Desafíos para seguir adelante: experiencias de una ONG en la frontera México-Guatemala

Por Ailsa Winton y Rosember López Samayoa.*

Versión en ingles aquí.

Si bien muchas ONGs prácticamente han cesado sus actividades desde el inicio de la pandemia en Tapachula, una ciudad a poca distancia de la frontera de México con Guatemala, algunas decidieron continuar. Aquí el equipo de la organización Una Mano Amiga en la Lucha contra el SIDA (UMALCS) comparte algunas de sus reflexiones y experiencias sobre cómo la pandemia ha afectado su trabajo con la población local y migrante.

¿Cómo han sido las respuestas de otras organizaciones e instituciones gubernamentales ante la pandemia?

De parte de las instancias gubernamentales, nos parece que ha sido una respuesta bastante inefectiva; pareciera ser que el único problema que existe aquí en la frontera sur es el tema del COVID. El cierre parcial o total de centros de salud ha causado dificultades para solventar necesidades de las enfermedades no graves de la población tanto migrante como local. En el caso de nuestro trabajo en salud sexual, podemos atender a las personas, pero no tenemos adónde canalizarlas. Nos parece que en una pandemia, debieron haber aumentado su capacidad para atención y no la parte contraria.

Respecto a las autoridades migratorias y para refugiados, hubo por ahí un desajuste, ya que por instrucciones del gobierno federal, dejaron de prestar servicios, sin embargo no se detuvieron las detenciones, la violación de DHH contra personas migrantes.

Para personas migrantes, es algo que se relaciona con la salud y el bienestar emocional, el tema del estrés y la desesperación de qué va a pasar con sus trámites, el abandono de ellos y el regreso a su país de origen, o el continuar caminando hacia la frontera norte, completamente solos, exponiéndose ante la situación de inseguridad y la pandemia, además de la inestabilidad económica.

Una sesión de consejería en UMALCS (imagen: UMALCS)

En el tema de los ONG, tenemos que hacer como una reflexión más profunda, porque se supone que los ONGs deberíamos ser de los primeros de estar pendiente de las necesidades, sobre todo organizaciones que trabajamos el tema de migracion y derechos humanos. Aquí no lo vimos así; muchas dejaron de prestar sus servicios. En acciones realizadas durante la pandemia, se hizo evidente las sinergias entre organizaciones que habían colaborado antes, pero fueron también muy evidentes las ausencias de muchas organizaciones.

De nuestra parte, hemos seguido prestando servicios. Sí tuvimos que hacer adecuaciones a horarios, y poner en pausa los abordajes en calle, pero de una u otra forma hemos seguido atendiendo a personas migrantes, solicitantes de refugio LGBTI, sobre todo en salud sexual y reproductiva y VIH, de la mejor forma posible.

Pero la respuesta en general debe ser más amplia; en una cuestión de emergencia o epidemia, a las instituciones y las ONGs e organismos internacionales, nos faltan bases o fundamentos para tener un comportamiento más activo y más pronto.

Pero en este sentido, un plus es que en Tapachula a partir de los éxodos migratorios, ya se había conformado un grupo de monitoreo desde la sociedad civil, que puede reactivarse. También hay organizaciones que quizás no están realizando actividades en campo tal cual, pero sí denuncian atropellos hacia personas migrantes, y de esta forma, juegan un papel importante en este momento.

¿Qué ha demostrado la pandemia? Y ¿cómo ha afectado su trabajo?

Algo que muestra esta pandemia es la forma de organizarse de las personas, sobre todo de quienes viven en hacinamiento, se modificó y a partir de la forma en que estaba construida el tejido social de estos, ¡o se compuso o se descompuso! Definitivamente, para quienes no tuvieron como una mejor manera de articulación, fue evidente que las vulnerabilidades aumentaron.

Entrega de dispensas en la oficina de UMALCS (imagen: UMALCS)

También ha demostrado el efecto emocional que puede tener el encierro. En el caso de albergues para migrantes, hubo confinamiento y ahí está envuelto el tema de la salud mental, cómo el encierro significó mucho, aún con todo lo que pudiera implicar estar en un albergue; tan así que muchas decidieron salir a pesar de no tener adonde irse.

Quizás lo que ha afectado más es que UMALCS,  su trabajo es más presencial, de campo, en la cual las plataformas difícilmente nos puedan servir. Por ejemplo en el tema de los abordajes, lo hemos suspendido y el tema es como visitar lugares donde están ellos, bares, calles, parques, a través de una plataforma, cuando la población no tiene recursos, o costumbres de usar estas tecnologías.

¿Qué lecciones o reflexiones se llevan de toda la experiencia de trabajar y vivir en medio de la pandemia?

El tema de la COVID, ha venido a destapar nuevamente el tema de la discriminación. Muchas organizaciones religiosas han señalado a la población LGBTI como responsables de esta epidemia, por el castigo divino. Todo esto nos lleva a que el tema de la estigmatización y discriminación en cuestiones de salud, sigue siendo presente, como la población LGBTI fue estigmatizada en la epidemia del VIH, ahora también.

Da mucho miedo; el preocuparte por el equipo, por la falta de seguro social adecuado, qué pasa si se contagian. Debemos estar trabajando la contención emocional, acompañamiento de otras personas. El contacto físico de una persona con otra, sorprende los resultados que puede dar, pero en COVID no se puede esto. En las organizaciones, tenemos que rescatar el tema humano; cuidarnos, como un solo organismo.

Tenemos que cambiar, realizar el trabajo de forma diferente, sin perder la calidez humana. Hay mucha incertidumbre todavía, pero hay que ver como adecuar nuestro trabajo diario, y sí hay posibilidades de hacer cosas nuevas. Incluso los cambios podrían ayudar en desnormalizar algunas violencias sexuales, como un punto favorable.

Sin duda, el reto mayor es el acceso a las tecnologías entre la población. Pero como sociedad civil, tenemos que seguir desarrollando en sinergia con otras para beneficio de las poblaciones más vulnerables.

* Con la participación de Erika Guadalupe Sumuano Moreno, Yadira Esmeralda Guerrero Castro, Esau (Essa Lilith) Pérez Hernández, Gonzalo Ernesto Cue Rasgado, Giseth Gordillo Verdugo, Francisco Javier Meza Rodríguez, Margarita Concepción Morales Villanueva, Alfredo Alejandro Marroquín Saucedo, Juan Carlos Veliz Sempoll.

Ailsa Winton es Investigadora Titular ‘A’ en el Departamento de Sociedad y Cultura en El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Tapachula. Rosember López Samayoa es Director de Una Mano Amiga en la Lucha contra el SIDA, la cual el fundó en 2000.

The challenges of carrying on: pandemic experiences of an NGO on the Mexico-Guatemala border

By Ailsa Winton and Rosember López Samayoa.*

Spanish version here.

Many NGOs have all but ceased activities since the COVID-19 pandemic made itself felt in Tapachula – a town a short distance from Mexico´s border with Guatemala – but a few decided to carry on. Here the team of Una Mano Amiga en la Lucha contra el SIDA (UMALCS) (A Friendly Hand in the Fight Against AIDS) share some of their thoughts and experiences about their work with the local and migrant communities during the pandemic.**

What have the responses of local organizations and government institutions to the pandemic been like?

It seems to us that the government response has been rather ineffective; it’s as if the only problem that exists here on the southern border is COVID. The partial or total closure of health centres has made meeting the needs of both the migrant and local population very difficult. In the case of our work on sexual health, we still see people but have nowhere to refer them to. It seems to us that in a pandemic, health services should have increased their capacity, not done the opposite.

Regarding the immigration and asylum authorities, there was an imbalance there; they stopped providing services on federal government orders, but migrant detentions were not stopped, nor was the violation of migrants’ human rights.

For migrants, it is also to do with health and emotional well-being, in terms of stress and anguish not only about serious economic instability, but also about their stalled application process, and the decision of whether to abandon it altogether and try to return to their country of origin, or carry on towards the northern border, alone and exposed to the dangers both of moving, and of the pandemic itself.

A counselling session in the UMALCS office (image: UMALCS)

On the issue of NGOs, we have a lot to reflect on, because NGOs are usually among the first to see to people’s needs, especially organizations that work on migration and human rights. But we did not see that happen; many stopped providing services. Humanitarian actions that have been carried out during the pandemic have shown important synergies between certain organizations, but the absences of many other organizations were also very evident.

For our part, we have continued to work providing services throughout the pandemic. We did have to make adjustments to how and when we work, and for now we have had to stop going out to make first contacts on the street, but we have tried to carry on giving assistance to LGBTI migrants and asylum seekers in our offices, particularly for issues relating to sexual and reproductive health and HIV.

But we feel, overall, that the response in general ought to be broader; in an emergency or epidemic, institutions, NGOs and international organizations lack the foundations for a more active, timely response.

But one good thing is that in Tapachula, as a result of the recent migrant exoduses (‘caravans’) from Central America, a civil society monitoring group had been set up, which can be reactivated. There are also organizations that may not be carrying out activities in the field at the moment, but that do denounce abuses against migrants, and in this way have played an important role during the pandemic.

What do you think the pandemic has shown us, and how has it affected your work?

Something that this pandemic has shown is how people organize themselves, especially those who live in contexts of overcrowding. There, social organization has either been built up or broken down, depending on the way people’s social fabric is constructed. Undoubtedly, for those who can’t find a better way of organizing, we have seen increased vulnerability.

Members collecting food parcels from UMALCS (image: UMALCS)

It has also shown the emotional effect that confinement can have. In the case of migrant shelters, where people were effectively shut in, the issue of mental health is really evident. Confinement meant so much, even in the context of the many challenges of living in a shelter – so much so that many decided to leave the shelters during the pandemic, despite having nowhere to go.

Perhaps what has most affected us is that our work is mainly face-to-face and in the field, where it would be hard to make use of digital platforms. We have stopped first contacts in public now, and so the issue is how to get to the people we need to reach, not through the places they go as in the past (bar, parks, the street), but rather via online platforms.

What are the lessons or reflections you have taken from the experience of working and living in the midst of this pandemic?

COVID has again revealed the issue of discrimination. For example, many religious organizations have pointed to the LGBTI population as being responsible for this epidemic, saying it’s divine punishment. This shows that the issue of stigmatization and discrimination in health matters is still present, just as it was during the HIV epidemic.

It has been scary; you’re worrying about your team, about the lack of adequate social security, what happens if they get infected. We have to work on emotional containment, on accompanying other people. Simple physical contact of one person with another can have surprising results, but with COVID this cannot be done. We have to get humanity back in organizations, take care of ourselves as one organism.

We have to change, to work differently, without losing the human touch. There is still a lot of uncertainty, but we must find a way of adapting how we work. There may be positive outcomes of this too, like how some of these changes could help denormalize some sexual violence, and others we may not have foreseen.

Without a doubt, we face important challenges now, but as part of civil society, we have to continue developing in synergy with others for the benefit of the most vulnerable populations.

* With contributions from the UMALCS team: Erika Guadalupe Sumuano Moreno, Yadira Esmeralda Guerrero Castro, Esau (Essa Lilith) Pérez Hernández, Gonzalo Ernesto Cue Rasgado, Giseth Gordillo Verdugo, Francisco Javier Meza Rodríguez, Margarita Concepción Morales Villanueva, Alfredo Alejandro Marroquín Saucedo, and Juan Carlos Veliz Sempoll.

** Responses have been translated from Spanish by Ailsa Winton.

Ailsa Winton is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Society and Culture at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Tapachula, Mexico. Her research currently focuses on processes of mobility, inequality and violence in the context of border regions. In May, Ailsa wrote for the MMB blog series Letter from Afar about life on the Mexico-Guatemala border at the beginning of lockdown. Rosember López Samayoa is Director of Una Mano Amiga en la Lucha contra el SIDA, which he founded in 2000.

Northwards across social geographies of race

By Luis Escobedo

‘I’m in distress. Los Zetas kidnapped some of my friends,’ said the first message I ever received from El Sirio on 2nd October, 2015.* Fear and uncertainty had haunted him across Mexico from his natal town of La Paz in Honduras, where death threats in connection to gang violence had finally triggered his journey northwards. Almost five years later, when I asked him whether these feelings persisted after he settled in the United States, he said, ‘It’s for that very reason I am armed.’ However, he also stated that where he lives ‘there are many police officers of Latin origin… They are Latinos [sic]. They respect that area a lot… There is a lot of compassion.’

The people who tormented El Sirio (Spanish for ‘The Syrian’ – a pseudonym allegedly given him after growing a long black beard on arrival in the US) in Mexico and Honduras, including members of cartels, gangs and the police, were also, of course, of Latin American origin. This range of contact he has had with different people of Latin American descent reminds us that how he identifies himself and how others identify him have been delimited by interactions and transactions across time and space (as analysed in Fredrik Barth’s seminal text). That is, they depend on context and are subject to change. Having grown up and migrated in vulnerable conditions, he has navigated physical spaces shaped by social inequalities, nationalist discourses and racism. In the context of these ‘social geographies of race’ and his related vulnerability, El Sirio’s journey has become that of a racialised young man claiming his individuality.

When he reached out to me, El Sirio was spending his last days at a migrant shelter in the north of Mexico before crossing the border into the United States. His message found me in my office, at the Queretaro-based campus of a private Mexican university, getting ready to close a series of academic and cultural activities commemorating individual victims of ascriptive violence. This series of events had been organised to begin on 26th September to honour the victims of the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping and murders and to end on 2nd October, in memory of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. It was an incredible coincidence that this was the day El Sirio had chosen to write to me about the kidnapping of his travelling companions. That evening, after mentioning the disappearance of his companions, I reminded the audience that the main idea of this series of events had been that identificatory practices of the everyday, especially those that stigmatise individuals, can in themselves be violent and escalate into brutality. El Sirio’s journey through Mexico embodied this idea well.

Looking out from the migrant shelter in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where the author first met El Sirio (image: author’s own)

Many of the racialised social geographies I navigated during the years I spent in Mexico reminded me of those of my natal Peru. Legally, there were no physical spaces that were segregated. Even where an unacknowledged segregation did take place, on an informal level, the boundaries between who was and who was not accepted were often blurred. However, these spaces had been historically, socially and politically constructed as hierarchically differentiated ones, where people of lighter complexion and/or other physical and behavioural characteristics associated with whiteness were generally more present towards the top, and those who were physically, or symbolically, darker had more presence towards the bottom. This differentiation involved informal forms of surveillance, control, punishment and violence, and was extended to foreigners like El Sirio, his travelling companions and myself.

El Sirio’s story across and beyond Mexico is loaded with terminology referring to groups and categories. However, this terminology is also contextualised according to how racism, inequality and other longstanding and structural issues have shaped the particular geographies that he navigated. He recalls that he ‘decided to go by bus with a group of friends. A lot of Hondurans, as they were blacker than me (más negritos que yo), decided to follow the route of the train.’ Although he identifies himself as ‘black’, the fact that El Sirio had lighter skin than some of his companions allowed him, to some extent, to avoid migration officers and enjoy parts of his trip more comfortably.

However, he was generally still a racialised and criminalised migrant. He did not spend his days at a beach resort, in a gated community, or as part of a private university department. His story, as that of many others, is one of moving across rivers, forests and deserts, migrant shelters, established routes, train rooftops, street corners and the like. While his racial identification in these spaces has occasionally led some people to randomly offer him money, food, shelter, clothing, transport and religious objects, being identifiable as a particular type of Central American migrant has also contributed to his vulnerability, in a similar way as being ‘black’ and ‘poor’ had done in Honduras, and ‘black’, ‘Latino’ and ‘immigrant’ currently does in the United States.

The first and only time El Sirio and I crossed paths was some time in August or September 2015 during my visit to a migrant shelter next to a railway on the outskirts of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. I was first struck by the kind-hearted and innocent look on his face; it was almost childlike. His words, and the way he spoke, however, later contrasted with my first impression. ‘Why did you come here today?’ was his first question.

Five years later, our conversations have started feeding the chapters of a work based on El Sirio’s story that combines elements of narrative and participatory research, discourse and visual analysis, and storytelling. He was the one who proposed I write something based on his life that could ‘help others’ with similar histories – this in itself speaks directly to the importance that claiming his and other people’s individuality and humanity in the face of racial categories has for him. Even when we currently stand in distant continents and times zones due to strict measures in connection to COVID-19, our endeavour reminds us that borders can and should be disputed.

* El Sirio’s words are translated from Spanish by the author.

Luis Escobedo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice, University of the Free State, South Africa. He is the co-editor of Migrants, Thinkers, Storytellers (HSRC Press, 2021).