Border 102: Casa de Migrantes, Ixtepec

Four days later we arrived at the Casa de Migrantes, situated outside the city along the railway. The albergue had just been created and was little more than a dirt field, the skeleton of a chapel, a shed full of food and blankets, and a place to sit in the shade. Father Alejandro greeted us. He was dressed in white from head to toe and carried a cross around his neck. Even though he didn’t look like it, he was seventy-two.

He invited us into the shade where a few other people were sitting. Two were a couple from Honduras. In the conversation between them, Father Alejandro, Father John, and some of the volunteers, I learned three important things about migration:

--Father John: It’s extremely difficult to get a work permit and only migrants with work permits, he said, pay taxes. Migrants will come through anyway, so if migrants came through on a work permit the state would get something out of it as well.
--Father Alejandro: Migrants stay longer and longer in the U.S. because it’s so hard to get there. When they finally arrive, they stay for longer and longer periods.
--The Honduran couple: “The United States is a good place to work, but we (migrants) don’t want to live there.”After two days in Ixtepec, a train arrived with hundreds of migrants. Some of them recognized us.

Ryan and I helped direct people to the Casa del Migrante, where they picked up food, water and medical supplies, and after three hours they jumped onto another train to continue on their travels.

This time Ryan and I heard the whistle in time to see the train take off with the migrants. As the train took off, we saw migrants running and jumping on the train, and people waiving from the top of the freight cars. It was a very special moment. Even though there is so much difficulty in the migrants’ journey, there was so much joy in their faces as they left.

When we came back to the Casa, I learned my last lesson along the Guatemala-Mexico border. There was a conversation between the volunteers and the migrants. One volunteer tried to explain how important it was for the immigrants to maintain their hygiene, take showers, wash their clothes and look proper. Then a tall gentleman from Nicaragua stood up and said that, for him, it was important to look like a migrant. When people see migrants dressed well, he said, they think to themselves that it’s not hard to be a migrant. It doesn’t look hard to be a migrant but it is hard, he said. “It’s not the hunger, the thirst, or the sickness. It’s that we have to leave our country and our families behind.”