With our presentations behind us, we woke up Wednesday morning far more relaxed than the day before. Graciela had pan pobre and café olla for us to enjoy. We joined Kim for a brief walk to the bus stop and bounced along looking at the businesses, traffic and people going by.
We entered the faculty lounge building which is equipped with computers. Gosia had given us her password, so we were able to work. After answering email and blogging, we met Jon Luckhurst and Gosia at Starbucks. Of course there’s a Starbucks. They treated us to a light lunch and a heavier discussion. I think Jon had been waiting for someone like Richard to arrive with whom he could compare notes about political discourse in the context of international relations. Luckhurst and a friend of his are working on a project that incorporates discourse analysis with game theory and how it can influence international relations.
A point Richard made was about how the US always thinks it can “make its own weather.” The US wants to be lead dog in all things and isn’t particularly interested in perspectives of other countries. Luckhurst noted that the US needed to look at immigration issues from an international relations/policies perspective rather than a domestic one. It made me realize that interviewing an international relations expert would be a good thing for our project, particularly if we write this book.
Luckhurst, quite the scholar, noted the term “glocalization,” popularized by sociologist Roland Robertson. Glocalization describes the tempering effects of local conditions on global pressures. At a 1997 conference on “Globalization and Indigenous Culture,” Robertson said that glocalization “means the simultaneity — the co-presence — of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies.”
The increasing presence of McDonalds restaurants worldwide is an example of globalization, while the restaurant chain’s menu changes in an attempt to appeal to local palates are an example of glocalization. Perhaps even more illustrative of glocalization: For promotions in France, the restaurant chain recently chose to replace its familiar Ronald McDonald mascot with Asterix the Gaul, a popular French cartoon character.
Luckhurst will be sending us articles by Robertson as well as by Jan Neederveen Pieterse.
Pieterse is Mellichamp Professor of global studies and sociology in the Global and International Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in globalization, development studies and cultural studies. He currently focuses on new trends in twenty-first century globalization and the implications of economic crisis. He has been visiting professor in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, and Thailand. He is an editor of Clarity Press and associate editor of Futures, Globalizations, Encounters, European Journal of Social Theory, Ethnicities, Third Text and Journal of Social Affairs.
We also discussed the fact that hybridization has always existed and therefore immigration, and its impact on identity, is really not so significant. Well, we’d kept Jon long enough from his meeting, and I was concerned that his scalp would burn as we sat outside. He went off to his next engagement and Gosia, Rodrigo, Richard and I prepared to make our way to Lecheria.
A word about cabs in Mexico. They don’t always know where places are. Lecheria isn’t very far from Tec, but it isn’t a direct path to get there. Finally Rodrigo chimed in and we arrived. We noticed a sign above the door that wasn’t there in the summer. It recognized DIF, Desarrollo Integral de la Familia. We knocked and were not greeted by either of the Guadalupes or Gustavos who have been there on previous occasions, but rather by Rugelio. He didn’t know us, but after a few minutes, Gustavo called him to let him know who we were and then he opened up to us.
Milagro. That’s the only word I could think of when we saw the transformations to Casa Migrante since I was there in July. It was in the same condition when Richard visited in November. Milagro. New bathrooms with two toilets in each facility, a new shower and nice tile floors and walls. Milagro. Brand new beds lining both sides of the large common room. We moved to the back and saw two people sorting donated food. Milagro. We walked outside and across to the chapel. A portion of it had been converted into a bigger kitchen with greater capacity to prepare food. And there were lots of fresh vegetables and cans of food stacked neatly in the pantry.
This was a far cry from the previous Casa Migrante at Lecheria. Then, they cobbled together whatever meals they could with what little had been contributed.
Rugelio explained that he had approached the previous mayor about some funding to improve the facility, but was turned down cold. The current mayor (and that’s our interpretation of his position) has greater political aspirations and saw the benefit in creating some goodwill and doing some good in the area. DIF got involved and very quickly the change occurred.
The changes weren’t just physical. There are now teams of volunteers scheduled daily who come in to help. The migrants themselves help take care of the place, tending to the cleaning. Rugelio said that he tells the migrants that they will be treated with respect and that in order to continue to serve the migrants still coming, they need to keep the place clean. Two Hondurans busily sorted vegetables and then swept and mopped the floor.
Rugelio told us his story. His mother and aunt had always been “muy católica,” and had been involved in various mission work. He helped on occasion, but when his mother died, he and his father didn’t get along well so he decided to go north to the United States to find work there. He worked in restaurants in LA for five years. He pocketed some money and decided to return to Mexico because the faith he had always held waned upon his mother’s death and he was feeling the need to reconnect with God in an important way. He found his aunt, Guadalupe, “Lupita” still working in Casa Migrante, quietly going about doing what needed to be done to meet the needs of the constant flow of migrants. He wanted to do more. He started going out and talking to people about what they were doing. He was working to get support for the albergue, or mission. He took some time away and visited Oaxaca and the albergue at San Luis Potosí. “I’m not married. I don’t have children. I don’t need much myself,” he said.
He told us that a group from Comisión de Derechos Humanos, Estado de México, came to take two of the Hondurans to Toluca, the capital of the state. They wanted to go back to Honduras. Because of the dangers of the trip, the Human Rights Commission pays their transport and accompanies them back to the border, feeding them along the way.
He also said that they often get indigent Mexicans who show up. “We feed them, we let them bathe, but we don’t let them stay here. They have other options as Mexican citizens,” he said.
He said that the flow of migrants, now more than 90% Honduran, required them to change their policy from a 3 day to a 24 hour stay. “It also makes it harder for the coyotes to prey upon the migrants. It’s hard to keep the coyotes out completely, but we do try to minimize their contact,” Rugelio said. He asked a Honduran what it was about his country that was driving people north. Is it the poverty? “It isn’t the poverty. It’s the misery,” he was told. It’s being robbed because of desperation of many. It’s the gangs and the drugs, he said.
He is convinced that he had God’s backing. I told him that seeing the well-stocked pantry after seeing the paltry food stuffs they had in the summer reminded me of the story of Jesus and the loaves and fishes. He told me that one night they had a group of migrants show up. “All we had to offer them was coffee. We felt bad because we didn’t have food for them. There was a knock at the door and standing there was a woman who gave us two bags of bread,”Rugelio said.
We took a walk along the tracks to see where the migrants get off the train. We thought about going to where they get on, but there weren’t many migrants in the shelter at the moment and didn’t think we’d see much. We walked to the tracks and observed the people walking along them. Construction workers carried ladders, a woman pulled a cart over the tracks, workers finished with their jobs made their way home along the tracks. A train came, but it was loaded with chemicals. It didn’t have the kinds of cars the migrants ride. Still, we visited with Rugelio. And I talked with Gosia. The experience, she said, made her think of her grandfather. “I hadn’t thought about him before,” she said. “He was not a migrant by choice, but rather was exiled from where he lived what is now the Ukraine when the map in Eastern Europe was redrawn. He was moved to Poland. Like these migrants, he didn’t ride in a passenger train. He rode like cargo,” she said.
I told her that everyone has an immigration story. Many in the US aren’t familiar with their story, but we actually started a presentation at a church by asking people to recall an immigration story in their own families.
I talked to Rugelio about the work that Padre Alejandro Solalinde is doing in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. He said that many of the migrants speak of this great man. Richard and I both encouraged him to make his way down to visit with him. They are kindred spirits.
After about an hour of waiting along the tracks with no train in sight, we made our way back to the albergue. It was getting late and Carlos was going to be picking us up. When we entered, Rugelio’s attention fell upon two young migrant men. They spoke for a few minutes. Both looked visibly upset. Soon Rugelio asked if they would be willing to talk to us. And although they were unwilling to be videotaped, they were willing to talk to us. We went to the entryway to the kitchen to talk.
We told them a bit about what we do and how important it was for us to show Americans that the migrants are human beings, just like us. We wanted them to see that they also want safety and security, the opportunity to work and raise their families.
One young man was tall and thin with a head of beautiful curly hair. His eyes were red. When we started to ask him about his family, he wept. He was leaving behind his wife and 4-year-old son. He was leaving because he couldn’t feed his family. He worked painting automobiles. He said he could make a decent living if he had his own tools and could open his own shop, but in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, your position of employment was terminated with no cause. He kept trying to find work, but exhausted his resources.
He’d had 6 years of formal schooling, but spoke as one with more education. He was one of 7 children. He was very close to his mother. “She made clothes for me and made sure I had toys, even Crayolas,” he said. She has since died.
He and his friend joined the migrant trail 10 days earlier. It is a brutal road, fraught with kidnappings and robbery. They had to pay several bribes, some to Mexican law enforcement. We asked if it was local police or federal. Both, they said.
His friend was stockier, but also tall. Also 23, he looked more like 19. He is also a father – his wife and 3-year-old daughter are still in Honduras. He had more education including certification in two different trades. Yet, his job prospects were the same as his friend’s. With so many young men coming north, we asked them, what has become of the friends you grew up with? Are they up north? “Many are dead,” the second man said. Gangs, drugs, selling drugs because it’s the only way to make money, is risky business, they said.
Rodrigo explained to them the road ahead of them. They planned to cross in Arizona. He explained that the Sonora Desert is equivalent in size to the country of Honduras, only isolated. It can be quite cold in the desert at night and the days will start heating up. Did they know where they were going? The first young man has a friend in Phoenix, but they want to make their way to San Francisco.
We wished them well. I gave them a hug and the first young man said that usually no one wants to touch them because they are dirty.
Later, back at Graciela’s, she told me that I needed to use less of my heart and more of my head in working with the migrants or their suffering would become my own. I occasionally hold onto a particular migrant and his story, but Guadalupe told me last summer that that holds true for her, as well. I don’t think it’s a problem because Richard and I, and often the students, or in this case Rodrigo and Gosia, talk about the interviews afterward as a way of debriefing. It helps us keep our eyes on our reasons for being involved in the Cross-Border Issues Group.
Graciela fed us mole Oaxaceña and then she, Richard and I cleaned the kitchen in an atmosphere of joyousness.
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