Gulf Pine Catholic
•
February 27, 2015
19
As migration pattern changes, Mexican women
adjust methods of service
BY DAVID AGREN
Catholic News Service
LA PATRONA, Mexico (CNS) -- Norma
Romero Vasquez watched a freight train roll
by her residence on a recent Saturday, and she
checked to see if any migrants were perched
on top.
“There’s one,” she yelled, motioning for a
friend farther up the line to pass food and
drink to the lone rider.
The migrant, sunburned and wearing
shorts and a hoodie, grabbed the bagged
lunch with an outstretched hand. He was the
only one to pass that day.
It’s drastic decline from six months earli-
er, when hundreds of Central Americans
huddled aboard northbound trains in attempts
to reach the U.S. border.
Nowadays, “They’re mostly arriving on
foot,” said Romero, whose team of 14 women,
known as “Las Patronas,” still serve them and
even offer a spot to sleep.
For 20 years, Las Patronas have tossed meals to
migrants riding atop trains passing through their hamlet
of cane and coffee farmers in Veracruz state, 175 miles
southeast of Mexico City.
Las Patronas named themselves for their hometown
-- La Patrona -- and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the nation-
al patroness. The women started out with scant resourc-
es, but their work has won national awards and interna-
tional attention. Their work also has contributed to
changes in attitudes toward migrants in Mexico, where
people have not always welcomed their southern neigh-
bors, despite the fact that the country sends so many its
own citizens to the United States.
“There are more people aware now ... that a migrant
is not a person coming here to do harm. It’s someone
who is trying to get ahead and help their family,”
Romero said, adding that some of those riding the rails
will contact her after arriving to give thanks -- even
though they never met.
“They look for us and ask, ‘Why would you give us
something to eat?’ I always say to them, ‘Because
you’re my brother.’”
Priests and religious attending the Feb. 14th 20th
anniversary celebration called the women examples of
Christian charity and compassion, who always shared
what they had, even in times of hardship.
“They’re a reference, when speaking of migration
and service to migrants,” said Father Prisciliano Peraza
Garcia, director of a migrant shelter in Altar, near the
Arizona border.
“These people know that what little they have, they
have to share it,” said Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of
Saltillo, who celebrated an anniversary Mass along the
railway lines in La Patrona. “The solidarity that exists
between the poor is something extraordinary.”
After the anniversary Mass, the women cut cake and
answered a crush of requests from reporters -- such is
the sensation of 14 peasant women who have become
minor media celebrities in Mexico.
Las Patronas started in 1995, when Romero recalls
being asked by migrants walking the railway lines for
food, though she confessed not knowing anything
about migration and confused the people atop the trains
with joyriders. The opportunity to serve migrants, she
said, was an answer to prayer.
“I said, ‘Please show me the road so that I can serve
you,’” she recalled praying.
The women prepared meals in pots over open
flames and passed out bagged food to outstretched
hands. When food was hard to find, the women picked
mangos.
Their work started being noticed, leading to dona-
tions from students, universities and local businesses,
which would send over day-old pastries and bottled
drinks.
Las Patronas won the 2013 National Human Rights
Award, and Romero rebuked President Enrique Pena
Nieto in person for a recently approved energy reform
and an ongoing neglect of the countryside. But Romero
downplays the attention she receives and credits her
colleagues and God for their accomplishments.
“This project is not only mine. It’s God’s,” she said.
“It is not something we expected, but it completely
changed our lives.”
Changes in Mexican immigration enforcement are
preventing migrants from climbing onto the north-
bound train -- known as La Bestia for the way it maims
riders -- through a government initiative known as the
Southern Border Project.
The initiative aims to make the southern
border safer, according to the Mexican gov-
ernment, and establishes order in an oft-
neglected part of the country. The plan was
presented after the child migrant crisis last
summer, when thousands of unaccompanied
Central American minors tried to travel
through Mexico to reach the United States.
“The child migrant crisis was a watershed
moment,” said Father Alejandro Solalinde,
director of the Brothers of the Road migrant
shelter in Oaxaca state, for the way it brought
increased enforcement, along with detentions
and deportations.
Critics, including Father Solalinde and the
operators of Catholic-run shelters, say the
plan makes migration more dangerous by
forcing migrants onto new routes, where they
are easily extorted or kidnapped by criminal
groups as they attempt to avoid the authori-
ties.
“The Southern Border Project is not about
making immigration safer,” he said. “It’s about making
it invisible.”
Father Solalinde sees most migrants now arriving
on foot, with 90 percent reporting some sort of injury
or having fallen victim to crime along the way.
Since the Southern Border Project was introduced,
Franciscan Brother Tomas Gonzalez Castillo has seen
only a minor drop in numbers arriving at his shelter
near the Mexico-Guatemala border. But he has seen
attempts by migrants to avoid the authorities and a new
crop of smugglers starting to offer services -- even if
they don’t offer anything of value.
“We’re receiving people that were lost in the jun-
gle,” said Brother Gonzalez, director of the shelter La
72 in Tenosique, in Tabasco state.
The directors of shelters in southern Mexico recent-
ly discarded a policy of limiting stays by migrants to
three days, “because they arrive extremely tired,”
Brother Gonzalez said.
Honduran migrant Jose Daniel Sanchez Barahona,
18, arrived in La Patrona after walking most of the
distance from Palenque, 375 miles away in Chiapas
state. He said he once jumped off the train after crimi-
nals carrying baseball bats demanded $100 to stay
aboard.
Many of the migrants traveling with him “turned
themselves in to immigration officials,” he said.
With fewer migrants riding the rails, Romero has
shifted her approach. She opened a shelter to attend to
those walking the railway line and arriving on bus and
now feeds around 50 migrants per day on the trains --
down from the more than 1,000 meals Las Patronas
used to prepare daily.
She plans to continue with her project, but hoped to
see the day “people did not have to migrate.”
Bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, Mexico, Norma Romero Vasquez
and Franciscan Brother Tomas Gonzalez Castillo lead a Feb. 14 march
through the hamlet of La Patrona, Mexico. Romero and a group of
women in the hamlet have fed migrants passing through for the past 20
years, despite having scant resources.
CNS photo/David Agren
