THE MIGRANT HOTEL - WHERE DEPORTEES FIND SHELTER IN MEXICALI
By David Bacon
New America Media, 12/22/10
http://newamericamedia.org/2010/12/the-migrant-hotel---where-deportees-find-shelter.php
MEXICALI, Mexico-- Last year, almost 400,000 people were
deported from the United States. That's the largest wave of
deportations in U.S. history, even larger than the notorious
"Operation Wetback" of the 1950s, or the mass deportations during the
Great Depression.
Often the Border Patrol empties buses of deportees at the
border gates of cities like Mexicali in the middle of the night,
pushing people through at a time when nothing is open, and no
services are available to provide them with food or shelter. Most
deportees are young people. They had no money in their pockets
coming to the United States, and have nothing more as they get
deported back to Mexico.
These are invisible people. In the wave of anti-immigrant
hysteria gripping the United States, no one asks what happens to the
deportees once they're sent back to Mexico.
In Mexicali, a group of deportees and migrant rights
activists have taken over an old, abandoned hotel, formerly the Hotel
Centenario (the Hundred Year Hotel). They've renamed it the Hotel
Migrante, or the Migrant Hotel. Just a block from the border
crossing, it gives people deported from the United States a place to
sleep and food to eat for a few days before they go home, or try to
cross the border again. The government gives it nothing. Border
Angels, the U.S.-based immigrant rights group, provides what little
support the hotel gets. A cooperative of deportees cooks the food
and works on fixing the building.
During the winter, about 50-60 people live there at any given
time, while five or six more knock on its doors every night. Last
summer, at the peak of the season when people try to cross the border
looking for work, the number of deportees seeking shelter at the
hotel rose to over 300.
"A lot of people get hurt trying to walk through the
mountains around Mexicali," says Benjamin Campista, a cooperative
member. "It's very cold there now, and when they get caught and
deported, many are just wearing a T-shirt and tennis shoes. Some get
sick -- those we take to the hospital. The rest stay here a few days
until their family can send them money to get home, or until they
decide to try to cross again."
Border Angels and the hotel collective agreed to pay the
landlord 11,000 pesos a month in rent (about $900 USD), but they're
already six months behind. Every day hotel residents go out to the
long lines of people waiting to cross through the garita (the legal
border crossing). They ask for money to support the hotel, and each
person gets to keep half of what they're given. The other half goes
mostly for food for the evening meal. Deportees have plenty of time
to explain their situation to people standing in line, since on a
recent afternoon the wait to get through the garita was two hours.
Every day Campista hears deportees tell their stories.
"Three brothers stayed here last summer, before they tried to cross.
A month later one came back. I saw him on the roof, crying as he
looked at the mountains where the other two had died from the heat.
A woman came here with her two-month-old baby. Her husband had died
in the desert too."
"We're human beings!" Campista exclaims. "We're just going
north to try to work. Why should we die for this? Our governments
should end these violations of human rights. Then our hotel wouldn't
even be necessary
The hotel used to be called the Hotel Centenario, and had a sports
bar on the ground floor. A deportee works on fixing one of the
upstairs windows.
Gerardo, who was deported a few days earlier, sits on the bed in his room.
Viviana "Chiques" Cervantes has been living at the hotel for several
months. On the wall is a sign warning deportees, "Don't Visit
Arizona!"
Another deportee tries to sleep after being deported the previous
night. The Border Patrol puts many people across the border in the
hours just after midnight, when no stores or restaurants are open, or
taxis or other services available to provide shelter, food or
transport.
Gabino Gonzalez, the cook, ladles out soup in the kitchen in the hotel.
Adriana, a woman from a Zapotec family in Oaxaca, was deported just
hours earlier.
Benjamin Campista, a leader of the cooperative, recalls the stories
of those who've died trying to cross, and the survivors who've
arrived at the hotel after losing members of their families..
On the roof of the hotel dozens of deportees sleep during the summer,
when the number of people trying to cross the border is at its peak.
Deportees on the steps leading to the tunnels under Mexicali. An
abandoned staircase and locked doors lead into the tunnels that lie
under Mexicali, some of which lead across the border.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and
Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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