to act however they want.
In 2009,
they abducted five migrants from here, two of them were women.
But it was the police who kidnapped them
and they were the ones who sold them to organized crime.
When they paid the ransom, they returned here to the house.
I went to fight with the Municipal President of Sabinas,
accusing the police because I had the proof,
but afterwards the municipal authorities openly told me:
"Father, we don't run the police,
they answer to organized crime".
[♪ ♫]
I was once followed by the border patrol, they followed me in Palenque,
and, well, what can I say, if I know one thing,
it's that border patrol is not allowed to carry weapons,
and they do carry weapons.
You know, they don't carry them around to shoot in the air,
they shoot to kill.
The question is: why?
We are not criminals who come here to stay,
we are just passing through.
Mexico: 32 states, 39 detention centers.
Over $684 000 spent in 2015 by the National Institute of Migration
to control and incarcerate migrants.
They detained me on February 10th.
We were a group of 15 people in one house,
it was around 11 at night,
we were already getting ready to go to bed,
and suddenly a group of armed people entered
with great violence to the house where we were staying,
pointing at us and telling us not to speak.
We thought they had come to kidnap us.
In my case, they dragged me out of the house and they kicked me three times,
they beat almost all of us.
They kept asking about drugs,
asking where the drugs were, and we started to identify ourselves and to say that we didn't know, anything,
that we were migrants,
that we were really nervous because we were outside of the house and it was really cold,
and finally, after an hour, they identified themselves
and said that they were judicial [police officers].
Migration took almost an hour and a half to arrive.
I think, just as a thought,
and I say this with some trepidation because I am in a different country, I am not in my own country,
when they're doing their job they should at least identify themselves when they enter places
to arrest people,
right?
Because one guy tried to escape when they arrived, and they beat him more,
because everyone thought that they were going to kill us.
Because you came today, they are giving us this food to eat.
It's good food because there are cameras.
Usually we only eat beans here.
Yeah, black beans.
[Laughs]
We are all the same.
We are all paisanos, even though we are from different countries,
we are still all paisanos.
We had almost reached the border when,
when a military operation arrested us.
They were state police.
We were nine in the group,
we didn't get to the destination, the state police dropped us off,
but it was state police, not Migration.
In fact, police told us that if we each gave them 100 pesos
that they would let us go.
but we gave them 100 pesos each,
and they didn't let us go.
They held us for 20 minutes in total,
until Migration arrived.
I'm still here because they took my wallet, and that had my identification in it
and my watch disappeared. They stole many of our belongings,
they took my cellphone.
Some people got their belongings back and others didn't.
What I really care about is my family and my life,
so I thought it better not to file a report
because what I really want the most is to go back to my country
and I don't want to be here any longer.
We are from Guatemala, you know...
Maybe we don't have the right to fight here in Mexico,
knowing that we are from Guatemala, maybe here we have different rights,
but at the same time, we are all human, and we all have the right to
to have opinions or to decide things, to question things.
Like over there where we're locked up it says "the right to know what is happening with your situation",
and we ask in the office and they don't tell us anything,
they just tell us it'll be the next trip, but they don't tell us when.
[♪ ♫] Children Area
I traveled by bus,
there were a lot of kids,
and I got off the bus with my son, and they put me in a single cell,
so that my son would be in an area where it was just him,
but he went crazy, he started to cry, he said he couldn't be without me and started shouting,
and what I said to them over there, to the boss where I was in the prison
was that they let me be with my child.
He told me no, no, no, and I begged and begged him to let me be with my son,
because if the boy was suffering, I was also suffering because I...
well I need to have my son with me.
They kept me and my son locked up for almost a month.
In the Migration detention center in Mexico it's pretty bad for us.
Because over there they humiliate us, they treat us badly, they reject us.
My daughter saw all of this, and she told me, "Mom, this is awful".
I mean psychologically I understand how it affects you as an adult,
but it affects children too.
[♪ ♫]
Between 2013 and 2014, child migration increased by 117%.
Since we go from center to center,
from here we are going to another one farther south,
and then to another, and after that they throw us back into Honduras.
We are really just being delayed while we stay here,
because we are going to turn around and come back as soon as they let us go.
We never get to Honduras, because we always come back.
We are made of pure adrenalin.
We exist and we want to achieve our dream,
and perhaps God willing, we will try again,
and those who have a dream to achieve, hopefully they will reach it.
[♪ ♫]
[COUNTING OFF PEOPLE] Three, four, five.
Arrival of deported people from Mexico to El Salvador.
Well, you know it's not easy to travel with kids on this journey, right?
It's even worse on the train.
So we decided to skip the train and look for ways to get there by bus
and that's where they got us, waiting for the bus.
We arrived in the morning in Tapachula,
and in Tapachula they held us for four days,
and from there they brought us here.
[♪ ♫]
We know that when they take us, we have to return to our country
and it's our country and we are not going to deny our homeland for any reason.
but we are threatened by the gangs.
[♪ ♫]
[OFFICER] That's the process that you will have to go through.
It consists of four steps, okay?
First we are going to conduct an interview with the General Directorate for Migration and Foreign Nationals,
a short interview, where they don't ask you questions…
Arrival of deported people from USA to El Salvador.
[♪ Plane turbines♫]
I lived in Dallas, Texas,
and I am from San Miguel, El Salvador.
I lived there for seven years
and I worked as a cook.
[INFORMATIONAL VOICE] For those who have the economic means to do so...
the management has authorized a carrier to provide this service.
I migrated for the first time in 1991.
I am coming from Aubrey, Texas.
[Murmurs]
Well...
you get caught if you make a mistake. For example if you are driving
and the police stop you, they ask you for your ID
and you show it to them, then they ask you for your license and you don't have it,
it is at this point that they realize that you aren't legal
y por eso te puede arrestar,
and they can arrest you for that.
Or also they…
if there are raids too, raids happen when you are working and they arrive
at your work and they arrest everyone who doesn't have papers.
I was on my way to work
when I was arrested.
I had to leave my wife, my three kids.
They're citizens, and my wife is too.
I think that people's painful stories motivate them to move.
Moving comes with a great deal of challenges too,
from the other contexts where they migrate to.
Because you travel and you move with your poverty,
your life doesn't change automatically.
You will have to work tremendously hard, who knows how many working days.
You get there and you don't speak the language,
or you don't wear the right clothes.
You leave your sons and your daughters in another country, in another land,
and you have to try to interpret new cultural codes.
And you have to live with the racism.
I think this is something…
really intense.
[Wind]
[♪ ♫]
This journey is not pretty,
but I didn't have any other choice.
I had to give it my best, not let anything get me down.
You think you are coming for a better life, but there are times when,
you are there and you realize that
that it's not how you thought it would be.
It has been difficult to get here,
but here on this journey you find many people who
are friendly to you, like if you don't have anything to eat
they give you food, they give you water,
they don't let... they don't let you lose anyone.
[Wind]
The Right to Hope
[♪ ♫]
So, this started in 2012,
we started
thinking about what we could do to
receive our brothers and sisters, realizing that migration was necessary for them.
It started with seven people
who were part of the Basic Ecclesial Communities.
We tried to give everyone a voluntary part in the co-op
and from this we began to build it, we built the cabin,
so that people could rest and they could, uh,
eat and continue on their way, this is our main objective.
Because, well, we know that we have an obligation towards our neighbor, you know.
This is where we prepare it, we give them food,
we, you know, do whatever...
Because sometimes they come here in the middle of the night,
sometimes at midday,
and some people tried to scare us,
saying, you know, "Why do you welcome people into your homes
if you don't know them? They could be robbers,
they could be violent people,
and you let them into your homes".
And we told them,
"Well no, I mean we are afraid, but you know,
we have the help of God,
God will not abandon us".
[Crackle]
For the same reason that we suffer,
for that reason one begins to feel that
one needs to do that, to build this kingdom on Earth,
a unified kingdom, for each other as people, you know.
Ground Jesus' teachings
in this town.
We do not have a salary to support us, you know,
but to see what they suffer,
walking and sleeping in the mountains,
in the cold, well…
All this motivates us to think
that it is important to do this work.
[♪ ♫]
This is an obligation to God,
to help the people who need it most, in this case the migrants.
They look for this space, the place where we are now,
to receive them, to help them,
to give them a place to rest, a safe place,
and the opportunity to tidy up and feed themselves.
[Dominoes clashing]
We are about eight or nine blocks away,
which is less than a kilometer,
from the Río Bravo, and this allows migrants to get here, and have the change to get close to
and see the border,
in order to have hope.
By the time they get here to Piedras Negras we almost always have migrants
who have come by train
and who have passed through all the vulnerable situations that migrants deal with.
But it often happens that
people come together in this house,
those who are looking for the American Dream,
and those who have been deported,
those for whom the American Dream has ended.
[♪ ♫]
These days Central Americans who arrive here
have already been traveling for about two months.
When, before, they would have been traveling for two weeks,
two weeks since they left their country, Honduras,
about 15 to 20 days to get here. Now we are talking about
two to three months,according to the father.
All the roundabout traveling that they do
walking to avoid
all the checkpoints from the National Institute of Migration.
And yet they continue, despite the fact that vigilance is increasing
more and more both in Mexico,
from the National Institute of Migration and from
the Border Patrol in the United States.
And we keep working together,
serving migrants, which has been the goal
since the house was started in September of 1994.
[♪ ♫]
Tomorrow I will have been here for a week, I got here on Thursday.
Here they treat us like a mother would treat her children,
sharing her water, her food, everything.
When we started this home, we did it to defend the lives of migrants,
who were being found dead,
attacked in the streets or in places close to here.
And we asked the authorities: "why are there people from Central America being killed here?"
So our story began, our first job
was to stop the murders,
to protect this forced migration from violence
and that was how our home started.
[♪ ♫]
So this is your house, we are here to serve you.
-Thank you.
-Welcome everyone.
Welcome to the Migrant House of Saltillo,
starting now, you can stay here for five more days,
enjoy them. And if you need more time, just let us know.
-Great so, those were the main points.
-This house is basically, like it says in the video, this house is for you all.
-To finish, we are going to pass these out one at a time.
-What said in there is some basic information.
[COUNTING] Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, okay then.
-Take one.
[Laugh]
-Don't look.
-Don't look! You totally saw it. -You saw!
-One more time.
[Laughs]
-Close your eyes.
-Who got number one?
My situation, the reason I left my country, was to look for a future for my daughters,
beacuse so many of us are leaving our villages in Bajo Aguán,
due to so much violence.
I have to do it for my wellbeing, because I have to buy my land,
my cottage, in order to survive,
because now frankly, well, I am 60 years old,
but I still have the strength to work, I have the strength to lift a pack of cement,
work in all that.
No, no...
I don't feel weak, I still feel powerful.
-Okay so today I'm going to read you a short quote,
it's really great, and then after we will
discuss it as group to see if we are on the same page, okay?
-Okay so it says: "We are probably not close relatives,
but if you are willing to shudder with outrage
every time there is injustice in the world
then we are partners, and that is more important".
-What do we understand from that?
-That friendship matters more.
-Okay so friendship matters, what else?
-Solidarity.
-That if all of us are feeling the same pain as the one who is in trouble,
we're onto something.
-Yes.
-We're together in this.
-In fact, this makes us more of a family than blood,
feeling pain because of another person's situation,
that makes us more than brothers.
-To be supportive.
-To be supportive. Anyone else?
We don't have a lot of money,
but we have a lot of support from the community,
yes.
And it is not from big companies,
but we have support from a lot of people, from groups of churches and groups of families,
from groups of residents, from high schools, from universities,
who donate. They say: "We can't offer much...".
But this little bit is a lot for us, and here we go, I mean,
there is not a day that goes by with only rice and beans, every day we have some kind of good food.
[Sound of people cooking]
All the housework is done with the help of the migrants,
so for each job there is a collaboration from the migrants,
coordinated by some volunteer.
[♪ Singing popular song ♫]
Oh, I mean, it's beautiful but I don't know any more than that, but I like it a lot.
[♪ ♫]
-Bye.
-Bye, princess.
[♪ ♫]
[Four dead bodies found in the state of Michoacan]
And my destination is Atlanta, Georgia,
right?,
to see if God will let me pass this time,
to get by the gringos.
-Now it's my turn to beat you.
-No, I will win, look.
-Yes. But because you didn't take my double, I am hanging on.
-Nooo!
-No what?
-You don't win, but you enjoy.
I was talking to my grandmother two days ago,
and she told me that my little brother always looks for me in the afternoons,
he is always crawling onto my bed to look for me,
saying my name, saying: "Giovanny where are you?, Giovanny!"
And that many times she has found him there sleeping.
I love my brother and I miss him so much,
I wish I could hug him right now and I can't,
I wish I could hug my grandmother and I can't.
But like I told you, I can't go back because I have to complete my mission
that has brought me here.
-Scoot back a little so we can fit everyone.
[♪ ♫]
I consider them my friends,
I consider them my brothers.
If I have learned anything in this house,
it is to have affection for a friend as I would for a brother.
And I feel very comfortable, being surrounded by you all,
because even though you are not my family, I feel as though we are related.
Well I wish you all the best, don't ever give up guys.
I wish you luck,
never lose hope.
[♪ ♫]
This strong faith that you have, like ours,
that is what keeps us going.
We are going to turn this faith, within the Via Crucis, into protest, into protest, okay?
What is this painful journey with the cross? It is your journey!
Nothing more, nothing less, okay?
Christ's Stations of the Cross is you.
It is you who they strip,
it is you who they beat,
it is you who are unjustly put to death.
You don't even have a lawyer!
So we are going to leave, passing over all this.
I have always told them
the only image
of Christ
that I revere
is you all.
You are the victims,
you are the historical embodiment of Christ,
the beaten down, the crucified,
in order to found
a history of liberation, you had to traverse
the extremes of suffering
and face death and injustice.
That is what you are doing!
You have started this revolution, this silent social rebellion
of the oppressed,
towards a new world where there are not oppressed people.
You are doing this,
and for that reason you are the crucified in history.
Soon history will be written
based on you all.
Let's rehearse the lyrics, please.
Raise your heaving chest,
[Coughs]
and we will bear this cross,
our historical memory,
of the migrants, our beloved migrants who have been murdered, okay?
When we walk out the door we will start singing.
[SINGING] He died for me too. And today he will die again.
In every brother that suffers, he dies again.
In every brother that suffers, he dies again.
The powerful always kill the innocent.
The powerful always kill the innocent.
The fifth station: Simón from Cirinea, helps Jesus to carry the cross.
Jesus is so weak and so tired from what has happened that he cannot bear his cross alone.
Simón from Cirinea appears,
a person who does not make great speeches nor does extraordinary things,
but who silently helps Jesus to continue on his painful journey.
The simple and quiet action of Cirineo is very important
because it reminds us of all the people that silently and unselfishly
live out their faith to the fullest
by directly helping other people.
There are good people in the world,
there are simple people who live their lives doing good,
who have compassion for the migrant on their path.
They support them, they give them food, they give them a place to sleep and recover so they may continue,
and more than anything they give them hope that they are not alone,
that love and human solidarity still exist,
so they may know people with open hearts who embrace strangers with compassionate.
-Goodbye. -Tell everyone goodbye.
-Goodbye, Silvis.
-I wish you the best, take care of yourself.
-Be good, take care of yourself. -I will.
-I'll call you, alright? -Okay then, see you later.
-I wish you the best.
[♪ ♫]
They're not fooling themselves.
But they want so strongly
to have a chance at a better life,
that it makes them invincible
against any adversity that might present itself.
I don't know, I feel like I learn from their example,
to see them keep going like that,
and they don't give up.
For me, that's admirable,
these people who walk.
NO MORE WALLS For the Right Not to Emigrate and the Right to Immigrate
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