More than three dozen women from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, mothers whose children disappeared after leaving their troubled homelands to find a better life, stopped in Guadalajara earlier this week as part of a 22-statewide campaign to raise awareness for their plight and perhaps even effect a resolution as to the vital status and location of their missing kin.
Their journey began the first of this month in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas and will end in Tenosique, Tabasco after stops in Maravatio, Michoacan, CDMX and Veracruz.
La Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas, founded 13 years ago with the help of the non-profits Bridges of Hope and Mesoamerican Immigrant Movement (M3), trouped into Plaza de la Liberacion Monday, where they set up photos, brandished banners and chanted slogans such as “Los migrants no somos criminals, somos trabajadores internacionales!” (we migrants aren’t criminals, we’re international workers) and “Hijo, escucha, tu madre esta en la lucha!” (listen, son, your mother is fighting for you).
One of these mothers is Honduran Doris Lopez, an object lesson in the importance of never giving up hope. She went 10 years without hearing from her son Carlos, who left home at 16 years old. Through a cruel comedy of communicative errors on both sides, mother and son lost contact. In the ensuing years, Carlos started a family in Monterrey; he sites fear of being forever separated from his children as the primary reason he never tried making the trip back. He and his mother were reunited this week in Guadalajara thanks to the publicity efforts of the non-profits organizing the march.
Gladis Velazquez, also from Honduras, is still in a constant state of suspense inre the status of her son, Mario, who hasn’t been seen or heard from since leaving the country for the United States in 2008. He called her in October of that year to inform her he was in San Luis Potosi awaiting a “coyote” to take him across the border, and then dropped off the face of the earth.
Accodring to Marta Sanchez Soler, founder of M3, migrants don’t wish of their own accord to cut off communication with loved ones back home, but rather are forced to by random circumstances or by organized crime, who often coerce vulnerable migrants into working for them while denying them contact with the outside world.
The frequency with which Central American migrants disappear in Mexico is, for M3 coordinator Ruben Figueroa, a sign that “something is seriously wrong with this country’s policies towards the migrant population.”
Expanding on this notion was Soler’s opinion that Mexico and many Central American countries “ape the immigration-stemming model of the United States,” resulting in “disaster.”
In the years the caravan has been in operation, 281 migrants have been located, two of whom were found dead. That may seem like a lot, but not when set against the estimated 70,120 migrants that have gone missing since 2006.
If you wish to trace the caravan’s route - or even participate and/or donate - go to movimientomigrantemesoamericano.org. Their journey ends this coming Monday.