I am slightly ashamed of the fact that my heart breaks at the sight of a lost dog but hardens at a street person.
Dogs are small and cute while vagrants are generally neither. I am more sympathetic if the person is crippled or selling something. (The latter probably appeals to my American respect for hard work.)
My colonia in Guadalajara is a few blocks from the railway that is the major route for people fleeing El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – folks who are often aiming for the United States but, since policy shifts both there and in Mexico, are increasingly seeking refuge in Mexico. As a matter of fact, I am virtually at the center of this humanitarian crisis, due to the establishment just seven years ago of a shelter called FM4 Paso Libre, located at the point on the railroad tracks that is just about as close to my apartment as you can get.
I frequently see these migrants selling things, asking for money or sleeping on sidewalks near my home. Once, I saw several doing laundry in a park fountain. Once, I bought a charming, woven, straw grasshopper from a migrant who approached my car. Once, I saw a tall, slim female migrant waiting for a bus.
Over the years, Central American migrants have become easier for me to spot. They wear backpacks, a certain type of rough and ready clothes and serious expressions that set them apart from Mexicans. They are generally young men with an unkempt, unhealthy and unhappy appearance, a distinctive look that is often the product of horrific experiences in their countries (where they are victims of a gun culture that is largely the responsibility of my home country), followed by weeks of clinging to the outside of trains, which originate in faraway southern Mexican states and passs through Guadalajara.
Clinging to these trains is not their only problem – they are frequently attacked, kidnapped and extorted by Mexican police and criminals who prey on them along the route. These difficulties explain why there are very few women and children among the migrants.
But these insights came later, after I finally visited the shelter that has been operating near my home since 2010. My normal reaction before that was to recoil at the sight of the migrants, especially when they asked for money. I avoided them out of fear.
Just as local talent is often overlooked on its home turf, so are familiar problems. Sometimes it takes an angel looking down from afar to discern a higher truth in what seems like a mere nuisance to homeboys. So it was that, when my French teacher told me she spends every Sunday volunteering at the FM4 Paso Libre shelter, I started to donate clothes and take a fresh look at the migrants I ran across nearly every day.
“They really need shoes,” my French teacher had said. So, from among my excess shoes, I found a few that were unisex and donated them. Was it just a coincidence that, one afternoon when I was hurrying home from French class as a thunderstorm threatened, I encountered a short, Central American candy seller hurrying to limp across a busy street before the light changed? I glanced at his feet, thinking perhaps to see a pair of the shoes I had just donated. The sneakers he had on were not mine but got my attention nonetheless – one of them covered a prosthetic foot whose skinny metal “calf” was visible beneath a rolled up pant leg. My usual hard-heartedness evaporated.
“Señor!” I blurted out loudly. “Que hay?” He turned and showed me a bedraggled selection of candy. I bought two and he said “Gracias,” but his big, pleading eyes made me wish I had bought ten.
I later learned that one of the services FM4 Paso Libre provides is providing prosthetic limbs for the many migrants who need them. I also reflected that this was my first twinge of sympathy for a street person – and it could have had to do with the fact he was small, cute, crippled and selling something.
When I visited FM4, behind its unassuming facade in a nice neighborhood, I was surprised by more insights. I learned the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, is a principal supporter of FM4. (And that UNHCR operates two field offices near Mexico’s border with Guatemala and helps support a large network of some 23 other shelters around Mexico, according to FM4 staffer Janet Valverde.) I was also surprised at how large and well organized the shelter is, and that nine paid staff members work there along with 100 volunteers, some from distant countries.
A very tall, blonde young man greeted me after I passed through FM4’s thick, grey metal doors with its logos of sponsoring, international groups neatly painted in white. Jacob, in perfect, nearly unaccented English, told me he works at the shelter full time and that his home country, Germany, pays 80 percent of his salary and the rent on his nearby apartment. I was astounded that the refugee problem at my doorstep is recognized as a crisis by a faraway government and that it offers this Peace Corps-type opportunity to its young people.
FM4 has faced many challenges, such as having to change locations a few years ago, due to security problems with criminals and addicts lurking nearby. Now residents are photographed, given ID tags and several interviews with a humanitarian staffer. And the center, which is bright and pleasant, has instituted strict searches of residents, eliminating anything that can be used as a weapon and even locking up cell phones, according to Valverde.
There were many smiles among residents the day I visited. A few days later, I saw a migrant picking avocados from a tree along the street. I was wary, but decided he didn’t seem threatening. Later I saw another migrant selling ten avocados from a cloth on a sidewalk.
“I picked these myself,” I overheard him tell a passerby with a smile. I bought four.