YES! Weekly article

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.

From Durham to Cieneguilla

Chickens peck at feed outside a home in Cieneguilla near a brick house under construction, paid for by funds from remittances sent back from the United States. (photo by Jordan Green)

By Dr. Steven A. Channing

It is raining in Cieneguilla, high in the mountains of southern Mexico. I listen to the sounds outside the window of my host family’s home: rain pattering on tin roofs, turkeys gobbling, children laughing. It’s a good moment to reflect on the 1,800 mile journey I’ve taken almost to the border of Guatemala, as one of 20 delegates with the organization Witness for Peace. For the past 25 years, Witness has shepherded “gringos” to places south of the U.S. border, to observe and sometimes help amend the effects of U.S. economic, political and military policies in Latin America. I am here to better understand the roots of migration from Mexico and Central America to Durham and countless other communities across North Carolina and the United States.

Concerned about the drumbeat of fearful calls against supposed “illegal alien” threats to our economy and national security, I chose to come to Mexico, and specifically to this little village of Cieneguilla, for a surprising number of young men and women from this place have lived and worked – are living and working today! – in Durham. They look familiar to me, short of stature, their skin a bronzed brown, black eyes and hair…. you’ve seen them too, busing our tables and cooking our food in local restaurants, painting and hammering, cleaning our toilets. From this little place of barely 2,000 souls, many hundreds have passed through our city, walking and working among us, seen and invisible.

Why do they take the long, expensive and dangerous journey to Durham? Frankly, this mountain-top community is prettier, and unlike Durham, at least thus far, they have chickens and turkeys in their back yards! They love their ancient Indian culture – Chatino is everyone’s first language, Spanish second, a smattering of English third. They leave a tight, tradition-bound place for the disorienting individualism of American life, to be hassled and hustled, charged upwards of $2,000 to be spirited across desert borders at night, be separated from families, often for years, to work 12 and 14 hour days off the books. They come for the same reason my grandparents came from Europe a century ago, to feed hungry children, to find jobs where there were none at home, do work many of us would find demeaning. They come in order to send remittances home that have helped lift up the lives of the old folks and children left behind.

Most of us are familiar with this story, and I understand how the current economic downturn has accentuated the fear. But would we be as hostile as many are if these folks were white, Canadian “illegals” desperately trying to earn meager livings? Do we understand how U.S. trade policies, including NAFTA, have crushed small farmers, as they benefit corporate agri-businesses? Do we acknowledge how an insatiable appetite for marijuana and cocaine and heroin right here in the United States is what’s really driving the “drug wars” south of our borders?

Like most of his friends, my host came to work in Durham not to stay but to return and live in Cieneguilla with a modest but real improvement his and his family’s life. They now live in a small concrete home he built for $1,200 with the money he earned following three years of harsh and unfriendly conditions working on North Roxboro Street. They no longer live in what is now the chicken coop, and to me at least, that seems like a good argument for a more fair and humane trade and immigration policy. I don’t claim to know exactly what it would look like, I just hope for a change for the better, in Durham and world wide.

Dr. Steven A. Channing is a historian and documentary filmmaker in Durham, NC.

U.S. and Mexico: interdependent and unequal

A village in southern Oaxaca (photo by Jordan Green)

By Irene Godinez

The United States and Mexico have a complicated, yet intrinsically dependent relationship with each other. Nowhere else on the planet does a “third world country” border a world “superpower.” Another distinctive component is that nowhere else on the globe does a nation exist where the disparities between excessive wealth vs. extreme poverty are more visible than in Mexico. These two facts create extreme tension and further strain the already dysfunctional relationship between the two nations.

To say that historically these countries have always been at odds is a gross understatement. The United States and Mexico experienced significant hardships, causing a faulty foundation in their relationship that continues to perpetuate a severely unequal and unstable relationship that cripples millions of innocent citizens on either side of the border.

During a recent journey to Mexico to witness the roots of migration, a delegation of mostly North Carolinians learned by speaking to Mexican workers how gravely the North American Free Trade Act, or NAFTA, has affected their lives. While NAFTA was promoted as a panacea to Mexico’s malaise – specifically economically – hardly any of the promises made to Mexican workers have materialized. While there is enough blame to go around, the US government is seen by Mexican workers as most culpable considering the tremendous influence it has over the Mexican government. NAFTA bankrupted the vast majority of small farmers in Mexico – most of whom have looked northward for survival, even knowing that they could lose their lives in the journey.

Many Mexican workers with whom we spoke asked why the US government doesn’t allow them to enter the United States legally to work. After all, they are no longer able to work their lands or work in their communities because of US-Mexico policies. While we can’t deny the complicity of the Mexican government in robbing millions of Mexican workers the most basic survival opportunities, the United States must use its influence over Mexico to allow its citizens the opportunity to prosper at home.

Mexico continues to experience extreme disparities, with the majority of its citizenry living in poverty and where jobs continue to deplete at alarming rates, for Mexican workers the only option to “make it” is migrating north. It is disturbing to see these two nations continue to use each other for economic gains for a few corporate giants at the expense of workers on both sides of the border.

The reality of these nations is that the United States cannot survive without the labor of its immigrant – mostly Mexican – workforce, and Mexico cannot sustain itself without the remittances of these workers. Unfortunately, neither government has come forward to change or create policies that could benefit its workers because in the end corporations and capital have taken precedence over just and human treatment of workers.

Irene Godinez is advocacy director for El Pueblo in Raleigh, NC.