[Marxism] [isn] Central America Migrant Flow To US Slows.

[Mike Friedman]

ARRIAGA, Mexico - For thousands of illegal immigrants from Central
America, the long journey to the U.S. starts here, on the groaning back of
a freight train they call The Beast. But these days many don't get too
far.

Central Americans without documents now face increased security within
Mexico, including checks on the train for stowaways. It's also harder for
them to head north once they cross into Mexico because of hurricane damage
to the train tracks.

The result: The number of non-Mexican migrants stopped by the U.S. Border
Patrol has dropped almost 60 percent from 2005, despite increased
detention efforts. About 68,000 non-Mexican migrants — mostly Central
Americans — were detained last year, compared to 165,000 in 2005.
Non-Mexicans make up about 10 percent of all migrants caught by Border
Patrol officers.

Mexico itself is also seeing fewer illegal immigrants — 120,000 were
arrested last year, a 50 percent drop from 2005, when Hurricane Stan hit
and destroyed the railroad, according to the National Immigration
Institute. Since President Felipe Calderon took office two years ago,
Mexico has added more soldiers and federal police on its border with
Guatemala and more immigration and military checkpoints throughout the
south.

[...]

Many Mexicans are also sympathetic to illegal immigrants from Central
America, but the issue still causes some tensions that echo the U.S.
debate. Isaac Castillo, owner of the Hotel La Posada in Arriaga, argues
that Central American immigrants often end up working in Mexico, where
wages can be double the few dollars a day they might earn at home.

"The problem isn't just in the U.S., but in Mexico, because a lot of
Central Americans want to stay here and compete with Mexicans for jobs,"
he said.

The crackdown on Central American migrants has left them searching for new
routes. Some pay smugglers $7,000 to go by boat into southern Mexico, then
hide in tractor-trailers heading north.

[...]

For those Central American migrants unable or unwilling to risk the sea, a
cargo train — The Beast — remains the only option for the 2,000-mile trip
to the U.S.

The long trek begins at the Suchiate river, on the border with Guatemala,
where for $1 they cross on makeshift rafts into sweltering jungles.

Then they hike along the destroyed, sun-scorched train tracks to Arriaga
for up to nine days. Arriaga, 200 miles from the Guatemalan border, is the
closest place to hop a train since Hurricane Stan destroyed the
Chiapas-Mayab line.

As they head north, they pay off thieves, immigration officials, police
and railroad employees.

Juan Gabriel Ramos, a Guatemalan 17-year-old trying to join his mother in
California, said he bribed a Mexican federal police officer and an
immigration agent before even making it to Arriaga.

[...]

When they're caught, migrants say they're often abused by Mexican
authorities. In one notorious case last year in the northern city of
Saltillo, migrants complained to the National Human Rights Commission of
rectal exams done by immigration officials who said they were checking for
cholera.

"The mistreatment of migrants here is brutal, and no one does anything
about it because everyone sees them as booty," said Heyman Vasquez, a
Roman Catholic priest. He estimated 80 percent of migrants are robbed
before they arrive at his two-room shelter in Arriaga.

[...]

Sitting on a cracked sidewalk outside the shelter, one Nicaraguan man told
of the time he saw a group of criminals gang-rape a woman and shoot her
boyfriend. A Honduran couple talked of fleeing their country after gang
members killed their teenage daughter, and leaving their seven children,
ages 18 to 1, in hiding.

It doesn't get any easier once immigrants hop a train. They must often
bribe private guards and police stationed along the tracks. Many stowaways
are too tired to hold on to the train and fall, losing limbs.

The trip itself can be deadly. Jorge Guevara, a 21-year-old Salvadoran,
said he first rode the train to the U.S.-Mexico border in 2001 and saw 20
people crushed, and probably killed, when cars derailed. He fled and never
found out what happened. "That accident left me in shock, but I kept
going," Guevara said to a group of first-time migrants, listening
intently. "One doesn't think about the danger, only about getting to the
United States. Once I'm there, I'll think about it."

[...]

It took Milagros Rivera and her family a month to reach Ixtepec, just 85
miles north of Arriaga. By then, the 36-year-old from El Salvador said
they had been robbed three times.

The first time was at the river crossing into Mexico. Soldiers demanded
money before allowing her, her boyfriend, her 20-year-old son and her
18-year-old daughter-in-law to continue on. About 50 miles later, gunmen
held them up along the tracks, forced them to strip naked and took about
$1,500 they had saved, Rivera said. "It was a terrible moment because they
took my daughter-in-law away, and we thought they were going to rape her,"
said Rivera. The thieves ended up freeing the girl unharmed. But then they
were robbed by a local police officer of the $40 they had collected
begging on the streets. Rivera said she is bound for Virginia, where
friends have promised to help her find work. "There is a lot of
suffering," she said. "But the hope of reaching your destination helps you
to keep going."

  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080413/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_fewer_migrants


-- 
Michael Friedman
Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior
City University of New York

Institute for Comparative Genomics
Department of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History
79th Street and Central Park West
New York, NY 10024

Office: 212-313-8721
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