Bulletins of CIEPAC
"Chiapas day by day"

Ray Ybarra is a human rights activist based out of Douglas, AZ, a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border. From 2004 to 2006 Ybarra documented vigilante activity on the border, including training over 500 people to use video cameras to follow vigilantes as they hunted for migrants in the desert. A graduate of Stanford Law School, Ybarra co-wrote and co-produced the award winning documentary "Rights on the Line: Vigilantes at the Border." He is in process of completing his first book, "Crossing the Line: Vigilantes, Death, Suffering, and Hope on the U.S.-Mexico Border," and is currently organizing a campaign of mass civil disobedience set to occur in Arizona in July 2008.

Ray was in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas in early August 2007 and participated with CIEPAC in the premier here of his video "Rights on the Line" and CIEPAC's new bilingual English-Spanish video on the structural causes of migration "Forced Displacement". We talked to Ray shortly before his return to the Arizona desert.

CIEPAC: You recently spent a month along Mexico's southern border in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas getting acquainted with conditions there. What were for you the most outstanding moments or findings? Could you tell us as well as your recent activities in defense of migrants' rights along the Mexico-US border?

RY: Sure. In Tapachula I think the memory that most sticks in my mind is sitting on the bridge that connects Ciudad Hidalgo with Tecún Umán and looking over the bridge and seeing rafts carrying people across the river border between Mexico and Guatemala like nothing. It was remarkable there was no fear whatsoever among the people that the Border Patrol was going to come get anybody, there was no big fence, no lights, no helicopters. It was so different from the border I know back home. For me it was just so mind-boggling. I could sit there and stare at the people crossing for hours and think about how different it is here along Mexico's southern border as opposed to the northern border. And when you see that you think, "oh, it must be easy to cross the border, it must be so much easier than crossing the Mexico-US border". But when you realize that it's a different kind of border patrol that is working down here in Mexico then you know that it actually must be harder to cross this border than the northern one. Well, I shouldn't say border so much because it actually is easier to cross the Guatemala-Mexico border, but it's harder to get through the country.

I was on a bus that traveled from Tapachula to Oaxaca and on the route we had four immigration checkpoints. And it's there, when you have a immigration agent that gets on the bus what seems to be every 45 minutes to make sure there are no migrants onboard, that you realize what the border patrol is all about. Whereas in Arizona, if I go from Douglas to Tucson, I can take certain routes where there are no checkpoints. Maybe there will be one checkpoint along the route I choose to take, but I'll know where that is and I can go around it. And that's a huge difference in border control that requires different strategies.

The things that stood out the most were the conversations that I had with the migrants. I volunteered at a migrants' center that took care of the Central American migrants that had been injured while riding the train, so they had lost a limb or were otherwise pretty severely injured. I listened to their stories about how difficult it is to cross the country of Mexico, not so much its border with Guatemala. And to see people on crutches with one leg because they fell off the train, or slipped off. That was the human rights tragedy right in front of your face.

At the same time, visiting with the migrants was incredibly inspiring. I was showing them a picture of the U.S.-Mexico border, of the large fence that sits behind my house. There was one young man from Guatemala who only had one leg and was walking on crutches, he looked at the fence and said, "That's not that high, I'll climb that someday." I could see it in his eyes and feel it in his voice that he will make it someday. His energy, his determination to keep moving forward is unbelievably inspiring; no government can build a wall that will crush the human spirit.

CIEPAC: Does it surprise you to see that there is so little control at the Mexican border with Guatemala? Because the impression we have is that the US has pressured Mexico to seal that border with Central America. Yet this doesn't seem to be the case. It would seem then that if the Central American migrants can get across the border with Mexico and take some of the least traveled routes, they may not have so many problems. What is your impression?

RY: That would be the initial impression that you get. If you just look at the surface, it might seem that the Mexicans are turning a blind eye, taking the money from the Americans, throwing some checkpoints on the highway to say that they are doing something, but actually letting people come across and making it easy for them. And just sitting there at the river, that's the impression I would have, if I hadn't talked to the migrants. If you didn't hear the stories of being robbed, held at gunpoint by bandits who are in the area where you have to walk to get to the train…stories of being abused while on the train by gang members, of being extorted by Mexican government officials. So when you look beneath the surface, I think it's actually more difficult for someone from Central American to cross Mexico to the Mexico-US border than it is for a Mexican to cross the Mexico-US border and get to someplace in the US. So it's twice as tough for someone from Central America to make it from their home all the way to somewhere in the United States. So on the surface it's easier to cross the border, but getting through Mexico is the difficult part.

CIEPAC: What were your findings regarding organizations, whether they are NGOs, or academic centers, that are studying the migrants' situation in Chiapas?

RY: I was really impressed by the quality of the really great human beings who are working on human rights issues in Chiapas. When I first came down here, in the States there is this mystical, romantic ideal that Chiapas is where the Zapatistas are, where the far left is, where it's at in constructing an alternative to capitalism, to neoliberalism, and so I was really expecting to see more radical immigrants' rights activists down here, who were doing more work to help out the Central Americans coming across. But what I discovered was the opposite, that there is one solid group in Tapachula [the "Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center] that I met with. But they work on human rights issues in general; they don't focus just on what's going on at the border or with migrants. So I was really surprised to see that there are not more entities devoted to ensuring that Central Americans' rights are protected crossing the border. I think there are a lot of opportunities to issue more reports on the reality of the situation.

I will give you one example: no one knows how many people have died crossing the [Guatemala-Mexico] border, how many people die yearly, how many die monthly. And it would be very difficult to get those statistics, since I don't think there is any one entity trying to find out those out, as there is in the United States. So I was a little disappointed to find not so much focus on pure migration and the human rights abuses that occur in Chiapas on that issue. But that said, there is a lot of amazing organizing going on regarding the globalization and capitalism issue than there is in general anywhere in the United States.

CIEPAC: Can you talk a bit about [Mexico's] northern border? What are your plans, now that you've recently graduated from law school?

RY: The plan I have coming up next summer [2008] is to do a campaign of mass civil disobedience along the US-Mexico border. I've spent the past couple of years out there in the middle of the desert seeing so many unbelievably tragic experiences, and disgusting events transpire before my eyes, that I realized that human rights violations are occurring on a daily basis. As we sit here right now, I sure someone is dying in the middle of the desert from dehydration. And it's a reality that's going to keep occurring. What I learned is that it's time to really be more radical, to try to put morality into the immigration debate. And so the plan is to do a mass campaign of civil disobedience. We're openly going to publicize it and say that we're going to openly disobey the laws of the United States because we say that the laws are immoral, the immigration laws are immoral because people have a right to migrate and also that the laws that prohibit people from helping other human beings are immoral, so we are going to go and break those, knowing full well that the consequences are, but I think that it's time to make the broader statement about the human-rights tragedy and the need to respect our fellow human beings, irrespectively of where geographically they were born.

CIEPAC: You've done work keeping an eye on the right-wing vigilantes that are on the border. This civil disobedience is probably going to provoke their anger substantially. Can you foresee any sort of trouble from the vigilantes that might be watching you?

RY: I think we could see a little role reversal here, where instead of us going out into the desert looking for the vigilantes and following them around, there might be some right-wing people following us they may call the Border Patrol, or try to stop us, and this is something definitely to keep in mind. But at the same time it's also about being proactive and their reacting to us. Instead of us staying back and waiting for them to have another manifestation in the desert or protest and responding to that, we're being proactive, and saying you have to respond to our actions to put the rights of human beings before the right of nation states. So that's the direction we need to be heading into. It's forcing people to be reactive to us, not waiting for the next raids to happen and saying "US government: stop the raids". Not waiting for another wall to be built to say "No more walls". Not waiting for another bad immigration bill and saying "Don't pass the immigration bill". It's time for the people on the far left to be proactive, forcing the other people to be reactive to us. So hopefully this action will go in that direction.

CIEPAC: The migrants-rights groups, the NGOs that seem to predominate, at least in Arizona, where you are going to work, have a faith-based backing. Respect for the law, and not wanting to break the law appears to me to be a major component of their faith-based principles. Do you think you will get a response from these groups that are already working on migrant issues along the border?

RY: I'm definitely hoping to get support from faith-based organizations, not just the ones that work on border issues, but that work on all issues. I think nobody wants to break a law, but if you put it into the context of, first, there is law of the nation-state, then there is biblical law, and the two are conflicting, which do you side with? If you look at the story of the Good Samaritan, if it takes place along the US-Mexico border and you see someone in the middle of the desert, what would Jesus do, or what would be the right thing to do in terms of your religious or philosophical backing? Well, I think it's very difficult to say we have to abide by the law of the nation states in a situation like that. I hope we're going with the moral underpinnings that supersede any law any nation-state could write and get to those core fundamental values of what it means to be a human being and what it means to live in society.

CIEPAC: Taking the conversation to the national level in the US, I've always been discouraged by the lack of discussion on the causes of migration, which have to do obviously with neoliberal policy, with NAFTA. Do you see any movement among the NGOs in the States or at the congressional level to analyze the broader economic issues that are at the heart of the migration debate or are these questions that are impossible, or inconvenient to ask?

RY: I think you hit it right on the money. It is unfortunate that the immigration debate is so far off reality, starting with the premise that immigration is charity, that's the concept most people have, most politician think that we're being generous by letting people into the United States to do the work that we need done. When, in reality, when you analyze the situation, as you do so well here, you can show that people migrate due to the policies of the United States. So it's not a matter of charity, you could even argue that it is a necessity for the United States, capitalism needs low-wage workers who continually compete with each other to keep maintaining itself as a system, to benefit the wealthy, to benefit the elite. So, unfortunately, there is no movement that I see within the immigrant rights debate at the federal level or the international level to challenge neoliberal economic policies.

What [immigration-rights activists] are more focused on now is winning an amnesty, and even for someone within the immigrant-rights movement, winning a guest-worker program, and it's not so much trying to get the wholesale reform or wholesale revolution that we need to take place. Hopefully this [civil disobedience] action goes in that direction of the human right to cross a border, but first and foremost there is the right to live where you were born, but that means having a well-paying job where you're at, or at least some way of sustaining yourself and your family. But unfortunately out there in the desert the reality I see on a daily basis is that people are dying, so I think this action is the best to not only save lives but also to put the morality back into the debate on immigration and hopefully from there we can begin more international cross-border organizing to get at the more large-scale economic injustices.

CIEPAC: What have the vigilantes along the border been up to recently? I haven't seen as much about them in the news recently. Also, could you bring us up to date on the wall that is being built by the US on the border? I recently saw in the newspaper about funding for the wall having been approved, although I thought that that aspect would be included in the legislation being debated in the US Congress.

RY: Right now there are no vigilantes out on the desert on the US-Mexico border because it's too hot for them. They really can't take the heat, so they do month-long operations in the months of April and October. So they'll be back out there in April. Last time I was out there in April 2007 they didn't have more than 20 people supporting them. Their numbers have really died down, mainly because of infighting, because of egos. They really haven't developed a good leader who can continually mobilize people who can go out to the border. A lot of infighting has really splintered off the groups so now they are small groups that go out occasionally.

And as far as the fence is concerned, the last time I was back home, in June 2007, I went out to the middle of the desert and the National Guard is out there building a wall. It's not something that will get publicity every day, you'll read that they're debating about building a wall; meanwhile they are just building the wall. And no one knows about it, it hasn't been on the front page of any newspaper. The debate is about whether or not to build the wall but the wall is just being built, probably still right now as we speak. The reason is that the building of the wall has already been approved with the previous immigration bill approved a couple of years ago. That was supposed to be the predecessor to getting some sort of amnesty and to appease the right by putting more militarization there. What immigrant-rights people said at the time is that it was a good thing that there wasn't any funding added to that bill, but it authorized the building of an additional 370 additional miles, but there was no money given to it. So all that needs to be done now is for a bureaucrat to assign money, and the building can go on, all 370 miles of it. So maybe that's what you've been seeing in the news, maybe they are publicizing that they're actually building the wall as I saw out there a month and a half ago. It was disgusting, I have the pictures of them putting the poles up and you can see how it's dividing the desert. The matting hadn't been put up yet but the poles were there. The beauty of the desert is being destroyed by this disgustingly archaic wall that's being put up there.

That's the reality and I think we are going to see more of that. There are rumors that pieces of immigration legislation are going to be reintroduced very soon that only deal with militarization, to further militarize the border, to make it harder for migrants to be in the United States, without any amnesty, without any guest-worker program, no positives, but with all the negatives. That's the atmosphere that we're dealing with in the United States, it's continually anti-immigrant and it keeps going farther and farther to the right and it's time to do something far to the left to hopefully push that debate closer back to the center and eventually to the left.

CIEPAC: I'd like to ask you about the NGO you are thinking about establishing. Can you give us any information at this early stage?

RY: Yes, it's called Movilidad Humana, Human Mobility, and the precept behind it is to work with the undocumented and Latino youth, starting in the States to make mobility a human right. So we'll be doing grassroots organizing, education and base building within the undocumented community to make sure that their voices are what's shaping the immigration debate and not full-time activists in Washington, D.C., or anywhere else. The idea I had for the organization really grew out of my volunteering at the migrant center in Agua Prieta, Sonora [across the border from Douglas, Arizona], where we were constantly having conversations trying with migrants to learn of their situation. I would ask them why do you break US immigration laws but you don't rob a bank or steal from somebody, since crossing would still be breaking the law if you are an economic refugee. And the answer 99.9% of the time was that people believe they have the human right to cross borders, and while they may be breaking the law of a nation-state, they morally are not doing anything wrong. Because they have the right to come across to find work. So in my mind, from my experience this is not something that I thought up in my sleep, but rather from going out and talking to migrants, and not thinking of myself as being a "voice" for migrants or a bullhorn for migrants, but more to open up the ears of other people to hear what migrants are already saying. But the ears of the privileged in the United States and in other parts of the world are just closed to what migrants have to say. They see migrants as someone who just cuts their grass, washes their dishes, makes their beds but they don't listen to their political voices and what they are saying about the world. So I think that this is the goal behind this non-profit organization: to say to the rest of the world "there is a solution out there, it has been developed and it came from the base, from the people who have the experience and who have lived through this. They may not have a college degree but they do have a degree in what it is to suffer and to analyze that suffering, so hopefully we can make inroads into making that a reality.