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The situation of Central American migrants has once again made headlines, but this time concerns are focusing on their welfare whilst on their overland route to their final destination, the US, rather than their treatment once they have arrived. Maura Sánchez, a 56 year old activist, finally reached Mexico City’s El Zócalo on 1 August after a gruelling 1,500km walk, bus and train ride from her native Honduras. She led a group of some 100 protestors, who were later joined by 400 Mexican activists, calling on Mexican authorities to ensure the rights of migrant workers are respected and to investigate the numerous reports of kidnappings, disappearances, forced labour and other abuses suffered by Central Americans while crossing Mexico.
“We ask the authorities to meet their obligations, to be heavy handed, because they [the authorities] are the ones who attack the migrants”, Sánchez said to the media. It is estimated that some 500,000 Central American migrants cross Mexico on their way to the US every year, but it is unknown how many of them make it to their destination and how many meet their end in Mexico. The discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of 72, mainly Central American migrants, in the state of Tamaulipas in August 2010, brought the issue of migrant abuses to the fore [RC-11-01]; since then, Mexican authorities have tried in earnest to free kidnapped migrant workers. On 23 July, for example, the Mexican federal police rescued 12 migrants who had been held against their will in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, for two months. Such efforts, however appear just a drop of water in an ocean of criminality and the relatives of those still missing, like Sánchez, are calling for more action.
Same dangers, less money
A study by the US-based PEW Hispanic Center released in July found that Hispanics in the US, now the biggest ethnic minority in the country (16% of the population), have been the worst affected by the US credit crisis and the subsequent recession. PEW calculates that the average Hispanic household has seen its net worth plunge from US$18,359 in 2005 to US$6,325 in 2009. PEW reckons that African American households on average saw a 53% drop in their net worth compared to a decline of just 16% for white households. The problem for Central American and Mexican immigrants is that they had already started from a much lower average than their African American and white counterparts.
According to a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), published in June this year, a quarter of Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan immigrants, together with 18% of Salvadoreans, already lived below the poverty line before the crisis hit. In contrast, only 14.3% of the general US population lived in poverty at the same time. This situation improved markedly when researchers disaggregated numbers by region of origin and generation: Central American second-generation immigrants were quick to catch up and meet the US median, but a large portion of their Mexican counterparts remained in poverty, with a rate of 20.1% for second-generation Mexican-Americans and 18.6% for the third generation.
The problems for these immigrants is not only that they start at the very bottom of the labour pecking order, taking the worst paid of the low-paying unskilled jobs on offer, but they also lack the most basic education to compete for work at home, let alone with their non-Hispanic immigrant counterparts. According to the MPI, in 2008 61.5% of Mexican immigrants aged 25 and over had less than a secondary school diploma when the figure is only 32.5% for all foreign-born adults. The problem is that the vast majority are unable to speak English well enough to improve their level of education or help their teenage children overcome this challenge: in 2008, 52% of all foreign-born persons reported limited English proficiency, while that figure soared to 74% for Mexicans and Guatemalans and to 72% for Hondurans and Salvadorans. The younger the immigrant the better his/her chances of learning English are, and of improving their education and employment opportunities.
Sánchez was compelled to enter political activism as a result of personal experience: in 1997, her 37 year old sister-in-law, Lourdes Soyapa, left her native Tegucigalpa to seek a better future in the US. After travelling for two years, she made it to the border city of Nogales in 1999, where she last made contact with her family. Her whereabouts have been unknown ever since. The Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH), the office of Mexico’s human rights ombudsman, estimates that in 2010 alone, 20,000 Central American migrants were the victims of numerous abuses -including kidnapping, extortion and murder- whilst on transit through Mexico.
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