Migrant Caravans Challenge the Continents Governments

Details: Published on Thursday, 15 November 2018 22:18; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1706 ... November 16, 2018
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Migrant Caravans Challenge the Continent’s Governments

Dan La Botz

Central American migrants, both desperate and courageous, have thrust themselves into the center of Mexican and U.S. politics with their demand for refuge and asylum. As the head of the NGO Pueblos Sin Fronteras told a reporter, "This isn’t just a caravan, it’s an exodus created by hunger and death."

The thousands of migrants organized in caravans and walking north from Central America, through Mexico, and to the United States -- some 3,000 miles -- have raised a challenge to the governments and to the people of North America. Driven by poverty and violence, their long march is an implicit critique of the Central American governments that have failed to protect them and have made... it impossible for them to earn a living. At the same time, it is in its very form a denunciation of Mexico, since they must travel in caravans because of the violence that migrants face in Mexico from both criminals and the corrupt police. And when the caravan reaches the border, it will be a challenge to the United States to adhere to its laws and international agreements that allow migrants to present petitions for refugee or asylum status.

Beyond all that however, the simple act of walking north is a courageous and defiant act of resistance against the economic and political system that envelopes North America, with its ‘free markets’, its authoritarian governments, and its failure to meet the basic human needs of millions. The migrants have put contemporary capitalism and imperialism on trial.