This summer I looked into someone’s eyes and saw fear, honest fear.

I accompanied the UNM Cross-Border Issues Group to Mexico in July. The group, led by Communication & Journalism Professor Richard Schaefer, works primarily in Cuernavaca, Mexico, researching immigration. This year’s research led us to Oaxaca City, Ixtapec, and Acapulco.

The CBI group has investigated Mexican migration to the United States as well as intra-Mexican migration over the past three years. The group expanded its investigation this year to include
immigration from Central America to North America.

We worked with El Centro de Orientación del Migrante de Oaxaca (COMI), an organization based in Oaxaca, that supports migrants who leave home in search of a better future. It is here that I began to realize what immigration means to migrants.

COMI manages several safe houses that provide lodging and meals to passing migrants. In the safe houses, or albergues, migrants can learn about the rights they have and the dangers and consequences they’re up against in migrating from Central Amerca and Mexico.

“They will get a job, but they won’t be paid much,” said Fernando Cruz Montes, director of COMI. “They will be both marginalized and discriminated against. They are hit hard and suffer by being taken out of their culture and country.”

CBIG students had the opportunity to meet, interview and befriend migrants in transit. The students heard the stories of exploitation. I learned that migrants are often robbed, beaten and kidnapped as they ride freight trains they call “la bestia,” or “The Beast.”

“Migrants suffer in transit. They die on the trains, in the rivers and roads,” Cruz Montes said. “They die in the desert. And their dreams die with them.”

Cruz Montes told us migrants still face adversity even if they reach their destination.

“They arrive in a country with unfamiliar laws and getting caught puts them at a risk greater than paying a fine,” he said.

Then, when migrants return to Mexico or Central America, they have a different life perspective and have a difficult time assimilating at home, Cruz Montes said.

“People know they left to improve their lot, but they return different, without the same sense of culture, family and community,” he said. “They are egotistical. They’ve earned money or influence. Their faith changes.”

With all of these obstacles, why would anyone still try to migrate? We asked, and heard one common answer.

“My reason for leaving my land is the confrontations, political confrontations (and) also gangs confrontations, insecurity,” said Edwin, a migrant from Honduras. “And there is no employment, and if there is, the wage is too low, and basic product prices continuously go up.”

The CBIG group and I interviewed immigrants, government officials, human rights associations, experts and students to round out our research. Each student shared their findings in a presentation at the Universidad de Fray Luca Paccioli, a UNM affiliate school in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on July 30.

We will continue to work at UNM to put together multimedia pieces for an American audience.