Broadcast live on Ustream, June 24th 2009

Moderator: Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News
Panel:Ed Vulliamy, Guardian and Observer journalist and writer
Alex Tweddle<, director of Juarez City of Dreams
Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch

Traffic on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma was blocked briefly last Friday afternoon by an actor in the role of Jesus.

Wearing a long white robe over jeans and sneakers and carrying a cross fashioned roughly out of wood, ”Jesus” took a tumble on a pedestrian crossing on the traffic artery in front of the U.S. Embassy while on his way to Calvary Hill.

But Friday’s performance wasn’t part of Mexico’s traditional Semana Santa (Easter week) activities, which are now in full swing. The depiction of the crucifixion of Christ in the tradition known as the Stations of the Cross, or Via Crucis, had a cross-border purpose.

Organized by pro-immigration activists, the street performance depicted Jesus as a Mexican migrant, and as the actor walked around dragging his cross, others wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ICE (U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and INM (Instituto Nacional de Migracion, Mexico’s national migration agency) flogged him from behind shouting, “Walk, wretch, walk!”

One of the organizers was Elvira Arellano, who shot into the spotlight in both the United States and Mexico in 2006 after she took refuge in a Chicago church to avoid being deported back to Mexico. Click here to read more about Arellano’s case.

Arellano was eventually deported, leaving behind her 10-year-old son Saul, who was born in the United States after she had crossed the border illegally from Mexico.

“It’s very sad that the migration policies treat us as though we were basically terrorists or criminals,” Arellano said in an interview after the protest.

“We’re just families looking for a better life. We want to live better and we all believe we have the right to look for work opportunities. Unfortunately, we don’t find those opportunities here in Mexico, which is why we go looking for those opportunities in the United States.”

Arellano, who was accompanied by protesters carrying signs that said “Stop the Deportations” in English and Spanish, implored Mexican as well as U.S authorities to show more respect for migrants’ human rights. As we reported last year, tens of thousands of Central Americans traverse Mexico illegally each year on their way to the U.S. border. Migrants have been maimed or killed hopping aboard freight trains. Others are robbed or raped.

Often, they are arrested and held in squalid cells or denied medical care. In hundreds of cases, Central American families never hear from their relatives again.

“Mexico’s National Migration Institute is complicit with the U.S immigration authorities because here in Mexico they ignore the rights of migrants who come from Central America,” Arellano said.

Thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans cross the U.S. border with Mexico illegally every year.

See the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Image: A Mexican man playing the role of Jesus takes a tumble in front of the U.S embassy Friday during a street theater performance depicting Jesus as a Mexican migrant. Click here for more images on Flickr.

The music of Mexico’s drug trade has taken a beating lately. As we reported from Tijuana last year, some radio stations south of the border have stopped playing the songs and promoters have banned the music from many public events. Nightclub owners ask bands to turn down narcocorrido requests.

Richard Marosi wrote: Narcocorridos still draw legions of fans, despite government
efforts to squelch the music. Calor Norteña played the song about
Villarreal only because of repeated requests from hard-drinking
bar-goers. But it was a momentary exception to a backlash that has
succeeded like none before in changing people’s attitudes toward the
music, say members of several bands, nightclub owners, concert
promoters and government officials.

They describe a growing dislike, even revulsion, for music that critics
say celebrates the people terrorizing a community that has suffered at
least 207 violent deaths this year. Attendance at narcocorrido concerts
has dipped; bands say audiences request the music less and less,
preferring dance and romantic tunes that take their minds off the
city’s troubles.

But Mexican artist Cristina Rubalcava wasn’t put off by the controversy. After writing a song for los Tigres Del Norte about the controversial 670-mile fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border, she got to listening to some of the band’s narcocorridos and created a mural that illustrates phrases from more than 40 of their canciones. Watch the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

The view from the border: Tijuana side.

“TJ? Really?” was the response from most people last week when they learned I was heading down south of San Diego for a research trip.

They were right to be cautious. I live in Mexico City — one of the biggest, baddest towns around — but still gave Tijuana a second thought. The world’s most famous border city has been getting some bad press of late due to the drug-related violence playing out on its streets.

But what struck me more during my brief trip was the border itself and how it is littered with evidence of its own casualties and conflicts, past and present. The wall is at the center of the current national debate on immigration, and I wanted to see it for myself.

Read on – this post was written for La Plaza.

Panting for breath, I waded through cow-pat flavoured mud, struggling to keep myself from slipping in the dark. “Vamanos, vamanos, vamanos!” urged my coyote, the Spanish name for people who smuggle migrants across the border into the United States.

The sound of La Migra’s sirens – also known as United States Border Patrol – sounded out behind me. Hands shaking, I stopped to catch my breath and watched the faces of the other migrants crouched in the dark, breathing heavily.

“We know you’re there,” boomed a crackling voice in English, tinged with a Mexican accent, over the loudspeaker. Gun shots rang out.

“What you’re doing is illegal. We have food and water. We can help you get back home.”

Only, no one wanted to go back home. Everyone was actually having a rather a good time. That’s because this wasn’t for real. We were pretend migrants, trying to cross an artificial border pursued by a fake Border Patrol deep in the Mexican state of Hidalgo for the bargain price of 100 pesos (US$10) rather than the thousands that Mexicans and Central American migrants crossing into the U.S illegally pay their smugglers.

But it certainly felt real. Complete with its own Border Patrol cars, smugglers, raging rivers and dark mountains, La Caminata Nocturna in Parque Alberto gives visitors an insight into what many Mexican and Central Americans experience nearly every night. The experience is run by an indigenous Mexican community, which itself has been ravaged by migration to the United States.

The dry countryside surrounding Parque Alberto is scattered with half-built houses that stand empty – unused and unfinished. Corn fields stand untended, and the giant maguey cacti thrive. Remittance money being sent home from the United States has slowed of late, bringing construction to a halt.

Most of the staff, such as the manager Delfino Santiago, have crossed la frontera to el norte illegally many times. Delfino is on sabbatical from his landscape gardening job in Las Vegas.

Traveling to our start point in the back of a truck, another member of the community told us he has crossed the border 15 times. The details on La Caminata Nocturna seems based on first-hand experience. The urgent tone of the coyotes sends a chill up the spine, as does the separation of men and women at the beginning of the trip. Our smuggler, who never removes his black balaclava, explains that women run slower. Making them go first allows them to set the pace to avoid anyone getting left behind.

However, two very experienced border reporters tell me that La Migra never shoot their guns in the air, nor do they use sirens. Some additions appear to have been made for dramatic effect.

As we crouched panting in the bushes, flash lights penetrated the darkness and the crackle of walkie-talkie radios came into range. “Stop! Get down! Get down!” yelled Border Patrol, clad in camouflage army gear and green Border Patrol t-shirts. Three migrants [actors] scrambled out of the bushes and tried to make a run for it.

“Suelta me! Suelta me!(let me go!)” one of the three protested as they were wrestled to the ground by La Migra. But there was no escape, and they were dragged off into the darkness. The flash lights of La Migra receded into blackness once again. A stunned silence ensued.

Then we were off, slithering under a wire fence – THE border fence – one by one. The trek was in many ways an obstacle course – an accident waiting to happen. To get out of the woods, each of us had to edge along a wall no more than eight inches wide, which separated a thin river from a five meter drop. With my boots slippery from mud and cow-shit and the wall wet from the rain, it was no easy task in the dark.

We broke out into a moonlit, pebbled clearing under a tree. A couple of teachers on the trek, Sergio Mendieta and Maria Elena Estrada, rested their bones in front of us. They were visiting from the nearby state of Mexico and the walk was a must-do part of their itinerary. He rubbed her shins as she tried to catch her breath.

After a brief rest, we made a break into the mountains, running first downhill at breakneck speed which in the dark was an exhilarating but terrifying experience. The mountains were beautiful, lit up by a full moon that cast the cacti and stones in an eerie dull, white light. Flash lights weren’t allowed because they would give us away to La Migra.

We scrambled over a mountain of shale, but were frozen by a violent whisper from our smuggler: “Paranse! (Stop!)”.

Beneath us, in the base of the steep valley, a bunch of migrants broke cover of the bushes and ran across the open, throwing themselves into the back of a waiting red truck. At the same time, two Border Patrol cars screeched into view in a nearby country lane. A bumpy car chase ensued between the three vehicles around a rough dirt car park, the red truck seemingly escaping La Mirga and breaking out into the country lane. But La Migra raced ahead, cutting off the speeding car – its occupants piled out. Game over.

And it was the end of the road for us also. In the ride back to the Park, I chatted with our smuggler, who said he has crossed the border many times.

“Is this trip anything like the real thing?”I asked.

“Well, really? No. The real thing is so much harder.”

“What’s the hardest part?”

“The desert,” he replied.

“Always the desert.”