Meet Mexico’s ‘Mama Africa’
For migrants, whether moving through Europe or Latin America, certain spots become known along the way for welcoming people.
I visit one such place in the Mexican city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. It’s a bare-bones hotel near downtown. The manager is a petite, 59year-old Mexican woman with coral-pink glasses and gold-coloured teddy bear earrings. Her name is Concepcion Gonzalez Ramirez, and she was born and raised here in Tapachula, but many now know her as Mama Africa. She’s called that because the hotel — actually she herself — has become a destination for Africans, as well as Haitians, passing through.
The hotel isn’t that charming. For $2.50 (U.S.) a night, guests stay in basic rooms with peeling, bare walls and metal-frame beds. In the lobby, there’s a parrot in a cage. There’s no sign for the hotel, but African and Haitian migrants by the hundreds have found their way here.
Sometimes, Ramirez says, people arrive in packed minibuses at the top of the road, “and start yelling out, ‘Mama Africa! Where’s Mama Africa?!’ ”
There’s a lull now, but earlier this year Ramirez had 200 guests at a time. There are only 24 rooms, so some people slept on cardboard outside. She doesn’t want to turn anyone away.
She also helps out by taking sick guests to the hospital, buying medicine and rubbing balm on travelweary feet.
Tychique Sebastiao, from Angola, arrived recently. I ask him if Mama Africa is a fitting nickname for Ramirez.
“Yes, yes,” he says, with a laugh. “I feel she is really like that, because African women are very nice women. Very loving. She has a mother’s gregariousness . . . We’re really comfortable here.”
Sebastiao is travelling with his sister and her three children, hoping to get to Boston to reunite with her husband. They’d been living in Brazil already, but for some Africans a popular route to the U.S. is to first fly to South America and then head north.
They heard about Mama Africa from fellow travellers.
“Mama Africa is a name that’s known all along the route,” says Felix Michelet, a guest here from Haiti.
He says Haitians and Africans often travel together, and Africans farther ahead on the route had sent back word about Ramirez via WhatsApp.
Like many Haitians, Michelet lived in Brazil, working construction ahead of the Olympics and the World Cup. After Brazil’s economy weakened, he began making his way to the U.S. He’s been at Mama Africa’s for months, selling SIM cards to make enough money for the bus to Tijuana.
“Mama Africa is our mom, we’re never going to let her go,” he says. “We’ll always be in touch.”
Ramirez says former guests often text her, saying hello or reporting progress on their trip. She says her work is motivated by her Christian faith. She doesn’t know much about Africa, but she has learned from guests how to make Ghanaian-style chicken.