PIONEER IN MIGRATION RECORDS

Jorge A. Bustamante, a pioneer professor in immigration studies, died March 25 at a hospital in Tijuana after going into respiratory arrest. He was 82.

He had been at his residence in Playas de Rosarito preparing for one of his classes on migration when he became ill that morning.

Bustamante, who held a doctorate in sociology and anthropology, was one of Mexico’s most renowned academics in documenting migratory flows in northern Mexico.

He was born in Parral, Chihuahua, on April 23, 1938.

He was the founder of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in 1982. He served as president of the university until he left in 1998, but he continued as a professor-researcher in the Department of Social Studies until his death.

He advocated for and increased visibility of immigrant workers in the United States. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Notre Dame contains a chapter titled “Wetback: A Participant Observer’s Report.” To conduct the research, he experienced the journey of migrants himself by crossing the border without papers.

In 2005, his work as a defender of the undocumented led him to become the first Mexican special rapporteur for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2006 the Mexican Congress presented him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He is considered the first academic to conduct systematic records of crossings at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to establish the movement, duration and motives of migration.

For his colleagues, friends, family and former students, his death leaves a legacy of social commitment to migrants.

“He was, above all, an extraordinary ‘fronterologist’ who promoted many issues in the field of culture,” said Alfredo Álvarez Cárdenas, former director of the Centro Cultural Tijuana.

“Because of his publications ... I believe that we will have to measure Jorge’s legacy over time. It is remarkable the level of anthropological study of the border, on economic development, on migration. I don’t think there is a researcher today with such social commitment as Jorge had,” Álvarez said.

“Jorge’s death is very painful, but he also leaves a luminous path.”

Bustamante’s son, Jorge Bustamante de la Mora, said that among the highlights of his father’s legacy would be putting the immigration issue on the desk of many Mexican presidents.

The sociological contribution he made to research on undocumented workers was key because the studies that previously existed were focused from the U.S. point of view, his son said. “That’s why he decided to create an educational institution to provide plausible solutions to be taken up by the government or local authorities, hence the idea of creating an institution that would provide information in a public and accessible way.”

He said that in the mid-1980s, his father and other researchers observed the daily dynamics in the Zapata canyon at the border. “He started counting the heads (of migrants) and began to discover that (human) flows can be scientifically measured.”

In the early 1980s, Bustamante founded the Center for Border Studies of Northern Mexico, which would later become El Colef.

“In 1982 when the school started ... it began a series of debates with many people who said the border was not an important issue,” said José Manuel Valenzuela, a researcher at El Colef. “Now no one discusses whether the border issue is relevant or not; now it is a fundamental issue.”

Chantal Lucero Vargas met Bustamante, who would later become her thesis director, on the first day she attended El Colef to study for her doctorate in social science.

“When they were welcoming us I found out that he would be my thesis director,” she recalled. “That day I went very nervously to introduce myself to his office ... and from that first day I received nothing but kindness and guidance from him.”

Lucero said she will never forget the advice from the man she considers her mentor. “I remember that in my doctoral exam he told me that the most beautiful thing about me was my humility, to always keep it up because there were academics who forgot to be humble and that to study those most in need, such as the migrant population, we should always be humble and put ourselves in their place because they had gone through experiences that we could not even imagine.”

Dr. Bustamante is survived by his wife Eréndira Paz, and his two children, Mariana Bustamante de la Mora and Jorge Bustamante de la Mora.