They can’t stay and they have nowhere to go. Forced out by poverty and the threat of imminent death in their countries, extorted by organized crime, kidnapped and executed in the transit countries and deported if they make it to their destination.
In a series of preliminary opinions, an international tribunal of conscience has condemned massive violations of human rights in Mexico.
Journalists can´t overlook the potential of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, whose Joint Public Advisory Committee hearings are accessible via webcast on Oct. 17 and 18.
Venezuelan society organized in movements to defend territories is the dynamic factor in making change, and in weaving a new kind of social relations.
As the Comprehensive Immigration Reform advances in the U.S. Senate, repressive policies against migrants who pass through Mexico have become more pronounced and represent a huge step backwards.
The obsession of U.S. politicians to “increase security at the border” has resulted in an unprecedented rise in the dangers to people crossing the border without authorization. In this sense, the notion of “security” at the heart of the legislative discussion on immigration reform in the United States is at odds with the safety of human beings.
On January 21, Enrique Peña Nieto stood poised behind a podium in Las Margaritas, a city seized by the Zapatista National Liberation Army in 1994. Before him, hundreds of wide-brimmed hats shifted in the afternoon sun. He arranged his papers and prepared to address the residents of Chiapas, a state where 78 percent of the population lives in poverty. Flanked by Rosario Robles, Secretary of Social Development, (Sedesol) and a number of local civil servants, Peña Nieto announced the launch of the National Crusade Against Hunger.
The price hike in transportation was the crack that revealed deep discontent in Brazilian society. In less than two weeks, the demonstrations multiplied: from 5,000 the first days, to more than a million in a hundred cities. Inequality, the lack of participation and repression are the big issues.
I read the statistics before joining 16 School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) activists on our first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border–before I followed Steve into the Sonora desert to drop off water jugs on migrant trails, before I watched Olga call her coyote to make sure he’d delivered her son safely, before I conversed with Pedro and tried not to stare at his missing leg – severed by The Beast, the deadly train that migrants hop to travel through Mexico. Before I stood at the wall with Jose Antonio’s mother and wondered why the Border Patrol pumped so many bullets into his young body as he walked along a street in his own city, on the Mexican side.
“Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations. While we recognize that transnational crime and drug-trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region.”
