Being in Mexico, I was struck by the magnitude of the northern migration: Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans in Oaxaca City, preparing to travel through San Luis Potosi, Nuevo Laredo and then across yet another border into the United States; Oaxacans heading to Sinaloa and Baja California for construction jobs; Oaxacans heading virtually everywhere in the United States for work in Chinese restaurants; small tobacco farmers from Nayarit heading to North Carolina to work on large tobacco farms; Chinese immigrants reportedly shot by Mexican authorities in a van traveling through Veracruz.
As much as the staggering numbers of migrants I'm stunned by the utter brutality and exploitation of the process: Central Americans victimized by Mexican gangs that kidnap, rape and assault them; police and railroad employees that extort them; and coyotes that charge exhorbitant fees to take them across the border to the United States. And then there is the case of Farm Labor Organizing Committee organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz, who was murdered at his workplace in Monterrey in 2006. The likely reason is that the union's work cut into the profits of unscrupulous Mexican recruiting agencies previously in a position to demand illegal surcharges from workers applying to the H2-A guestworker progam.
This and more is detailed in my cover story, published today by YES! Weekly.
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