( Middle East Monitor ) – Just days after her inauguration as the first female president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum called for the recognition of the State of Palestine as a step towards achieving peace in the Middle East, and reaffirmed her country’s longstanding support for the Palestinian people.

“We condemn the aggression currently taking place,” said Sheinbaum, “and we also believe that the state of Palestine must be fully recognised, just as Israel is.”

The president condemned the violence in the Middle East and outlined what Mexico’s position will be during her term in office. “This has been Mexico’s position for many years,” she pointed out, “and it remains the same. We seek peace above all.”

Speaking at her daily press conference, the new president addressed Israel’s actions in the region, stressing that mutual recognition of a Palestinian state is key to finding a diplomatic solution to end the violence in Gaza. Sheinbaum also stressed that “war will never lead to a good outcome,” urging a peaceful resolution to the conflict and calling on international institutions to take a more active role. “The United Nations should be much more proactive as an institution in the pursuit and construction of world peace,” she insisted.

Furthermore, the Mexican president recalled that the previous Mexican government, led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, condemned the aggression of the Israeli government. “The previous government condemned the aggressions of the Israeli state against Palestine and what is currently happening in the world. There is concern about the risk of this conflict expanding to Lebanon and Syria, which could greatly complicate the situation in the Middle East.”

She also mentioned that Mexico joined Chile’s complaint at the International Court of Justice regarding Israel’s disproportionate response following the attacks of 7 October last year. “The international community is aware of the growing complexity of the Middle East conflict with its potential for expansion,” she noted. The leaders of both Chile and Mexico emphasised the latter’s commitment to international legal mechanisms in seeking justice and accountability.

Claudia Sheinbaum is the daughter of Jewish parents, but she rarely discusses her heritage. When she does, she tends to express a more distant connection to Judaism than many others in Mexico’s Jewish community, which has been present since the country’s early days and now numbers about 59,000 people in a population of 130 million.

“Of course I know where I come from, but my parents were always atheists,” Sheinbaum told the New York Times in a 2020 interview. “I never belonged to the Jewish community, and we grew up kind of removed from that.”

Sheinbaum’s Jewish heritage has made her the target of a smear campaign. False rumours have circulated that she is not a Mexican citizen and was “born in Bulgaria”.

Despite being part of the Latin American Jewish community, which is often associated with Israel, she supports left-wing governments in the region, such as those in Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, many of which have a strong anti-Israel stance.

Since the war broke out last year, Sheinbaum has condemned attacks on civilians, called for a ceasefire and expressed her support for a Palestinian state. Her consistent stance highlights her long-term commitment to advocating for peace and the recognition of Palestinian rights. Moreover, she has extended a helping hand to some 30,000 Palestinians living in Mexico.

“Many of my relatives from that generation were exterminated in concentration camps,” she wrote in a 2009 letter to La Jornada, in which she also condemned what she described as the “murder of Palestinian civilians” during an Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

via Middle East Monitor

Iván Cabrera at N+ reports that the megastorm destroyed 80% of the city’s infrastructure, leaving the inhabitants without light, electricity, communications or internet. Some 274,000 homes and 600 hotels were affected by the outages in this city of some 800,000 workers in the tourism industry, at an estimated cost of $18 billion. Over 32,000 homes suffered physical damage.

As of midweek this week, only 35% of the city had potable drinking water. Seven soup kitchens set up by the provincial Guerrero government delivered 4,000 servings of food every day. Although 10,200 electricity poles were downed and 38 high tension wires were damaged, some 75% of the city now again has electricity.

The unprecedented destruction came about because humans are burning fossil fuels and heating up the earth and especially the oceans. Otis accelerated as it neared the Pacific coast of Mexico, jumping in only 12 hours from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane just before it slammed into “America’s Paradise.” Ordinarily such storms slow as they approach landfall, and their force is dissipated once they get beyond the warm waters that feed them. It was the first known Category 5 storm to strike the Pacific coast of Mexico. It won’t be the last.

Guardian News: “Hurricane Otis: before and after footage shows scale of destruction in Mexico’s Acapulco”

Jeff Masters and Bob Henson at Yale Climate Connections observe, “In what the National Hurricane Center called a ‘nightmare scenario,’ Hurricane Otis made landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, at 1:25 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 25, as a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane with 165 mph winds and a central pressure of 923 mb. Otis unexpectedly intensified from a tropical storm with 65 mph winds to a Category 5 storm with 165 mph winds — an astonishing 100 mph increase — in the 24 hours before landfall. Rapid intensification is extremely dangerous because it leaves people little time to prepare for strong storms. The phenomenon is expected to happen more often as the climate warms.”

Let that sink in. “Rapid intensification” of hurricanes and cyclones will become more and more frequent, making any early warning system for evacuations almost impossible.

One reason Otis intensified so rapidly was that it was passing over a sea surface that was 86-88°F (30-31° C.) The Pacific is usually much colder than that, but it is 1.8° F. warmer than the average of the past twenty years. It has been an unusually hot summer, and September had set a record for a spike in temperatures. Both underlying climate change, caused by our burning fossil fuels (the equivalent of setting off 400,000 nuclear bombs the size of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima every single day) , and El Niño contributed to this hot mess off the coast.

In addition, the authors explain, Otis was helped along by a “jet streak,” a band of powerful winds connected to the jet stream, which gave oxygen to the hurricane, just as you can fan the flames of a fire.

Acapulco, they say, isn’t an obvious place for a hurricane to land. Usually they are blown north along the Mexican coast. Only two twentieth-century hurricanes that struck the city or near it are known, and both were much less powerful than Otis.

Mexico’s Pacific coast typically gets 4 hurricanes that make landfall every 3 years. But in October of 2023, already three hurricanes have made landfall along this coast.

What happened to the “Pearl of the Pacific” was not normal. But it wasn’t a freak occurrence, either. It was our new reality, of ever-changing, ever-challenging climate phenomena impelled by the terajoules of energy we are infusing into the atmosphere and the oceans. The Hiroshima nuclear device released 63 terajoules of energy. And we put 400,000 of them into the atmosphere every day, 365 days a year. Much of that energy is going into the oceans, and they are feeding it to hurricanes and cyclones. We are doing this to ourselves.

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Spanish-language Twitter account for Palestine, “Palestino Hoy,” announced on Thursday that the Palestinian delegation in Mexico City will now be upgraded from a “Special Delegation” to a full embassy, after Mexico fully recognized the state of Palestine.

N.B. Some commentators allege that this announcement is solely from the Palestinian side and does not in fact represent the policy of the Mexican executive. IC has a call into the Mexican Embassy for reaction. In the meantime, this article has been revised to reflect that our information on this issue only comes from the PA. As noted below, the Mexican Senate did vote to recognize Palestine in November 2022.

GRAN NOTICIA: México reconoce plenamente a Palestina. A partir del primero de junio, ya no hay "Delegación Especial" sino "Embajada del Estado de Palestina". pic.twitter.com/EEDpXWULcN

— Palestina Hoy (@HoyPalestina) June 3, 2023

The Palestinian foreign ministry statement announced, “This measure is undertaken in the spirit of cooperation and friendship between the two countries, which is evidenced in the continuous development of bilateral relations in the bilateral and multilateral sphere, since its establishment in 1975.”

The document continued, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates expresses its firm conviction that this measure will significantly contribute to the continued development and strengthening of relations between the United Mexican States and the State of Palestine, on the basis of mutual respect and recognition and for the benefit of the two peoples, as well as contributing to international security and development.”

The Mexican Senate passed a resolution recognizing Palestine as an independent state last November, on the anniversary of the Palestinians’ own declaration of independence on November 15, 1985.

They said that they hoped it would contribute to a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the Mideast.

The chairman of the Commission on Exterior Relations, Senator Héctor Vasconcelos, said at that time, “I express my desire to see a free, independent Palestine in full exercise of its rights, because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict affects how we conceive of the human rights of peoples, how we conceive of freedom and of being recognized as free persons and not subjects of other nations.”

Vasconcelos, who is an important intellectual, put his finger on something here– that if Palestinians can be rendered stateless and without any real human rights, that situation detracts from our very notion of human rights. It clearly wouldn’t be universal anymore and would be subject to many important exceptions that might render it meaningless. That is, the situation of the Palestinians affects our very conception of what human rights are, and that is why it is so important.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who is center-left, has often been critical of the Israeli government and joined in calls at the UN for investigations of Israel’s bombing of Gaza in 2021. Many Mexicans sympathize with the colonized Palestinians since they feel the force of US hegemony themselves.

Mexico will have gotten enormous pressure from the US State Department not to recognize Palestine, but then Mexicans are used to such pressure and it often backfires.

Mexican thinkers see recognizing Palestine as a path to achieving a two-state solution.

The state of Palestine has over 80 embassies around the world and 12 in Latin America, including in Brazil and Argentina, so Mexico is joining a consensus here. Western Europe, which mostly has Palestinian missions rather than embassies, is an outlier in global terms. Even then, Sweden has a Palestinian embassy and so do many former East Bloc countries, including both Russia and Ukraine.

( Cronkite News ) – TAPACHULA, MEXICO – The desperation here is palpable.

It fills the stifling air as migrants line up in the hot sun outside the National Migration Institute in hopes of receiving an interview, their children close at hand and their visa applications tucked under their arms in colorful protected sleeves so the papers won’t get ruined on the nights their families sleep outside in the rain.

It strains the voices of the asylum seekers protesting outside a news conference by Mexico’s president, as they chant demands for action before some sew their mouths shut in defiant, gruesome silence.

Yobel Ruiz and his daughter, Milaidy, 5, wait outside one of the immigration offices in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. The pair fled their home in Panama’s Darién Province the month before, after guerrillas kidnapped Ruiz’s wife. Ruiz hopes to be granted asylum and move to Florida, where a cousin lives. He still doesn’t know the fate of his wife. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

And it wells in the eyes of displaced Haitians – struggling to deal with a system entrenched in anti-Black racism – when they throw rocks and set fires on the streets to bring attention to their plight.

These moments unfold day after day in Tapachula, a city of about 350,000 near the border of Guatemala that has long served as a waystation for migrants spurred north by political turmoil, gang violence, discrimination and poor economic prospects in their countries of origin.

But as the United States has pressed Mexico to stem the flow of people heading to the U.S. in recent years, tens of thousands of migrants have become trapped here in Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state.

They now face extreme limitations on their movements, few job prospects, poor living conditions and long waits for immigration hearings in an environment some have labeled an “open-air prison” and others have described as a southern extension of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You see misery. You see anger. You see desperation,” said Freddy Castillo, a Haitian migrant who arrived in Tapachula last August. “People say, ‘Well, what did I come here for?’ You know, the situation is bad in my country. But that’s supposed to stay there, because I (want to) have maybe a better life someday.”

As frustrations have reached a boiling point in the city, thousands of migrants set off in the rain Monday for the United States. The group intends to walk the length of Mexico and could grow to as many as 15,000 people, by some estimates – a number that would make this caravan the largest ever recorded in the country, according to The Guardian.

Many of the migrants who end up in Tapachula are from Honduras, El Salvador and other Central American countries, but others started their journeys from such far-flung places as Palestine, Cuba, Nigeria, Brazil and, recently, Ukraine.

After escaping the sometimes brutal conditions in their home countries, migrants moving up through South America must pass through the treacherous Darién Gap, a more than 60-mile stretch of jungle that connects Colombia to Panama, where robberies, rapes and encounters with animals are frequent.

The journey takes multiple days for most migrants. And those who make it out alive sometimes view Mexico as a reprieve, said Yamel Athie, a Tapachula resident and community organizer who has been facilitating dialogue between migrants and locals.

Instead, they face only more challenges.

“Imagine if you are from Africa or the Middle East or Haiti and you have spent months fighting to survive, to live, to eat, to pay for your trip,” Athie said. “And when you arrive here, with all of your emotions at the surface because you are reaching your goal, you smash into a wall. And it is a wall that will break your soul.”

Left: Haitian migrants clash with the Mexican National Guard in front of the National Institute for Migration in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 4, 2022. During the protest, migrants threw rocks and set street fires in frustration with their conditions in the city of 350,000 people. Right: Katerine Martinez, 28, has her mouth sewn shut during Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s visit to Tapachula on March 11, 2022. López Obrador told local officials the best way to help migrants was not to improve conditions in Mexico but to create work programs for them in Central America. Not all the migrants in Tapachula are from Central America. (Photos by Drake Presto/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

The new caravan is yet another sign that although Mexico has stemmed the flow of migrants on their way to the United States, it hasn’t shut it off completely. In April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that U.S. officials encountered about 230,000 people attempting to cross the southern border – the highest monthly total in at least the past four years. An encounter is defined as either the apprehension or expulsion of a migrant.

And some analysts predict even more will come because of President Joe Biden’s stated intention to end Title 42 – a policy the federal government used during the pandemic to expel thousands of migrants under the guise of public health protections. Shortly after Biden’s April 1 announcement, groups of migrants took off from Tapachula for the United States, defying local restrictions on their movements. Some fought with police and Mexican immigration officials.

On May 20, a U.S. federal judge blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42, agreeing with a complaint from 24 states that the move would increase illegal immigration. He also ruled that the administration must provide public notice and a comment period before ending the policy. The administration has announced it intends to appeal the ruling.

Despite migrants’ frequent complaints of poor conditions in Tapachula, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico offered little recognition of and few solutions during his remarks at a news conference in the city March 11.

The best way to help migrants, he said during a brief discussion of the issue, was not to improve conditions in Mexico but to create work programs for them in Central America.

“People don’t hit the road because they enjoy it but because of necessity,” he said. “The majority of the migrants are young people who want to move forward and progress in life – so we have been proposing that there be investment in Guatemala, in Honduras, in El Salvador.”

That approach mirrors the United States’ “root causes” strategy, which seeks to address the forces that push people to leave their home countries as part of an effort to stem migration before it begins. But the strategy would do nothing to help improve conditions for the migrants who protested beyond the white tent set up for López Obrador’s visit.

Wairiuko Samuel Kimani, an asylum seeker who said he fled his home country of Kenya after his family learned he was gay, survived 10 days in the rainforest in Panama. He said being in Tapachula has been worse even than that. At least in the jungle, he saw a way out.

“These people you see here,” he said, motioning around to the mass of migrants nearby, “they are very frustrated because we thought getting out of the Darién Gap was all. We thought that was our living nightmare. But actually Mexico is.”

The U.S flag is set up in the Suchiate River, which separates Mexico and Guatemala, during a 10-day religious festival on March 4, 2022. Some observers have called the nearby city of Tapachula, Mexico, the “new U.S. border,” and the flag served as a physical representation of that idea. (Photo by Drake Presto/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

‘The job of President Donald Trump’

During a religious festival in early March, three national flags were posted in the middle of the Suchiate River, which separates Chiapas state and Guatemala – the Mexican flag, the Guatemalan flag and the stars and stripes – a symbol of U.S. influence here, although its border is more than a thousand miles to the north.

Unless they pay a coyote who takes a different route or they have the means to fly over Tapachula, many of the thousands of migrants who make the journey north through Central America each year will cross the Suchiate here.

About 70% to 80% of all asylum applications in Mexico are filed in Tapachula, according to the local refugee office. In 2021, that number was 89,000 applicants. And because the city is so close to a main route into the country from Guatemala, Tapachula is “always going to be a place of pressure and then relieving that pressure and then pressure again” when it comes to migration, said Rachel Schmidtke, an advocate for Latin America with the global nonprofit Refugees International.

But the pressures here have felt higher than ever in recent years, thanks to a complicated cocktail of government bureaucracy, politics and pandemic-related challenges that have further exacerbated the difficult conditions for migrants. The same cocktail has strained Tapachula residents, who face great competition for jobs and housing.

Most experts agree that the current situation in Tapachula took root in 2019, after then-President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs starting at 5% on Mexican imports if the country didn’t increase efforts to “reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens” coming to the United States.

Fearing the potential impact to its economy, Mexico – whose biggest trading partner is the U.S., and vice versa – struck a deal promising to deploy members of the National Guard to its border with Guatemala. The deal also expanded the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, which requires grants to stay in that country while awaiting immigration processing in the United States. Most applications for asylum or other forms of entry are denied.

Schmidtke said Mexico’s harder line toward immigration has in part reflected its own values, noting that the country doesn’t want “a lot of refugees or migrants.” But the U.S. also plays a “pretty significant role in Mexico’s immigration policies,” she said.

“I absolutely believe that U.S. pressure on Mexico has a lot to do with why Mexico has militarized its southern border and is trying to keep migrants out of the country – to stop flows of people coming to the U.S.-Mexico border,” she added.

Rosbalis Parez and her son, Daniel Alejandro, 2, wait in the crowd outside the COMAR office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 9, 2022. The Venezuelan migrants have been living in a tent close to the office while waiting for their immigration paperwork. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Left: Venezuelan migrants compile a list of their names and immigration numbers at a protest outside the COMAR office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 9, 2022. The group planned to give the list to COMAR and ask that their immigration paperwork be expedited. Right: Two people hug as they wait to enter the COMAR office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 9, 2022. Mexico’s complicated process of applying for asylum typically takes months, and many applicants are unsuccessful. (Photos by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

López Obrador, for his part, has said the shifts in Mexican policy are not a result of his bowing to U.S. pressure. Instead, migrants are being kept in the south to protect them from the powerful gangs that operate near Mexico’s northern border, he said.

“We don’t want them to come to the north where they might become drug addicts or victims of crime,” he said in a press conference in January 2020.

Whatever the motivations, experts say the policy shifts that resulted from the 2019 deal have significantly restricted the movement of migrants.

Before the agreement, “people were for the most part getting through Mexico,” said Arturo Viscarra, a staff attorney with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a nonprofit migrant advocacy and civil rights group that is working in Tapachula.

But the National Guard’s increased militarization of the southern border has since made it “more difficult” for people to get through the country, he said.

Just one month after the countries signed their deal, the Mexican National Institute for Migration held more than 30,000 migrants in detention – “the highest number of detentions made in a month in the last 13 years,” according to Refugees International.

In Tapachula, Kimani, the Kenyan migrant, described the city as a prison, noting that many migrants struggle to leave without proper paperwork.

“I think this, all this you see here, is the job of President Donald Trump,” he said, gesturing to the masses of people gathered outside the National Migration Institute office.

Although experts and migrants blame Trump for some of the on-the-ground realities migrants face in Mexico, Kimani said U.S. politics continue to drive changes here even under a new administration.

He said he’s heard from several migrants who began their journeys after Biden was elected in 2020, in hopes that they might benefit from the Democrats’ softer approach to immigration.

But while the rhetoric has changed significantly under the new president, many U.S. immigration policies have remained much the same – and they continue to send ripple effects from the southern border of one country to the other.

“Most people came because they thought Biden would have a new effort or a better effort toward migration,” Kimani said. “According to what I have read, he hasn’t done much.”

‘I need free movement’

On a muggy day in March, migrants line the wall up and down a colorful mural outside the National Migration Institute office, desperate to obtain an audience with officials who could grant them an earlier immigration appointment. The energy in the air is at once frenetic – as if a protest could erupt at any moment – and listless, as the day gets hotter and they go longer without food and water.

“Every day people are here,” Kimani said, “because they’re trying to reduce their dates. There are people whose dates have been reduced, but I don’t know how they choose who they reduce their dates for.”

Near the office, National Guard members with shields keep the crowd at bay, avoiding eye contact with the migrants huddled before them.

Daniela Cisneros and her son, Mesias, 5, rest outside an immigration office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. The family arrived at 4 a.m. to wait for her husband’s immigration appointment. Cisneros and her son weren’t able to get an appointment until 10 days later. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Left: National Guard officers stand between an immigration office in Tapachula, Mexico, and the dozens of migrants awaiting entry on March 8, 2022. In recent months, there have been multiple clashes between migrants and law enforcement in the city of 350,000. Right: A young girl waits with her family outside an immigration office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. Obtaining the necessary paperwork to move freely throughout Mexico can take months. (Photos by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Among the group are Maria Linares and Yandry Mijares of Venezuela, who said they fled the government corruption and violence of their home country in hopes of securing a better life for their son and daughter.

But after they arrived in Tapachula in January, the family found that their struggles were only compounding. Unable to find work, they struggled to pay rent and instead had to sleep on the streets each night. Unable to buy food, their children were facing malnutrition. And without proper immigration documents, they said, their asthmatic son can’t get a prescription for an inhaler.

Linares spread paperwork out across her hands showing that each family member had a different immigration appointment date – all of which were weeks into the future.

Even under normal circumstances, the process to apply for asylum or a humanitarian visa in Mexico can be long and complex, requiring multiple appointments, interviews and documents. And the stakes are high for people like Linares and Mijares, who are sometimes stuck in limbo for weeks or even months without proper immigration papers.

As they wait for their applications to be processed, migrants are required to stay in the state where they submitted their claim. In the meantime, they become effectively stuck in Tapachula, with limited housing and job opportunities.

Left: Migrants sign up for a day’s work at Mercado Laureles in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. They can earn a modest income by helping maintain public spaces, such as parks and markets, through a government work program. Right: Eduin and his son, Samid, 4, pick up trash on the grounds of Mercado Laureles in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. The family, who provided only their first names and are seeking asylum, left Venezuela two months earlier and are living in a shelter while they apply for refugee status. (Photos by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Those who try to leave the city without authorization risk detainment in the government-run immigration center known as Siglo XXI, and they could be deported to their home countries.

Mexico’s already challenging immigration process was further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted the United States to effectively close its borders to migrants under Title 42. Since Title 42 was enacted, Schmidtke said, many migrants became “basically incentivized to stay longer in Mexico.”

The number of asylum applications had already been rising in Mexico, doubling “each year from 2015 to 2019,” according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. But by 2020, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid, known by its Spanish acronym of COMAR, faced steep backlogs, which it was able to work through only with help from the U.N. High Commissioner. The agency in 2021 again struggled “to meet record demand” for asylum claims.

Although the number of applications has spiked, not all these migrants want to achieve refugee status in Mexico – particularly because doing so could complicate their efforts to ultimately get legal protection in the United States. And not all the applicants are necessarily eligible for asylum, an international protection available only to people who can prove a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on their race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.

Mexico does offer asylum to a broader subset of people than the United States. People whose home countries face “generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive human rights violations, and other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order” are also eligible for asylum under the Cartagena Declaration, a non-binding agreement reached in 1984.

In some cases, migrants apply for asylum in Tapachula as a protection against deportation because they can’t be booted out of the country until their claim has been processed. Others apply so they can obtain a humanitarian visa free of cost, according to Alma Cruz, who is in charge of COMAR’s Tapachula office.

The visas, which are issued by the National Institute for Migration and are valid for six months to a year, facilitate access to important government services, including education, health care and permission to work, according to Refugees International.

That’s why long waits for humanitarian visas pose such a problem for migrants stuck in Tapachula.

“The people are coming to us, and if you ask them, they don’t want to be here,” Cruz said. “They don’t want to be refugees here. The complaint of the people is, ‘I need free movement in Mexico. … I need a humanitarian visa. I need to go out from here as soon as possible.’ And COMAR is not the source of the problem.”

‘It’s better not to come right now’

While they wait for documentation, masses of migrants in Tapachula spend long days in parks or in the city square, where the men often bide their time playing chess and the women braiding each other’s hair.

Some resell goods on the streets, keeping a watchful eye out for city employees who could shut them down for operating without work permits. Others beg passerbys for money for food or other necessities.

Migrants help unload produce at Mercado San Juan in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 5, 2022. They work at the market from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily, earning the equivalent of $10 a day. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Haitian women braid hair in Parque Benito Juárez in central Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. With few work opportunities, many migrants have come up with creative ways to earn a living. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Oscar Sierra, who fled Honduras with his wife and three children in early January, looked for formal work when he arrived in Tapachula but found his options limited. He considered a particular job only to learn that it required grueling hours from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a daily wage of 150 pesos (about $7.50).

“It is heavy,” he said, standing with his wife and three children in front of the city steps where they slept their first night in Tapachula. “The people are taken advantage of.”

Sierra said his family had a good life in Honduras and never imagined they would have to leave everything. But as their piñata business became more successful, gangs took notice and began extorting them for money. They were quickly in over their heads, estimating that they owed thousands in protection money. And they feared that they would be killed when the payday came.

That’s when they left everything they owned and got on a bus to Tapachula.

The family ultimately hopes to make it to the United States to restart their business. In the meantime, they’re trying to pay the bills by churning out piñatas in their small apartment at a rate of four or five per day. But at 2,000 pesos a month, the apartment isn’t cheap, and they’ve had trouble making rent.

Oscar and Lizeth Sierra and their three children pose on the steps where they slept after arriving in Tapachula, Mexico, two months earlier. They left their home and thriving piñata business in Honduras after falling $180,000 behind on extortion payments to local gangs. The family eventually hopes to go to the United States. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

“The economic situation is complicated,” said Lizeth, Oscar’s wife.

Government jobs programs can help some migrants, but not everyone can take advantage of them.

After finding ways to make money, obtaining shelter is among the biggest challenges migrants face in Tapachula.

Landlords often charge them exorbitant rents, which some migrants counter by sharing a unit with others to split the cost. Athie, the community organizer, said space was so limited in December that some homeowners began charging people to sleep on their roofs.

“They put up plastic tarps, and people charged them for this,” she said. “It is very sad.”

Some migrants end up in shelters, but space is limited and they often are over capacity, according to a March report from the humanitarian aid organization UNICEF. So those who can’t find work often end up sleeping on the streets; the lucky ones finding an out-of-the-way corner or a thick piece of cardboard to provide some support from the hard ground.

Darwin Chevez and his girlfriend, Anna, relax on their “bed” in Parque Bicentenario in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 8, 2022. While living in the park for three months, the pair slept on a piece of cardboard and walked 4 kilometers to a river to bathe. They have since arrived in California and are looking for work. (Photo by Juliette Rihl/Cronkite Borderlands Project)

Despite their limited resources and different backgrounds, some migrants do their best to help others.

On one occasion, a group pooled their money together so they could prepare a community meal near the town square – a small act of solidarity within a population that so often ends up fighting for scraps.

“Many of the children were very hungry – not just the Haitian children, but Venezuelan children, all of us,” said Wilnot Devalsaint, a Haitian migrant who has been in Tapachula since late last year. “So what do we do among all of us? We asked, ‘Do you have 10 pesos, 5 pesos, 4 pesos, 20 pesos?’ And so we put it all together to make food. To help each other.”

For all the challenges migrants have faced here, Athie said, their influx also has strained longtime residents of Chiapas state, leaving them with fewer jobs and housing options. Some even see the presence of so many outsiders in the small, poor city of Tapachula as something of an invasion, she said.

“The local people feel really harmed by the presence of migrants here,” Athie said.

Oscar Ulises Sol Diva, a lifelong Tapachula resident, said he has stopped walking his dog at night over fears of violence. He said he understands the obstacles migrants face but noted that many permanent residents in the community don’t have much to give – they’re struggling themselves to find work and to feed their families.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it makes us mad sometimes, with the migrants. They want everything. They say, ‘Give me, give me!’”

Athie, whose family migrated to Mexico from Lebanon, said she has tried to help both sides better understand one another through a community Facebook group she started. On it, she advocates for “a dialogue and a language where we are able to share the co-humanity of everyone and the necessities that we all have.”

Because in an area that’s long been shaped by migration, for better and for worse, experts say it’s unlikely that the flow of people through Tapachula will end anytime soon.

Kimani and other migrants, however, said that if they’d known what awaited them in Tapachula and on their journey here, they would have never left home.

“If you are not in immediate danger, if it’s something you can control, it’s better not to come right now,” Kimani said he would advise other migrants. “Here, people are sleeping out. They don’t have food. They don’t have somewhere to sleep. People are desperate.”

Don’t come, he added, unless “you are willing to be that kind of desperate.”

Via Cronkite News

(Yes! Magazine) – The institutions responsible for harming people operate across borders far more than most people realize, yet many groups are joining forces to gain strength.

Embed from Getty Images
Graffiti art on Seperation wall in West Bank: BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK – NOVEMBER 1 : Graffiti art is seen on Israeli separation wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on November 01, 2017. (Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The latest judicial rebuke of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall arrived just in time for July 4, when a federal appeals court again blocked the administration from diverting $2.5 billion in military funds toward the wall. But as history shows, court orders aren’t always effective in halting construction or expansion of walls that “divide neighborhoods, worsen dangerous flooding, [and] destroy lands and wildlife,” as the Sierra Club explained in a statement following the court’s June preliminary injunction.

As part of Grassroots International’s work defending the human right to land, water, and food, my colleagues and I engage in conversations with farmers worldwide. One topic surfaces time and again with those from the U.S.-Mexico border and Palestine: how to resist the walls carving up their communities.

Just a few days before the ruling blocking funds for Trump’s wall, 49 Palestinians—including eight paramedics and one journalist—were wounded protesting the Israeli barrier fencing in the people of Gaza.

Graffiti on the West Bank wall. Photo by Grassroots International

Today marks 15 years since the International Court of Justice offered a glimmer of hope that the situation of Palestinian farmers might change. On July 9, 2004, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion deeming Israel’s West Bank wall illegal, calling on Israel to dismantle it and pay reparations for any damage caused, and reaffirming the duty of all states to ensure Israel ends its violations of international law.

For Palestinians and those of us who have stood by them in their long struggle for freedom, this was a rare victory. Israel, however, has yet to heed a word of the ruling. As the U.S. continues to shield it from international pressure while bankrolling its military occupation, Palestinian families living closest to the wall suffer the most.

According to a 2015 report by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, 60% of affected communities reported that the wall had deprived them of water resources. By the time the wall is complete, it’s likely Israel will have taken nearly 15% of Palestinians’ agricultural land there. Including the broader impact of Israel’s military occupation and settlement expansion, the loss goes up to 63% of Palestinians’ agricultural land in the West Bank.

This isn’t the only militarized barrier Israel has built. There’s one along its border with Egypt that’s meant to keep out African refugees. This southern wall has been praised by Trump as a model for the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the U.S. is already employing Israeli border technology used to destroy Palestinian communities and enforce racist immigration policies.

What’s happening to Palestinians is not simply something happening “over there.” Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of an Israeli company, is making millions off militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. Elta North America, another such subsidiary, was paid between $300,000 and $500,000 to build a prototype of Trump’s wall.

The institutions responsible for harming people operate across borders far more than most people realize, yet many groups are joining forces to gain strength.

Resisting what’s been described as “the wall industry,” organizers around the world like the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, solidarity and human rights groups in Mexico, and others are coordinating advocacy efforts as part of a #WorldWithoutWalls campaign. As a member of La Via Campesina, an organization that includes over 200 million small-scale farmers and Indigenous peoples from 81 countries, Palestine’s Union of Agricultural Work Committees has been organizing with others facing threats to their livelihoods.

Palestinians use the spent shells of tear gas canisters fired at them by Israeli soldiers. Photo by Sam Vinal.

We cannot allow walls and borders to divide, fragment, and isolate us. Those fighting uphill battles miles away need our support and solidarity in order to persevere. Their victories will create a more just and peaceful world for us all. I’m reminded of Angela Davis’ insistence on the “indivisibility of justice.” Ultimately, 15 years after the ICJ ruling, it’s clear that the courts alone will not deliver justice. We need indivisible solidarity among those of us who reject racism, and who value human life and dignity more than profits.

Via Yes! Magazine

Chung-Wha Hong is the executive director of Grassroots International, an organization that partners with social movements to create a just and sustainable world by advancing the human right to land, water, and food through global grantmaking, solidarity, and advocacy.

(FPIF) – There’s nothing “uncontrollable” about people applying for asylum. All the U.S. has to do is meet its obligations under international law.

Donald Trump has once again torpedoed the U.S. relationship with Mexico — its third-largest trade partner, closest neighbor and, actually, an ally — by announcing his decision to impose a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods if Mexico doesn’t stop Central American migrants and refugees from reaching the United States.

Trump, ever the alpha macho, has thrown down the gauntlet to Mexico. His rant written on White House stationary concludes with a direct threat to the Mexican president: “Mexico cannot allow hundreds of thousands of people to pour over its land and into our country — violating the sovereign territory of the United States. If Mexico does not take decisive measures, it will come at a significant price.”

The move once again exploits the plight of thousands of families to galvanize a racist electoral base. The tariff measure against Mexico, like the wall, will fire up his supporters — but he may have gone too far this time. Trump has gotten pushback from Republicans, business, and for the first time, from south of the border.

Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador fired off a letter retorting that “social problems are not solved with taxes or coercive measures.” He reiterated his commitment to addressing the root causes of displacement and cited FDR’s defense of the rights of freedom from want and freedom from fear. He ended politely but pointedly: “Please remember that I do not lack courage, that I am not a cowardly nor timid, but rather I act on principles.”

After six months of enduring Trump’s bluster, the tariff threat seems to have finally cracked the appeasement strategy of the new Mexican government. After months of capitulation — including flowery letters of praise that bewildered Mexicans who, if they agree on anything, agree on being vehemently against Trump — AMLO’s sharp defense of Mexican sovereignty signals a shift in more than tone. The Mexican president said he does not want confrontation and much less to resort to retaliatory tariffs, but his letter makes it clear it’s No More Mr. Nice Guy either.

An Absurd Ploy

Given this bold stance, the question is: What are the likely scenarios for the tariff threat, and the binational relationship in general?

The sheer absurdity of Trump’s order renders it unworkable in political and even practical terms. According to the plan, the tariff, effective June 10 under the “International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” would increase by 5 percent a month to 25 percent, and stay there if Mexico fails in the impossible — and probably illegal — task of running interference against migrant and refugee families for the U.S.

Unless AMLO takes a sudden sharp turn into Orwellian territory where no one is allowed to move about or speak freely, Mexico cannot stop immigration. There is no period or place in human history without human migrations. Migration always exists — U.S. immigration laws only determine whether it’s documented or undocumented. The Republican administration has not even tried to adjust those laws to labor markets and other socioeconomic realities.

Other premises of the “emergency measure” are equally absurd. It should come as a relief to know that the number of migrants today is neither unprecedented nor unmanageable, that there is no basis for considering desperate families a security threat, and that this wave of migration is mostly not, in legal terms, illegal — it’s asylum seekers immediately reporting to authorities for processing.

There’s nothing “uncontrollable” about that — the U.S. government simply has to develop the mechanisms to attend to it in the terms established by national and international law that assure the right to safety for all human beings, and especially children, no matter where they happen to be born.

The countries people are fleeing — notably Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador — expel their own citizens in large part due to patterns of violence established by U.S. policies. These include supporting death squads and genocide, bolstering repressive dictatorships past and present, exporting the U.S. gang model, backing megaprojects that displace local communities and repress resistance, and spreading an economic model of inequality that leaves little or nothing to impoverished families with children to feed.

Ending policies that generate violence and repression, like the war on drugs and inequitable development practices, could fairly quickly give Central American families the option to stay home. This doesn’t even require more U.S. aid.

These arguments are well known, and yet the “solutions” coming out of the White House place the onus on Mexico. Trump’s statement reads: “If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the Tariffs will be removed.”

Donald Trump’s “sole discretion and judgment” is not a reasonable criterion in a critical binational relationship.

In the end, Mexico might not have anything to worry about. Trump faces some serious obstacles on the home front. His misuse of the Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to experts, will certainly spur lawsuits to block the tariff imposition.

Many Republican leaders are not on board either. Senate Finance Chair Chuck Grassley came out stating bluntly, “I support nearly every one of President Trump’s immigration policies, but this is not one of them.” CNN reports that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and advisor Jared Kushner warned Trump against the measure.

U.S. trade and manufacturing associations have predictably reacted in a panic, noting that the tariffs would punish U.S. consumers and put in jeopardy entire industries that rely on cross-border supply chains. The National Association of Manufacturers wrote: “These proposed tariffs would have devastating consequences on manufacturers in America and on American consumers.” Industry and trade groups are rushing to Washington to lobby against the Mexican tariffs.

But so far, instead of backpedaling — as he did on his “I will close the southern border” threat — Trump is trying to assemble defenders. One of the few willing to enter the fray is trade adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro accused Mexico of “exporting illegal aliens,” which he described as a business model (although the vast majority of immigrants are Central American and, under economic theory that he ostensibly has some familiarity with, when you export something you normally receive something for it).

Even the estranged Steve Bannon jumped in, gleefully anticipating a scenario where the tariffs against Mexico are applied in full: “The ratcheting up to 25 percent will get their attention,” he gushed.

AMLO’s Dilemma

South of the border, AMLO’s Secretary of Foreign Relations Marcelo Ebrard praised AMLO’s letter (in which he undoubtedly had a hand). The AMLO government has been criticized domestically for a crackdown on immigrants in response to Trump pressures. Now AMLO could gain backing from the Mexican population, and a large part of the U.S. population, if he follows through on promises to stand up to immigration policies that are becoming increasing unpopular even in the United States.

The problem is that the Mexican rhetorical defense of a different approach to immigration — one that respects human rights and addresses structural causes — is not what the government itself is doing on the ground. After initial signs of a change in policy, in recent months the Mexican government has upped deportation, detention rates, and raids. A May report from human rights groups on the Mexico-Guatemala border found a “focus on militarized security” and a “strategy of exhaustion and containment” similar to the United States.

Mexico has a lot to lose and a lot to gain. Both countries announced plans to begin the ratification process for the new trilateral accord that would replace NAFTA. Trump seems to be using the tariffs as leverage against the Mexican government and against Democrats, who have called for modifications to the agreement.

AMLO’s government wants the new NAFTA, but says it’s not willing to do anything more to get it. Agriculture and some manufacturing would be heavily hit, but what they’re more concerned with is the markets. In the long term, Mexico wants to free itself from U.S. economic dependency, in part to avoid being a political hostage. But that’s a long process, and the country can’t afford major disruptions just as AMLO’s signature social programs go into effect.

AMLO also wants to consolidate his image as a reformer — rarely has a president been so focused on legacy so early in the game. Straddling what appear to be contradictory policy goals is creating a crevasse he risks falling into unless makes a clear choice between caving to the abhorrent and coercive policies from the north or building a model that puts human security first and refuses to use Central American refugees as a bargaining chip.

For his part, Trump needs these tariffs to look tough. The latest threat is part of a campaign strategy that’s just getting into swing and depends on hostility toward Mexico and immigrants. This means that the untenable and too-often deadly situation this creates for families will get worse, as manufactured blame for a manufactured crisis is used against forces that oppose the white supremacist agenda.

What he isn’t factoring in, according to many on his own team, is the blowback. The U.S. stock market fell further than the Mexican market when the tariffs were announced. Higher consumer prices, broken supply chains, retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, armed white men in border communities, and rampant hate crime is not a pretty scenario for 2020.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Laura Carlsen heads the Center for International Policy’s Americas Project in Mexico City.

Via FPIF

—–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

President Trump Defends ‘Beautiful’ Tariffs And Hints There’s More To Mexico Deal | NBC Nightly News

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gave a few of the movement’s leaders government jobs, had them call off the demonstrations, and then quietly displaced the vendors as originally planned. Since 1929 the PRI has honed the art of repression and cooptation. The PRI, along with the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), had hoped to use those tactics during Mexico’s July 1 presidential elections. It didn’t work.

On Sunday democratic socialist Andrés Manuel López Obrador received a stunning 53 percent of the presidential vote, compared to 22 percent for PAN’s Ricardo Anaya and 15 percent for PRI’s Jose Antonio Meade. A leftist coalition, led by Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), won a blowout 300 of 500 seats in the House of Deputies and between 56-70 in the 128-seat Senate.

Lopez Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, presented a progressive alternative to the corrupt leadership of the past. He drew support from blue collar workers, peasant farmers, small business people, a sector of the intelligentsia and some big business people alienated from the major political parties.

AMLO called for free education, pensions for seniors and improving the country’s petroleum infrastructure. He also called for a massive tree planting project that he said would create 400,000 jobs.

“AMLO focused on a few key programs aimed at increasing Mexican economic independence from the US and generating jobs,” Bruce Hobson told me. Hobson is an American political activist and analyst who has lived for decades Guanajuato, Mexico.

Lopez Obrador also benefited from widespread voter anger at the establishment political parties.

Student Eugenia Gonzalez, said “In truth, I don’t think any of them are worth much, but it’s better (to pick Lopez Obrador), who is a useful vote against the PRI.”

To Have and Have Not

AMLO’s election represents a victory of the have nots over the haves. A wealthy elite in Mexico enjoy extravagant lifestyles in homes surrounded by high walls. Yet, of the country’s 127.5 million people, a staggering 46 percent live below the poverty line. l

Drug cartels control swaths of major cities with the cooperation of government officials. The last two presidents, PAN’s Felipe Calderon and PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to end the narco violence, only to see it increase. Since 2006, over 200,000 people were killed in the drug wars and some 30,000 disappeared.

The most infamous case remains officially unsolved, the 2014 disappearance and murder of 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero. An international human rights report implicated federal officials in the disappearances and subsequent cover up.

AMLO put forward a great slogan: “bicarios si, sicarios no,” which means “scholarship students yes, contract killers, no.”

Move to the center

During the campaign AMLO downplayed his socialist politics and moved towards the center in an effort to pick up alienated PAN and PRI voters. He promised to appoint wealthy capitalist Alfonso Romo as his chief of staff and Harvard-educated economist Graciela Márquez as his economy minister.

AMLO also formed an electoral alliance with the far right, evangelical Social Encounter Party (PES), which on first view, seems an odd alliance. PES opposes abortion, gay marriage and homosexuality. But AMLO comes from a Catholic background and didn’t campaign on women’s rights issues. The coalition with PES may have given AMLO a few extra percentage points in the presidential race and in the legislative elections.

NAFTA

In 1993 I appeared on a Mexico City radio station to discuss NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. A pro-NAFTA businessman assured the audience that jobs would increase and the economy would improve overall. In reality, inflation shot up, and since implementation of NAFTA in 1994, poverty grew exponentially.

Farmers were driven off the land because of cheaper imports from the United States. Some U.S. and Canadian companies opened factories along the border, but the new jobs never replaced those lost to cheap U.S. imports.

“NAFTA devastated countless Mexican lives,” said activist Hobson.

Nevertheless, the new Lopez Obrador administration will face a belligerent Trump, the continent’s 800 pound gorilla. “AMLO has clearly expressed that he wants better economic and political relations with the United States based on equal partnership and respect,” said Hobson. “This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

Trump and AMLO can agree on some NAFTA changes, albeit for different reasons. Trump wants to raise hourly wages for auto workers in Mexico to $16/hour in order to encourage U.S. companies to keep more jobs at home. AMLO supports wage increase for Mexican auto workers.

However, NAFTA negotiations and Trump’s absurd demand that Mexico pay for a border wall will remain major areas of conflict.

New president’s future

On election night AMLO announced efforts to develop a peace plan, in consultation with UN human rights and religious organizations, that would help lessen drug cartel violence.

Javier Bravo, a history professor and MORENA activist, told me it won’t be easy.

“Corruption is very deeply rooted in our political system,” he said. “AMLO doesn’t have a magic wand to change everything at once. It will be a long process.”

Hobson said the rank and file will have to keep up the pressure for democratic and socialist policies within MORENA. Lopez Obrador exhibits some of the traits of a Latin American caudillo, or all powerful leader, he said.

Leftists within MORENA want the party “to undergo a cultural change so that leadership should be more collective,” he said.

Hobson wants MORENA involved not just in electoral politics but to become rooted in the movements of indigenous people, women, gay/lesbian/trans, labor, counter-culture youth, and environmentalists.

Imagine for a moment if Bernie Sanders had won the 2016 presidential election. That would have been a tremendous step forward for the country, but only a first step towards fundamental change.

That’s the admirable position now faced by the left in Mexico.

Featured Photo: AFP / PEDRO PARDO. Mexico’s president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (C) cheers his supporters at the Zocalo Square in Mexico City after winning general elections.

[The following passages are excerpted from Hunter of Stories, the last book by Eduardo Galeano, who died in 2015. Thanks for its use go to his literary agent, Susan Bergholz, and Nation Books, which is publishing it next week.]

[The following passages are excerpted from Hunter of Stories, the last book by Eduardo Galeano, who died in 2015.  Thanks for its use go to his literary agent, Susan Bergholz, and Nation Books, which is publishing it next week.]

Free

By day, the sun guides them. By night, the stars.

Paying no fare, they travel without passports and without forms for customs or immigration.

Birds are the only free beings in this world inhabited by prisoners. They fly from pole to pole, powered by food alone, on the route they choose and at the hour they wish, without ever asking permission of officials who believe they own the heavens.

Shipwrecked

The world is on the move.

On board are more shipwrecked souls than successful seafarers.

Thousands of desperate people die en route, before they can complete the crossing to the promised land, where even the poor are rich and everyone lives in Hollywood.

The illusions of any who manage to arrive do not last long.

Monster Wanted

Saint Columba was rowing across Loch Ness when an immense serpent with a gaping mouth attacked his boat. Saint Columba, who had no desire to be eaten, chased it off by making the sign of the cross.

Fourteen centuries later, the monster was seen again by someone living nearby, who happened to have a camera around his neck, and pictures of it and of curious footprints came out in the Glasgow and London papers.

The creature turned out to be a toy, the footprints made by baby hippopotamus feet, which are sold as ashtrays.

The revelation did nothing to discourage the tourists.

The market for fear feeds on the steady demand for monsters.

Foreigner

In a community newspaper in Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood, an anonymous hand wrote:

Your god is Jewish, your music is African, your car is Japanese, your pizza is Italian, your gas is Algerian, your coffee is Brazilian, your democracy is Greek, your numbers are Arabic, your letters are Latin.

I am your neighbor. And you call me a foreigner?

The Terrorizer

Back in the years 1975 and 1976, before and after the coup d’état that imposed the most savage of Argentina’s many military dictatorships, death threats flew fast and furious and anyone suspected of the crime of thinking simply disappeared.

Orlando Rojas, a Paraguayan exile, answered his telephone in Buenos Aires. Every day a voice repeated the same thing: “I’m calling to tell you you’re going to die.”

“So you aren’t?” Orlando asked.

The terrorizer would hang up.

A Visit to Hell

Some years ago, during one of my deaths, I paid a visit to hell.

I had heard that in the underworld you can get your favorite wine and any delicacy you want, lovers for all tastes, dancing music, endless pleasure…

Once again, I was able to corroborate the fact that advertising lies. Hell promises a great life, but all I found were people waiting in line.

In that endless queue, snaking out of sight along narrow smoky passages, were women and men of all epochs, from cavemen to astronauts.

All were condemned to wait. To wait for eternity.

That’s what I discovered: hell is waiting.

Prophecies

Who was it that a century ago best described today’s global power structure?

Not a philosopher, not a sociologist, not a political scientist either.

It was a child named Little Nemo, whose adventures were published in the New York Herald way back in 1905, as drawn by Winsor McCay.

Little Nemo dreamed about the future.

In one of his most unerring dreams, he traveled to Mars.

That unfortunate planet was in the hands of a businessman who had crushed his competitors and exercised an absolute monopoly.

The Martians seemed stupid, because they said little and breathed little.

Little Nemo knew why: the boss of Mars had seized ownership of words and the air.

They were the keys to life, the sources of power.

Very Brief Synthesis of Contemporary History

For several centuries subjects have donned the garb of citizens, and monarchies have preferred to call themselves republics.

Local dictatorships, claiming to be democracies, open their doors to the steamroller of the global market. In this kingdom of the free, we are all united as one. But are we one, or are we no one? Buyers or bought? Sellers or sold? Spies or spied upon?

We live imprisoned behind invisible bars, betrayed by machines that feign obedience but spread lies with cybernetic impunity.

Machines rule in homes, factories, offices, farms, and mines, and also on city streets, where we pedestrians are but a nuisance. Machines also rule in wars, where they do as much of the killing as warriors in uniform, or more.

The Right to Plunder

In the year 2003, a veteran Iraqi journalist named Samir visited several museums in Europe.

He found marvelous texts in Babylonian, heroes and gods sculpted in the hills of Nineveh, winged lions that had flown in Assyria…

Someone approached him, offered to help: “Shall I call a doctor?”

Squatting, Samir buried his face in his hands and swallowed his tears.

He mumbled, “No, please. I’m all right.”

Later on, he explained: “It hurts to see how much they have stolen and to know how much they will steal.”

Two months later, U.S. troops launched their invasion. The National Museum in Baghdad was sacked. One hundred seventy thousand works were reported lost.

Stories Tell the Tale

I wrote Soccer in Sun and Shadow to convert the pagans. I wanted to help fans of reading lose their fear of soccer, and fans of soccer lose their fear of books. I never imagined anything else.

But according to Víctor Quintana, a congressman in Mexico, the book saved his life. In the middle of 1997, he was kidnapped by professional assassins, hired to punish him for exposing dirty deals.

They had him tied up, face down on the ground, and were kicking him to death, when there was a pause before the final bullet. The murderers got caught up in an argument about soccer. That was when Víctor, more dead than alive, put in his two cents. He began telling stories from my book, trading minutes of life for every story from those pages, the way Scheherazade traded a story for every one of her thousand-and-one nights.

Hours and stories slowly unfolded.

At last the murderers left him, tied up and trampled, but alive.

They said, “You’re a good guy,” and they took their bullets elsewhere.

***

Quite a few years ago now, during my time in exile on the coast of Catalonia, I got an encouraging nudge from a girl eight or nine years old, who, unless I’m remembering wrong, was named Soledad.

I was having a few drinks with her parents, also exiles, when she called me over and asked,

“So, what do you do?”

“Me? I write books.”

“You write books?”

“Well… yes.”

“I don’t like books,” she declared.

And since she had me against the ropes, she hit me again: “Books sit still. I like songs because songs fly.”

Ever since my encounter with that angel sent by God, I have attempted to sing. It’s never worked, not even in the shower. Every time, the neighbors scream, “Get that dog to stop barking!”

***

My granddaughter Catalina was ten.

We were walking along a street in Buenos Aires when someone came up and asked me to sign a book. I can’t remember which one.

We continued on, the two of us, quietly arm in arm, until Catalina shook her head and offered this encouraging remark: “I don’t know why they make such a fuss. Not even I read you.”

Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) was one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers.  He was the author of many books, including the three-volume Memory of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, and The Book of Embraces.  Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for 12 years before returning to Uruguay in 1985, where he spent the rest of his life.  The passages in this post are excerpted from his final book, Hunter of Stories, translated by Mark Fried and about to be published by Nation Books.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Excerpted from Hunter of Stories. Copyright © 2017 by Eduardo Galeano. English translation copyright © 2017 by Mark Fried. Available from Nation Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, Lamy, N.M., and New York City. All rights reserved.

Tomdispatch.com

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

TeleSur from 2015: The Life of Eduardo Galeano: An Interview with Tariq Ali

Trump told the Mexican leader that they were both in a bit of a political bind due to Trump’s campaign pledge to build a massive wall to prevent illegal immigration and have Mexico foot the bill, according to a transcript of a phone call shortly after Trump took office in January.

“They are going to say, ‘who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President?’ to both of us, and we should both say, ‘we will work it out,'” Trump said. “It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, ‘we will not pay’ and me saying, ‘we will not pay,'” the U.S. president said.

But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,” Trump warned.

While Trump has repeatedly insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, he has provided few details about how that would be done.

According to transcripts obtained by the Post, the exchanges came in back-to-back calls that Trump had with Peña Nieto a week after taking office.

“Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important,” Trump told his counterpart.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government denied that Peña Nieto telephoned Trump to offer his congratulations for his hardline immigration and border policies.

The allegation that Peña Nieto phoned Trump emerged when the U.S. head of state claimed that he had received a congratulatory call from his Mexican counterpart about his policies, according to the Independent.

While swearing in John Kelly — a former four-star general and secretary of homeland security — as his new chief of staff, Trump commented, “At Homeland, what he has done has been nothing short of miraculous.”

Trump added, “As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and they’re close to 80 percent stoppage. And even the president of Mexico called me — they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”

However, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry released a statement denying that Peña Nieto had “recently spoken to President Donald Trump over the telephone.”

The official document said, according to the Associated Press, that the only other time the two men had met and conversed was at the G20 Summit.

“During the meeting, the two heads of state held last July 7 in Hamburg, Germany, the topic of migration was a topic of conversation approached by both. President Peña Nieto shared that repatriations of Mexican nationals from the United States had fallen 31 percent between January and June 2017 in comparison to the same time-frame in 2016,” the statement noted.

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Young Turks: “LEAKED: Trump BEGGED Mexican President To Stop Talking About The Wall”