The Migrant's Story

Even before arriving at the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman on their way to Tapachula, Central American migrants are oftentimes victims of extortion. The road from El Salvador already seems long, and you've really just started. You left your family, your property your coffee farm. You're in debt up to your eyeballs. You know you shouldn't go out on the streets after six. It's too dangerous. This city is a free-for-all of drug-runners and black-market arms dealers. Territory of human smugglers. City of hortelanos, tricicleteros, loan sharks, and restaurant owners who live off people like you, people just passing through.

It was already risky getting this far. It's not like it used to be. The U.S. Border Patrol trains the Guatamalan special army forces called kaibiles. It provides them with technology. Now you don't have to wait to get to the Unitedf States to suffer. The hard line begins in your own country. Then it gets harder in Mexico. Mexico has become Washington's southern gatekeeper, guarding the backyard entrance. The government's Southern Plan sealed the border. Santiago Creel, Mexico's Minister of the Interior said as much: "The Mexican government is prepared to cut off the growing flow of foreigners that use the country as a transit point in their efforts to reach the United States."

The house where you wait to cross is not big enough for everyone who's waiting. You're piled on top of each other. In the night they lock you up with chains and armed guards. They tell you that you'll be part of a crew going to work in the fields of the Soconusco using false papers. You should carry a machete and a gunny sack. You won't cross the Sucihiate River in a tire boat, or swim like others do. But you have to learn to talk like a Mexican, know about that country even if you're just passing through. They sold you a booklet for ten bucks. There you read about Mexico's "Child Heroes," what the president's wife's name is, the colors of the flag. Others even obtain a voter card to given them a new identity.

You wish you could travel in a banana trailer. It has air conditioning so you wouldn't be asphyxiated. But you don't have enough money. Not even for a chicken truck. You have to go by train. You're young and strong. You can stand the days. You won't go by boat. You know what happens to those who take a shark boat to Salina Cruz and then a smaller boat to Acapulco . How they suffer on the rogue seas. What happened on August 16th when two boats sank, one with 20 people on board, the other with 30. Not one person made it to shore. No, this business of "kill or be killed" isn't for you.

You don't know the numbers but it's a lot. Travelers like you who die at sea, in the rivers, on the bridges, on the train tracks, in the trailers. The Center for Central American Resources in El Salvador says that between 1997 and 2000 almost 25,000 Central Americans disappeared seeking the American dream. Ten thousand were Salvadoran. Many of the families still don't know what has happened and may never know.

You're on the Mexican side. You wait for the train, the beast, as it's called here. The train stations stink. You wait hours. There are others like you. Biding their time in graveyards, vacant lots, underneath bridges. As you go on your way, the vigilance will get worse. Soldiers guard the rails. Your itinerary is not made up by a travel agency. The routes, the operatives of the Migra, your own fatigue, and pure luck will determine your course.

The beast arrives. When the wheels of the convoy begin to move you run as fast as you can, grab hold and hang on. If you get run over, it's the end. How many like you have lost arms and legs? Every month seven or eight train amputees arrive at the regional hospital in Tapachula.

Bad luck. This train doesn't carry grain or sand. But at least it's not raining. Better not to go inside the wagons--if they close you can get asphyxiated. Better to hang on like a monkey, taking care to duck the high tension wires. In the tunnels you move onto the side and tie your arms on with wire. You cannot sleep. If you doze off you fall. You protect yourself from the cold with a windbreaker. You wrap up your hands. In tunnels and on cold days the steel of the train freezes.

This time there aren't any gangs. Often they jump on to steal. To them, 50 pesos can cost your life. The Maras. They chase you, catch you, and beat you up. Hit you in the face and body. Throw you off the train. Abuse the women.

When the immigration agents get on you run to the back and jump. It doesn't matter if the train is moving. They can't catch you. You wait until another train comes by, start to run, then get off in Huamantla. It's near Apizaco, at the end of the longest tunnel, there's a checkpoint. When you see a red antenna that announces the arrival in Lechería and you do it again. That's where most of the cargo trains heading north end up. It's the halfway border, and they'll get you for sure there. If it's not the thieves, it's the police. So you go around the station and wait for the next train. From there the freight trains head out for the north.

You already have a different gaze. Same with everyone else traveling with you. You've become tougher--from the hardships, the fear, the waiting, and the horrors. You smell different. Not just for the sweat and dirt. Little by little, the smell of death gets under your skin. That's what the refuges that help migrants along the route smell like.

You head out to Coahuila, another stop for the freight trains. You cross at Piedras Negras or Ciudad Acuña. You think the vigilance will be less there. But private guards watch the trains. They're even more violent. In less than a year three migrants were assassinated in Coahuila. Elmer Alexander Batrahona was shot. Ismael Jesus Martinez was stoned to death in November 2002. All by the employees of a company called Canine Protection Systems, hired to guard the trains. Its president is Miguel Nassar Daw, son of one of the main men responsible for Mexico's dirty war.

In Saltillo the police stop you. They hit you and take your money. It's like Gabriela Rodriguez Pizarro, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants for the UN says: "In Mexico there is a generalized climate of hostility and many take advantage of the migrant's vulnerability." It doesn't matter that in El Salvador in September of 2000 Vicente Fox offered major efforts to respect the human rights of migrants. Pure rhetoric. Nothing personal.

You arrive in Laredo . Finally the border. Salvadorans like you work outside the municipal building. They wash the pick-ups of the law enforcement officers. From here you can't get to the other side. Operation Hold the Line, or Rio Grande on the Mexican side, leaves no holes. So you go to Las Antenas, 14 kilometers away. On the edge of the river there are some small beaches. You pay the patero--that's what they call polleros or smugglers here--to use the rafts and hide in the bushes. They, in turn have to pay a quota for "use rights" to the "Z," the thugs of Osiel Cárdenas, head of the Gulf Cartel.

You shove off into the river and the current takes you. When you reach the other side you start to look for a safe house. There you wait until they put you in a truck with 60 other people. That's how your compatriots died in Victoria, Texas. But it's not your time yet. You're off to Georgia. Your cousin is working the harvest there. It all starts again.

The Exodus

Coffee growers and laborers are the latest link in the historic migration to the United States. They arrive when the border is closed, the cost of the journey, and support networks hardly exist. These new migrants have little or no knowledge of the geography, physical and social, they will face.

To emigrate, coffee growers have to go into debt. They mortgage their land and houses and are charged interest rates of at least 20% a month. Every day that passes is more money they owe. It's urgent that they arrive at their destination quickly. That's why so many die in desperation in the desert.

Often they fall into the hands of abusive smugglers. When the "guides" are from the same region they have a certain responsibility to the family to take care of their "charge." But when they are strangers, they have no commitment to anybody. Ignorance of the journey means that the new migrants frequently fall in with smugglers who sell them or abandon them. They are easy victims of assaults and extortion. All along the way people lie in wait seeking to exploit them.

The coffee farmer sets out for the north ill-prepared. He or she arrives without boots, or water, carrying money. Instead of making a deal in the village or through someone they know in some city in the United States , arrangements are made in bus depots and train stations. It's no wonder that events happen like that of August 2002, when two Chiapan youths were found floating dead in the All-American canal in California --just yards from U.S. soil.22

Alan Bersin, one of the strategists of Operation Gatekeeper, explains the complexity of crossing for new migrants: "Now the ones who cross illegally have to cross extremely difficult terrain, deep rocky canyons, full of thorny bushes, practically without water and with peaks of over 6,000 feet, or over peaks nearly 6,000 feet high, or through desolate and dangerous deserts. Before they crossed in areas with almost immediate access to highways, but today it's a hard walk of two to three days out to the highway. The guides are more necessary than ever and charge accordingly."23

Many new migrants do not speak Spanish or it isn't their first language. It's common that in the United States there are no translators in their language. The fact is basic to receive medical attention or legal defense. In the 80s the Trique Adolfo Ruiz Álvarez and Mixtec Santiago Ventura Morales were jailed in Oregon for a misunderstanding that derived from not knowing English or Spanish. Álvarez was locked up in a mental institution and sedated for over two years, while Ventura was unjustly held prisoner for four years.

The new migratory flows are directed toward places where migrants didn't go before. The destinations are states located in the east coast such as Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, or the Carolinas. The conditions there are more difficult. On arrival they must live in bridges, caves, and open fields, where they suffer discrimination--often from their own compatriots established there. "Superfluous people are cheap," wrote Enzesberger. "Clandestine immigration lowers the price of the labor force."24

The conditions of the journey, the crossing, and the changes in diet weaken defenses and expose migrants to many illnesses. Several cases of tuberculosis have been reported in cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Ana. It is easy to catch something when travelers are locked up together in the trunk of a car for hours. In 2004, 30 cases of Central Americans with malaria were reported in Orizaba, Veracruz and one died. And it's hard to get well. "There are people who come back sick from the north," they say in the Chinantec community of Santiago Yaitepec. "There they don't have curanderos, because only young people go, and the old don't leave the village and the young don't know how to cure. Just kids of 25 or less are the ones who leave for the north, the old people don't want to go."25

The United States isn't the only destination. There is heavy migration of Nicaraguan workers to Costa Rica since there they can earn double what they make at home. This situation has become so critical for Nicaraguan plantation owners owing to the lack of labor that president Enrique Bolaños declared in late December of 2003 that the nation could lose up to 200,000 quintals of coffee.

Researcher Edith Kauffer Michel described migratory routes of Central Americans on Mexico's southern border.26 According to her study, migrants now cross Mexico through the states of Tabasco and Campeche and not only through Chiapas. The routes are: the coast, by train from Tapachula to Arriaga; the Sierra Madre, through Motozintla, La Angostura, and Comitán in Chiapas; the border, which is the second most important; the jungle, through Veracruz; the ocean route from Puerto Cahmperico (Guatemala) to Huatulco, Oaxaca; the air route for those with papers and money; and the plains route from Tabasco through the Tenosique corridor.

Migration in Chiapas has been explosive. The signal for the exodus came with the rains of 1998 when 400,000 hectares were damaged and 400 people killed. The coffee crisis added to it. And the passage of Hondurans stimulated it by showing the way. At least 30 municipalities in Chiapas have formed part of the migration. Some 30,000 Chiapans leave each year for the United States. By late 2004 some 300,000, over 65% farmers and indigenous peoples.27 In 1997 Chiapas occupied 27th place among states receiving remittances from abroad; in 2001 it rose to 15th; in 2003, 12th; and this year 11th. In 2003, the state received $260 million. This year it received $227 million in the first half and by the end of the year the figure is expect to rise to $500 million.

According to researcher Jorge Cruz Burguete, there are 136 travel agencies in Frontera Comalapa, with buses that leave for Tijuana once a week. Posters, radio commercials, and trucks with loud speakers announce departures throughout the state. The business began, reports Alberto Najar, with entrepreneurs like Rosalinda Quiroa of Carrillo Puerto, half an hour from Tapachula. Doña Rosalinda used to organize pilgrimages to the Villa in Mexico City. When she realized that many youths were continuing on up to Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez, she hired buses and began to offer service to the border. A year later, she bought her own bus, and then another.

Migration is not limited to the poorest. Even the sons of plantation owners have had to follow the road north to the United States. They are charged with maintaining the family pride; for years they lived a privileged life, wore leather boots, drove big trucks, and looked down on the Indians. Now, those who haven't migrated north wear rubber boots and mended clothes. The men use the dollars from the remittances to hire seasonal workers. And, irony of life, the smugglers treat plantation owners and day laborers the same.

To Die a Little

How does immigration affect the indigenous coffee communities that have conserved their ethnic community identity?

Over 10 years ago, writes researcher Daniel Oliveras de Ita, emigration from San Juan Quiahije in the Chatina region of Oaxaca began when the first tour migrants arrived in the United States.28 Their main economic activity was coffee growing, working as seasonal laborers or dependent producers for the coffee plantations of the region.

Before going north, the travelers went to the curanderos, or healers, of the village. The shamans told them to place candles for the saints, for example to Santiago Yaitepec, or the Virgin of Juquila, or Saint John Quiahije, depending on which saints the curanderos said. They instruct them to purify themselves and they have to abstain from having sex for 7 - 13 days. They also must not swear or fight during this time, they should behave well, and walk straight and narrow so that favors will be granted them.

Those who go north without consulting the curanderos have problems, so they communicate with their parents or elders and tell them about the situation. The family represents them and consults with the curanderos who tell them what to do to change the luck of their relative on the other side. They are instructed to carry candles to the saints and the dead in the cemetery.

Before going north the youth go with the curanderos who eat the sacred mushroom (hui ya jo), narrates Narciso García Urbano of Santa María Yolotepec. When they eat the mushroom they see the destiny of the people who will migrate for work. They can see if they will be able to cross the border or if they will have problems along the sway, if they will find work and if it will go well. They see if one will fail in the north. They also go to the graveyard to ask permission and health from the dead, their grandparents. They ask for help from the tomb to care for them along the way, so nothing happens to them and they find work and return well.

In Santiago Yaitepec the people say that to migrate north is to die a little. When a family member is absent, either dead or far way, the rest of the family still performs healing and rituals for them, using photographs and clothing. In the hills the people strike the clothing of the dead and migrants with a staff, and light candles and ask that wherever they are they do not suffer and repent for their sins.

The young people expect to leave. Adolescents begin to migrate at 13. Most work for about three years in the United States and return at 17 to take on their first cargo as topil (a community post that forms part of the traditional cargo system).

Catholic people with strong family ties do not change so drastically in the United States . They continue to carry out community service and perform cargos. These are the ones trained in the Chatina customs.

For others, however, without the preparation and belief in the traditions and customs, they return with new ideas that they often seek to impose. They no longer accept traditional authority and want to be bosses themselves. They refuse to serve in low-level cargos because they come back with money and they feel powerful. They do not obey the political or religious hierarchies. When they return they want to be municipal presidents.

Are the Chatinos of De Ita's study typical of indigenous coffee migrants? We don't know. Migration has transformed the logic of the community, its dreams and its demons. It has had to reinvent itself.

In a recent book, Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado note that in spite of the adverse conditions that indigenous migrants face in the United States, many have found ways to build a broad range of political, social, and civic organizations to fight for strategic objectives.29 In these cases, the migratory mobility of the peoples instead of weakening them has done the opposite. There they have created and recreated identities. Oaxacalifornia, that imaginary community that brings together the many Oaxacan villages where migrants are born and the U.S. cities where they live now is the new space of a transnational society.

The lack of papers and the increased risks in crossing the borders after September 11 th make it harder for migrants to return to their home countries. With no real perspective of better coffee prices (the increase in the last harvest is temporary and is still below the costs of production), without possibilities of employment in their places of origin, establishing oneself in the north is becoming progressively more attractive for those who once produced coffee.

Responses to the Crisis

In September 2002, 3,000 Nicaraguan coffee day laborers and their families camped on the Pan-American highway near Las Tunas, about 97 kilometers from the capital. Their presence interrupted traffic. On Wednesday the 11 th, they blocked Central America 's largest Pacific highway for ten hours.

The majority of the participants have been out of work for months. "We want real jobs, they can't hire us to 'work for food'. We want work with a wage, we want stable jobs." One hundred hours after the protest started, negotiations ended with some important agreements.

But Las Tunas is more the exception than the rule in the coffee-producing world. Instead of leading to open protests, the discontent and despair in the sector have lead to emigration as an escape valve. Protests have broken out in many places, but they do note even begin to reflect the dimensions of the tragedy.

The crisis has struck cooperatives of small producers and their struggles for self-administration. Although the crisis has stimulated conversion to organic coffee, fair trade and gourmet markets, it has also reduced membership in grassroots organizations.

Certainly those market niches have grown with the crisis, to the point where Guatemala has become second-only to Colombia as a global exporter of specialty coffee. The conversion toward these markets has been financed by the World Bank. USAID has funded a $20 million support program for marketing and technical assistance in the area for 2002-2006--just as it did to increase coffee production in Costa Rica to rein in "sandino-communism" in Nicaragua.30 But niche marketing benefits a very small percentage of coffee producers and fails to resolve the central issues.

Civil society in Mexico and Latin America has shown a notable lack of interest in the migrants' situation. Migrant services are provided by voluntary organizations with scarce resources, mostly of a religious nature. While in Europe, the global justice movement has made the fight against xenophobia and struggle for universal citizenship central demands and areas of work, for the left in the Americas , support for migrants is nonexistent. The exception has been, as in so many other cases, the Zapatistas. The autonomous governments punish smugglers and assist Central American undocumented migrants, offering them water, housing, and food for free.

Migration in the area has grown so rapidly that no one can deal with it. Governments laud the millions of dollars of remittances that keep their countries afloat and keep quiet about the human rights violations suffered by their countrymen and -women in the United States .

Ironically, coffee is one of the products where Mexican and Central American farmers should be profitable according to the theory of comparative advantages. But instead of a bonanza, coffee cultivation under current conditions has condemned the growers to poverty, exile, death, or charity. Meanwhile, transnational traders and international investment funds accumulate huge fortunes.

Luis Hernández Navarro is Opinions Editor of the Mexico daily La Jornada, former adviser to the National Coalition of Coffee Organizations (CNOC) and member of the Mexican Center for Rural Studies (CECCAM). He is a regular contributor to the IRC Americas Program, online at www.americaspolicy.org. This essay owes much to the work of many people, especially Alberto Najar and Laura Carlsen. The author also greatly appreciates the contributions of Ana de Ita, Arturo Cano, former fellow workers at the National Coalition of Coffee Organizations (CNOC), Andrés Aubry, and Dora Berztercezey. This text forms part of an upcoming book "Coffee in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean: A Sustainable Solution to the Crisis" forthcoming from IRC in 2005.

Resources:

National Coalition of Coffee Organizations (Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras (CNOC) http://www.laneta.apc.org/cnoc/

Endnotes

1. Mario Pérez Monterosas, "Las redes sociales de la migración emergente de Veracruz a los Estados Unidos," Migraciones internacionales, Vol.2, Núm 1, Enero-Junio 2003. 2. Odile Hoffman, "El andar investigando... historial de un proyecto de investigación sobre cambio sociocultural y crisis cafetalera," Ciesas-Orstom, 1994 . 3. ICO, Coffee crisis, p.2. 4. Jan Rus, La Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional . 5. Henry Favre, Cambio y continuidad entre los mayas de México, Siglo XXI Editores, primera edición, 1973. 6. Angelino Calvo Sánchez, et al. Voces de la Historia, Desarrollo Económico Social de los Mexicanos Indígenas, A.C. y Centro de Estudios Indígenas, Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, 1989. 7. Entrevista con Laura Carlsen, Casa del Migrante, Tecún Umán, Guatemala, March 13, 2004. 8. Han Magnus Enzesberger, "La gran migración," Anagrama, Barcelona, 1992. 9. See, Luis Hernández Navarro, "Centroamérica y el Caribe," in Victor Pérez Grovas, Edith Cervantes, John Burstein, Laura Carlsen and Luis Hernández Navarro, "El café en México, Centroamérica y el Caribe: Una salida sustentable a la crisis," Coordinadora de Pequeños Productores de Café de Chiapas, AC-Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras de Café, México, November 2002. 10. Perez Grovas, et al., op. cit. 11. CEPAL, El impacto de la caída de los precios de café, 2002 p.1. 12. Noticias del Café, February 26, 2003. 13. EFE, October 22, 2002. 14. Consejo Salvadoreño de Café. Efectos de la crisis del café en el desarrollo socioeconómico de El Salvador. 15. U.S. Embassy Guatemala City, February 29, 2002. 16. Sodepaz, "Café: una crisis que dura quince años," January 2004. 17. La Hora, September 9, 2002. 18. Valeria Imhof, "El nuevo diario, Hambre y Muerte," August 2, 2003, Indymedia Colombia. 19. Documento para el análisis "El café, su crisis y acciones para impulsar su sobrevivencia," Intermon/Oxfam, September 2002. 20. Daniela Spencer, "Los empresarios alemanes, el Tercer Reich y la oposición de derecha a Cárdenas," Ciesas, 1988. 21. La Jornada, October 10, 2004. 22. Nieves, Evelyn, "Illegal Immigrant Death Rate Rises Sharply in Barren Areas," New York Times, August 6, 2002 . 23. Alberto Najar, "Chiapas: migrar a puños," Masiosare, June 30, 2002. 24. Enzesberger, ibid. 25. De Ita, Daniel, ibid. 26. Edith F. Kauffer Michel, "Entre peligros y polleros: la travesía de los indocumentados centroamericanos," Colegio de la Frontera Sur. 27. La Jornada, October 11, 2004. 28. This was taken from the field work of Daniel Oliveras de Ita in the Chatina region of Oaxaca, October 2004. 29. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, "Indigenous Mexican migrants in the Unites States," Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, San Diego, 2004. 30. "The Cappuccino Effect," in The Washington Post, October 17, 2004.

Published by the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org). ©2004.

Recommended citation: Luis Hernández Navarro, "To Die a Little: Migration and Coffee in Mexico and Central America," special report, Americas Program (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, December 13, 2004).

Web location: http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2004/0412coffee.html

Production Information: Author: Luis Hernández Navarro Editor: Laura Carlsen, IRC Layout: Tonya Cannariato, IRC