Already the center of attention
A chaotic clash at the U.S.-Mexico border this week showed just how desperate many Central Americans are to reach the U.S., said Hugo Ruvalcaba in La Crónica de Hoy (Mexico). After nearly two months on the road, a caravan of at least 5,000 Central Americans has now arrived at the Mexican border city of Tijuana. They had hoped to cross straight into our northern neighbor but have discovered they will have to wait for months in temporary shelters as U.S. officials process their asylum claims a handful at time. Angry at the delay, about 500 migrants staged a demonstration at the San Ysidro border crossing, and an hour into the protest, hundreds of migrants suddenly rushed the fence and tried to clamber over to the U.S. Using tear gas and, some witnesses claimed, rubber bullets, the U.S. authorities “slammed them back.” Some protesters responded by hurling rocks at border guards. At least 42 migrants were arrested on the U.S. side of the border, while Mexican authorities arrested at least 39 people “accused of provoking the riots.” For now, Mexico’s Federal Police are to reinforce the northern border, but that’s not a long-term solution.
The incoming Mexican administration says it will keep the migrants in Mexico—for a price, said Javier Lafuente and Jacobo García in El País (Spain). Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who takes over as president on Dec. 1, has been secretly negotiating with the Trump administration. In exchange for absorbing most of the migrants and preventing them from crossing to the U.S., Mexico will get more than $20 billion over López Obrador’s six-year presidential term, “mainly in private investment” backed by the U.S., to develop its poor southern provinces. At the same time, the U.S. will nearly triple funding for an aid program to Central America to $1.5 billion. If all sides agree to the deal, the plan could be in action by May 2019.
But using Mexican police to try to stop the migrants from crossing, as Mexico did last weekend, “sets an ominous precedent,” said Jorge Castañeda in El Financiero (Mexico). Sure, it’s illegal under Mexican law to cross the border without papers, or at an undesignated entry point. But hundreds of Mexicans do it nearly every day. Once we start forcibly turning back Hondurans, won’t the U.S. “demand exactly the same procedures” to keep our own people in? Maybe more Latin Americans should stay home, said Carlos Ramírez in El Debate (Mexico). Everyone wants “the American dream,” but it has proven to be “a nightmare for migrants.” Hispanics in the U.S. “suffer marginalization and exploitation,” and their neighborhoods teem with “drug exploitation, overcrowding, prostitution, delinquency, and all the sins of Dante’s Inferno.” They endure this indignity because their paltry wages are at least earned in dollars, hard currency to send back home to their relatives. Let’s hope this rumored new U.S. development deal proves a reality. Because the only way to stop migration is to create a safe and prosperous Central America.