On Their Own: Border Humanitarians Respond to a Crisis Created by Governments
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On Their Own: Border Humanitarians Respond to a Crisis Created by Governments
“I kept thinking, Who is going to come step up to the plate and help us here?" says Dora Rodriguez, co-founder of a migrant resource center in Sásabe, Sonora.
In September 2020, Tucson-based humanitarians Dora Rodriguez and Gail Kocourek were delivering 700 meals a week to stranded migrants and asylum seekers in the small Mexican border town of Sásabe, Sonora.
Three years later, Rodriguez and Kocourek are still working in Sásabe, but everything has changed. There’s a migrant resource center, Casa de la Esperanza, painted white and decorated with a colorful monarch butterfly mural. It has a fully stocked kitchen and offers clothes and shoes to anyone who needs them. And for migrants who have been injured, there’s a clinic staffed by a town resident who is training to become a nurse.
Since Title 42 was lifted in May, Sásabe has no longer faced a humanitarian emergency. At the peak in 2020, each day saw the Border Patrol returning upwards of 150 men, women, and children to the remote desert outpost. The numbers went down in 2021 and 2022, but they stayed high until Biden finally ended the program.
“We had no way of helping them,” Ofelia LaBrava, a Sásabe resident had told me on my previous visit. “The town felt sorry for the migrants. They were sleeping in the plaza, and there was nothing for them here. We didn’t know what to do.”
Like any town on the U.S.-Mexico border, Sásabe is deeply affected by whatever immigration policy changes come from Washington, DC, or Mexico City and their respective immigration agencies. But with little aid coming from either government, border communities are largely on their own.
It’s come down to border residents and nonprofit humanitarian organizations to absorb the impacts of these policy changes, which can be enormous for their communities. They also must acclimate to changing human smuggling routes. Up and down the border over the last several years, from The Sidewalk School in Reynosa and Matamoros to Casa Esperanza in Sonotya, Sonora, residents and nonprofits have responded to humanitarian emergencies by creating innovative programs and building shelters and migrant resource centers.
Global migration will continue as more people are displaced by climate change, wars, and poverty. The need will remain for humanitarian responses. But how do these community-led initiatives survive over time, especially when there’s little or no government funding or support?
In Sásabe, Rodriguez and Kocourek are working with LaBrava and other residents to make Casa de la Esperanza not only a resource for migrants in need of help, but also an integral part of the community. For years, the primary economic driver in Sásabe has been human smuggling. At the town’s main grocery store, called Super Coyote, people can buy camouflage gear and provisions for the deadly trek through the Sonoran Desert, arranged by smugglers who charge hefty fees.
“Thousands of dollars flow through this town every year,” said Rodriguez. “But almost none of it stays here.” The resource center still helps migrants and asylum seekers, she said. But they are also building programs for the town, including a new library with a computer lab and a playground. And they are working on creating programs that provide some wages for work, so that people are not forced to migrate.
During a visit in early August, several women sat around tables at Casa de la Esperanza embroidering colorful tote bags with images of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and butterflies and cacti. The women meet every Wednesday, and they sell embroidered bags and jackets through the Salvavision website, a nonprofit founded by Rodriguez. The women receive money every month from the sales.
“It’s an opportunity for us to get rid of some stress and have a nice time, and we get paid for our work,” said Fabiola Nuñez.
Blanca Reyes López, a retired schoolteacher, helps run the center. She said the embroidery group began with two women and has grown to 15. “They do nice work, and the money makes a difference in their household. Some of the women are housewives, while others have other jobs, making tortillas or bread.”
The women also take turns volunteering to work at the migrant center on weekends, said Reyes López. “That way they collaborate, and they also volunteer for Casa de la Esperanza,” she said.
Across town, it was impossible not to notice the new library, which will be completed in the coming months. Among some drab, low-slung adobe buildings, one was painted bright orange and sports a mural created by a local artist, featuring flowers, grapes, and butterflies. The inside was vibrant pink, and on the walls the artist had painted children reading books surrounded by flowers.
Inside, Silvia Rodriguez, a town official, supervises the building’s remodeling. “We’ve never had a library before,” she said. “And now the children will have somewhere to do their homework. It’s going to be very good for our town.”
Kocourek said she is excited by the potential. “I’ve been looking for inflatable movie screens so that we can have movie nights,” she said.
After the library, we visited the town’s plaza, where many migrants were stranded during the worst days of Title 42. Now there is a children’s playground, which was built with the assistance of Veterans for Peace and School of Americas Watch. “The community never had a playground,” said Rodriguez. “Through these programs the town can see that we are not just here for the migrants but for them as well.”
The goal, she said, is to help people where they are, so that poverty doesn’t force them to leave. “Of course, people should migrate if they’re in danger,” she said, “but if the reason is poverty maybe there is a way to help, especially women, so that they don’t have to leave their children. Because no one wants to leave.”
Rodriguez, who nearly died on her journey through the Sonoran Desert in the 1980s, fleeing the civil war in El Salvador, understands the agony of being forced to leave home. Her nonprofit, Salvavision, also helps another group of women who embroider in rural Guatemala and sell their items online, so that they can support their families. “They’re not making hundreds of dollars a month,” she said. “But even if it’s $40 a month, it makes a big difference. And it’s something that they enjoy doing and are proud of.”
It’s a challenge to find the funding to sustain Casa de la Esperanza, but slowly it’s becoming a part of the town’s fabric. Salvavision provides some funding, as do other Arizona organizations Tucson Samaritans, No More Deaths, Casa Alitas, and Humane Borders, along with some private donors.
Rodriguez said it’s frustrating that the U.S. and Mexican governments created the crisis in Sásabe during Title 42, leaving thousands of stranded people with no way to get home, but have done nothing to support the town’s residents, who were left to handle the crisis.
“As we were responding to this emergency,” Rodriguez said, “I kept thinking, Who is going to come step up to the plate and help us here? Because it’s the U.S. government that is sending everyone here, and the Mexican government is receiving millions from the U.S. government to accept them. But we’ve gotten no funding from either of them. Not even a box of donations.”
On Their Own: Border Humanitarians Respond to a Crisis Created by Governments
Is Casa de Esperanza set up for on-line purchases? Bet y'all could sell some t-shirts & tote bags.
Related: https://www.viamhs.org/