• wsmcmm presentacion

last modified May 1, 2018 by facilitfsm


Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano,

No Nos Vamos, A.C.

 

 

Gabriel Mancera 1817 # 201, Colonia Del Valle Sur

Benito Juárez, México, DF 11370

e-mail: mafesaja  aol.com - +52 555 435 2637

www.movimientomigrantemesoamericano.org

March 1, 2018

World Social Forum on Migrations, Mexico 2018

 – World Summit of Mothers Searching for their Missing Children in Transit.  ( download document

Presentation:

Around the world, hundreds of thousands of migrants disappear or die while transiting from their places of origin to destination. In Mexico alone, thousands of migrants die while crossing the desert, or drown in the river that divides the Mexico-USA border, or disappear along the way. The subject of the concrete, correct, and verifiable statistics to estimate the number of Central American migrants in transit in Mexico represents a perverse mirror of the ways in which the movement of people is managed. Depending on the source (non-governmental organizations, houses of refuge and aid to migrants, civil society and political organizations, academic observers, or governmental sources) from 1995 to date the average flow of “events” or attempts to cross the border from Central America to the United States ranges between 200 and 430 thousand annually. While we may not be able to affirm the exact number of migrants who attempt this exodus, how many have been successful, nor how many have disappeared in their journey, we can assert that the numbers are terrifying. The migrants who disappear en route to the north are the invisible among the invisible.

 

Central American populations flee from the violence of the neoliberal market that infringes upon all areas of their daily lives as well as the generalized use of violence committed under the gaze of absent and complicit governments. Nonetheless, public policies, immigration laws, and migration management agreements between the US government and Mexico continue to criminalize migrants fleeing to the United States from the social, political and economic violence that they suffer in their home countries. Violence permeates throughout Central America and Mexico, fueled by the collusion between authorities and organized crime – whether by omission, negligent collusion, protection, complicity and/or acquiescence to rampant corruption and impunity. In any case, the surveillance and control exercised on the southern border of Mexico has led to an all-out hunt for Central American migrants by Mexican authorities. Migrants in transit through Mexico regularly end up in the hands of organized crime who, under the protection of the authorities, have turned migrants into a second source of income via kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, sex trafficking, organ trafficking, and the use of forced labor for illegal activities. Meanwhile, through deals with “coyotes” and the organized crime group, the Zetas, the Mexican authorities receive generous “compensation” for allowing the flow of human trafficking to continue through highways, airports, seas, and railways.  

 

Migrants in transit are treated as disposable bodies. In order to halt their passage, all kinds of containment measures have been adopted including the implementation of plans and programs such as the Southern Border Plan, which has turned Mexico into the most violent country in the world for migrants in transit. Various reports have spoken of more than 20,000 kidnappings of migrants per year, between 72,000 and 120,000 disappeared migrants, and since the intensification of the securitization/externalization of borders, the discovery of 24,000 bodies in unmarked graves in municipal cemeteries, plus an additional 40,000 unidentified bodies in public morgues and an unimaginable number in the clandestine graves that have been found throughout Mexican territory that have not yet been analyzed.

 

Since 2006, Central American mothers have journeyed to Mexico each year, sponsored by the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano, along with the indispensible collaboration of multiple Mexican and Central American organizations. They are mothers, spouses, sisters, and also fathers that search for their disappeared migrant family members – that multitude of human beings moving along the largest migratory passage in the world. This forced passage between the south and north is tragically similar to the Mediterranean Sea, which, like the desert, takes the lives of thousands upon thousands of migrants. Due to the work of the Caravan of Central American Mothers, some 270 disappeared migrants have been found in Mexico.

 

The Mediterranean is another location where people die while fleeing their countries due to the effects of endless war. But not only do they die, migrants also disappear after successfully crossing the sea. There are abundant testimonies of survivors who have seen others migrants manage to save themselves from the sea, but who later cannot be found, among them some 30,000 minors who possibly have become victims of trafficking.

In the absence of responses from governments to account for what happens to people in their own territories, organizations of family members, principally mothers, have emerged worldwide. Through their own initiative, these mothers carry out actions to locate their missing children, alive or dead, and travel through unknown countries looking for traces of them in prisons, morgues, hospitals, shelters, neighborhoods and places of work where migrants congregate, in addition to actively denouncing and interviewing government officials.

In 2014, the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano signed a collaboration agreement with a collective of Italian organizations grouped under the name, Carovana italiana per i diritti dei migranti, per la dignità e la giustizia (Italian Caravan for the Rights of Migrants, for Dignity and Justice) in order to link their work for the defense of the rights of migrants in both continents and whose main action is to organize a caravan that takes place parallel to the Caravan of Central American Mothers who search for their missing children in transit through Mexico. In that year they were joined by organizations of Tunisian mothers who also are searching for their migrant family members who have gone missing while crossing the Mediterranean, where there is no record of their drowning, but whose whereabouts are also unknown.

Since the World Social Forum held in Tunisia in 2014, we have been in contact with many of these organizations and can confirm their progress. The Tunisian mothers have consolidated their organization and are already an important presence in Italy where they have joined the “Carovana per i diritti dei migranti, per la dignità e la giustizia” in their annual journey, denouncing and raising awareness of the situation of injustice that migrant populations suffer.

 

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In this way, in the geographically, politically, and culturally different contexts of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Italy and Tunisia, we work on shared objectives related to the defining phenomenon of the era of globalization: the displacement of millions of people who flee to save their lives, the migrations, the trafficking of human beings, the disappearances that occur during the journey of migrants, and the increasing deaths of persons who are only guilty of seeking a more favorable living condition for themselves and their families. In this devastating context, we seek to achieve a rigorous respect of the human, civil, and social rights of migrants. We walk together in Mexico and in Italy, denouncing violence, holding events, conducting searches, broadcasting joint press conferences on radio, television and video, through which we make our declarations and demands known.

 

For all of the above reasons and to seek to build a bridge between the different actors who work and suffer the effects of forced migration, we will hold a WORLD SUMMIT OF MOTHERS searching for their missing relatives in transit, uniting the organizations of mothers in the Mediterranean Sea area (Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Mauritania, Senegal, Algiers and Morocco), with Central American organizations (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala), agencies of the Asia-Pacific block, as well as Mexico and the United States as a fundamental part of the activities of the WORLD SOCIAL FORUM ON MIGRATIONS, which will be held in Mexico City on November 2, 3, and 4, 2018.

 

The WORLD SUMMIT OF MOTHERS searching for their missing relatives in transit.

A Political, Pedagogical, Cultural and Healing event.

 

The fundamental purpose of this event is to link the emerging organizations of family members, mothers in particular, who share the struggle to find their loved ones and reunify families broken by the phenomenon of forced migration. It is an opportunity to share their search and healing experiences, nourish hope and recognize that the problem of the disappearances of migrants is global, diverse, and extremely complex.

 

This event also seeks to make known globally what is happening in the world of migration and of forced displacement, to identify the causes and those responsible, and to define shared strategies of search and the struggle for the right to truth, justice, and reparation for the damage that has been done.

 

In this same sense, the World Summit of Mothers seeks to send a strong message of repudiation to the global powers, governments, and institutions, telling them that their models of migration management, rather than solving what they erroneously assume to be the problem, in fact criminally aggravate the situation that they themselves have caused in this era of capitalist accumulation through dispossession and violence. Despite the many deaths that they cause, they will not achieve “order” nor the control of the migratory flows. The struggle of human beings for their lives and well-being is an energy that no measure of containment will ever control.

 

We are sure that this Summit will bring surprises and unforeseen results as we will be building a space conducive to creativity and spontaneity, where freedom of expression and respect for diversity will feed the participation of persons, who for the first time, will come together to share their lives, their struggles and hopes, thus breaking geopolitical, cultural, and language barriers.

 

We will be selling food and handicrafts from the visiting and local countries and will be holding artistic and cultural events, visual art exhibits, and viewings of documentaries and films, thus easing the intensity of the exchanges of life experiences, workshops, conferences, and strategy exercises among others.

 

We intend to facilitate an intense and productive encounter in an environment of the recognition of identities, and of healing, hope, and peaceful resistance.

 

Welcome to the WORLD SUMMIT OF MOTHERS searching for their missing family members in transit, which will be held as a fundamental part of the activities of the WORLD SOCIAL FORM ON MIGRATIONS, Mexico City, November 2-4, 2018.