Pursued by Maras

International /Central America

Escape from their countries because of the poverty and the violence, if “they return the they kill"

Pursued by Maras

For: Carlos Damian                                   October 22, 2015

Of those escaped of Central America, one of each five only gets resident's status

Mexico. -   Alicia Vazquez has never been in the Mexico City but there I want to go: "It is a big city. They tell us that for the ‘Central de Abastos’ there is where to live. Alicia and Chuy Benavides Saldana, their husbands travel accompanied by their 10 year-old son". In four passes they draw the terrifying panorama that took them out of El Salvador: It is included racketeers of Maras attacking their neighborhood of soldiers and policemen dressed, the prohibition of to use the colored hair of blond or to get dressed of yellow or red, the danger of death. Alicia and Chuy worked in a hospital in Delgado City. He studied engineering in systems. They left their country to preserve their lives after a gang threatened them directly. With 300 dollars in the pocket they were of the rich ones. On the average, the migrants that venture for the old route of the train leave their origin countries with between sixty and eighty dollars. Of the histories that circulate in the houses refuge, the number 72 is the most fortunate. In El Naranjo town, Guatemala, they took a boat that brought near them to Mexican territory.   Refuge #72, in Tenosique, Tabasco  The couple would originate of El Salvador nation-state, she keeps as a treasure the document that aids her stay in Mexico like refuge applicant, with the signature of an official of the National Institute of Migration, in Acayucan town of Veracruz, place where they cannot go without taking a risk to be prisoned. The document that they carried allows them to move, when a lot of time until Villahermosa. Recently they went to the municipality of Emiliano Zapata, where the Mexican government builds a bunker that shines every night and he forces to the vehicles to enter to a labyrinth to be revised. Alicia speaks of an impenetrable country, and she says: "We already saw the squad". To them in particular, United States doesn't interest them, for its social, economic system and with many requirements to be American resident, and they have decided to be Mexican, although they know that it is difficult in these times the empire of the North impels Mexico since to close its frontier of the south, traveling its south frontier with the Grande river, toward Mexico by means of its Merida Initiative. In the refuge #72, in Tenosique Tabasco, they have informed him that the federal government accepts very few refuge applications.     This bureaucratic slowness for the Central American people has its explanation, due to the scarce quantity of bureaucrats in the whole country with hardly three offices: Tapachula, Acayucan and Federal District. In our country one has the Mexican Commission of Help of Refugees (Comar for their initials in Spanish) it received 2 thousand 137 applications last year it only granted refuge in one of each five cases. The previously mentioned couple knows that they have to wait, to trust and to pray to the saint of their devotion. "Mexico is a very big country and there are places where one can live, our country is very small and we don't have where to hide of the injustice". In another history, one has Fita that it was near to die in Progress, Yoro, Honduras. When she is reminded the name of the coup d’état Micheletti (Roberto), loose a laughter remembering the slaughter in those times. She is 24 years old, the scars of 18 shots that the boss of a Mara gang ordered and she remembers her brief sex-servitor history. The racketeer full with tattoos told him with hoarse voice: "you will be mine or of anybody", before of shooting her in cold blood.     The American dream has ended  In Yoro she was devoted to the oldest service in the world; "to the sex-service and in the day she sold lottery (daily)". She took three days in traveling the hell of the migrants to be able to be in Mexican territory, they hardly cross the South frontier with 60 kilometers that separate the town of Tenosique of the border line, and when it arrives at this Mexican town they assaulted her and they snatch her the little thing that it was her in their pocket. But in these times of the Mexican side, she carries out handmade works when making little flowers of fantasy to sell them in the streets now, while she hopes the scars of the violence are enough argument so that Mexico grants her refugee's condition. This girl is making time in the refuge #72 with her document: an asylum application that she keeps with zeal and affection. This girl has an uncle in United States, but she won't look for it because she wants to stay here, where she knew to other people trans-genre that supposes they are happy in Monterrey.     Coque Echeverri (CE) it takes few days in the housing of the Jesuits and he assumes leader's tasks. The migrants in this refuge every day they come and they leave that it makes that the leaderships last a little time. CE and two friends left Coyagua together, in the vicinity of Tegucigalpa, for threats of the gangs. By word of mouth flowing and white skin he explains how the house refuge that describes the persecution climate that from the coup d’état activists, students and Honduras teachers suffer works. He chats us the history of how together with their friends they made a documentary about the rejection to the orders of the Maras: "in the movie we said that they would not give in us and we go up it to YouTube". That was enough so that one day later we dropped the racketeers, but the following morning they were already in the frontier conserving their life. "We had to lower the documentary of the nets of the threats. For that reason now we ‘re hoping the CD sends me, to present it like test in the refuge application that we have in the Comar", Coque says. Although it clarifies that they no longer want to go to the “American nightmare", what we want is to stay in Mexico, it offers me the opportunity, and I will live to Mexico City", (La Jornada, Arturo Cano).     For the investigating Alex Olayo, he is a person that has traveled the migratory routes during one year, and he comments us that it is more the quantity of Central American that they escape from the violence and of the threats of the racketeers' owners of lives recruitment and of country properties. He has met with whole families that they escaped for the threats of the gangs that recruit their 9 year-old children without caring the complaints of the parents, and of the society. The Jesuit says that the number of escaped migrants of its country accepted in refugees' condition, “is ridiculous in front of the thick of applications” and the government is passing above the Convention of Cartagena, of which Mexico is signatory. "The decision is discretionary: it is usually requested to the migrants that document how they are threatening them”. "You give me a test that they killed your relative", they tell them, “when the convention establishes that the force of the tests doesn't have to relapse in the applicant". Once they reject the migrant's application, naturally it stays in Mexico in irregular situation that to return to a place where it waits them the death. For Ramon Marquez, director of the refuge #72 the house in Tenosique, Tabasco has detained to be in passing a station to become “refugees' field". Every time more people stay and for more time. "The stagnation is preoccupant because when not having an insert plan conflicts, tensions, and discrimination they will appear". It will be for that reason that the High Commissioner of United Nations for the Refugees, with diplomatic offices in the Federal District and in Tapachula, it is beginning to open a headquarters for practical cases, in Tenosique Tabasco, Mexico. (La Jornada, politica, p.p. 4 – 5, October 21, 2015).