One. It is revealing, but not at all strange, that Donald Trump, a man with a well-known ability to launch accusations and sometimes even to receive judicial convictions (he then manages to avoid fulfilling them), has chosen as one of his first indictments against Vice President Kamala Harris, his rival in the US electoral race, what he considers her poor work in handling the migration crisis that is taking place on the southern border of that country. The “border czar,” as she has been called by a resolution of the House of Representatives, with a Trumpist majority, is, according to the former president (whom he privately calls her a “bitch”), the person responsible for the immigration policies of the current Administration, and, therefore, constitutes a danger. As Trump assures, “she will destroy our country if she is ever elected.” And it is that, definitively, migration has become today, more than ever, a political asset and using it, a strategy that accumulates votes.
I am not seeing anything new when I recall that throughout the rich (and even not so rich) West, the debate on the problem of migration functions as one of the emblems of the various parties. In France, it almost brought the far right led by Marine Le Pen to power; in Germany and Italy, it serves to raise flags; in Spain, it creates political schisms. In the United States, where thousands of legal and illegal immigrants are received (or not) every day, it has become the subject of the most heated debates. What should we do with migration? This is a question that cannot be left out in the search for leadership.
But what happens with the use, and even the manipulation, of such an alarming and delicate issue is not only a question of partisan strategies to gain sympathy. It is also a reflection of a trauma that runs through practically all sectors of societies that receive migrants at a time when the number of people determined to find another destination is highest. And accusing these invaders of any of the social or economic ills that a country faces, even criminalizing the figure of the migrant as a whole, can produce easy and abundant profits: because having an enemy to blame, especially if it is an external enemy, and focusing the causes of our ills and fears on others, is a strategy of guaranteed success.
On the other side of the sea, the river or the wall are those threatening and destabilizing beings who intend to invade – and are in fact doing so – the territories that I once called the privileged part of the world. They are individuals with other customs that can range from religious beliefs to culinary traditions and who, it is said and believed, intend to pervert the habits of the host societies.
We all know (or so I think) why these legions of people emigrate and seek refuge or simply another life. Wars, misery, repression or political or religious persecution. Or the human desire to have a better existence that has been denied or denied to them in their places of origin. And to achieve this they often risk their lives.
The figures on the consequences of these risks are all too revealing. In March of this year, the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) noted that during 2023 at least 8,565 people had died on migration routes around the world, making it the deadliest year for this reason. The same IOM published that between 2014 and the beginning of 2023, more than 28,000 people had died trying to reach Europe in the Mediterranean alone. In the most frequented migration corridor in the world, that of the border between Mexico and the United States, in 2022 a new record of 830 dead migrants was reached (although I presume there are many more). And we could add other data, although they would hardly confirm those previously noted.
TwoIn the small town of Trigueros, in the Andalusian province of Huelva, a festival dedicated to Cuban culture has been held every August for 11 years. It is organized by the Flour of Another Cost Center with the sweat and smile of a small group of enthusiastic promoters.
As a preview of this Cuba Cultura festival, I traveled to Trigueros to participate in the inauguration of an exhibition of watercolors by the Cuban painter René Francisco entitled Shoresdedicated to reflecting on the problem of migration and the fate of migrants on various “shores” of the world. As a visual solution to address this universal tragedy, the painter chose to work with images of those blue gloves that many of the migrants who arrive in Europe use to carry out productive or service tasks in which, with luck, they manage to get a job.
My presence alongside the artist was conditioned by the writing of 12 texts on this burning issue that accompany the exhibition and are part of its catalogue and an already printed book.
But it so happened that the drama that the exhibition proposes to visualize and the reflections that I tried to express in my texts had, on that very day of the opening of the exhibition, a confirmation of how close this drama is to each one of us and how much personal and social history the migration phenomenon contains.
A few days earlier, in a regular session of the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba (Parliament), the report was presented Results of the calculation of the effective population at the end of 2023, prepared by the country’s National Office of Statistics and Information. And it reflects, among other data, that the effective population in Cuba on December 31, 2020 was 11,181,595, of which, between 2021 and 2023, 1,011,269 emigrated, with the alarming evidence that among these migrants 79% corresponded to people of working age. In the end, the report warns that in 2024 the migratory trend has continued, which is why it is considered that the resident population in Cuba right now is less than 10 million inhabitants… and will continue to decrease, experts point out.
How did that million or so Cubans leave the island? There have been many ways, but the smallest number was thanks to visas such as the so-called “words humanitarian” that the United States can grant. Because a significant, I would say overwhelming, number of compatriots sought the path that begins in Nicaragua and advances toward the southern border of the United States through that “migratory corridor” known as the coyote route.
The drama of uprooting, desperation and death represented in René Francisco’s images suddenly touched us on the shoulder. The figures warned us of how much this phenomenon, which is so often repeated in the political rallies of the leaders of the host countries, can concern many of us. They see these migrants (among whom I have friends and even relatives), as the horsemen of an Apocalypse who will pervert their privileged society and not as desperate beings who seek on other shores the better life that has been denied to them in their places of origin. A tragedy that, well used, generates votes and, with votes, grants power.
#Shores
