Central American migrants have long passed through Tultitlán on their way north to the United States because the trains on which the migrants ride north pass nearby.

The mayor of Tultitlán says the number of migrants arriving has increased over recent months and wants them deported, but local activist Paty Camarena continues to fight for their rights.

Video by Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times.

Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history.

Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming “In the Shadow of the Raid,” a documentary film showing at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. A 15-minute edit of the film was recently broadcast on PBS “Frontline’s” website.

“In the Shadow of the Raid” delves into the consequences of the ICE raid for Postville and for some of the the migrants who were arrested and deported back to their homes in two rural villages in Guatemala.

Following the closure of the meatpacking plant, Postville businesses failed and livelihoods were destroyed.

In Guatemala, migrant Willian Toj returned to his wife and parents. Awaiting him was a massive debt that he accrued from his trip to the U.S. He had been working in the Postville plant for 20 minutes before the ICE raid.

Toj can barely earn enough to pay the monthly interest on the $7,000 debt, let alone get the funds to treat his mother’s worsening cancer.

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as “Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain.” The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Watch the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: An interview with Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan, directors of “In the Shadow of the Raid.” All non-interview material courtesy of Szymaszek and Brosnan. Video interview by Deborah Bonello.

The first, last and only time that I met the French-born filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda was on 1 April of this year, when I interviewed him in an apartment he was renting in Mexico City while doing promotion for his film, La Vida Loca.

I’d seen the documentary the night before at a screening attended by Poveda, who fielded questions on why he chose to spend 16 months following members of El Salvador’s notoriously violent 18th Street gang with a video camera. It is a film that could well have brought him to his violent end.

Poveda was shot dead on Wednesday 4 September just outside San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where he lived. Sources say that the night before he was killed, Poveda confessed to being afraid and worried that the gangs were taking a turn for the worse, with a new crop of ever-more vicious leaders coming to the fore.

La Vida Loca is a groundbreaking documentary that shines a light onto the bleak lives of El Salvador’s Mara gangs. Poveda achieved unprecedented, long-term access to certain branches of the gangs and their daily lives in the capital.

I’m not one to speculate on who might be responsible for his death — the disorder, impunity and lawlessness in El Salvador means we might never know. But his murder is a terrible loss, not only to his friends, family and colleagues, but to the journalistic community in Latin America, which already suffers some of the highest rates of aggression and intimidation against members of the trade.

To Poveda, the young people who join las Maras were “victims of society”. He approached the gangs as a documentary filmmaker with an open mind and a lack of moral judgment.

As he said to me during our interview, he was of the opinion that “the majority are young boys that were abandoned at a very young age, and the fact that someone would come from another continent to spend time with them on a daily basis, filming and listening to them, for them that was something very important, that someone was paying attention.”

Many would disagree with Poveda’s assessment of the gangs that stretch across Central America to the United States. Poveda worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador during and after the 12-year-long civil war, which began in 1980. But the gangs really took on their current strength and size in the United States.

Gangs were formed by Salvadorans living on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s, many of who went to the US to escape the civil war ravaging El Salvador. When the peace accords that ended the war were signed in El Salvador in the early 1990s, huge numbers of gang members returned to the country, some of them by choice but most of them through deportation by US authorities. Many were sent back after completing prison sentences.

Although gangs did exist on a small scale in El Salvador before the mass return of migrants from the US, they only grew into the super-gangs they are today after the end of the civil war. The brutally violent groups have been connected with organized crime and other illegal activities across the Americas.

But however you view the gangs, Poveda did what good journalists do — he broadened the discussion, taking a new visual and journalistic angle on an issue that has become so black and white. As the United States continues to sweep the issue of immigration reform under the carpet and turn a blind eye to the repercussions of some of its policies on its smaller, poorer, weaker neighbours, Poveda put some of those realities up on cinema screens on both sides of the Atlantic for all to see.

Tragically, he paid the highest price for doing so.

La Vida Loca, which has been showing on the international film festival circuit, is coming up for commercial release in Mexico and France over the next two months. But the day after Poveda’s death, his producer Gustavo Angel was still trying to negotiate a US release for the film.

I can’t help feeling that if La Vida Loca isn’t seen by audiences within the United States, many of whom have never traveled south of the border, let alone as far south as Central America, we will miss an opportunity to advance the discussion surrounding America’s gang and immigration problems — issues that are inextricably linked.

Deborah Bonello is a blogger and video journalist MexicoReporter.com

www.MexicoReporter.com

This article was written for Index on Censorship.

At first glance, “Los Bastardos” seems a surprising film for a Mexican director to make.

The second movie from Amat Escalante, 30, is a disturbing fictional tale about 24 hours in the lives of two undocumented Mexican day laborers in Los Angeles.

The documentary style of Escalante’s storytelling, which uses two non-actors in the main roles, lulls the viewer into a false sense of complacency that comes to a traumatic and sudden end. The long, lingering shots, taken by a stationary camera, are reminiscent of films such as “Luz Silenciosa / Silent Light” by hot Mexican film talent Carlos Reygadas, who was an associate producer on “Los Bastardos” and also provided Escalante with what he calls “moral support.”

Given the debate raging in the United States over the rights of undocumented migrants, “Los Bastardos” could be accused of playing into the hands of the anti-immigration lobby.

After a day’s hard (illegal) labor, the lead characters Jesús and Fausto break into the house of a white, middle-class woman. OK, she’s too high on crack to really care that much. But why would Escalante _ the son of an American woman and a Mexican man who illegally crossed the border into the U.S. before Escalante was born _ want to portray his undocumented paisanos as violent delinquents?

Escalante said his intention was to provoke thought, not to strengthen stereotypes. The film will be seen on both sides of the U.S. border with Mexico, and promises to challenge the two audiences.

Although anti-immigration activists may feel vindicated by the criminal nature of Jesús and Fausto, many people in the U.S. could be concerned by the way Americans in the film treat day laborers in California. Likewise, Mexican viewers might empathize with the persecution of their countrymen abroad, but bristle at the portrayal of the undocumented Mexicans as ultimately violent thugs.

“What I wanted … is that both sides could be offended, not just one,” said Escalante, who knew since he started making movies in his early 20s that he was going to one day focus on immigration.

“I didn’t want to make a movie [in which] the Mexicans had to be completely good,” he said in near perfect English during an interview in Mexico City. Escalante lived in the U.S from the age of 11 to 18. He now resides in Guanajuato, Mexico.

That none of the characters is completely good or bad is what makes the film much more cynical and complex than it first seems. The bleak social background against which the events of the film roll out paints a depressing picture of the daily lives of at least two Americans, too. The day laborers’ victim Karen (played by Nina Zavarin, a professional actress) can barely have a conversation with her teenage son, and hits the crack pipe in the evening to block out her everyday existence.

Throughout the film the viewer has a mounting sense of dread as they observe the abuse Jesús and Fausto endure from U.S. citizens. But whether their crime is a vengeful act, or one for which they’re being paid by a third party (as Karen suspects, at least from her drug-addled perspective) isn’t really the point. Perhaps the point is that everyone in the movie is a victim in some way.

“The movie is about something that stops working, and collapses, for me. I have the theory that when things are not just, or not equal, or not the way they should be naturally, they will explode and some bad things are going to happen. In the movie this is what I wanted to show,” said Escalante.

He does so very graphically, with a feature film that deserves the recognition it has received from a number of festivals including the Morelia International Film Festival (best feature film) and Cannes (Un certain regard).

Whether you love it or hate it, “Los Bastardos” promises to leave an impression that’s hard to shake.

“Los Bastardos” opened in Mexico cinemas last Friday, and is available on DVD in the United States.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times

Video by Deborah Bonello. All non-interview material courtesy of Mantarraya Productions. With thanks for the Red Tree House for hosting the filming of the interview.

The Canadian Embassy in Mexico City’s posh Polanco neighbourhood has been descended upon by thousands of Mexicans since the Canadian government announced on Monday that Mexican nationals now need a visa to travel to Canada.

Since Tuesday, Mexicans from Mexico City and states outside of the Federal District (another name for the capital) have been lining up around the block clutching envelopes and bundles of documents that they need to apply for the new visa. It’s up to the officials at the Canadian embassy to decide who qualifies and who doesn’t.

Much like the visa process Mexicans who want to visit the United States have to go through, they need to convince embassy officials that they only plan to visit, that they have enough money to do so, and that they won’t overstay their approved period of time in the country.

I spoke to many of the people lining around the block yesterday morning. They were, generally speaking, a very well-heeled, middle class bunch. All of those that I spoke to had already booked their flights when the Canadian government introduced the new visa restrictions.

The Canadian government explained on Monday that the new visa restrictions were in response to a surge in refugee applications from Mexican nationals. Reading between the lines, the new visa restrictions were in response to an increase in what they judge to be fraudulent refugee applications from Mexican nationals. As the news release stated:

In 2008, more than 9,400 claims filed in Canada came from Mexican nationals, representing 25 per cent of all claims received. Of the Mexican claims reviewed and finalized in 2008 by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent administrative tribunal, only 11 per cent were accepted.

The Canadian authorities have their reasons, but what still seems odd to me is that they should announce the new visa restrictions just two days before they came into force, throwing thousands of Mexican travelers into panic and dumping an enormous workload onto the embassy staff here in Mexico City. The usual working hours for visa issues is 8am to 1pm but staff have been working into the early evening over the last few days to cater to the demand for the new visa.

Watch the video for more on how Mexicans feel about the new visas.

Video by Deborah Bonello, created for the Los Angeles Times.

In a news release, Canadian immigration officials said that for the first 48 hours after the new rules go into effect today, Mexican citizens can apply for entry on arrival in Canada. But as of Thursday, a visa will be required:

Refugee claims from Mexico have almost tripled since 2005, making it the number one source country for claims. In 2008, more than 9,400 claims filed in Canada came from Mexican nationals, representing 25 per cent of all claims received. Of the Mexican claims reviewed and finalized in 2008 by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent administrative tribunal, only 11 per cent were accepted.

“In addition to creating significant delays and spiraling new costs in our refugee program, the sheer volume of these claims is undermining our ability to help people fleeing real persecution,” said Minister Kenney. “All too often, people who really need Canada’s protection find themselves in a long line, waiting for months and sometimes years to have their claims heard. This is unacceptable.

“The visa requirement I am announcing will give us a greater ability to manage the flow of people into Canada and verify bona fides. By taking this important step towards reducing the burden on our refugee system, we will be better equipped to process genuine refugee claims faster.”

For the last three years, Canada has seen an increase in immigration violations, according to the country’s Citizenship and Immigration website. This includes Mexican nationals without proper travel documents and those not leaving Canada once their period of stay had expired.

Read the whole report here.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Mexican women left behind by husbands who migrate to the United States in search of work were one of the focuses of the documentary “Los Que Se Quedan,” or “Those Who Remain,” by Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo, which we’ve mentioned a number of times here on La Plaza.

In response to those posts, Jared Wilkerson, one of the authors of a recent study on that subject, got in touch with us about the findings he recently made with his colleagues at Brigham Young University.

The study, called “Effects of Husbands’ Migration on Mental Health and Gender Role Ideology of Rural Mexican Women,” found that those women generally have a poorer state of mental health than a comparison group. The study attributes this condition largely to the nontraditional gender roles that are forced upon the women because of their husbands’ absence.

As Wilkerson explained to us via e-mail:

“For most of the women, a shift in ideology comes as a necessity, not a choice. This necessity is brought on when their husbands leave and their duties of livelihood and community representation increase. As the women see themselves doing things traditionally associated with male success — which happens to be the most visible form and baseline of success, they begin to think such success is right and proper for both men and women. This newfound ideology does not die when husbands return.

“When a woman holding this nontraditional ideology is surrounded by society, culture, location or other circumstances that are contrary to that ideology, it may be more difficult for her to act upon or even feel comfortable with the ideology.”

And how does he think this can contribute to the immigration debate now raging in the United States?

“Americans should not see this study as a call to ‘seal our borders’ from the ‘evil aliens’ in order to keep alien families together. That would likely be less of a solution to the problem of women’s mental suffering, especially in places where farming is not a perennial option like the ranchos, because men would likely become frustrated and agitated with their inability to provide for their families. This agitation would surely lead to familial suffering.

“In the long run, if labor is allowed to flow freely and safely across the border to satisfy demand in the United States, then women who care about their husbands’ well-being will be less anxious for their safety. Further, the free and safe flow of labor would allow families to plan when and for how long forays into the United States would last, providing surety and stability for wives and children who remain at home.”

You can decide for yourself what the immigration debate can learn from these findings; download it here.

Wilkerson co-wrote the study with his former BYU psychology professor Niwako Yamawaki and Samuel D. Downs, and it was published in the Healthcare for Women International journal this week. The study was carried out in rural Guanajuato in a cluster of five villages.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Photo: A screen shot from the documentary  “Los Que Se Quedan,” or “Those Who Remain.”

“Money sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell by 19.9 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline on record as the U.S. recession slashed jobs.

“Remittances dropped to $1.9 billion from $2.4 billion in May 2008, the central bank said on Wednesday. The amount of money sent home in the first five months of 2009 fell 11.3 percent to $9.2 billion compared with the same period last year.

“Remittances are the second-biggest source of foreign currency after oil exports in Mexico, and their decline has contributed to the country’s own economic downturn.”

The recession in the United States and related job cuts, combined with the crack down on illegal immigration
might tempt some migrants living in El Norte to head home. But things are just as bad if not worse in Mexico. Even on a normal day, if there were so many great jobs in Mexico then there wouldn’t be12 million Mexicans living illegally in the United States, where they go looking for better job – el Sueno Americano.

But the recession up north is causing the demand for exports to drop. The U.S buys around 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports, so it’s a serious blow for the country. The knock on effect here? More job cuts. So if there already weren’t enough jobs, now it’s only getting worse for Mexico. Swine flu earlier this year didn’t help, and neither do the steady reports of drug related violence from around the country.

The City Government’s modest program of subsidised soup kitchens and unemployment cheques shouldn’t just be confined to the city. As the informal system of social security that migrants have provided to their families living in Mexico starts to fall away, the pressure on the Government to help out it’s poor and unemployed will only grow.

So far, it’s efforts have largely been limited to the left-leaning city government. So what comes next?

You may recall that last year, I published this video about a group of Honduran mothers who came to Mexico looking for their missing family members and friends.

Since then, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has a carried out it’s own investigation into the problems Central and Latin American migrants encounter when they try to cross or enter Mexico, usually on route to the United States.

The report found 198 cases of migrant kidnappings during that time, with an average of 33 kidnappings a month – that’s more than one a day. During that period, 9,758 migrants were deprived of their liberty. More than 60 percent of kidnappings involved groups of migrants travelling together. The majority of those kidnapped were from Honduras (67 %). 18% of the victims were from El Salvador and 13% from Guatemala.

Who’s doing the kidnapping?

More than 9,000 of the victims were kidnapped by gangs that operate along Mexico’s migrant routes, 35 of them were kidnapped by police, migrant officials or other Mexican authorities, and 56 were taken by a combination of the two working together. In 6 of the cases, migrants were kidnapped by a single kidnapper.

According to the Commission’s research, the various kidnappers asked for a ransom of between US$1,500 to US$5,000 for their hostages, who were often blindfolded, driven to various locations, and in some cases only fed one meal a day, sometimes consisting of little more than bread or stale tortillas. The average price they demanded was around US$2,500, meaning that over the six-month period, kidnapping gangs or authorities made around US$25 million from ransom money out of the 9,758 victims detected by the study.

The president of the Comision Nacional de Los Derecho Humanos (CNDH) Dr. José Luis Soberanes Fernández, made a speech at the unveiling of the report here in Mexico City on Monday. Needless to say I wasn’t there in person due to my foot injury, but was sent the speech.

“These figure clearly show that the frequency and magnitude of migrant kidnappings represent an enormous level of this criminal activity, which means high earnings from delinquency.

He also said that the reaction of the Mexican authorities hasn’t been proportional to the severity and volume of the crimes against migrants in Mexico, leading to an increase in the impunity enjoyed by those who commit these crimes.

Gigi Bonnici, an independent human rights consultant, specializing in immigration and asylum issues who has six years of experience working with migrants and refugees in Mexico for a number of organizations including Sin Fronteras, said of the findings:

“The statistics are frightening, given that we are probably talking about thousands more, since this is obviously a very difficult issue to assess, primarily because the overwhelming majority of cases are not reported to anyone. The migrants often consider these crimes as part of the cost of migrating, part of the tax one has to pay for being poor and for crossing through Mexico and into the US without legal documents.”

She said that the fact that many migrants don’t know their rights combined with the indifference of the majority of the Mexican population compounds the problem.

“The international migrant population traveling through Mexico by train, by bus or on foot is by and large an invisible one to the majority of the Mexican population – invisible in the sense that they are essentially undocumented and live in fear of being discovered by any type of authority; invisible in the sense that they themselves are often unaware that as human beings they have the same rights as all of us to physical integrity and to be protected from criminal acts, whether they have legal status to be in the country or not; invisible in the sense that in the eyes of the authorities charged with protection they have no rights and so are not subject to protection by the state (which also means that criminal perpetrators who harm migrants are not subject to state investigation); invisible in the sense that (unlike other so-called vulnerable groups) migrants do not exist to the Mexican population at large – because they are considered criminals who are simply using passage through the desert to get to the north (in fact sometimes even considered as “competition” for those Mexicans who are trying to do the same thing), the public also does not believe that they should be owed protection by the state.”

Finally, Bonnici picks up on a point that explains why I choose to highlight this issue so frequently. Mexico and the Mexican Government have worked hard to gain recognition of the migrant rights of Mexicans in the United States. The issue of Mexico’s northern border with the United States and the thousands of migrants (of many nationalities) who die trying to cross it each year is a humanitarian tragedy. That said, it’s only fair that Mexico’s government and people turn their attentions to those migrants suffering within Mexico’s own borders and pay them the same respect they demand for their paisanos / countrymen abroad.

“Undocumented migrants have no access to justice in Mexico; at most, access to justice for migrants is conditioned on a regular legal status,” says Bonnici.

“If an undocumented migrant wishes to approach the police or prosecutor in order to lay a charge for a crime committed against him or her, or to provide witness testimony, he or she would risk being detained and deported. According to Article 67 of the General Populations Law and section 201 of its Regulations, the authorities are obliged to first confirm legal status of the claimant, and if the person cannot prove legal status in Mexico, he must be transferred to the migration authorities (which means, being detained in immigration detention prison and most likely deported). Why on earth would any migrant who already has suffered at the hands of criminals, expose himself to these risks, especially when there is strong evidence to suggest that the authorities are in collusion with the kidnappers, and when it is abundantly clear that the migrant will get no redress or restitution.

“This is obviously a significant violation to the right to equality before the law, and is also something Mexico has fought hard to get for its own migrants in the US.”

The CNDH’s investigation took place between September 2008 and February 2009 this year, and was carried out by Comission employees who toured migrant shelters throughout Mexico, from Chiapas all the way to Baja California and Nuevo Leon.