Via Crucis

Hi! :)

Sorry it's taken me forever to write this post, I've had some busy days. Well, they've been tiring more than busy...On friday we did a "Via Crucis", of which I'll tell you more in a moment ("en un rato", in Spanish :D), and since then both the things to do and the tiredness just kept accumulating. I'm still going to the comedor everyday, sunday was my only day off and I basically spent it all in bed. I really wanted to start my research plan, but I just needed to rest! Aside from the work at the comedor, I've tried to step up the translation of the main booklet of the organization (not sure I already told you about this), as my supervisor is going to LA in two days and I was hoping for him to have quite a bit translated before that. I'm actually still at the end of chapter 3 (out of 6!) but he said it doesn't really matter. Then, yesterday, one of our colleagues left to go back to Germany, so we had some celebration. I only actually went to two dinners (yes, there was more!), but I guess I'm getting old and I need to go to bed early nowadays...How sad...!

Well, let me tell you about the Via Crucis. So interesting! For those of you who don't know what it is: you can google it! :P No, well, in simple words it's supposed to be sort of a remembrance of the difficult walk that Jesus had before dying, bearing his cross. I'm not sure ours can actually be called a Via Crucis as, in the end, we didn't have prayers or anything like that. Certainly we didn't have a cross! It was, however, organised by two religious people, two Jesuits who also volunteer at the comedor. They had this amazing idea of going to the place where migrants get off the train here in Guadalajara, and walking back from there to the comedor, to see what they go through in this city, before arriving to us. As you can imagine, they do not go through a pleasant journey. It's 3/3.5 hours long, under the Mexican sun (and they generally get off at around 10am, so they walk under the midday sun!) and the landscape is not the best.

Half of the walk is on the train tracks, easy to follow. We saw three dead animals, and some pieces of clothing. In general, I had this huge sense of desolation along the way and I know that, if I were in their shoes, it would be so easy for me to just become prey of the saddest thoughts. One of my colleagues also noted that there is a long part where the sides of the "camino" are really high, it's like being in a small valley. As far as security is concerned, it's not a very safe place. It's very easy to be bottled up, stuck between possible aggressors. Considering the vulnerable situation of migrants, it's indeed very dangerous! Then, when approaching the station and its private territory, you have to leave the train tracks and walk on the street. You don't wanna lose the tracks (Guadalajara is a big city and the vast majority of migrants wouldn't know where to go), so you walk on the street next to them, which is a relatively busy one. Trust me, it never seems to end! The main thing that all of us noticed was that we found the walk very hard, but migrants are in much harder conditions than us. They haven't slept on a proper bed for weeks, they have been on a train for days, who knows when the last time they ate was, some of them don't have a backpack, or a hat, and so many don't have enough water. We all had the privilege to sleep on our own bed the night before, to eat a nice breakfast, to be able to carry how much water (and gatorade) we needed in our convenient bags...and we were even reminded by the supervisor of the comedor to bring sunscreen! Well, don't wanna bore you with the details, but the experience made me think a lot. I'm glad I did it :) I'll leave some pictures for you at the end of the post.

A few days ago, also, we had an "operativo". There's another spanish word for you! I learnt it the first day I did interviews, and I'm still not sure I actually know the meaning...Basically, it should be when the police arrives and asks for your documents. They might also check if you have drugs and things like that. Sometimes it happens to migrants on the train: the federal police (or the municipal) might stop the train, or simply wait for it to stop, and make the migrants get down so that they can check them out. Obviously, it's particularly bad when it's the migration police, cause then they can deport you (I might have already written this, only migration police can deport you, although not all migrants are aware of it). Back to us: the other day these 4 or 5 police vans arrived in the street where the comedor is (you might remember some homeless people live there) and they made everyone face the wall with their hands up. Well, I don't remember them asking people to do it, but most of them ended up in that position. Once the police checked their documents (if they had them!), and the police dog hadn't detected any drug, they were good to go. It was a bit scary in a way. I knew I was "safe", and actually police generally does make me feel safe (especially in the city centre of Mexico City!), but I don't know...at a certain point, I even thought "oh god, I don't have a passport on me!". Silly, I know, especially cause there was no migration police. And cause they didn't even enter the comedor. But that's what happened to me in that moment XD I guess I was a bit too influenced by all the testimonies I heard in interviews...

As far as this last point is concerned, I specifically asked my supervisor, who happened to be there too, about that: the police doesn't come in, because the government acknowledges the good work that organizations like FM4 are doing. Obviously, though, they might catch migrants who have just got out of the comedor. My supervisor actually told me that this was happening a while back, when some migration police officers were always around the corner from our street. FM4 spoke with the council, however, and they stopped. I don't think they get operativos from migration police that often nowadays.

As promised, I'm leaving you with some pictures ;)

This is the train, famously called "la bestia" (="the beast") 

The other main place for migrants here in Guadalajara, next to where they get off 

This is one of the homeless people who live near the comedor. He is a migrant too and lived in LA for 12 years before being deported 

El camino

Kate

Singing helps the troubled souls

Hola familia! :)

First thing first, the title is a sentence from one of my favourite songs, "Immigrant Punk", by Gogol Bordello. Check it out if you're into (gypsy) punk/rock! I chose it as a title because today in the comedor (I hadn't talked about it yet, it's the place where i work in the afternoons: migrants can come in between 4 and 7 pm to have a shower, hot food and, in some cases, the possibility to call home), we had a very interesting visit. A group of migrants were bringing along two guitars and amazing voices, so they gave us a private concert after eating. They were singing Christian songs (they were part of a church - surely catholic, but I don't remember exactly which denomination) in spanish...it was really cool (*free spanish lesson* in Mexico, to say "cool!" you can say "chido!" or "padre!". The last one is particularly interesting for me, because it also means "father")!

Now I have completed a whole first week of working with migrants and it's been extremely intense. I wanted to write my posts in a logical order, so the next one was gonna be about getting ready to come here, but I really needed to reflect on my experience tonight...so here I am! Today it was a particularly emotional day as I was, for the first time, in charge of interviews. Let me explain, there's four main areas in the comedor in which volunteers are needed: the kitchen (where you cook and serve the food), roperia (=literally, clothes shop...of course it's not a shop, as everything is for free for migrants), interviews and door.

The door is where the first selections is made: only migrants who are passing through Guadalajara before continuing their journey can come in. The comedor is in a street with a lot of homeless people, so you need to be able to distinguish them. Also, sometimes migrants decide to remain in Guadalajara for a while, but they can't come in to shower and eat more than a few times, so you have to tell them "no" if you realize they're not continuing their journey. The first day I talked with my supervisor here in FM4 Paso Libre, he explained to me that it is important to understand that the organization, as it is small and voluntarily-founded, has its limits and cannot welcome EVERYONE. Sad but true!

When they come to the comedor for the first time (or their first time in this camino, as sometimes they have been deported so they're repeating their journeys), they have to go through an interview before showering and eating. This serves many purposes: it lets us know them better, it is useful for research aimed at improving the protection of human rights, and it gives us the opportunity to know if there has been any abuse, and of which kind. So, today I was at the interviews for the first time. It wasn't easy as my spanish is not so good yet (I know the grammar and everything, but I don't know that many words), but all in all I think nobody complained. However, it really gave me a lot to think about. Sooo many of the migrants just took it for granted that in their camino, it was normal for them to be robbed and to be pointed guns at. When asked "have you been victim of a crime?", they might often say "no", but then once you talk to them a bit more they'll tell you that one night, as they were waiting for the train, a dozen of armed men with their faces covered robbed them of all their money. And maybe even killed a guy who was travelling with them. Say what???!! Yes, it happened to one of the migrants I interviewed today. What's more, a couple of them told us that the federal police, at the border with Guatemala, asked them for money, otherwise they wouldn't let them come into Mexico. Interestingly, only migration police can deport people, but obviously most (...all?) migrants don't know it, and therefore they pay. It's disgusting and very saddening, but I always try to put on a brave face, as obviously I am not the only one who witnessed these things in person, so I don't really have anything to complain about compared to the people I'm talking to.

At the interview we see if they need anything - shoes? a new t-shirt? a hat? - and, if yes, we write it down on a piece of paper that they bring to the roperia. After receiving these things + a towel and a soap, they can go and take a shower. They then have to wash the towel they use (which, I find, is a very intelligent method to do it!) and finally they can go and eat a nice, hot meal, served with some agua fresca (a drink made of water, sugar and some kind of fruit, depending on the type) and/or coffee. Before today I generally worked in the kitchen, and I loved it. You really get the chance to talk to people (yes, you do that in the interviews too, but that's a more formal setting) and you see these big, beautiful smiles when you serve them food.

Well, to (hopefully) cheer you up after all the talk about robbery/human rights violations, let me put a few pictures I took today. All taken in the kitchen area, in the first one you can see three volunteers, in the other two the migrants playing and singing.

Hopefully next post is gonna be about getting ready for Mexico, but who knows...Vamos a ver! ;) (=we'll see)

Ciao!

Caterina

Why Mexico?

Hi everyone :)

I am Caterina, an italian student who's arrived in Mexico 10 days ago and is planning to stay here for about 2 months and a half. Why? The short answer is: to do an internship. When I give this answer, though, I then have several people asking me: yes, but why in Mexico?

Just to be clear, I actually live in the Netherlands and the moment, where I'm doing a two-years Master in International Relations and Diplomacy. The master's module for these months precisely consists in doing an internship, with the end goal of writing a research paper on something related to the experience. This was actually one of the main reasons why I chose my course so, free tip to everyone who's thinking of doing a Master: consider whether it has an internship or not! It's a tip that my professor in my Bachelor gave me, and I think it's very valuable. Not only because employers do look at this kind of stuff (basically, working experience), but also because you can get the chance to try out a type of job, and see whether you actually like it or not. Of course, these Masters tend to be two-years long, so you have to see whether that's something you're OK with!

Well, let's get back to why Mexico. I was here last year, in July, after a week in Cuba with my mum. The week in Cuba was sort of a "prize" for graduating, and was probably my best holiday ever (no, we didn't spend all days on the beautiful, sandy beach...just one, tbh). When planning it, I realised Cuba was relatively near to Mexico (what a surprise!), so it could be a great occasion to go and visit on of my best friends, who lives in Guadalajara and who I hadn't seen for one year and a half. The decision to come here the first time, in 2013, was therefore purely out of chance. I was never really interested in Mexico, the picture I had in my head was of boring deserts with some cactuses here and there and, sometimes, pyramids. Nah, not my kind of thing.......how naive!! To cut a long story short, I fell in love. Purely, in any sense of the word, since one night I found a great Mexican man who made me go crazy with his perfect salsa moves.

After that amazing experience, then, all I could think about was: how do I get back there? So, when I had to find an internship, I decided to ask my friend's boyfriend, who's a professor of International Relations here in Guadalajara, if he knew of any organisation I could work with. I was thinking in particular of the issue of migration, something that is very interesting for me personally, both because I'm italian (and we get a lot of "illegal" immigrants there) and because it's strongly connected to what I study. Short flashback: last year, when I was here, we went to the Tequila distillery with a train. When boarding the train in Guadalajara we saw the other train, the one called la Bestia, carrying goods (and migrants) to the US. It was rather shocking, seeing these men holding onto the outside of the carriages, in such an unstable way that several of them never have a chace to reach the US. Since then, I had been thinking that I would have loved to work to improve their conditions.

And this is where we finally get to why I came here: my friend contacted the founder of this great organization (FM4 Paso Libre, I'll talk more about them in the next posts), who agreed to have me as an intern. I came here because, during my short trip last year, I realised there's so much more than cactuses and pyramids here. I came here because Mexico is a country that tens of thousands of immigrants cross every year hoping to follow the "American Dream", and where the issue of human rights is therefore particularly pressing. I came here because I thought I had a chance to do something meaningful, while enjoying it.

The whole blog is meant as an account of my weeks here. I hope that it will serve to explain better why I came here, and to inspire other to do something similar. As I'm writing, though, I'm just being particularly optimistic: I don't know what will happen to me here in the next months...It could end up being a horrible experience for some reason! I doubt that, but I'll keep you updated! :D

Ciao!

Caterina