On the Mexican Side of the Border

The days of confining children in tent cities on the dusty Texas side of the Rio Grande are over. Guards need no longer bar the concerned visitors who set red balloons afloat over the camps to show those inside someone cared about them.

     But migrants still cross into Mexico from Guatemala, Honduras, and
El Salvador. In the five-year span from 2010 to 2015, the UN estimates over 300,000 left Central America. The Economist magazine (March 16, 2019) mentioned 8,000 left in January and February this year.

     Mexico understands the plight of Central Americans who seek asylum from government repression of the poor, gang violence, and soldiers, like those who murdered San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero and four nuns in 1980 and the environmental activist, Berta Caceres, in Honduras in 2016. Besides fleeing violence, migrants also risk the long, hot and dangerous journey north when they are displaced by mining activities and when coffee and other crop prices drop or when a lack of rainfall, heat, and a plague of insects reduce crop yields. (Also see the earlier post, "How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents A Pound?")

     Since Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador became Mexico's President in December, 2018, his humanitarian welcome has cut into the estimated $2.5 billion organized crime was used to pocketing for trafficking migrants through Mexico to the U.S. border. As requested by Washington, D.C. migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. now remain in Mexico until close to their court dates.