In the last migrant caravan that left Tapachula, Chiapas, last weekend, one of the men walking in the front row shouted: “We want to get to Mexico City.” The country’s capital has become the new promised land. The United States is too far away for a wave of hundreds of undone men, women and children, with no savings other than those sent by their relatives and those that the mafias have not yet managed to snatch from them. The footage of the US border patrol crackdown a few months ago sent you a very clear message: stay on the other side. As they advanced north, crossing towns, jungle and train tracks, Daniel Arias followed them from his cell phone, surprised: “Do you really want to come here?”
Arias is 18 years old and has been surviving in the capital of Mexico for three years since he arrived from a small town in El Salvador. He never imagined that his last stop at La Bestia – the dreaded freight train that also carries thousands of migrants on its back – would be in this city, ahead of time. But he was too small to continue north alone. His brothers, some of whom had already done it three times – and deported three times – advised him to settle in the country. And he is still very afraid of the stories that come from the desert, the Rio Grande, the drug traffickers and the massacres.
But Mexico is not Oklahoma either. From where the stories of prosperity came to his little Salvadoran house by phone. His brother earned in dollars, many more a week than they had ever passed through the Arias’ hut. And their salary saved them from more days from sunrise to sunset working the land: corn and beans. Thanks to the dollars, Arias was able to go to school. And before he was taught to read, he learned what death was. His father was shot to death in front of him when he was six years old. And for that alone, he never wanted to join a gang. The youngest of nine siblings fled El Salvador the day gang members threatened to kill him and any man of his blood.
He prefers not to tell his mother that he has slept in ATMs in the State of Mexico. Nor that the banks of the Alameda, in the center of the capital, are a safe place, where they also dance cumbia at night and make their sleep more enjoyable. Much less than when he finally got a job, in a blacksmith shop, a client yelled at him: “Go to your country, starving,” and he was not silent. And now he has no income other than a plate of chicken rice that is about to be eaten at a migrant shelter. Who shares a windowless bunk room with six Haitians.
“And why do you want to come here?”
Gabriela Hernández directs Tochán House, one of the few centers in Mexico City that give asylum to the new wave of migrants seeking in the capital what they would have sought in the United States a few months ago. From January to September of this year, at least 11,311 people have arrived in the city, according to figures from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar). Some statistics that possibly hide all those who have not started the process yet; or that they did it in Chiapas, but they got tired of waiting for an answer – on the southern border, more than 63,000 have requested it, the highest number in history – or those who have not been able to do it directly.
Doña Gaby, as the tenants call her, struggles these days to take advantage of every corner of this gray work space. A network of rooms, stairs and more improvised sheet rooms where 32 migrants coexist in bunk beds, mostly Haitian men who arrived a month ago from Tapachula. “Those days we became more than 80 people. Mattresses were placed in the corridors, on the terrace, at the door of the bathrooms ”, says the director.
From the shelter, which does not get institutional support and is only financed through private donations, they try to get them a job and little by little they achieve independence. But it is being especially hard for the Haitian population, as the language barrier is another obstacle for potential employers, according to Hernández. Those who have gotten a temporary job have done it at a construction site in the back street, 200 pesos a day (almost 10 dollars). And on Thursdays, between legal counseling workshops for their asylum procedures, they give Spanish classes.
The government of the capital, led by Claudia Sheinbaum, warned that no exceptional measures would be taken in the face of the new arrival of hundreds of migrants. No government shelters or any other measure will be set up to alleviate the pressure that civil society centers are receiving these days. “From what we know, his presence will not be very long,” said the president a few weeks ago. The only option they have is to apply for a refugee in the Comar – burdened with cases and with a small budget – and regularize their stay to get a formal job. But the bureaucracy has extended the deadlines if possible, and many have gone months without a response. While that happens, the only way out is to try to survive.
If Arias could choose, because choosing death is not an option, he would return to his town. He misses the countryside, the fresh air, playing soccer with his friends, going for a walk hand in hand with his mother after eating. He misses his mother a lot. Now he lives in a colony of gray alleys and steep little houses, with no green space other than the urban garden that an NGO has installed on the roof of the shelter. And the months, like this one, in which there is no work, not even a penny to go to the movies, he spends his time glued to Facebook. “And why do they want to come here?” He insists as he watches the videos of the last caravan.
“We earn just enough to eat”
A half-hour drive from there, a group of Haitians seek to survive by placing and loading boxes at the Central de Abastos, the country’s largest market. Max Boyer, 24, Gerline Louis, 25, and Jean Hyppolite, 45, are among the more than 500 compatriots who managed to break through the siege of Tapachula, on the southern border, and reach the capital by buses a month ago .
They get up at five in the morning. They wash their faces. They put on their clothes. They hardly eat breakfast: at that time nothing comes in. They have to take a metro and a bus to travel a journey of more than two hours from the center of the capital, where they live in a pension, to their job: a marketer that sells spices as well as legumes, sauces, syrups or mix for micheladas. The boxes come from the floor to the ceiling. The counter has glass displays with chocolates, nuts and sweets. “We were going to the United States, but not because we love that country, we want a better life. If we get jobs and papers here, we stay in Mexico ”, says Boyer.
Boyer and Louis have been a couple since they met years ago in Chile. For most Haitians the journey began years ago: from the island to South America. He, a computer technician, traveled at the age of 19, alone. She a little later. In Haiti he studied Chemistry and worked in a laboratory. But now he can’t find anything of his own, he says as he places cans of sauce on one of the shelves at the Central de Abastos stand. Boyer was the first to get a job when he arrived in the capital. From Tapachula they came with an unexpected surprise. Louis was pregnant. But within a few days, he began to have a severe headache. His pressure rose. He fell. It started to bleed. He lost the baby. A week ago, she joined the job alongside Boyer and Hyppolite, who came in just before her.
Louis sees reality starkly. By force, she has become the most pessimistic of the three. When he speaks he always uses a serious, sober tone. And the atmosphere is dominated by a question, a constant doubt: after having been away from home for years; of having crossed a dozen countries looking for a better life on a journey in which every corner represents a new danger; of arriving in a city where they are supposed to welcome the migrant when seeking refuge, but where in reality there is no other option but to resist; of not earning enough to even send money home; of feeling the permanent risk of being deported, will this ever end?
“This is not how we thought,” notes Louis. The three charge 250 pesos a day (just over 12 dollars), rest on Sunday and live in the room of a pension in the center of the city that costs them 1,600 pesos a month (almost 78 dollars). They don’t have a kitchen, they cook food on an electric stove. “I do not know whether to stay, I do not charge well for the work. We only earn just enough to eat and the house is not good ”, the girl continues. “We can’t even make our food. I arrive very tired, I don’t have time to cook. My mother in Haiti does not work, I have three sisters, seven nephews, they are my responsibility, I have to send money, and I still don’t send anything. But I don’t want to go back, it’s dangerous. They kill people there just for the fun of it. “
All they do is work. When they finish, they go to their boarding house. They are afraid of being stopped by the police if they are on the street. The two went through Brazil after Chile, but they were not convinced either. “In Chile the money was enough, but I didn’t have papers; in Brazil I had papers, but no money ”, summarizes Boyer. Hyppolite, for his part, left Haiti almost two years ago and went directly to Brazil, but the salary was not reaching him either. His family is scattered across the continent, looking for a life, and his only goal is to be able to send them remittances.
Racism
Olga Martínez, the manager of the place where they work, explains that it is difficult to find them a job because of the racism that still exists in Mexican society: “Some guys mistreated Max because they didn’t want him to touch the merchandise because of the color of his skin.” . When he hired Boyer, Hyppolite started coming to the store as well, hoping they could find some work for him. More Haitians followed. “They stood outside waiting for something to come out, it was terrible. Now there are positions that ask me for workers. They have taken me as an agency, ”says Martínez.
As the sun begins to set, they board a crowded bus back to the pension. Today Hyppolite was lucky: he got a place by the window. The fatigue on her shoulders and the last rays of light in her eyes slowly close her eyelids. But the transfer arrives earlier than expected and interrupts sleep. She carries a bunch of bananas that she has bought at the market. Dinner tonight. The three of them shuffle towards the subway. They start talking to each other in French. They laugh. And, suddenly, there are only three more workers who return home after a long day, joking, as if a brief parenthesis had opened, as if the migrant’s path had stopped there, and life outside the wagon did not exist. for a while.
The last caravan with hundreds of Haitian and Central American migrants that left Tapachula for the capital has yet to arrive. This monster of 20 million inhabitants who come and go every day has the capacity to absorb any demographic challenge, from indigenous people in the highlands of Oaxaca to African Americans in Haiti. But it also hides another reality, that of 2.5 million poor people. And starting this week, a few hundred more. With no other institutional support than waiting for a refugee procedure and the solidarity of NGOs, the migrant dream crashes in Mexico City.
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