In response to inaccurate media reports of violent protests by vigilantes against migrant refugee children at the U.S./Mexico border, a group of young women completed a 360-mile trek starting in Merced, CA and ending at the border in San Sedro/Tijuana. The march was a call for a humanitarian approach to the crisis at the Texas border and support of comprehensive immigration reform. The principal organizers were Valeska Castaneda and Cindy Gonzalez from the Bay Area.
It is alleged by the U.S. media that the children are gang members and constitute a threat to the U.S. In fact, gangs in Central America started in L.A. around the 1980’s when the youth fled Central American countries due to civil war with U.S. involvement. Central American gangs in L.A. arose as a way to protect themselves from local U.S citizen gangs. Later the Central Americans were deported back to their respective countries when they ran into trouble with the law.
The following are responses to questions asked:
Tribuno del Pueblo (TP):
What is the purpose of march?
Valeska:
To let the general public become aware that the children and women are crossing due to violence and poverty. I am walking to claim the children’s humanity.
Cindy:
I am walking to make a public statement that these undocumented children and adults deserve a better life than what they are living under now.
TP:
What is your message to the community?
Valeska:
I want the community to embrace these refugees as part of our family and treat them as human beings.
Cindy:
We are all the same regardless of gender, race and class.
TP:
What in your opinion has caused the crisis at the border?
Valeska:
U.S. policies that displace workers in their homeland and lead them to travel to the U.S.
Cindy:
The violence and poverty in those countries is due to U.S. trade policies.
TP:
What did you like about the march?
Isabel Gonzalez-Rios:
I will always remember marching to the border.
Valeska is walking as a mother so that issues can be documented in order to show the atrocities at the border. The media have done a terrible job criminalizing these immigrants.
Cindy is walking as a mother who sees the injustice these children and adults crossing the border face in the U.S. She wants her children walking to witness the injustices occurring here.
It is estimated that since 1998, 5,600 immigrants who crossed the border into the U.S. died. They attempt the walk because they do not have other choices, or else they will die in their country. If you were under the same conditions, what would you do?
