The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

Online at mexicosolidarityproject.org

June 14, 2023/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Statue of Insecurity: Cagle Cartoons

Here in 2023, A Statue Against Liberty

Those who our culture now hails as the forefathers of our USA all at one point stepped onto boats determined to start life anew. They sailed across an ocean and landed on another continent. They never worried about being allowed to land on territory that didn’t happen to belong to them. They simply came, they conquered, they settled in.

How would their descendants go on to treat immigrants who also stepped onto boats looking for a new chance at life? In theory, they welcomed those immigrants. The United States stood, as the Statue of Liberty would proclaim, as a beacon of hope for the “tired and poor” ever “yearning to breathe free.”

But even back in 1886, the year the Statue of Liberty first graced New York harbor, those welcoming words rang false. Lawmakers in Congress, just four years earlier, had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, legislation that prohibited — for the first time ever — migrants of a specific nationality from entering the United States. In the years to come, US immigration policies would emphasize quotas and expand their restrictive hurdles, with deportations the ever-present danger for those who dared in any way to violate those restrictions.

Getting into the United States remains a cruel obstacle course, even for asylum-seekers facing direct threats on their lives. In our interview this week, the director of the American Friends Service Committee project that’s helping these migrants at the US-México border explains just how difficult entering the United States has become. Asylum-seekers must pass, in effect, a survival test as grueling as any Navy Seal’s — and combine that physical endurance with the computing expertise necessary to navigate application apps and a lawyer’s understanding of our US immigration system’s infinitely complex legal maze.

Can a nation born from a sense of Western European entitlement — and the violent extermination of a continent’s original peoples — ever become capable of truly welcoming the oppressed? Migrants themselves, poor and tired as they may be, are pointing us toward a positive answer. Back in 1980, Vietnamese immigrants led the way in the successful push for that year’s Refugee Act. This landmark legislation has helped tens of thousands of persecuted people enter into the US and get assistance.

We can, migrants are reminding us, do better as a nation. Their determination is challenging us all to face our national past and finally discover the humanity we all share.

Don’t miss an issue! Sign up for a free México Solidarity Bulletin subscription.

US Asylum Today: An Idea Turned Upside Down

You’ve spent your life working to better the lives of migrants!

My parents came as immigrants from México, and I was born and raised in San Diego, an entry city for migrants from Latin America and beyond. During college I began organizing against anti-immigrant initiatives in San Diego. I’ve been directly involved ever since in supporting migrants. Their perilous journey doesn’t end once they’ve made it onto US soil.

The problems these migrants face go way beyond getting documented. Back in 1996, for example, Congress and President Clinton put in place a welfare “reform” that ended up costing many elderly immigrants the benefits they depended on. The majority of these seniors did have permanent residency status, but didn’t meet the new work history threshold, either because they had worked in “informal” jobs or didn’t have enough years of registered work.

Migrants confront daily obstacles because policymakers stack policies against them. So advocating for immigrant-friendly legislation must be part of our methodology.

You’ve been working with asylum seekers at the border. What does “asylum” mean?

Asylum used to be defined as taking in those from another country fleeing harm. During WWII, a boatload of Jewish people arrived on US shores, but US officials sent them back to Germany —  and almost certain death.

This shameful incident often gets cited today as a reason why the United States and other countries should accept asylum seekers. But today’s asylum policies all too often lack compassion. They set an unconscionably high benchmark. Refugees must prove they are fleeing extreme harm.

So what happens? US authorities have denied asylum to Mexicans threatened by criminal gangs in Michoacan. They say these asylum-seekers can just move to somewhere else in México. But the criminal networks operate well beyond Michoacan.

Refugee Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis denied entry into the United States in 1939./Keystone-France, Gemma-Keystine, Getty Images

Most Mexicans who try to enter into the United States do not cross with the intention of turning themselves in and seeking asylum — because US officials so rarely approve asylum claims for Mexican nationals. The direct result: Migrants are making extremely dangerous journeys across mountains and deserts.

Those migrants who do seek asylum are now facing unfair new process hurdles. They must use a special Customs and Border Protection app on their cell phones to make an asylum appointment at a port of entry. But not everyone has or knows how to use this technology, and those with 5G technology can beat out the 4G people in getting the available slots.

Asylum-seekers trying to use the Customs app also find that people with dark skins have problems uploading photos of themselves, as the app requires.

Photo: Herika Martinez/AFP, Getty Images

The Trump-era Title 42 border policy just ended, and President Biden, expecting a big surge of migrants into the US, sent 1,500 troops to ensure order. What did you actually see on the ground?

Trump’s Title 42 used the Covid pandemic as a pretext to deny Black and Brown migrants asylum by empowering Border Patrol agents to expel migrants without honoring their due process rights. This made an extremely difficult entry process for migrants even worse.

We also need to remember that denying entry into the US puts migrants in harm’s way by forcing them to wait in dangerous areas on the Mexican side of the border. Title 42 especially endangered Black people. We saw a documented uptick in kidnappings, rape, and torture after Title 42 took effect.

Just before the anticipated end of Title 42, we heard heated rhetoric in the media about the massive multitudes that would soon be “surging” into the United States. Words like “surge” condition the US public to think that militarization offers the only viable alternative. But Title 42 ended with no surge, no extraordinary increase in migration.

The Border Patrol, before that end of Title 42, seemed to be doing its best to purposefully manufacture a false “surge” event. In the weeks before Title 42’s expiration, they stopped processing asylum-seekers who had made it past San Diego’s primary border wall. They kept these asylum-seekers between the 30-foot-high primary wall and a 30-foot secondary wall for extended periods of time, as many as seven days. Those spaces between the two walls essentially became an open-air pre-processing detention space.

Migrants needed to keep their phones charged to connect with family members. We tried to help migrants with charging their phones. Border Patrol agents responded by threatening us: “If you keep charging their phones,” they said, “we won’t let you feed them.” 

We charged their phones anyway because we recognized how important a lifeline those phones had become.

Your American Field Services Committee tries to work with the Border Patrol to improve the treatment of migrants, right?

Yes, we have had regular meetings with various agencies in the immigration apparatus. But our relationship with the Border Patrol has varied by administration and with who leads the agency. Under George W. Bush, the War on Terror hardened the US stance. Under Obama, we met quarterly and developed a national standard for the treatment of detainees. With Trump, we had no communication. Under Biden, we have dialogue, but the conversation has been shallow and hasn’t resulted in better practices. 

AFSC doesn’t just assist and advocate. You facilitate organizing in migrant communities. How important do you see this part of your program?

All people have agency. Organizing remains the key. We inform people about their rights and provide them tools to organize themselves. Migrants can accomplish a lot at the local level and influence what happens regionally and nationally. Cities can become allies in protecting and defending human rights, but this must occur through the organizing that gives directly impacted communities a sustained ownership of the process. 

What kind of reforms do you want to see?

Immigration reform must emphasize humane treatment. Over the past several decades, the emphasis has been on enforcement through deterrence, and that has only increased border-related deaths. An alternative? The Biden administration must improve processing, increase service staff, and train more hearing officers to address the backlog of cases. Another good use of federal funds would be supporting states and municipalities that want to integrate migrants into their communities.

Above all, we need to practice compassion and respect. Migrants face untold harm from state and non-state actors. But they also have the capacity to shape policies and narratives to reflect the realities they face. We have a responsibility to create public spaces that can help migrating people speak on their own behalf — so they can offer the ideas that best meet their needs.

The End of the PRI/El Fin del PRI

Delfina Gómez’s victory over Alejandra del Moral in the June 4 gubernatorial election in the state of México rates as no ordinary triumph. Her victory may well mark a harbinger of things to come in Mexican politics for the foreseeable future.

Gómez, a former schoolteacher with working-class roots running on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party ticket, soundly beat her opponent, del Moral, who had all three of México’s major opposition parties behind her. Yet Gómez still took 52.6 percent of the vote.

We simply cannot overstate this outcome’s significance. The results could spell the end of the PRI, the once hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party founded in the wake of the Mexican Revolution that went on to dominate national politics for over 70 years. The PRI, for most of those years, governed the entire country and all 32 Mexican states with an iron fist. It will now govern only two states.

The state of México — the jurisdiction that surrounds the capital on three sides and includes slums, suburban bedroom communities, and rural communities — has long been the PRI’s most preeminent bastion. The state hosted the Atlacomulco Group, a shadowy organization that served as the braintrust of numerous PRI politicians, including former President Enrique Peña Nieto.

With more voters than any other Mexican state and nearly as many voters as all of Ecuador, the state of México has been where the PRI perfected its political machine. The party manipulated clientelistic networks and vote-buying to keep the state under its control for nearly a century. The PRI has now lost access to state government coffers, to the pesos so often employed to “win” votes.

The PRI defeat also constitutes a major blow to the opposition’s strategy for the 2024 presidential election. Under the tutelage of business magnate Claudio X. González, a vociferous opponent of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the opposition’s three major parties have come together to present a single candidate in most electoral contests since López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. Despite their ideological differences and historical rivalries, these three parties — the PRI, the National Action Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) — intend to present a single candidate in the 2024 presidential race. But the gubernatorial election results in the state of México show that their chances of winning the presidency, even if they stay united behind one candidate, remain a long shot.

That presidential race now begins in earnest. What lies ahead? Morena seems increasingly likely to have another six years to carry out its transformational agenda.

José Luis Granados Ceja, a Mexican freelance journalist, is currently studying human rights and popular democracy at the Autonomous
University of Mexico City. You can follow his comments on democratic struggles in Latin America on Twitter via @GranadosCeja.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Ron Grossman,  Latino Activist Rudy Lozano Was Murdered 40 Years Ago. Some Called It a ‘Political Assassination.’ Chicago Tribune.  An organizer with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Lozano had been a beacon of hope to a Mexican community largely confined to low-paying jobs. 

Ulises Rodríguez López, Morena presenta reforma para elegir ministros por voto popular, Polemón. El proceso de votación se organizaría en el INE, al igual que sucede con los demás poderes, además se organizarían debates entre las y la aspirantes. Asimismo, el cargo duraría cuatro años con la posibilidad de una reelección a otros 4.

David Raby, México and solidarity journalism, Morning Star. A look at the difficulties in raising international awareness about México’s transformation.

Guerras e imperialismo en las Américas: una crítica feminista a los 200 años de la Doctrina Monroe, Capire. En el documento de la Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres y ALBA Movimientos se discute el imperialismo y su rol en los conflictos armados en la región.

José Olivares,  The US Is Unhappy That Mexico Is Spending Money on Its Own Citizens, Intercept. México’s populist president should instead be spending more on furthering US interests, according to a leaked intelligence document.

Sugeyry Romina Gándara, Carlos Salinas dio Guanajuato al PAN y desde entonces lo retiene. ¿Hora del cambio? Sin Embargo.  Aunque existe un descontento hacia los gobiernos panistas debido a la inseguridad y la baja calidad de vida, analistas en Guanajuato consideran que aún hay varios factores que hacen difícil considerar que haya condiciones favorables para un cambio de partido en el Gobierno.

Edwin Flores, Critics slam The Economist for 'racist' article calling Latin American workers 'useless,' NBC News. Historian Alexander Aviña says the story reflects longstanding US media tropes that blame poverty in México on “Mexicans having the quote-unquote mañana habit.” 

Gabriel Nava, El lado oscuro del nearshoring, afectaciones y riesgos de este fenómeno comercial, Indigo. La relocalización de empresas se ha posicionado como la mayor esperanza para el avance económico del país, sin embargo puede tener efectos negativos.

Eduardo Porter, México’s New Normal Is Coming Into View, Bloomberg. Claudia Sheinbaum, who heads the government of México City, is widely believed to be the favorite of the president’s circle. But her lefty credentials and vaunted loyalty to AMLO frighten a business class that much prefers the urbane foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard.

Zedryk Raziel, Las ‘casillas zapato’ donde Va por México obtuvo 9 de cada 10 votos en el Estado de México y Coahuila, El País. La alianza encabezada por el PRI acumula irregularidades en casillas donde hubo más votos que electores registrados o donde casi todos los sufragios fueron para sus candidatos. 

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman, Steven Hollis, Daniel McCool, Betty Forrester, Jesús Hermosillo. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

Subscribe! Get the México Solidarity Bulletin in your email box every week.

Web page and application support for the México Solidarity Project from NOVA Web Development, a democratically run, worker-owned and operated cooperative focused on developing free software tools for progressive organizations.