Tag: migrants

Living, Mexico

Who are you?

Jane Bauer

Latest editorial from my magazine The Eye, if you aren’t already following us be sure to check it out:

http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com

“Identity is never singular but is multiply constructed across intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions.”
Stuart Hall

Who are you? What is the first trait you think of to describe yourself?

Is it your gender?
Is it your nationality?
Your race?
Perhaps a description of the kind of person you view yourself to be?

Tensions feel high lately. Not only in the world we see through our phones and television, but in real life. The conflicts across the world remain a safe distance away, beyond our ability to affect change, other than voicing our outrage and hoping we fall on the right side of history.

There are tensions closer to home, things we can do something about. On the outer edges are the migrants, avoiding the immigration officials as they move towards the unknown. Inside our bubble we cling to our opinions about the situation- no, not just the situation- we cling to our opinions about the people- how we imagine them to be, where we imagine they have come from and where they are going.

On the inner edge we have tensions between the outsiders: the travelers, tourists, digital nomads, snowbirds, expats and gringos versus the locals, nationals, long-term residents, the “Mexico experts,” who are pushing back. Blame for everything that seems to be going wrong is thrown around like a tennis ball or maybe I should say like a pickelball.

Last year I was sitting at my favorite sushi haunt in Terminal 2 of CDMX when the man on the stool beside me attempted to engage me in conversation. I am not the kind of traveler who enjoys idle chitchat with strangers. He was undeterred and proceeded to tell me with a hint of pride that he had been living in Oaxaca City for the past eight years.
‘That’s nice,” I responded out of politeness.
“Where do you live?” he persisted.
“On the coast.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Twenty-six years,” I said turning back to enjoy my unagi.
“Oh. You win I guess,” he said.
“It’s not a contest,” I replied.

People are always having conversations like these, asserting their identity and experience to justify their entitlements and points of view. But who are you really? Take away the cloak of where you happened to be born, where you live, your job, your religion, your gender, the amount of stuff you have collected on your journey and the opinions you have formed, based on the information you have. When you strip those things away, what are you really entitled to, that someone else isn’t?

Aren’t we all just minnows in a school of fish moving through the water on the momentum of each other?

March is usually our Women’s Issue. However, in the spirit of shedding our identities, rather than clinging to them so fiercely, I am calling this the ‘Achievement Issue’. Our writers have profiled people whose accomplishments are inspiring.

See you next month,

Jane

Uncategorized

Walking Across the World

Jane Bauer

If you have not ventured to the highway around Huatulco lately you may not have noticed the growing number of migrants on their walk towards a better life. Many months ago on the south side of Copalita an immigration kiosk was erected and manned by immigration and army personnel. They pulled over buses and vans and had a tented area where I occasionally saw people who had been pulled off the buses and vans, for not having the proper documentation, waiting. When I happened to be standing next to a man in an immigration uniform at the bank, I asked him what they did with the people and he told me they sent them back to their country or at least to the border of Mexico.

In the last couple of weeks the number of migrants has steadily grown and in the past couple of days I have seen at least a few hundred people walking on my fifteen-minute drive home. A path just before the immigration kiosk has been forged so that they can avoid it altogether. 

Yesterday I stopped and asked a group where they were from just before they got on the avoid-immigration kiosk path through the bushes. 

“Haiti” one man responded.

“où allez vous?” I asked

“Les Etats-Unis” he said.

This morning while driving back in to work, moving in the same direction as the walkers, I stopped for two women. They climbed right in my car with a small baby and a few meters later we picked up a young man. I asked if they were from Haiti and they said they were from Guinea. 

The immigration kiosk was just up ahead but we weren’t stopped, to be fair the two soldiers standing in front of it looked resigned to their inability to do anything.

We stopped just off the highway in Copalita and had breakfast. Guinea is 9345 km from Huatulco. Over breakfast we exchanged names and phone numbers. 

Mari Assi, a robust young woman with a burn scar covering one hand and forearm was wearing sandals and carrying her 19 month-old daughter Fati. Her traveling companion was Aminata who had left her 13-year old daughter back in Guinea and the young man was Osmane. While French is the primary language in Guinea, due to its colonization by the French, their speech was also peppered with words of a language I didn’t know. They flew from Guinea to Nicaragua and had been walking/taking buses/ hitchhiking for 12 days. Their final destination goal: New York.

If you watch the news it will tell you about the atrocities happening in other parts of the world- military coups, crime, instability, places where women being raped is a regular occurrence. I don’t need look at the news to understand the why of what brought Mari Assi, Aminata, Fati and Osmane to be on the same road as me. I only need to look at their inadequate footwear, their clothes that have leaves sticking to them from sleeping in the bushes, to know they deserve more… more help… more humanity… and more compassion.