Original Americas Program Translation
Mexico City, January 21, 2013. – Forty-four years since his assassination, we remember Martin Luther King’s dream of a day when his four children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Today more than 11 million undocumented migrants will have to wait for a tortuously slow legislative process to recognize their contributions, from political to fiscal, in the United States.
Barak Obama, thanks to the Latino vote, will be sworn in for the second time as President. The Latino vote was the pointer on the scale that weighed in Obama’s favor and granted him victory after a dead heat election. During his inauguration, thousands of voters will be protesting in Chicago, demanding an immediate moratorium on deportations and separation of families: While Obama orates promises of immigration reform, undocumented migrants in the United States are being harassed by a new wave of attacks, raids on workplaces, arrests and deportations carried out in the days and weeks subsequent to his reelection.
During Obama’s first administration, the numbers of deportations add up to more than 1.5 million in four years. From now until the long awaited immigration reform materializes, an estimated half a million more people will be deported unless Obama changes the current policy. It is therefore urgent to establish the moratorium on deportations and separation of families meanwhile the immigration reform law is approved and regulated for its implementation. It is difficult to understand why the President is deporting the hundreds of thousands of people he wants to legalize. The unconstitutional mass deportations have caused the painful separation of hundreds of thousands of families whose children are citizens and have lived in the United States for years.
It was during Obama’s first administration that we saw the rise of anti-immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, to name just three states. In practice these laws criminalize difference and people of foreign origin. Fear and hatred permeates in those places and their racist legislation emphasizes the difference in the color of ones skin over any other value and contribution from the various ethnicities that inhabit the United States. Organizations like the National Rifle Association, the guards of this racism, are the mercenaries that continue to lobby for the militarization the border with Mexico, neighborhoods, and most recently, schools.
Mexico adopts these racist measures as theirs, and accords with their northern neighbor policies such as the Merida program, a necessary instrument with which the military training of the police forces ultimately competed with those who changed sides and joined organized crime. Meanwhile the vulnerable, predominately migrant communities are caught in the middle of this unequal war of suffering and fatal consequences.
Migrants in transit, human rights defenders and social activists who seek to exercise their constitutional right of freedom of transit in areas where there are new frontiers of crime confront spheres controlled by groups that charge them fees with the complicity of corrupt officials and institutions.
The migrant route is the best example of the authority granted to criminal groups. Cartels, gangs and mara groups are granted power distributed through areas, routes, borders, checkpoints, and prisons to operate lucrative businesses. Human trafficking, group kidnapping, extortions, rape of migrants from both sexes, and the consistent homicides are intimidating messages to individuals and communities. All of this under the gaze of local and federal authorities who enjoy total impunity. The lack of a state policy on migration shamefully leaves transmigrants few options and they are forced to mount the spine of the Beast.
The staff of the migrant shelter “La 72” has put their finger on the dangers of doing this and the discrediting implications that involves showing the world what happens in Mexico. Crime groups have begun tolling $ 100 to $ 300 dollars to those who want to get on the train and threaten to throw them off the moving train if they fail to pay.
These recent events lead us to think that the national security policies are actions to strengthen the security of the United States, and we predict the same results unleashed by Calderon’s war with more than 60,000 victims discarded as collateral damage. These figures do not include the number of unarmed transmigrants who were executed on their journey through our country at the hands of cartels and mara groups armed with U.S. guns.
Today, the peaceful resistance movement understands the role of violence as the only control the system wields to govern by. Work and organization in our communities is and has been the only form of self-defense. The people are organizing and building roads for freedom from these systems that supplant real human values for material values measured in money, in an obsession with accumulation and death. Systemic violence continues to provoke social conscience and the Martin Luther Kings, the Zapatas, the Flores Magons will collectively resurface with renewed values and impetus.
WE DEMAND THE UNITED STATES:
· To stop the export of weapons and military interventionism to Mexico, which claims the lives of thousands of domestic and transit migrants.
· To issue an executive order granting a moratorium on deportations and separation of families pending the issuance of a reformed immigration law,
· To legislate the delayed the unfulfilled promise of immigration reform, aimed at regularizing residence that includes the more than 11 million migrants and their families,
· We demand Barack Obama engage in a different international policy with Mexico during his second term, one that is not defined by the exclusive focus of the security of its borders but more so based on cooperation for development with due respect to our sovereign nation.
WE DEMAND MEXICO TO:
· Not to assume the U.S. policy in its own immigration policy under national security but instead uphold human security and respect for the rights of people,
· To clean the migrant route of organized crime and government accomplices who, with weapons imported from abroad, massacre both internal and external migrants during transit to the northern border,
· That Mexico abolish visas for Central Americans as they have been suppressed for people from countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and thus, leading by example, can negotiate a better deal and life opportunities for our diaspora in the United States.
Mesoamerican Migrant Movement (Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano), Elvira Arellano, Rubén Figueroa, José Jacques, Marta Sánchez Soler, Adriana Luna Parra, James Cockcroft; Hogar para Personas Migrantes “La 72”, Fray Tomas González Casillo; Heyman Vázquez Medina, Hogar de la Misericordia; La Familia Latina Unida, Emma Lozano, Elvira Arellano y Walter Coleman, Chicago Il.; Casa del Migrante de Saltillo; Promoción del Desarrollo Popular, Luis Lopezllera, Cristina Lavalle; Alianza Braceros del Norte, Rosa Martha Zarate; MIREDES, Internacional; Nuestros Lazos de Sangre, Luis Ángel Nieto; Las Patronas, Norma Romero; Unión de Juristas de México, UJM, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME); Alianza de Tranviarios de México (ATM); Movimiento Nacional Organizado Aquí Estamos (MONAE); Consejo de Organizaciones Sociales (COS); Nuria Ciofalo, Los Ángeles; Patricia Barba Ávila; Juan Carlos Arauz, líder de los Dreamers, San Francisco; María Guardado, Los Ángeles/El Salvador (Sobreviviente de torturas por los escuadrones de muerte); Dorinda Moreno, Tribunal Internacional de Conciencia; Pro-Migrante Arriaga, Carlos Bartolo; Catalina Eibenschutz; Central Campesina Cardenista Democrática-Puebla; Federación De Militares Retirados "General Francisco J. Múgica"; Sonia San Simón; Reyna Carretero; Mtro. Carlos Arturo Hernández Dávila, Director del SJJV-México; Luz Rosales Esteva; Cristian Pineda Flores, artista visual; Migrantes Frontera Sur; Armando Barreiro Pérez; Grupo Tacuba, Pastor Ricárdez, Coordinador de Comunicación; COFAMIPRO, Progreso, Honduras; Elvira Madrid Romero, Brigada Callejera de Apoyo a la Mujer "Elisa Martínez", A.C., Jaime Montejo, Agencia de Noticias Independiente Noti-Calle, Posgrado para la Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos de la UACM; Migración Refugio y Desplazamiento Forzado del Capitulo Mexicano del TPP; Secretaria Permanente del Tribunal Internacional de Conciencia de los Pueblos en Movimiento; IPSOCULTA, Tlaxcala, Alejandro Solalinde, Albergue Hermanos en el Camino; Albergue San José de Huehuetoca. Ustedes somos Nosotros, Colectivo Vía Clandestina, Cultura Migrante, Prami-Ibero, Soy Migrante; Estancia del Migrante González y Martínez; Colectivo Somos tu Voz; Hna. Leticia Gutiérrez Valderrama, Misioneras Scalabrininas-Sección México; Fernando González Reynoso; Silvia Conde, s.a.; María de la Soledad Cervantes Ramírez; Laura Nava, Arturo Fabián Zavala,Brújula Metropolitana.
Contactos: Elvira Arellano earellano@somosunpueblo.com - 044 447 100 3548 - Marta Sánchez Solermafesaja@aol.com - 044 555 435 2637
www.movimientomograntemesoamericano.org
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