12/4/20

By Julie Swift with Dr. Yolanda Leyva

Day 10 of 16 Days of Action Against Gender-Based Violence Against Women The Official 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign

#16days #OrangeTheWorld #generationalequality #RatifyILO190

Dr. Yolanda Leyva, an acclaimed associate professor at the University of Texas El Paso, is a Chicana historian and writer who was raised on the Texas border. She listens compassionately to and documents the history of people on both sides of the border. She also stood witness outside the gates of Tornillo and gave voice to the children imprisoned there through their art at the exhibit, Uncaged Art, at UTEP (https://tinyurl.com/y55sb2cpl). Today she shares some of her impressions, observations and experiences:

In the spring of 2019, I crossed the Paso del Norte international bridge that connects El Paso, Texas with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. I stopped midway where the U.S. meets Mexico above the deepest channel of the Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo and looked at the political murals painted on the concrete walls that rise from the river. I said good morning to the young men who leaned against the wall laughing at each others’ jokes. Over time, I realized they were lookouts for the gang that controlled that area.

Once over the bridge, I took a left and began walking towards el Centro de Atención Integral a Migrantes (el CAIM), a state-run agency that assists deported Mexicans and asylum-seekers who are trapped on the Mexican side of the border through Trump’s maliciously misnamed Migrant Protection Protocols, known also as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The MPP has nothing to do with “protection.” Rather it has created thousands of defenseless humans trying to find their way in border cities where they know no one. Already vulnerable mothers are walking targets when U.S. immigration officials escort them across the bridge, sending them across the border into a sprawling city of two million.

During that spring and into the summer and fall, before COVID, el CAIM became a place I visited often, speaking with asylum-seekers to document their stories. Most were women with children, the majority from the Golden Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It was always heartbreaking to witness their pain. I came away exhausted after each visit. I could not imagine how they carried on day after day. Sitting with the attorneys and paralegals from Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, a non-profit that provides legal counsel to migrants, I wondered how they had the stamina to listen to story after story. Sometimes all I could do when a woman told me a harrowing story was offer an embrace as they sobbed against my shoulder. I had no words of comfort.

Having spent a decade as a social worker in Central Texas, I knew about listening to stories of violence against women and I had seen the aftereffects in the women’s fearful eyes and in the way that their children looked down at the ground when I spoke with them. That did not prepare me, however, for the amount of horror that existed in the stories that women shared with me about their journey north seeking asylum.

We are in a historic moment on the border. While la frontera has always been a contested place, a politicized region because of the movement of people back and forth, the policies instituted in the past four years have terrorized migrants and border residents in ways that I have never witnessed before. Because of that, the Institute of Oral History (the University of Texas at El Paso) began interviewing asylum seekers and their advocates. As one woman told me, “I want people to know what I have been through.” I, too, want people to know what they have been through because of our policies, because of Mexico’s policies, because they are strangers in both Mexico and the United States and because they are women. I remember once during a particularly horrific story, sitting next to an attorney from Las Americas, he asked the mother if she wanted her small daughter to step outside with the paralegal. “What for?” she responded wearily. “She already experienced it.”

As my research assistants and staff listened to the stories of violence, kidnappings, beatings, and sexual violence at the hands of coyotes, police, and gangs, our hearts have broken and we have come to admire the courage and determination of women to save their children. We have also learned to witness their desperation. Once when I asked a very young mother why she had come to the border when she knew that crossing and receiving asylum would be difficult, she said she had no choice. With her toddler in arms, she said “They found a truck full of dead children in my city. I had to bring him.” Mothers bringing their children to the U.S.-Mexico border are fleeing gang violence, political chaos, and deadening poverty. They hope against hope that they will receive asylum in the United States. Sometimes they just want to stay here until things get better in their own countries.

Migrant women experience violence on both sides of the border. They are not safe either in Mexico or in the U.S. Thousands of children held in U.S. detention camps have reported sexual violence against them by staff members. Between 2010 and 2016, migrants filed almost 5,000 complaints of physical and sexual assault in ICE detention centers, including in my hometown of El Paso, Texas.

Migrant women are targets on both sides of the border.

They are also the bravest women I know. Sometimes after listening to a story of surviving violence back home or on the journey here or in Juarez or El Paso, I ask “What gives you the strength to endure all of that.” Almost inevitably, they answer. “Mis niños.” My children.

Yolanda Chávez Leyva