This editorial first appeared in the May 3rd edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.
Photo by José Luis Granados Ceja.
The massive influx of migrants to Mexico City in recent years poses significant challenges, not least of which is the lack of sufficient and adequate housing for those who have chosen the city to rebuild their lives or who have been stranded here due to the tightening of anti-immigration policies in the United States. Parallel to this problem, which local and federal authorities must address, is a much more troubling issue developing in terms of its implications: the crisis of lack of empathy, lack of solidarity, and covert xenophobia among certain sectors of the capital’s society.
The most conspicuous example of this phenomenon is found in neighborhood associations protesting against the settlement of migrants near their homes, whether in makeshift camps, formal shelters, or even the mere presence of asylum seeker assistance offices. On Thursday night, migrants spending the night in the relocated camp in Guadalupe Victoria Park, outside the Candelaria Metro station, were forced to flee after being warned that they had to leave their rooms because they would be destroyed.
Indeed, yesterday morning, individuals claiming to be local residents cleared the so-called ranchitos (small ranches) where families, mainly of Venezuelan, Colombian, Honduran, and Ecuadorian origin, lived.
It is impossible to look the other way while Mexicans replicate the unacceptable behaviors that have become normalized north of the Rio Grande.
This week, the eviction and relocation of refugees took place at the Vallejo camp in the Gustavo A. Madero borough, at the request of residents. Residents have demanded that federal and local authorities set up shelters so that migrants can stop spending the night in tents, cardboard, and plastic along the train tracks. This argument echoes the one used by residents of the Juárez neighborhood in the Cuauhtémoc borough when they expelled the migrants, mostly Haitians, who were occupying Giordano Bruno Plaza while awaiting the resolution of their asylum applications.
In this central neighborhood, residents camouflaged their classist and xenophobic hostility toward Central Americans and Caribbeans with a discourse of alleged concern for their well-being: according to their rhetoric, they didn’t oppose the presence of migrants, but the disregard for their human rights by the authorities, who have a duty to provide them with safe and decent shelters. However, when the government proposes to open such facilities, it also encounters the intransigence of residents who organize not to demand rights, but to be denied aid to those most in need, as happened in Nueva Santa María, Azcapotzalco municipality. It is heartbreaking to see residents not only of the presumably affected neighborhood, but of several surrounding neighborhoods, establishing sit-ins, patrols, and blocking roads in order to prevent men, women, and small children from having a roof over their heads and a plate of food. It is also disconcerting to note that the lack of empathy cuts across social classes, manifesting itself in the elitist Anzures—whose settlers prevented the transfer of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar)—in the gentrified Juárez neighborhood, and in the popular Vallejo neighborhood.
Fortunately, not all Mexico City residents have been swept away by selfishness and xenophobia. Migrants themselves recount the many ways in which Mexico City residents have made them feel welcome and the sometimes unexpected facilities they have provided to integrate into their new social and professional environment. But it is impossible to look the other way while Mexicans replicate the unacceptable behaviors that have become normalized north of the Rio Grande, because hate speech and the rejection of differences have no place in a democratic society, which has also historically been a source of migrants and should be the first to understand the plight of this community.