Articles
HOW BORDER MILITARIZATION IN SOUTHERN MEXICO IS PUTTING CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS AT RISK
Doña Francisca* keeps a photo of herself and a young relative, Kevin*, on her phone. In the photo, Doña Francisca is wearing a mask, but Kevin is bare-faced, clean-cut and smiling. He looks like a good kid. “He’s the kind of person that, if he sees something dirty, he’ll stop what he’s doing and clean it up,” she tells me. I’m not surprised: Doña Francisca is the same way. After our interview, she takes all our coffee cups to the sink and washes them up, laughing with the staff of the migrant shelter where we met.
Doña Francisca showed me Kevin’s photo because we couldn’t meet him ourselves. At the time, he was in a detention centre known as La Mosca, located on the outskirts of nearby Tuxtla Gutierrez, which has been described by detainees as overcrowded, unsanitary, and “a terrible place.”
Mexico | migration | MCC | analysis
Feds’ global pandemic response must support local peace building
While serious human rights abuses have not been reduced, what has changed is the ability of local and international organizations to organize and accompany affected communities, and to monitor and denounce these abuses.
Colombia | Canada | peace | Hill Times | analysis
Another world is possible: what magical realism taught me about social change
Just before I arrived in Cartagena for a few days of vacation, I was visiting the tiny community of Pichilín in the Montes de Maria, a community that had been the victim of a massacre during the worst years of the Colombian armed conflict, in which 11 people were murdered by the military. The survivors fled, and when they returned, it was to a parched landscape devoid of life and a social fabric destroyed by trauma. It was hard to even imagine a way out of the devastation.
Today, Pichilín is still facing overwhelming problems—as the climate changes, water is becoming scarcer and scarcer, and the reparations promised by the Colombian government following the violence have been slow in coming. But now, it’s a community where trauma is being processed and, slowly but surely, the social fabric is being stitched back together.
Latin America | social change | MCC | essay
memories of trauma
At 3 p.m., after a full day in the waiting room of Haiti’s central tax office, Joseph Saingelus accepted he wasn’t going to get the documents he needed before the office closed at 4 p.m. He decided to leave—his accounting class started at 4 p.m., and Saingelus is never late. He could try again the next day.
But the next day, the tax office was gone. An hour into Saingelus’s accounting class, on Jan. 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Haiti’s impoverished, densely populated capital. Unable to get down from the top floor of the school, Saingelus remained where he was as the school shifted, cracked, but remained standing.
Haiti | mental health | MCC | analysis
I saw the light: how solar power brings light, income, and connections to a small community in Haiti
I went to Wondo to see the light. I don’t mean in a religious way, although I did find it at a church. I’m talking about a street light. Thanks to a small Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) project, the remote mountainside community Wondo in Haiti’s Artibonite region has recently installed its first working light.
The children and youth of Wondo are learning how to maintain and profit from the simple solar-powered electrical system that powers the light attached to the top of a pole. This simple project is already making a big difference in the community, where the light beside the church has become a place for people of all ages to gather after dark.
Haiti | development | MCC | communications
Preventing cholera in Haiti
In 2016, when a fresh outbreak of cholera began in the mountainside community of Wopisa-Gabriyèl, Haiti, Precius Estilus was among the first to fall ill. Early one morning, he was gathering his tools to work in his garden when he was overtaken by a sudden, extreme weakness.
By 11 a.m., he was vomiting. A friend encouraged him to go to the doctor, and they began the long descent to the nearest cholera treatment center.
The only way out of Wopisa-Gabriyèl is on foot. The descent is steep and covered with loose rocks, and at one point requires climbing down rocks through streaming water in the middle of a waterfall. Despite his friend’s encouragement to hurry, Estilus had to stop every few minutes to recover and gather his strength.
Haiti | cholera | MCC | communications
Coming Home to Kabay
Remis Pierre, 23, lives in the house where he grew up in the farming community of Kabay. It’s only 8 a.m. when we visit, but the sound of a soccer game can already be heard from a radio inside the house: the World Cup has just started. Pierre supports Brazil, as do both my MCC colleague and my motorcycle taxi driver, who are also sitting with us. The two countries have a long history together. Everyone in Haiti knows someone who has gone to Brazil—or the Dominican Republic, or Chile, or Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince—to find work and send a little money back to their families.