Good morning. My name is Patricia Montes, I’m an immigrant from Central America and I’m the director of Centro Presente, an immigrant rights organization that has been working with the Central American immigrant community since the 80‘s.
We are living times in which we need a lot of reflection, solidarity and love. Thank you for opening the doors of your sanctuary for me and for the members of my community.
I was born and raised in Honduras. Honduras, my country, is the second poorest country in Latin America — the country that was the original Banana Republic – its economy and political life controlled by US corporations with the help of the US government; the country where the paramilitary group the Contras were trained by the U.S. during the 1980’s to invade Nicaragua; the country were a coup d’état, took place in June of 2009, which the US State Department, under Secretary Hillary Clinton, supported.
Honduras is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental activism. According to Global Witness, more than 120 people have been killed in Honduras since 2010 for standing up to multinational companies that grab our land and trash the environment. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for ANY kind of activism and we have the high murder rates of human rights attorneys, labor leaders and other activists to prove it.
I’m from a very poor family in Honduras. I was born and raised in a small town with no electricity, drinking water, and, sometimes, no food. When I was a child I did not understand why we were poor. But when I went to high school and college, I formed my understanding of the politics of my country and I learned that more than half of the population of my county was living under the same or worse conditions. And there was an economic and political system in place in order to maintain that situation.
I moved to the US 16 years ago. That same year difficult things happened in my life, including the death of my father and the deportation of my older brother from Texas to Honduras. And I had to adapt to life in the US where I didn’t know the language.
A short time later, I found a place that welcomed me. The same place that has welcomed thousands of Central American immigrants since the 1980s, and since then I have been working with the Central American immigrant community at Centro Presente.
This community came to the US during the 80’s as a result of the civil conflict of that time. Today, Central America is again facing a crisis that has been invisible in the news coverage and also within the discussion about immigration in the US.
In all these years living in this country I have realized that many people don’t know the real reasons why people migrate.
Yes, people migrate because poverty, wars, hunger and violence, but none of these situations fall from the sky. There is an economic system, a world order that is designed to keep a few with power and privilege, and maintain the majority of the people in misery.
At Centro Presente we live the pain of the disintegration of families that have been fleeing violence, as is the case of my nephew Jair, an 18-yearold boy who fled death and violence. His brother was killed by organized crime in Honduras and he had to flee. Like thousands of Central Americans, he crossed the border for protection and now he is in a detention center here in MA.
We need your support helping us to inform more people about what are the real structural reasons behind forced migration.
Structural violence, corruption and impunity, lack of employment and work opportunities, structural poverty, gender oppression, the implementation of economic policies like ‘free‘ trade agreements such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These are some of the real reasons behind forced migration.
But not everything is negative. I find much hope every day. In the mothers who seek help for their children and do not give up; in the young people who continue to struggle; in migrant children who, despite their situation, have a smile on their faces. I find a lot of hope here today with you, because we are gathering together to find solutions.
You can use your privilege of being white and take a proactive role in this struggle and help us to create a more humane, just and democratic society.
In these times of searching for freedom and true democracy, it is urgent that you use your privilege and demand changes in the structures of power. Use your power and your privilege to demand that the US government focus its foreign policy on addressing root causes of migration—in order to improve the living conditions of vulnerable populations, reduce impunity and increase respect for human rights in our countries of origin, as well as here in the US.
We can educate more people about the challenges of immigrant populations, we can create more spaces of dialogue, instead of building walls, we can build bridges between our communities.
Read the Q&A with Patricia Montes, Executive Director of Centro Presente