This online panel discussion focuses on the El Paso, Texas and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico area, and the speakers are activists in that region. This is the second of five US-Mexico Border Fact-Finding panels about the impact of US immigration policies on human rights along the border, part of the Zooming to the Border for Human Rights series sponsored by the People’s Tribune and El Tribuno del Pueblo. Panelists in this video are Hilda Villegas, part of the leadership of Familias Unidas del Chamizal; Rosemary Rojas, board chair of the Border Agricultural Workers Project; Susana Prieto Terrazas, a labor attorney in Mexico; and Fernando Garcia, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights. The moderator is Carlos Marentes, founder and director of the Border Agricultural Workers Project.
Laura Garcia: Welcome, and I’m very happy that all of you guys are participating in this panel. Apologies, for the technical difficulties that we had earlier, but we’re ready to start. My name is Laura Garcia and I’m the editor of the Tribuno del Pueblo, and I would like to tell you how these panels came about. A delegation of activist, researchers, and independent journalist convened by the Chicago-based el Tribuno del Pueblo and the People’s Tribune, were moved to action by current immigration policies that separate thousands of children from their parents, that allow border patrol agents to injure and kill people with impunity, and that the border wall desecrate ancestral lands of indigenous people. Our goal is that these presentations are designed to allow community members to work together to build communities and to be able to network and be able to build liaisons that can create a movement in order to do away with these policies that are now present and are damaging and are hurting our brothers and sisters, whether it be immigrants, migrants or refuges. We intend to contribute to this ongoing work of building this connections along that US/Mexico borders. Just a little bit about the Tribuno del Pueblo, the Tribuno del Pueblo is a reader’s supported publication. We used to be in print, and now we are digital. Our pages are open to the movement to use it as a platform or a tool to speak out, and organize, educate our people. Our focus is the struggles for a better life of the immigrant, migrant and refugee Community, as well as the poor people of this country. As such, we’re a press or publication of the movement. Like I said, thank you. Before I go, I would really like to thank Carlos Marentes for his participation in coordinating a wonderful panel. He is from the Border Agricultural Network, and with this, I would just pass it on to Bob.
Bob Lee: Thank you, Laura. I’m Bob Lee, the editor of the People’s Tribune. We’re the sister publication for El Tribuno, and like El Tribuno, we’re a national paper based in Chicago with correspondents in different parts of the country. We’re completely volunteer-run and funded by donations from our readers, and we’re devoted to the understanding that an economic and political system that doesn’t feed, close, house, or care for all the people must be, and will be replaced with a system that meets the needs of the people. We try to offer a platform to the millions of people in this country who are fighting to survive, and try to help build connections among these fighter, and the awareness that together we can create a whole new society and a whole new world. Most of our articles written by our readers, and now we’re happy to be part of this collective effort to sponsor a series of panel discussions on this critically important issue. I also just want to note the fact that we are recording this discussion and the recordings will be posted online. Thank you, and I’ll hand it over to Carlos.
Carlos Marentes: We are in El Paso, Texas. A few meters from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. We are divided by a river. We will be speaking about what’s going on in our border region. We will speak about crisis we are facing in the border region, and not only the current pandemic crisis, but all crisis’ that we have been facing in this area. We were already in a bad situation prior to the pandemic crisis, and now the situation is worse. We are going to have four persons, leaders of the movement, who will touch different issues and we hope that their presentation will give you an idea not only about what’s going on and what are the challenges we are facing in this border region, but also the resistance in the struggle they are organizing and how our community from both sides of the border have been responding to the current crisis. We first have Hilda Villegas. Hilda Villegas is a woman leader from our community, the struggle of the barrio. She comes from the movement, La Mujer Obrera. Since the early 80s, has been fighting for the rights of the woman, trying to the woman as the protagonist through change, not only as a witness of change, but actually lead. In the importance of the struggle of woman at the border area, and you will later hear from attorney Susana Prieto, is that in this area the most significant sector of the productive forces are women, working women. That’s very important fact. I was told to that after Hilda, we will have Rosemary Rojas from the Border Agricultural Workers Project also a woman leader in the region, in the moment for the dignity and justice for woman, and for Indigenous communities. Then, we will have Susana Navarro who has been fighting for the rights of maquiladora worker for most of her life, and she will tell you what’s going on in Mexico and she will also speak about what happened when somebody challenge the capital of the maquiladoras. Finally, we are going to have Fernando Garcia, founder of the Border Network for Human Rights who have been leading the struggle to promote the rights of the immigrant families on both sides of the border. Let me show you a map of where we are. We are right in the middle of Paso and Juarez, we’re in the middle of the border between United States and Mexico, and we have a very deep (?) relationship. The movement, actually, is in both sides of the river, and this is where we are. Many people in the United States don’t know about El Paso. Actually, many people discovered El Paso a year ago when this white supremacist went into a Walmart and started to shoot people, killing 23 persons. This is El Paso, so we are going to start with Hilda Villegas. I’m going to ask her to start her presentation, meanwhile, I’m going to show you a photo of her in one of the many protests that they been doing to protect the public education system, especially the public schools, the education of the barrios. She is a single mother. She is part of the leadership of the community organization named Las Familia Unidas del Chamizal. Familias Unidas del Chamizal has been fighting against the closure of public schools by El Paso District Authorities in the barrios. They have resisted and fought the struggle against gentrification, the aggravation of racism (?) that is unfortunately affecting the poor families and the poor barrios of El Paso. Her struggle comes from, as I mentioned, La Mujer Obrera movement more than 40 years ago. They created La Mujer Obrera as a movement in response to the displacement of thousands of women in the garment industry, which used to be an important sector of work in El Paso. The movement has been attempting to create economic alternative to place working women as protagonists at the center of the movement for communities that are actually serving the most marginalized sectors in our society. For the past five months, they have been struggling with their campaign for education is a right because we see the government using the crisis to attack the public education, and in attempt to create segregation in our school districts, in the school systems. She’s going to speak now.
Hilda Villegas: (Already in Spanish)
Hilda Villegas: (Already in Spanish translated to English) Good afternoon. Thank you for giving the opportunity to present what is currently happening here to our people in our communities. I will be talking in Spanish. I imagine that there will be an English translation for those who don’t understand. Like I said, I am Hilda Villegas, and I am part of the Chamizal neighborhood. I was born in El Paso and I grew up here in the Chamizal neighborhood. I was fortunate enough to have known La Mujer. For over 18 years, I have been part of La Mujer Obrera. I had to come to La Mujer Obrera to learn about my story—the story about the women, the struggle, and what is currently happening. El Paso is very different from other US cities, so our poor communities are more different and isolated than the rest of the city of El Paso. El Paso is one of the poorest cities compared to other Texas cities, and that puts our people at a disadvantage, and being so close to the border we are more exposed to the immigration issue. Our communities, especially Chamizal, is where immigrant families arrive because it’s a community that it’s a very cheap neighborhood, it’s so close to the border, and these families can still be close to their loved ones in Juarez. It’s as if we are connected to Juarez, in a way, here in Chamizal, like we’re the same families. This, in turn, isolates us and protects us from certain things, but we face more discrimination. It puts us in a vulnerable situation because our community is consistently generating new families, and the old ones are getting lost. Like my comrade Marentes said, La Mujer Obrera has a history of fighting for the dignity of women, but also, at this moment, it’s teaching us Mexican-American immigrant women, who have a lot of culture, experience, and a sense of struggle, how we can also defend our communities by reclaiming our spaces and using our knowledge to create a dignified community that does not discriminate against us. The women here in Chamizal, we have been fighting against environmental injustices. We are close to the border, so our community has become a dumping ground for industries. Not just for those in Juarez, but local industries as well. This has exposed our families and put us at a higher risk for asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure. A lot of people say it’s because they’re Mexican, but we are studying and learning that this contamination correlates to our environment. There are kids that are developing health issues that they should not be having at such an early age. Our schools suffer because they are surrounded by these industries. The fight against racism exists, and is well hidden in El Paso because the people in power in El Paso have used systemic discrimination and the racist bureaucracy to control our resources and to continue violating the rights of our people. They have told us that because we are immigrants and do not know how to speak English and amongst other things in our community, we do not have rights. They do not recognize us as residents of El Paso. This has put our families in danger. Take our education, they have closed two of our most important neighborhood schools, and left open the schools subject to these bad environmental conditions. They placed our children there knowing that the majority of the parents were against it. This is what we have been facing. Now with the pandemic, we are seeing that the most affected are immigrant women, specifically Mexican. We have done some surveys and they are the ones suffering these traumas because they are seeing that their kids cannot navigate such a discriminatory and alien system. They have put us in a position that is degrading for human beings and as moms. They make us feel like we can’t and do not have the capacity to help our own children. It’s a desperation that is not being talked about in El Paso. The local news is being well controlled by the people who also control our institutions and have the power to do so. It’s important for us to continue organizing. We a project from La Mujer Obrera, and we have decided to organize in the Chamizal neighborhood because here lies the history of these factories, like my comrade Marentes said, these women gave so much for the development of the city of El Paso. However, their communities are under these conditions. We have decided that these are our spaces and we have earned them our own sweat and labor. Our children deserve a better future. Right now, they are talking about our schools and the parents who are capable of giving them a virtual education due to the question of their children’s health or are afraid. [Imagine] a mother from a more economical stable place saying “I have rights and I anot going to send my child [to school]” versus when you hear from a fellow mother saying “I have no alternative, but to take my child out of school because they are being traumatized and I can’t help them.” Those are the conditions our communities are under. We are aware that there is a big difference within El Paso, and there are people who do not understand the realities of our communities. It’s not just about us being able to say we have rights, but about us being able to exercise those rights within a system that discriminates and uses them against us. It’s very exhausting, and like my comrade said, us women cannot let others tell us that we are not capable of or let other make those decisions for us. There are people who make these decisions, and due their lack of understating of our differences, they harm us. As women, we have the right to organize, work, heal the relationships between us, and use our creativity and our knowledge of our people to create a dignified community. That’s where La Mujer Obrera comes in bearing the components of the projects we have. We currently have project Green that is developing green communities, and is helping us can get out and rescue the knowledge our people bring. There are many women in our neighborhood that are already practicing that relationship with mother Earth. They grow their own products, continue their own practices, and that knowledge is a defense mechanism and a way to resist. It’s important that we work together in that way.
Carlos Marentes: Thank you, Hilda. We are going to have Rosemary Rojas, she’s a Chicano of Yaqui Apache origin and a social activist for more than 40 years, and currently chairs the Board of Sirectors of the Border Agricultural Projects. She has been involved in many movements. She has participated in the mobilization of Standing Rock in North Dakota, in the two International Encounters of Women in Struggle by the EZLN comrades, and has been part of other movements. She’s currently the regional representative in the International Articulation of Women of La Via Campesina. She’s going to go ahead with her presentation.
Rosemary Rojas: Good afternoon, everybody. It’s an honor to be a part of this panel with ym brave compañeros and compañeras. They have been fighting on the border region for justice and dignity for working people, women, and migrant families. I wanted to touch on the pandemic crisis. Covid-19 has brought so much suffering across the nation and everywhere around the globe. The number of infected people increases day by day, and every morning we count the deaths that occurred the day before, and we’ve learned they are also increasing. The bodies are piling up in the morgue, and their families can’t even pay them their last respects or pray for them and bury them in a dignified way. In our culture, that is one of the most sacred thing that we can do for our family, but in this terrible pandemic crisis, women continue to be the hardest hit as a result that the premises of a woman’s life are worth nothing. It’s very important to understand the evils affecting women, particularly such as the savage appropriation of its labor force, the violence against women, the racism, forcing women into submission, the suppression of the voices, the objectification as sexual and disposable commodity, the social and political inequality that exists. We now add the unfortunate impact of covid-19, creating a mix of damage unsustainable and unacceptable. Effectively, this crisis is reminding us of the perversity of the patriarchal nature of capitalism. In El Paso, Texas region, women represent 51% of the deceased while men are only 49%. According to the figures of the authorities and the institutions are responsible for the emergency response to the coronavirus, the experience we have had for the past 6 months is that the official response to this crisis has been very deficient and has characterized as lack of coordination, improvisation, pure (?) simulation, and we think that the numbers provided for public consumption do not reflect the reality of those serious situation that we face on the border. I work with women in the fields of the border region of El Paso, Souther Mexico, and ciudad Juarez, I know the reality of the anguish, oppression, inequality they systemically suffer. Most are terrified to go to work to the fields, but they don’t have any choices, what choices are there for them because most are single mothers or head of the household who have to maintain their families. They know well that in these great times they are risking infection by working, and at the same time they have to feed their families, pay the rent, and take care of all the basic needs in the household. They’re psychologist. They’re nurses. They’re everything. They’re the glue that keeps them together. In the United States, the salary that the women classified as Latina Or Hispanic receive is almost half the pay that man receive, about $0.54 for every dollar paid to a white man. In other countries such as Mexico, the salaries of the women is only less than 30% of what is paid to men. In addition to that, the women work more intensely and for more hours daily, than men. And their work doesn’t end when they leave their job site, it continues throughout the night. Typically, most of the women in labor and agricultural fields of New Mexico, where they earn between $20 and $30 for 12 hours of work while men received $50 to $60 a day, that is usually between 6 to 8 hours, so even the hours that the men work and gain more, there’s such a discrepancy and such a such a bridge there. But as if the economic inequalities weren’t enough, the exploitation of women in agriculture in El Paso, southern New Mexico region, it’s intimately mixed with the verbal abuse, sexual abuse, harassment, physical violence, brutal rapes, and wage theft. This we hear on a daily basis from our compañeras who give us a report every day, every week. The predicament face by the women farm workers begin at midnight, just to give a glimpse at what they have to go through on a daily basis and how little they sleep, it begins at midnight when they arrive at the recruitment sites in the south side of El Paso, which is right in between the international bridges, they cross over the bridge, in order to be hired by the labor contractors to work in the field that day. Once they are hired, they are transported in old dilapidated vans with other workers. No consideration for any safety standards, distancing, or any safety protection. Once in the fields, they all work together without keeping appropriate distance to avoid possible contagion due to the group contact. Also, they’re not provided with health and sanitary basic needs such as drinking water, hand washing stations, and clean or portable toilets. The ones out there, I get reports that some of them are 50 years old and have never been cleaned, so they are using the restroom at either the bushes or wherever they can. They’re not provided with any protection despite the fact that there are field sanitation standards that are supposed to protect the farm laborers, but most of the farmers and agribusiness don’t respect that. There’s no monitoring by authorities. There’s no enforcement in charge of compliance, and so that’s not done, and it says most of them, but it’s all of them that don’t do this. Agricultural work in the border region has become the perfect environment for contagion of the spread of the coronavirus and for the loss of human life, and it’s mainly our compañeras who have children and parents to depend on them. Because the Health crisis has effectively merged with the economic injustice, most of the single mothers were excluded from the relief and economic stimulus programs approved by the federal government to alleviate the crisis, but they don’t qualify. They don’t quality for unemployment benefits. Many of them don’t qualify for any public assistance due to their immigration status, or because some of the members of their family have no immigrant status. Working women don’t have access to covid-19 testing let alone their families to get tested because we know that behind each woman is a family with their children. They can’t receive emergency assistance from food banks because all the help and relief programs and millions of dollars are done by a drive-thru operations and they have no means of transportation. Once more, over and over they are excluded. Many of the female farm workers don’t have husband have to experience this alone, but was is worse, is the women that do have husbands who are experiencing domestic violence in their homes without any protection from any institutions that are supposed punish these acts of violence against women. Under this human crisis, women suffer violence not only in their homes, but I was also on the fields, and not only in the fields, but cross the bridge every night to get back home to their children and every morning to get back to work. It’s a desperate situation that’s causing so much infliction to women, but the cruel suffering and oppression the border women face today is not a problem that started with the crisis, the conditions of exclusion, discrimination, economics injustice, and violence against women already existed before the pandemic. The coronavirus crisis only exaggerated and aggravated the conditions of poverty and inequality that women have historically suffered under this patriarchal capitalist system. It’s for all the above reasons that I stated, and there’s so many more but we just don’t have enough time, for all the above reasons that our organization has intensified its work of organizing the women, so they can defend themselves, so they can resist collectively, and that they first fight to survive this pandemic and protect their families. Second, to resist against the oppression, injustice, inequality. And third, to press for the rights to be respected, to end the exclusion of which they have been a victim to, and demand better working and living conditions. Yes, the situation for the women farm workers and agriculture, they’re desperate, they’re critical, but at the same time organizing process is taking place, and we see it around us because we’re collectively organizing now. We are listening to the struggle, even in our own neighborhoods while we were so excluded and segregated by a way of communication. This organizing process is taking place that can lead the border women to build a collective force capable of bringing changes to improve their lives and their family, but first, we have to get out of this crisis alive, and we’re attacking these problems as they come up, but anticipating what is the next move to punish us as women because we were born women. This is our commitment, not only to ourselves, to our campañeras, to our compañeros, to our community, to our campesinas and campesinos, but to each other. We have to live, and then try to change the world. And in closing, I just want to say that there was something that I had stated when I went to Palestine, I think it’s so more important to collectively be able to meet the other women of the struggle separated by a border, separated and enduring this life of violence. Women are sacred, they carry the seeds of life and their bodies and in Mother Earth, and we are not asking, but demanding to live with peace and dignity, with equality. We don’t want to live in fear or hunger, and we are demanding these basic rights for our future generations, for ourselves, for our community, for each other. Gracias.
Carlos Marentes: Thank you. The next speaker is Susana Prieto Torres. She has dedicated most of her life to fight for maquiladora workers in Juarez, in the border are, in Matamoros, in many places where we have maquiladoras and that continue to oppress especially women. Most of these maquiladoras are related to the United Sates automotive, electronics industries (?). Her efforts to advocate for the working people, maquiladora workers, has led to threats and harassment from companies and authorities. In 2019, she supported more than 30,000 workers, who declared 45 strikes to demand better wages and better working conditions. When the pandemic crisis intensified, she supported thousands of workers who demanded to be sent home with sick leave pay to protect their lives, and the attacks against her intensified. Last June, she was violently detained in Matamoros, accused of provoking riots and threats against public servants. Her arrest and imprisonment in Matamoros created a massive movement in Mexico, which extended abroad, mainly in the United States, to demand her freedom. Even a group of 60 US members of Congress urged Secretary of State Pompeo to intervene with Mexico for immediate release, which occurred after three weeks in jail. We are now going to hear from Susana Prieto Terrazas.
Susana Prieto Terrazas: (Already in Spanish)
Susana Prieto Terrazas: (Already in Spanish translated to English) Good afternoon, everyone. Wherever you find yourself in Mexico, the U.S., or the world, and can access this discussion about the work in the field or the city from our day laborers and workers. To speak of the work of these people on U.S/Mexican border, is to speak of a war zone. When we all listen to these conferences, we all want to burst into tears. To listen to Hilda talk about the situation for women, the home of La Mujer Obrera in El Paso, about everything that our countrymen in the U.S. have to fight against, like discrimination, the violence against migration and women. Having to deal with politicians who take social activists, in both countries, as a flag during times of voting. It depresses us, almost wanting to drive us crazy. For example, I am in a period of depression, and sometimes I think we fight for people who do not want to fight or think it’s not worth it, but then I change my mind in the last minute. The conditions of the workers in the maquiladora in the North side of the country, and those of the day laborers, on bother sides of the border, has put us in a war zone. The workers along with the activists, we are situated between the fires. The voracious fires of capitalism from the U.S. that treats Mexico like a backyard. In general terms, the Mexican person, is mistreated by the United States if they in Mexico or if they live in the United States. If they are a resident or is a citizen through naturalization, or if they work without legal documents, or entered in a manner other that provide by the U.S. law to flee violence in our countries or for a better future for their children, the U.S. consistently works to maintain workers in precarious conditions that result in unsustainability. It keeps workers in the maquiladora industry, in Juarez city, to live on an average of 185 pesos a day, which isn’t even 9 dollars. This sounds terrible considering that this is 9 dollars for work that requires 10, 12, or 13 hours, and the travel taken between their homes to these maquiladoras and back. We have a decomposition of the social fabric since these maquiladoras prioritize the workforce of women over that of men. We have daughters and sons growing up alone on the streets. We have terrible insecurity. There is no hope. There is no education budget. These workers live depressed with these salaries. In Chihuahua, they sell a paradise without labor unions. The governor, any governor, but the current one of our state has gone as far as to say that this place is a paradise without labor unions when looking investments. The government will work that way because federal labor laws has placed it in that position, so that no union registration is granted. According to the law, the only way that workers can fight for better wages and better working conditions is through a union, but it is not through a white union that is entrenched in Mexican power for 85 years through CTM,CROC or CROM. It’s through labor unions that really work for the interests of the people because the white labor unions have only served to protect the employers. They are the right hand of the human resources department. The right hand of capitalism, the voracious, the one that generates all these conditions that Hilda spoke about. That lives in Juarez, El Paso, Matamoros and Brownsville with the passing and the export of all the merchandise that is produced in Mexico that goes to the U.S. or to any part of the world. Nothing is left here for us expect the contamination of the water, the air, the environment in general, the destruction that maquiladora industry and various other companies generate along the border of our countries, the south of the U.S. and Northern Mexico, remains. Fighting for the workers, not only has it cost me fabricated crimes made against me by government employees to falsify facts by declaring before the attorney general of the state of Tamaulipas, who is employed by the dictator governor, Francisco Javier Garcia, or take advantage of the situation at the request of businessmen grouped in employer organizations such as canacintra, index, y coparmex. Not only have they intervened applauding the unconstitutionality of the resolution to allow my freedom, but they also applauded and allegedly have been the orchestrators to discredit my persona, as a woman, as a mother, as a professional and as an activist far and wide in my country. They have paid the consequence for wanting to fight for better benefits for workers through a syndicalism that is honest and transparent with workers from the base that they organize themselves. That they be the ones who distribute the payment, their costs, union workers that use them to progress themselves, so that their children can progress. That they build day care centers that the government refuses to fulfill. To build schools that are free for their children. It becomes impossible to continue an education after middle school because most of the country had begun to privatized education starting at the high school level. It’s impossible for the children of the workers and laborers of this city, who are worse off because they do not respect these children. They can’t work before the of 16, but you have children working the fields and their organizations know better than I do. These workers have no way to provide a future to their children by paying for high education that correspond to politicians or their friends in the Northern part of the city. The corruption of the union leaders is entrenched in the system, especially, their worker confederations such as the CTM, CROC, and CROM, which can’t be eradicated overnight. We are fighting many fights, but we have to go further than that. The workers need to lose their fear. If activists are afraid, then they are even more afraid because the extortion that they attribute with me causing these companies, which nobody can prove because I have never done it, they call enforcing the law on foreign businessmen extortion. However, those who extort are them. If a worker in Mexico organizes to fight for their rights, they are fired immediately. I am going to make a correction on the number of workers who benefited from the 20/32 Movement in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. With respect to what Carlos Marentes said, I believe he said it was 30,000, but it was 70,000 workers who benefited from the 20/23 Movement. The maquiladora industry in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, complained of having lost 300 million dollars to the 20/32 Movement. They did not lose, they paid the workers what already corresponded to them while trying to use leaders such as Jaun Villafuerte and Jesús Mendoza Reyes to take it away from them in 2019. They did not comply, but with clauses contained in the collective labor agreement, and with the payment of benefits of an annual bonus that had been given for 15 years and wanted to eliminate due to the 100 percent increase in salary that this bonus triggered of 3,500 pesos a year, which had been the last time the maquilas had paid in exchange for not increasing the wages of the workers. This was guaranteed and supported by union leaders that workers maintain 4 percent of their weekly salary. That precarious salary that I told you about can average, for example, in Matamoros at 1,400 pesos, unlike in the city of Juarez, which fluctuates between 1,300-2,260, but they have to deduct taxes from that. They have to remove the worker’s contribution to social security. They have to remove savings. They have to remove the loan from the amortization payments of the home loan, which is Infonavit, or the Fonacot if they asked for an economic loan to get furniture to furnish their houses. There are workers who don’t even have Infonavit credit or Fonacot credit, who still go home with 900 pesos a week. 900 pesos per week. That’s 45 dollars to their houses. With this, the foreign investors expect the workers to support themselves. This is what doesn’t allow their children to dream. I am the granddaughter of day laborers, the daughter of workers, I was a worker, and 50 years ago we still had the possibility to dream. To get ahead. The corruption that politicians have grown in my country, and the voracity of capitalism that believes Mexicans have no rights to live, to aspire, to get out of poverty. Not if we live in Mexico, or if we live in the U.S. It’s what has flared up. All the actions that have been taken against me because they consider me the head of the 20/32 Movement, have lied in all instances. I haven’t charged a single penny for counseling for almost two years of the 20/32 Movement. On the contrary, because it took place in a location where I did not previously have a home, where I didn’t have an office, where I worked in public parks to organize the workers’ struggle, where they moved bicycles and vans so I could jump from company to company to give them free legal advice. To tell them if it was legal or not what the companies or the unions were saying. There had to be an investment, and you as activists know it. The 20/32 movement as well as maquiladora workers from Juarez, on occasions, such as when we convened all these organizations that you invited in the United States and some others, they have participated with us in giving economic contributions directly to the workers. I do not work with any organization that give money out of pocket, so that the workers organize themselves and continue their fight. I also put in the money for activists from many parts of Mexico, and some others in the United States. I am repulsive because I am not poor. The money my family and I have obtained during the past 35 years have been through hard work, and if you invest it in the workers organizing themselves, if you do not charge them, or if you go to where they live, the press will not publish that. And I am struck by what Hilda had to say about the press being bought in El Paso, Texas for social activism movements. Well, it is also bought here in Mexico, Matamoros, Juarez, and everywhere. We are being surrounded. Depriving me from my freedom in Tamaulipas and Chihuahua was a plan between the governor of Tamaulipas and Chihuahua. With the defense of my lawyers, they captured me in Chihuahua and where to move me next corresponded to the demand of the businessmen grouped in Canacintra in Coparmex and and Index. Those with money govern the politicians in my country, and the politicians, in this case the governors of Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, are the ones who move and who appoint the state attorney general. They receive orders from them, and therefore, the jails belong to them. Next Monday, at 10 am, I will have a court hearing and now I am going to fight against Chihuahua, not just against Tamaulipas. I have a court hearing at 10 am on Monday, and on Wednesday again at 1o am. Lies have been fabricated against me by anyone who wants to speak out against me. If I disappear, Carlos Marentes, cross over to Juarez and file a complaint for me, that right now the government of Chihuahua is practically publicly requesting for people who have a grudge against me. That I have married their husband, that I have had an affair with someone, or anyone who wants to say something about me, even if it has no reason or foundation. Surely, they will build an investigation folder against me and will continue to accumulate crimes. They have criminalized my fight in an unacceptable way. They have destroyed my professional life. Tamaulipas has forbidden me to travel to the United States where all my children live, my husband and including myself. I am obliged to live in the state of Chihuahua for two and a half years in any of its 67 municipalities. That does not make it more serious, that they violate my constitutional rights to free movement. I can live in 67 municipalities, well, bravo, because it’s only a single state. There are 32 states in the Mexican Republic and I have dual nationality. In two and a half years, I cannot set foot in Tamaulipas. In two and a half years, I can’t go to meetings in Matamoros. We appealed this resolution, we filed the pertinent appeal, but press in Tamaulipas records that I reached an agreement with the judge to be able to obtain my freedom, and that I recognized these criminal acts. That’s the way the press works here, Hilda. In case you want to feel less bad about the way the press is handling your fight. In Chihuahua, Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and all over the world, the press states that I accept having committed the crimes, and that I accepted this ridiculous offer they imposed on me of paying 3,300 dollars to the alleged offenders, people I do not even know. But this resolution has been appealed. I did not make any agreement, and I will never agree with my executioners because I have not committed any crimes beyond defending the labor rights of the workers of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Juarez and now those of Reynosa. It seems to me that this war, in which we are united as I listen to you all speak, it seems like a permanent, constant and endless war. We saw the struggle of Cesar Chavez. We talk about the Martin Luther King struggle. We talk about all the struggles, but we continue to be the same. It seems that we were not moving forward. I continue to see discrimination. I continue to see the abuse towards undocumented workers. I continue to see the abuse enacted by foreign businesses against the workers on the border. I continue to see the abuse of the Mexican government and make things even more precarious, or deprive Mexicans who live in the center and south of the country the opportunity to have jobs, so they are the ones who migrate and cannot cross to the United States. They are converting border towns, like Juarez, Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Mexicali into smaller U.S. towns where Mexicans fight with other Mexicans who cannot cross over, or with Hondurans, Guatemalans, Cubans, and that our race, the Hispanics, are being divided and destroyed. We are being cornered. They have stolen everything from us. Absolutely everything, even our dignity. The only thing that they have not managed to take from us with this system, that is the same that they used since the late 60s and 70s with the students who rebelled in ’68 on September 23. Now it is the activists working on big projects who have been assassinated. People like me because I am a lawyer for the workers, and I have managed to organize them so that we can fight in agreement — will never be fulfill freedom and democratization through unions in my country unless the workers stop depending on workers’ centrals like the ones I have listed. They have already generated new workers’ centrals that now depend on Senators from MORENA. Now we have CATEM, which is sponsored by Senator Monreal. Now we have the new central that was also founded by the man who lived in Canada for many years, and accused of corruption against the miners, and who is now a senator who has a new labor union that is favoring the federal government with collective labor contracts, displacing those that already existed, but also includes charrismo. They want to use the workers like those in Nuevo Laredo and have them join this CATEM labor organization, and get rid of those who have tolerated the CTM for so many years, and they need to vote and continue to grow a party that will be changing their acronym. I’ve even been losing hope. The fact that some workers are only taking home 900 pesos weekly, and that’s if they don’t have Infonavit credit, otherwise they can go home with zero. Zero pesos. They work to pay the roof over their children’s heads, and must have second jobs on the weekend to able to get ahead. The CTM takes, in Matamoros and Tamaulipas, 4% of the ordinary earnings, that is, the weekly salary of the workers. They work overtime, and are forced to do so with such precarious wages from their Christmas bonus, holidays, vacation bonus, the distribution of profits, and their annual bonus. Out of all these things the workers receive, the CTM takes 4%. Of that 4%, which are millions, I believe that in Matamoros the CTM exceeds 700 million pesos a year, the CTM takes 70% of that. It then leaves 30% for the charro leaders and workers who support the company, so that it stays in the local region, and of course, crumbs are distributed to the workers while the rest continues to enrich the leaders exclusively. What is happening is inadmissible. It is likely that I will be deprived of my freedom because of arbitrary acts that we can’t avoid as activists. I am not a stone in the shoe of the maquiladora industry in Matamoros and Juarez. I am a mountain. I grant the notice for the independent national union of workers of industries and services for movement 20/32. Like I commented a few moments ago about the congressmen of the U.S., they are the reason why I am free. They have already sent a letter, first 60 and now 109. I am very grateful to Congressman Chuy Garcia, who has been coordinating and has been sharing my situation among the other U.S. congressmen. The most obvious proof of the first violation, beside the T-MEC, is the lack of respect for trade union freedom and democratization, and the Mexican government legitimizes it. They did give me the union registration, but now they want to deprive me of my freedom, in addition, to criminalizing me at the national and international level that is constitently based on a lie, so that the historical movement of the workers and the maquiladora industry in the northern part of the country goes unprecedented. Dare I say that since the maquila was formed in Mexico, there has not been such an important movement. We, in Matamoros, did not take 300 million dollars from the maquiladora. We fought for the first time in a historical way by laying it all out on the table, so that the workers were paid what they were entitled to by law. Now they want to criminalize us. You have to ask these US congressmen when they have seen these type of union leader, in addition to Napito and Esther Gordillo, who of course had direct political disagreements with the presidents of the republic and were persecuted like me. There is nothing in the origin of my family’s money that is false. And for those of you in Uncle Sam’s country, you all continue to live like us. If I were to accept an illegal income, they would already be on me, too. We are an honorable family with a class consciousness. I have personally dedicated the last two years of my life to work for free on this project for union freedom and democratization, and it has cost me my freedom. It has cost me to live with a fear that I can’t control because I am not free at all, they just changed my jail. I left the Tamatan prison and they sent me to live in Chihuahua. They have deprived me of my right, like immigrants, to live together and to reunite with my family. I live separated from my husband and from my children. I can only see my husband on certain days. As for my children, almost never. Now we have taken a week to pamper ourselves because I do not know if the governor of Chihuahua, on Monday or Wednesday, will illegally deprive me of my freedom. The crimes that they attribute to me have been falsified by the authorities. I have never committed these crimes and they do not have the records or an element to prove it. Just for having denounced what is happening just like in El Paso, as Rosemary said. For having denounced the companies in Juarez that did not shut down due to the COVID-19 contingency, especially the maquiladora industry, and in this case, Electrocomponents in Mexico. A company that is not essential and that the government has allowed to work at 100%, and only shut down for week, and that’s because of all the complaints we were making and workers dying of COVID. It has more than 18 thousand workers in Juarez. This is the company that is accusing me of the illegal deprivation of liberty of two managers and administrative personnel, in total of 11. On April 20 and 21, 2020 in which I met the workers because they knew me as an activist on social media. They know I’m from Juarez and they know that I was there. Due to the pandemic, I went from Matamoros to Juarez to see my family. And it turns out that the company I filed a complaint against and were accusing me of having deprived 11 company officials of their freedom, were inside both days and who wanted to force their workers to sign an agreement that would send them home with only 50% of their salary, with 450 pesos per week. That’s 20 dollars a week. They wanted to force them to go home with that salary, and I told them not to sign any document because the Secretary of Labor, Luisa Alcalde, the president of the republic, and Marcelo Ebrard, the Secretary of Foreign Relations, had declared at a press conference that they could not cut the workers’ wages, they had to be paid in full during the health emergency. The bosses pleaded, but legally they established it. They told them how I attended for free and told the workers not to agree to the 50%, that they should be paid100%. The Juarez Conciliation and Arbitration board simulated the signing of an agreement in their facilities to deceive the workers into believing that the authorities were not sanctioning that agreement, which they finally did not make effective because after a week they realized that the entire maquila continued working. This factory accuses me of illegal deprivation of liberty and the improper exercise of a right. This is why I am going to have a court hearing on September 9, and this is Chihuahua’s second chance at depriving me of my freedom. Although it’s illegal, although the resolution she made to suspend the procedure, the Tamaulipas judge may ask me to get out of Tamaulipas. I haven’t seen something like this before. I think that since the inquisition, a resolution like this has not been seen. They have applauded, not only the congressmen because the congressmen did not intervene for me, they intervened because of all you men and women and over 45 organizations in the United States who sent letters to the congressmen of the U.S., all of you who are sitting at this press conference. I owe my freedom to you, my children, and my husband who fought to keep me out. To the comrades of the collectives in Mexico, Matamoros, Mexicali, Juarez and everyone who has fought for me, thank you so much. I believe that we must continue in this fight, and the time is approaching for the freedom and democratization of workers’ unions to be respected. It is very easy for U.S. and Canadian congress people to say that the freedom of union democratization should be repected in a country like Mexico, but it has never had it. It has always been under repression. If you want to change your union, you screw yourself. If you want to change your union, you are fired or put on a blacklist and you won’t be given a job. Now, we have to factor in the fact that the federal and state governments allowed the maquiladora to lay off vulnerable workers on top of the working conditions. The first to be laid off were workers with diabetes, those with hypertension, those with cardiac respiratory and kidney diseases, and chronic and fatal generative diseases. They committed a crime against humanity. That’s what the maquila did and the governments allowed it to happen. They were left without medical attention because they stop receiving social security 52 days after dismissal, and were also put on a black list so nobody would give them work. That is the last thing that the maquila put northern Mexico through, which was allowed by our Mexican government. It’s probable that not even hundreds or thousands of letters from US governors or congressmen will allow me to remain free because I am an enemy of the state who denounces these precarious conditions. These are the inhumane conditions that transnational companies are imposing on our people in Mexico. Thank you very much for inviting me. I think I went over time.
Carlos Marentes: Now we have Fernando Garcia, the founder and director of the Border Network for Human Rights. I would like to apologize for the signal of this Zoom conference is very weak, and it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s the system. I’m sorry for the technical difficulties, but it’s Zoom. Fernando, he is from Mexico City, he went to the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 1998, he moved to El Paso, Texas to join the Border Rights Coalition, but a year later he founded the Border Network for Human Rights. Since then, Border Network for Human Rights has spent the last 21years fighting for human rights in the border region through its unique community approach. Garcia has directed many border campaigns focusing on human rights including border enforcement accountability, and other important campaigns including: The New Ellis Island Dialogues, the Hugs-Not-Walls campaign, and many others. He will speak about that. He will tell you what is going on in the border in regards to the situation created (?) by the Trump administration against the poor.
Fernando Garcia: Thank you, Carlos, for the invitation. Thanks for opening the opportunity to share some of the struggles of our border communities and our families along the US/Mexico border. I will try to be very short and precise. The way that the experience in organizing along the US/Mexico border has taught us in the last 22 years working here, it is at the border where the character of the nation is being defined for good or for bad at the end of the day. I mean you might remember Ellis Island, for many people Ellis Island became the ideal of America–the pursuit of happiness, freedom, and the poor masses immigration coming into the United States to build this country. The US/Mexico border is going to become that reference in this new century. It is debatable if it’s going to be for good or for bad, but let me talk about what I believe had happened, what is happening at the US/Mexico, first in general terms, as I say, the character of this nation will be defined by these terms. What we see at the Border, and it is important to say this because the farther away you are from the border, the more chaotic it looks like, but I think what we have at the border is the conjunction of evil systems and systemic problems of this society coming all together at the US/Mexico border. I might talk about that more specifically, but let me list them. The first one we call the militarization of the US/Mexico border. The second one is the criminalization of immigrants in border communities happening like never before. The third one is this ideological white supremacy racist ideas about people of color, especially immigrants from the south. Finally, poverty, and when I say poverty, it’s more of the result of a system that protects the capital and the wealth of some and left many people unprotected, unable to cover the basic needs. All of those systems are coming together at the US/Mexico border, but let me focus more on some of the discussions that had happened within our peers and partners around the US/Mexico border, around this idea of the border being a military zone. In the last 3 (?) year, it is fair to say that the US/Mexico border has become one of the most militarized zones in the world. I think we are 3rd, or 4th already, behind North Korea and other borders, who has the most militarized areas in the world. How did this happened in a nation that’s supposed to embrace freedom, liberty and democracy? How we became pawns in this chess play by both Republicans and Democrats, where our communities were thrown under the bus. I mean at the border you will see that some of us and some of our peers live under an occupied zone, and how this militarization is expressing along the US/Mexico border. First let’s count the money, by 2018 14 billion dollars were spent for immigration enforcement of the border. Only for enforcement for ice and Border Patrol. We now we have close to 23,000 border patrol agents, well-armed, allocated at the US/Mexico border, and the system has deployed thousands of National Guard elements, military already, at the US/Mexico border. On top of that, personal, there’ve been more than 800 hundred miles of fencing and border walls being constructed, 12,000 underground sensors along the border, 170 aircraft, 8 (?) drone system in our skies, 84 water vessels many of them heavily armed, 73 remote surveillance systems, 9,000 night vision goggles, 6,000 thermal imaging technology and dozens of checkpoints along the border within the hundred miles of the border, and not mentioning dozens and dozens of immigration detention centers with children and immigrant families who are being incarcerated, mistreated, and dehumanized. If that was not enough, I mean this has been the build-up for the last three years, the Trump Administration came to El Paso to declare the border as a national emergency zone, and with that, the Trump Administration deployed 5,000 active-duty soldiers, like never before. I mean we’re asking about soldiers who trained to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other unfair wars, and they have been brought to the border. At least at the border, it has never happened before. We actually warned through our many years of work at the border, our friends, activists and the rest of the nation in the past, that they should pay attention to what’s happening at the border because if they didn’t, then the border will become the nation. Now you saw what happened in Portland a few days ago, can you identify what was the first line of aggression against the protesters in downtown Portland? Who was the agency leading that charge? It was the border patrol. Obviously, they have been tested at the border and now they’ve been deployed in the interior as a part of this, now what I call, the militarization of the United States. The militarization of the response to the protests in the United States. They have learned very well in the border. What have been the impacts of this massive enforcement in terms of our families and our communities. Let’s remind ourselves that along the US/Mexico border, there are almost 13 million people living. Many of them citizens, many more of them part of mixed legal status families, but let’s remember that the border is not a piece of land in the desert, it is populated, we have communities that are vibrant with of relationship between Juarez, El Paso, San Diego, Tijuana, Brownsville, Matamoros, I mean there are historic links and relationship of communities, not only in terms of commerce, but also in terms of cultural relationships and family relationships. That is what the border is, however, this militarization have caused major, major problems, especially in the mobility of the people within this region. We are essentially trapped. Wherever you go, you have the potential to be searched, stopped by border patrol agents, especially if you look like me or if you look like an immigrant, so it is an area where racism and xenophobia is the policy and the practice. That is the policy and the practice of border patrol, of ICE, and many other law enforcement agencies. This is the region, and this is probably the only place I would think, in America where constitutional rights appear to not exist. I mean, again, we’re having millions of people under this exceptional area where constitutional rights appear not to exist, and I’m talking about the intentional narrative promoted, a false narrative that immigration enforcement had all the power and that members of our community do not have rights. That has been an intentional forced narrative promoted by not only this administration, but other administration. And I’m not talking about going into interior of the United States, I’m talking about Downtown El Paso, Downtown Brownsville, universities along the US/Mexico border, high schools being subjected to this xenophobic vision of the nation. Again, I mean violations of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment rights by federal immigration institutions have become the norm, have become a pandemic. If that was not enough, if the violation of constitutional rights above residence was not enough, then we have the use of excessive force by all of these agencies. We can name dozens and dozens of people being shot and killed by border patrol and ICE agents and by police departments along the US/Mexico border. We can also mention, how on average 500 immigrants die in the desert and in the mountains trying to cross the border looking for a better life, but they’re dying because of intentional policies, strategies that are pushing them into the rivers, into the mountains, when they essentially don’t have an option. It’s very dangerous and they die. We have communities living in fear of enforcement institutions, those enforcement institutions are supposed to protect them, so how can we explain the fact that high school students are finding themselves being questioned by border patrol. How can we explain that US children, born in the United States, when they see a border patrol agent, they run? How internalized the control of the communities have become in a region. If this is not a human rights crisis, what is? Whose responsibility is to fight against this. I think those are some of the questions that we’re trying to answer. Actually, we are answering that question. The Border Network for Human Rights have been organizing, and organizing alone very clear lines, and I would like to conclude saying that indeed if this border is going to define what this nation is going to be, count that border communities of immigrants will be an active participant in defining how the nation will be because we’re going to reject the idea that this nation’s destiny is to have children in cages, separated families by enforcement, rejection of refugees and asylum-seekers, the construction of a futile and hateful border walls, the treatment of our community as second-class citizens or third class citizens, so we refuse to say that, that’s going to be the destiny of the nation. We are organizing, but we’re not organizing a march or only a march, we are not organizing as protest or only a protest, we need to organize community structures to fight for social change for the country and the America that we want and that we deserve. We have been able to build a permanent community structure with hundreds of families who come together to fight for the rights, to fight for a better future, but specifically to fight for their families. That’s what Border Networks is about, we are a self-sufficient autonomous organization that actually provides the space for that necessary voice of border residents and immigrants into the national debate. So, we’ll leave it like that. I know that there are many other issues and topics. El Paso became the epicenter of this anti-immigrant agenda by the Trump Administration, but it’s also the epicenter of the resistance. As you see with our panelists, you can see that many things are happening in our community, and good thing is happening, we’re working together. It doesn’t matter what is the issue, we understand that at the end of the day we either we do it together, or we’re going to fail if we do it alone, so I will wrap it up there. Thank you again for the invitation.
Carlos Marentes: Thank you, Fernando. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to open the discussion to the participants, so we’re going to ask Laura to guide us on what is next from this very important, very informative and very good panel. And thanks everybody for their participation. I’ll give you the lead, Laura.
Laura Garcia: It’s not an advertisement, either. I want to thank everyone: Fernando, Susana, Hilsda, and Rosemary for your moving words, for all the information, and for all the inspiration. I really want to thank Carlos because he is like a brother to me. We’ve known each other since the days of Texas Farm Workers, when they were organizing for a union back in the seventies, so thank you Carlos. I just want to let you guys know that the next panel will be September 17th, and this time we’re going to Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, and please, all this information, all this inspiration that we heard today, let’s use it to get Trump out of office. Thank you. Bye.
