Читать книгу Seeking Refuge - Maria Cristina Garcia - Страница 8

INTRODUCTION

To leave one's country in search of refuge, to save one's family, one's community, meant facing the unknown, and not knowing what would happen tomorrow or whether the place one had chosen as temporary refuge would open its doors and warmly welcome those fleeing terror and death.

RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ TUM

The political upheaval in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala in the last decades of the twentieth century had a devastating human toll. A quarter of a million people died during the period 1974-96, and over one million people were internally displaced, forced to find refuge in other areas of their own countries. Many of those who survived the warfare and the human rights abuses chose temporary refuge in neighboring countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras, living anonymously as illegal immigrants or as documented refugees in government-run camps. When the camps filled up, or when their safety or economic survival was once again threatened, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans traveled further north, to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Over two million of those who fled Central America during this period settled in these three countries.

This book tells the story of that migration and how these governments responded to the refugees' presence. It also tells the story of the individuals, groups, and organizations that responded to the refugee crisis and worked within and across national borders to shape a more responsive refugee policy. During this period Mexico, the United States, and Canada were engaged in discussions of free trade but were more interested in facilitating the free movement of capital than in addressing the human migration that inevitably followed from such policies. Likewise, they and other nations in the Northern Hemisphere ignored the refugee crisis created by the revolutions in Central America until fairly late in the i980s, even though some had played a role in exacerbating the political conflict and had become unwilling hosts to thousands of refugees. By the time regional leaders sat down to address possible solutions to the crisis, over three million people had fled their homes, crossed national boundaries, and stretched charitable resources in hundreds of communities. It was the pressure exerted by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the grassroots organizations that worked firsthand with the victims, as well as the refugees themselves, that forced these states to address the crisis.¹ Collectively these individuals and organizations established domestic and transnational advocacy networks that collected testimonies, documented the abuses of states, reframed national debates about immigration, pressed for changes in policy, and ultimately provided a voice for the displaced and the excluded.

The Central American refugee crisis highlighted the bureaucratic inconsistencies in the immigration policies of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Each country politicized the refugee determination system or failed to offer a legal status that adequately addressed the refugee crisis, in large part to discourage further migration to its territory. Instead of crafting a regional response that collectively shared the burdens of relocating and supporting the refugees, each government reacted to the crisis on the basis of its own state interests. Each was then forced to readjust its policies to deal with the consequences of its neighbors' policies. Passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in the United States, for example, created a “border rush” of Salvadorans who sought refuge in Canada to avoid deportation, and then forced Canada to redesign its refugee determination system. Likewise, the Mexican government's very different responses to the illegal Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Mexico influenced the character of the migration to the United States and forced the United States to redefine its border policies.

Surveys and public opinion polls conducted at the time showed that the Central American refugees did not rank high in domestic political agendas. However, in all three countries, a small, vocal, and disproportionately influential segment of the population successfully lobbied for a more humanitarian response. These individuals—students, academics, lawyers, trade unionists, journalists, religious and secular aid workers—created organizations and networks to defend the rights of the refugees and to demand an end to their countries' complicity in the political upheaval. Wherever they worked—in comunidades de base (faith communities), refugee camps, legal aid offices, sanctuaries, universities, or nonprofit organizations in Central or North America—refugee advocates relied on the information and support provided by each of the network's constituent parts. Human rights activists in Central America, for example, relied on journalists and NGOs to publicize their cause, mobilize support, and secure protection for the displaced. Likewise, lobbyists working in Mexico City, Washington, and Ottawa depended on the refugees and human rights activists for the evidence that might help them argue their case.

By 1980, advocacy networks existed in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, working within and across national borders to protest not only human rights abuses in Central America but also state policies that militarized the region, exacerbated the civil wars, and discriminated against the wars' victims.² Some groups operated solely at the grassroots level, informing and providing assistance to communities and lobbying local legislators. Others, like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Americas Watch, and the Church World Service, worked on a broader scale, collecting evidence, providing testimony at hearings and tribunals, and using their moral authority to press for policy changes from government bureaucracies. Whether at the local, national, or international level, these actors were bound together by their common concern about the social upheaval in Central America. They used international norms to criticize individual state behavior, collected and disseminated information that challenged official state discourses, forced accountability, and ultimately changed policy.³

Clergymen, missionaries, and aid workers in Central America played key roles in these networks; indeed, much of the information circulated about Central America was first acquired by these individuals, who worked on the front lines. Religious and secular aid workers tried to help communities in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala have some semblance of a normal life amid the bombings, disappearances, and assassinations. But they also played critical roles in documenting the abuses and traumas of war, from recording the names of those who had disappeared to compiling detailed reports and chronologies of death squad campaigns. Together with the photographs and films taken by international journalists working in the field,⁴ this documentation presented a very different picture of events from the one presented in Central America, where censorship of information was a keystone of repressive governments. These advocates also challenged the discourses about Central America promoted by the Reagan and Bush administrations, which played key roles in militarizing the region. Those who were eventually forced to flee the region helped to keep Central America on the front pages of newspapers. They wrote articles and editorials, testified before legislative bodies, spoke to civic, political, professional, and religious groups, and cofounded some of the organizations that became the backbone of the solidarity and advocacy network.

Advocates who were motivated by religious beliefs were particularly predisposed to challenging laws and nation-states during this period, because they believed they answered to a higher authority. Their acts of civil disobedience inevitably gained front-page coverage in newspapers around the world. Photographs of nuns and clergymen arrested for sanctuary work, or for chaining themselves on government property in protest of foreign policy, were more sensational than photographs of refugee camps and detention centers, and understandably garnered more attention. Likewise, the assassination of high-profile religious leaders such as Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero commanded more international media attention than the dozens of nameless citizens shot and killed at his funeral procession. Their vocal defense of the rights of the poor and their willingness to suffer imprisonment, torture, and death made them heroic figures in a region that seemed so lacking in heroes. They risked their own safety to raise consciousness about Central America. In the process, they also provoked national reexaminations about the role of religion in political life.

It is impossible to separate the refugee advocacy of the 1980s from the larger protests against state policies and human rights abuses in Central America. Mass migrations generally attract the involvement of NGOs, which in turn encourage a shift in international policy.⁵ Those who became involved in the sanctuary movement, or who filed lawsuits on behalf of the refugees in camps and detention centers, or who lobbied their legislators for immigration reform did so in part because of their opposition to state policies that created a disposable population. Refugee advocates in the United States, for example, argued that the United States had a moral obligation to help the displaced because of the country's long history of economic exploitation of the region and the role it played at the time in supporting corrupt military regimes and death squads. For some advocates, it was their opposition to militarization that brought them to refugee work; for others, it was contact with the refugees themselves in churches, clinics, and legal aid offices that heightened their awareness of foreign policy. However the advocates came to know about Central America or its refugees, the two political initiatives became symbiotically entwined. When Americans lobbied or testified in favor of immigration reform, they always condemned the policies that had created the refugee crisis in the first place.

The advocacy networks used a variety of tactics learned from other social movements around the world, among them the labor, student, and environmental movements of the 1960s, as well as the US civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests. Refugee advocates organized petitions, rallies, and demonstrations. They organized conferences, published books, articles, and editorials, and produced films and documentaries.They organized letter-writing campaigns and fact-finding trips for scholars, legislators, and journalists. They set up halfway houses and sanctuaries for the refugees. They financially supported communities in Central America through the sale of cooperative-produced clothing and crafts. And they transported food and medical supplies in highly publicized “peace caravans.” All these activities served to heighten awareness of the wars and its refugees.

At the same time, those who worked in Central America promoting economic development and political rights helped local communities to experiment with democratic institution building and political empowerment. By addressing the issue of human rights, activists also addressed a wide range of interrelated issues including poverty, agrarian reform, environmentalism, population growth, the rights of women and indigenous societies, and what in the post-Cold War era has become known as globalization.

The refugees played a role in their own advocacy. By relating their personal experiences in interviews, at legislative hearings, and at church and civic halls, they gave a human face to statistics. The refugees exerted a transnational influence on their countries of origin—not only through the testimonios that helped to change state policies, but also through the economic remittances they sent to family and friends. These remittances, in particular, became so important to the developing economies of Central America that at least one head of state is known to have pressured the Reagan administration to ease up on the deportation of co-nationals.⁶ And once repatriation or travel to their homelands became possible, these migrants exerted a significant influence on the political and economic life of the communities they helped to rebuild. Their migration reflected—and contributed to—the devastation in their countries, but the influence they exerted in exile and repatriation was equally powerful.

A COMPARATIVE FOCUS

Central American migration provides the case study through which to examine the role foreign policy interests play in shaping immigration policy. Over the past two decades, a number of studies (among them Loescher and Scanlan 1986; Mitchell 1992; Pedraza 1985; and Teitelbaum 1985) have examined how US foreign policy has shaped population movements, especially in the Americas, where US interests and influence are most evident. The United States has also been the focus of much of the recent literature on globalization, transnationalism, and remittances. This study draws on and contributes to that literature by adding a cross-national focus, examining the impact that state policies have, not only on the character and flow of migration, but also on neighboring countries and the region as a whole. The United States cannot be totally decentered in this discussion, given the economic and political impact its policies have had on Central America. However, the study places the United States within a North American context to examine not only the impact US policies had on the region but also the influences that neighboring countries exerted on the United States. Thus, Mexico and Canada, two countries that played an important role in the regional response to the refugee crisis and ultimately in moderating US policies, receive comparable attention. Likewise, the study also examines the impact that sending countries had on the North American policies. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua maintained an interest in their emigrants for both economic and political reasons: emigrant labor abroad provided much needed income in the form of remittances; and dissidents exerted enormous political influence through their lobbying and fundraising in host societies. Thus, pressure from Central American governments also shaped the ways Mexico, the United States, and Canada responded to this migration and the ways they accommodated the refugees.

This study also contributes to the growing literature on Central American immigrants to North America. During the first decade of the migration, a number of reports and monographs were published examining the root causes, character, and distribution of Central Americans. Aguayo 1985;Aguayo and Fagen 1988; Fagen 1984, Fagen and Aguayo 1986; Ferris 1987; Manz 1988 (Refugees of a Hidden War); Montes 1987; Montes and García Vásquez 1988; and Peterson 1986 were among the studies that chronicled the early years of Central American migration and the migrants' reception in different host societies. These studies complemented others by Bonner (1984), Coatsworth (1994), LaFeber (1993), and LeoGrande (1998) that provided regional histories explaining the civil wars. After the peace accords were signed and repatriation programs begun, the scholarship on Central American immigrants changed, focusing primarily on the social and legal incorporation of Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants in their host societies, particularly in specific cities in the United States, as well as the immigrants' transnational ties to their homelands. Several important studies, among them those of Burns (1993), Coutin (2000), Hagan (1994), Hamilton and Chinchilla (2001), Loucky and Moors (2000), Menjívar (2000), O'Dogherty Madrazo (1989), and Repak (1995), focused attention on these new Central American populations and contributed to the social science literature on “Latino” groups in the United States. My study owes a great deal to these important works. However, rather than focus on one group in one particular setting, it seeks to examine Central American migration in three different national settings in order to draw certain conclusions about this migration, in this case about the context of reception and the ways domestic and foreign policy interests shape how immigrants are received and perceived.

Finally, the study contributes to the growing body of work on nongovernmental actors and their role in shaping domestic and foreign policies. During the 1980s, a number of books were published on the culture of protest in the United States, especially the sanctuary movement. Studies by Coutin (1993), Crittenden (1988), Cunningham (1995), Davidson (1988), Golden and McConnell (1986), MacEoin (1985), and Tomsho (1987) examined the religious and civic motivations for American protests against the wars in Central America. My study draws on these and other more recent theoretical works by Boli and Thomas (1999), Fisher (1998), Keck and Sikkink (1998), and Risse et al. (1998), which discuss the changing role of NGOs within a global context. This study also contributes to this literature by examining the role of immigrant advocacy networks that operate within and across national borders.

One could argue that comparative studies are inherently prescriptive, but historians are generally reluctant to offer policy recommendations. Nevertheless, the history of Central American migration does offer various critical lessons, which in the post-September 11 world the United States and its neighbor-allies ignore. These lessons include, first, the need for regional responses to migration crises in which wealthier nations collectively share the burden of accommodating the displaced, rather than shifting the responsibility to poorer nations. Second, while foreign policy decisions often cause the displacement of populations, migration should not be used as an instrument for undermining or bolstering a specific regime. Finally, and most important, asylum seekers are entitled to certain protections, rights, and procedural safeguards, as specified by a number of international conventions on refugees. Likewise, immigration policy must be fair, consistent, and humane.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

The following chapters provide a history of Central American migration in the 1980s and 1990s, government responses to that migration, and the advocacy networks that emerged to shape the policies of states. Chapter1 provides a brief history of the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala to explain the causes of the migration. It discusses the reasons why people migrated and where they settled, following their migration within Central America to countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras, and explaining why thousands ultimately chose to migrate northward. Chapters 2 through 4 examine how Mexico, the United States, and Canada, the countries that received the largest aggregate number of refugees, each responded to the refugee crisis. It examines how refugee policy was made, the role that different agents and interests played in shaping that policy, and the impact that individual policies had on neighboring countries.

Mexico is known as an emigrant-producing nation, but this discourse denies its parallel tradition of accommodating exiles and immigrants from all over the world. During the 1980s alone, Mexico became host to an estimated 750,000 Central Americans, primarily from El Salvador and Guatemala; and over a million more transited through the country on their way to the United States and Canada. Chapter 2 examines the political debates within Mexico regarding sovereignty and international responsibilities as well as refugees and economic immigrants.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico tried to assert itself as a middle power in hemispheric affairs, challenging the United States on its Nicaraguan and Salvadoran policies, and assuming a prominent role in the Contadora peace initiative. (The Contadora Group consisted of representatives of Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela, who first met in 1983 on the island of Contadora, off the coast of Panama, to establish a blueprint for a negotiated peace settlement.) From the beginning, Mexico denied the US discourse that the wars in Central America were part of an East-West struggle and asserted the rights of Central Americans to challenge unjust structures and institutions in their own countries and to shape their own destiny. However, this position was threatened by the presence of thousands of refugees along its southern border, which exacerbated centuries-old tensions with neighboring Guatemala almost to the brink of war, and jeopardized the political stability of Chiapas, a state of key importance to Mexico's overall economic development. Mexico's challenge, then, was to assert and balance its international responsibilities without alienating Guatemala and the United States. Its refugee and immigration policy was conceptualized against the backdrop of these foreign and domestic policy debates.

Even though Mexico was not a signatory to the UN Convention and Protocol, it granted official protection, albeit reluctantly, to one of the largest groups of refugees in the region, in large part because of pressure from various non-governmental organizations and from the refugees themselves. With the help of the UNHCR, the Mexican government established camps in Chiapas, Campeche, and Quintana Roo that housed forty-six thousand refugees, mostly Maya Indians, and then later assisted them either to repatriate or to legalize their status in Mexican society. However, the majority of Central Americans living in Mexico did not receive any recognition or assistance from the state or the UNHCR. Churches and charitable organizations that had direct contact with the refugees estimated that as many as half a million Salvadorans lived and worked anonymously in the major cities, and as many as two hundred thousand Guatemalans preferred to live outside the UNHCR camps and settlements, even if it meant forfeiting assistance. The Mexican government justified its neglect by claiming that the Central Americans were transmigrantes, or economic migrants, traveling through Mexico on their way to the United States or Canada, even though evidence suggested otherwise. In the end, Mexico's neglect encouraged many Central Americans to move further northward in search of higher wages and better working conditions. As a result, by the late 1980s the United States actively pressured Mexico to do more to control its southern border and step up its deportation of Central American workers, and in the NAFTA era Mexico was willing to comply.⁷ Once again, Central Americans became the pawns of foreign policy decisions.

Of the three countries, the United States hosted the largest number of Central American refugees. Those who entered the United States—most of them illegally—encountered a society that was less than enthusiastic about their arrival. Since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, the United States had accommodated millions of immigrants, refugees, and undocumented workers from a variety of countries, and Americans perceived the Central Americans as yet another drain on their economy. The influx of so many undocumented migrants in particular—from Mexico, Central America, and other regions—contributed to the anti-immigrant backlash of the 1980s that culminated in the passage of the restrictive 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which imposed a variety of measures and sanctions to try to control the entry of undocumented workers.

But for a segment of the US population, the migration of Central Americans presented a moral dilemma. Its members believed that the United States had a responsibility to assist the migrants from Central America because of the role their government had played in escalating the violence. The Reagan and Bush administrations denied that the “feet people” were refugees, because to acknowledge this would have implied that the governments they supported with billions of dollars each year were terrorizing their own citizens—an action that would both alienate the United States' Central American allies and sabotage continued congressional aid for these regimes. In the 1980s, the Central America advocacy networks in the United States called for a reassessment of US foreign and immigration policies. Chapter 3 examines how these networks demanded accountability from the US government for its actions in Central America and on the United States-Mexico border—first, through protest and civil obedience, lobbying, and the manipulation of the media and, ultimately, through the courts and the Congress.

Of the three countries, Canada did not have a long tradition of immigration from Latin America, in part because of its climate and geographic location, but also because of its limited diplomatic presence and trade relations within the hemisphere prior to 1970. During the administrations of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (1968—79, 1980—84), Parliament reevaluated its relationship with Latin America, increasing its embassies and consulates and creating a number of new institutions to oversee trade, investment, and development. Like Mexico, Canada tried to craft a foreign policy independent in tone and substance from the policies of the United States, partly in response to nationalist complaints that Canada was a “US territory” overly influenced by the culture and world view of its superpower neighbor. Canada's foreign and immigration policies, then, became means through which to distinguish its international priorities and assert its distinct cultural identity.

Canada's first experience with accommodating large numbers of immigrants from Latin America came in the 1970s, when it agreed to offer asylum to Chilean refugees fleeing the rightist military dictatorship. Less than a decade later, thousands of Central Americans migrated to Canada because of its more generous asylum policies. Unlike the United States, which prior to 1990 granted asylum to fewer than 3 percent of Salvadorans and Guatemalans, Canada granted asylum to up to 80 percent of applicants. The number of Central Americans increased significantly after the US Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, demonstrating the impact that the polices of neighboring countries had on the character and flow of migration. In response to IRCA, thousands of Central Americans, especially Salvadorans, arrived at Canadian border cities requesting asylum. The administrative backlog that it created pointed to the weaknesses in its refugee determination system. That Canada kept the door open was in no small part due to pressure from advocacy networks that forced a reexamination of national debates about Canadian identity and the country's role in the hemisphere. Chapter 4 examines the impact of Central American immigration on Canada's national debate on immigration, its identity as an open and multicultural society, and US-Canadian and hemispheric relations.

The concluding chapter examines the difficulties and challenges of crafting a regional response to migration, especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Despite the lessons learned from the Central American refugee crisis and from the subsequent international efforts to exchange information, coordinate policies, and share responsibility for the accommodation of displaced persons, US interests have dominated these regional discussions and policies. Safeguarding civil liberties, due process, and human rights is often trumped in the name of national security. Once again, it is the non-governmental actors that remain the asylum seekers' most vocal advocates, trying to force nations to examine difficult issues that in the post-9/11 era many are reluctant to examine.