Category: Migration

On the Border, Small Farmers Tackle Big Issues of Migration, Climate Change, Food Policy

November 20, 2017

Ciudad Juarez on the Chihuahua-Texas border has historically been a nexus of migration and global capital flows. Now that the presidency of Donald Trump has revived international debates on both, the international small farmers’ organization, Via Campesina, gathered from around the world there in early November to examine the connections between low-wage work, migration and the environment.

The End of a Dream

September 8, 2017

After weeks of rumors and tweets, Donald Trump announced his decision to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a notorious racist and anti-migrant advocate, broke the news with the gleeful expression he reserves for when he’s destroying the lives of thousands of Latino or Muslim or Black or Indigenous people.

The Trump-Peña call

August 7, 2017

The Washington Post published the full transcript of the January 27 phone call between Donald J. Trump and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto and it has stirred up the usual voyeuristic interest in the inner workings of the U.S. president’s disturbed mind. But more than that, it reveals the bizarre relationship between an ego-driven domestic agenda and a rudderless and opportunistic foreign policy.

Guatemalans Driven from their Homes Stuck in Limbo on Mexican Border

July 7, 2017

After traveling the 3 kilometers to the border, the Laguna Larga community arrived in Campeche, Mexico. There, the refugees were met by the Mexican Nacional Institute of Migration (INM) and armed federal and state police who had been informed days before of the impending eviction by the Guatemalan authorities. Barred from entering further into Mexico, the villagers were forced to stay in makeshift tents made from plastic bags on the 8-meter border zone between Campeche and El Petén.

Mexico Hosts SouthCom Conference to Launch Plan Pentagon Against Central American Migrants

June 14, 2017

Mexico’s Secretaries of Government and Foreign Relations and Defense and Marine Secretariats will stand beside their U.S. co-hosts June 15 and 16 to launch the new Plan Pentagon for Central America. They won’t call it that, of course. Vice President Mike Pence will open the event “Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America”, before the presidents, the generals and representatives from observer countries.

Refugees: Caught Between Violence and Persecution

May 19, 2017

This viacrucis, or Stations of the Cross, was made up of about 300 migrants, including women and children, who traveled through Mexico, ending up in Mexico City. According to one of its communiqués, its fundamental purpose is “to escape the southern border, which has condemned many people without papers to precarious work, discrimination and the absence of state protection.”

Fear and Resistance on the Border of Trump America

May 18, 2017

The Caravan Against Fear set out from Sacramento April 10 in eight white vans that carried some fifty people, most of us strangers before the trip. We traced the border from California to Texas and back again, and learned about friendship, solidarity and resistance on the border of Trump America.

On May Day, Protestors Show Transnational Unity As Tensions Heighten

May 16, 2017

May Day is a transnational event in the Paso del Norte borderlands of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez-southern New Mexico. At this year’s demonstrations, U.S. and Mexican activists joined together to denounce Trump administration immigration policies, current and looming wars, Peña Nieto administration economic and labor reforms, femicides, the forced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa college students, attacks on workers, and Mexico’s pending internal security law.