Quixote Center staff spent 5 days in southern Mexico a few weeks ago to see for ourselves how US border policies are impacting the rest of the Americas.
On our second day we traveled to Tenosique, in the State of Tabasco, located near the border with Guatemala. Tenosique is home to the La72 migrant shelter, a member of the Franciscan Network on Migration and long-term Quixote Center collaborators.
Most of the current migrant population at La72 are Honduran men, and on the younger side. They flee escalating criminal violence and lack of economic opportunity in Honduras and seek work and safety. They understand that they are not welcome in the United States. Many said that they are heading to Monterrey, where there are jobs, to resettle until US border policies are friendlier. Some still plan to attempt to cross into the US using dangerous maritime pathways. Some succeed; others are captured, detained and deported, only to try again a few weeks later. Some likely never make it and we will never know who they are. A few will stay at La72 and try to resettle in Tabasco.
La72, named after 72 migrants who perished in a massacre in 2010, allows for long term respite while migrants figure out their next steps. They provide food, shelter, health care, legal services, and a safe space for men, women, and families, including members of the LGBTQ community. Migrants travel to La72 through Guatemala and the border town of El Ceibo, where the border is porous and there is a thriving business of young men on motorcycles ferrying people along hillside paths.
We drove to El Ceibo during our stay to visit a small night shelter that the local Catholic diocese operates. During the drive, our LA72 partners offered assistance on the spot to migrants on the side of the road, including a group of teenaged boys and a family with an elderly woman. We also passed through several Mexican government enforcement checkpoints with signs that read “humanitarian assistance.” It is a well-traveled migrant route.
Similar to La72, in El Ceibo they are receiving mostly Hondurans, some heading north, and others who were deported into Mexico and moving south, likely to try again at a later time.
At El Ceibo we met a father with two young boys. The sons were born in Mexico with Mexican residency, but the father was Honduran without permission to enter Mexico. Although the children could enter legally, they were afraid to do so because the Mexican government would separate them and place the children in a facility for unaccompanied minors, while detaining the father elsewhere. Without funds to pay the motorcyclists up the road, they were stranded. Such are the everyday stories of human tragedy in the borderlands. Those of us who listen become containers for the stories, hoping that in the telling, the narrators of their own tragedy can find peace.
Across southern Mexico and into Guatemala we witnessed regular people trying to help without the resources to do so. La72 is a great facility with some infrastructure issues and a never-ending need for food. We enjoyed visiting their new chicken and turkey coop, which provides regular fresh eggs and poultry.
With permission, Quixote Center is presenting videos of migrants telling their stories, in our series called Between Borders. We release them on occasional Wednesdays, and you can find the full series here. We are also organizing a solidarity trip to southern Mexico in late fall and plan to increase our support for La72 in the coming year. We will release details when we have them.
This is the second in a series of three posts on our trip to southern Mexico. The first post is here.
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