The pandemic reminds us of our interdependence with Nicaragua
2020 Julio Costa Rica
Research into and debate over international migration shows more interest in migration from South to North than in South–South movements, especially...
Undocumented emigrants’ civil disobedience: Self-employment and informality
2019 Junio Centroamérica
Central American migrant caravans have become the media darling of population mobility. They showcase acts of defiance against an exclusionary system...
Imagine the other
2018 Marzo Internacional
There’s a recurring phantasmagoria that repeats itself so many times we end up turning our backs on it. It’s the army of Central American emigrants...
How the “Dreamers” turned into a movement with power
2017 Diciembre Centroamérica
On September 5, Donald Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In the blink of an eye, the word DACA, until then used...
Undocumented immigrants in the Trump era: Fears, resistance, strategies....and more
2017 Septiembre Centroamérica
Avianca announces its first call to board flight 582 to Dulles Airport in Washington. A legion of elderly Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan women...
Fear is the message of the first 100 days of Trump’s migration policies
2017 Junio Nicaragua
During his election campaign, Donald Trump said he would expel millions of undocumented immigrants and would complete the wall along the US-Mexican...
When women are forced to migrate...
2017 Marzo Centroamérica
One cannot generalize what forced migration means for women. Many leave because of tragic experiences, others for reasons of sheer survival. Courage...
Thousands of African migrants on our borders
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
Globalization is shaking up Central America. One evidence of that can be seen when we trace the spatial-temporal starting points of the growing numbers...
Donald Trump wants to destroy the heterogeneous State
2016 Junio Centroamérica
Waving the banner of xenophobia and stirring up hatred against Latino and other immigrants, Donald Trump has turned himself into a vote-harvesting machine...
Migrants: Disobedient in the market and citizens in consumption
2016 Febrero Centroamérica
The world of consumption has been assailed for both intellectual and moral reasons. It’s associated with a lack of wisdom and an abundance of vices....
The Mexico-US border: A very lucrative, inefficient business. Solid and liquid border vigilance (part 3)
2015 Julio Centroamérica
To enter the United States, Central American migrants must pass through one of the most patrolled regions on Earth. They’re confronted by an armed legion...
The American Dream’s anteroom is Mexico’s nightmare, Solid and liquid border vigilance, part 1
2015 Abril Centroamérica
The surveillance operations of the policies designed to repel immigrants have both “solid” and “liquid” expressions, often more theatrical than effective,...
To seek asylum or to go without papers? That is the question
2014 Septiembre Centroamérica
Many Central American migrants who recently crossed the Mexican-US border as well as those who have lived in the United States for months or even years...
Why so many immigrants? The cup ranneth over...
2014 Agosto Honduras
The data is irrefutable: an enormous wave of unaccompanied children from countries in Central America’s northern triangle has crossed the extensive Mexican...
Big and small fleeing from the geography of fear
2014 Julio Centroamérica
Central Americans in search of asylum: it sounds like a front-page newspaper headline from the eighties. The peace accords that the conflicting forces...
“Illegal” migration of Central Americans and Chinandegans
2014 Enero Centroamérica
Nicaraguans are the Latin Americans with the 12th greatest presence in the United States. They total 395,000, according to the latest Pew Hispanic Center...
What’s happening where the Central American migrants cross?
2013 Diciembre Centroamérica
Mexico’s southern border is an area Central Americans cross en route to the United States. It’s also used by Cubans, South Americans—especially Ecuadorans—and...
A portrait of young Ngäbes who migrate out of the comarca
2013 Junio Panamá
The Ngäbes are the largest ethnic group in Panama, comprising 59.3% of the Panamanian indigenous population. In a lot of writings they speak of the...
In migration’s “science kitchens”
2013 Mayo Centroamérica
Knowledge isn’t produced in the aseptic test tubes hawked by the torchbearers of scientific neutrality. The process is both burdened and enriched by...
Mothers without borders search for disappeared migrants
2013 Marzo Centroamérica
Teodora Ñaméndiz, one of the Nicaraguan mothers on the caravan, had not seen her son in 32 years. He left in 1980 and she had heard nothing from him...
Detainees and deportees: Xenophobia and dollars
2013 Enero Centroamérica
Undocumented migrants detained in the Lasalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, wear uniforms of three different colors, constituting a warning...
Immigration policies during the Obama administration
2012 Abril América Latina
The only point of consensus regarding the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 S 1348), a federal compromise bill touted as both smoothing the...
Tell me the house you live in, and I’ll tell you if you receive remittances
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
The prudish reaction to consumption—which has its origins in Roman stoicism, hermit-like asceticism and even, paradoxically, the accumulating desire...
Chinandega’s Navigation In the Sea of Globalization
2011 Abril Nicaragua
Chinandega used to be the City of Oranges. The expression has survived what turned out to be an ephemeral reality. Chinandega’s orange groves have...
The Latest Border Crisis: Bi-national Citizenship Revisited
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Río San Juan is the sinuous strait discovered with premeditation and treachery by Spanish conquerors dreaming of a broad turquoise band of water...
When the Youngest Emigrate
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaraguan emigration also has the face of adolescents and children: 24% of our total emigrants are under 18, according to the country’s 2005 Living...
Migrants: Submissive Victims or Engaging in Civil Disobedience?
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
Imagine a starch-collared World Bank official stroking his brush moustache and adjusting his Gucci tie while introducing a panel on export incentives...
I’m Here Because I Went to the USA
2010 Mayo Honduras
I first set out for the United States when I was 16. I had no idea how to get there. They hadn’t told me anything else, but I wanted to see whether...
A Look at the Gringo Wall
2010 Abril América Latina
In 1997, Tijuana artist Marcos Ramírez Erre placed a Trojan horse on the border between Tijuana and San Diego, just meters from the migration buildings....
Twelve Days on the Road to Rejection
2010 Marzo América Latina
On the run-up to Mardi Gras—the “Fat Tuesday” carnival the day before Lent—New Orleans Jesuit and lawyer Tom Greene organized an unusual workshop that...
A Passenger’s Version of Latin America’s Future
2009 Noviembre América Latina
I had two passports in my hands and wasn’t sure which I should to give to the immigration official, who seemed more interested in the size of the airplane...
Don’t Deported Migrants Have Human Rights?
2009 Septiembre Centroamérica
Every Friday a load of migrants is brought to the Honduran-Nicaraguan border post of Guasaule. These are the migrants that Mexico’s migration system...
The Darker Sides of a “Country of Immigrants”
2009 Mayo Internacional
The famous Statue of Liberty rises up on the island next to Ellis Island, the famous Island of Tears that filtered immigrants coming to the United States....
A History of US Deportation: Will to Exclude, License to Marginalize
2009 Abril Internacional
When the first European colonists reached what is now the United States of America, Ellis Island was just a 3.3-acre island at the mouth of the Hudson...
Reflections of a Nomad
2008 Diciembre Centroamérica
They say that those born beside the sea are destined to travel. I wasn’t born by the sea, but I am destined to travel. Perhaps because of my Romany...
Deportees Have no Papers or Rights, Only Borders
2008 Noviembre Centroamérica
When workers leave their municipality, departdepartment or province of birth for another in their same country where they have greater opportunities...
María: Mother, Wife, Indigenous Woman,Emigrant and Voluntary Returnee
2008 Octubre Centroamérica
We visited María in Xicalcal, a rural, almost urban village near the city of Zacualpa, located on a plain at the foot of the Chuacús mountain chain....
Posoltega Ten Years Later: Buried Then, Uprooted Now
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
Posoltega was emblematic of the effects of a natural disaster and of a decided and tenacious effort to rebuild. But it was also plagued by animosity...
Strawberry Fields and Undocumented Workers Forever?
2008 Junio América Latina
Salinas Valley was catapulted to universal fame by Nobel Prize winner in literature John Steinbeck, admirer of the original Californians, those who conserved...
Deportation from the USA: An “Illegal” Guatemalan’s Tale
2008 Junio Guatemala
Guatemala is witnessing a speeded- up deportation of its migrants living in the United States. A recent study by the Office of Human Rights Ombudsman...
Whose Money Is It Anyway?
2008 Abril Centroamérica
Remittances donÂ’t come vacuum packed and canÂ’t be isolated in a test tube. They are conditioned by a socio-political environment and come with a cultural...
Remittances Are Far More Than A Development Panacea
2008 Marzo Centroamérica
Pisto, plata, lapas, tucanes, tejas, tostones, güevo, chichimosca, palos, tucos, fichas, hojas de repollo, barbas, luz verde, reales, búfalos, daimes,...
Ticaraguans: Bi-national Identities on the Liquid Border
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
Feet run across the line. There’s no reason to feart heir murmur. What are they taking, what are they bringing? I don’t know. What’s important...
Reforms to the Migratory Law: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2007 Junio Costa Rica
Called a repressive, draconian law by Costa Rica’s President himself, the new Migration and Alien Affairs Law will be a year old as of August. In that...
Politics Comes to the “Third Space”
2006 Noviembre Costa Rica
Although it had rained a lot during the afternoon, as tends to happen in San José during October, it was a night for a concert. But this concert wasn’t...
AIDS and Migrants: A Perverse Association
2006 Octubre América Latina
The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has earned a prominent place among the cruelest scourges to afflict humanity. The bottom line of its global...
An Exodus, a Train, An Unreachable Horizon
2006 Julio Centroamérica
Arriaga is a town in Chiapas known for its astounding procession. In Arriaga you can watch the pilgrimage of the Central American people, live and direct....
The Ideological Bricks of the Anti-Immigrant Wall
2006 Julio Centroamérica
On August 6, 1890, a German immigrant named William Kemmler was the first person to be executed in the electric chair in the United States, at New York’s...
Nicaragua’s Indispensable Migrants and Costa Rica’s Unconscionable New Law
2006 Abril Costa Rica
Nicaraguan migration to Costa Rica is nothing new. It goes back at least a hundred years, with the numbers of migrants and their motives fluctuating...
“I’ve Been in El Salvador Without Being There”
2005 Noviembre Centroamérica
...
Our Constructed Image Of Central American Migrants
2005 Junio Centroamérica
Central America is exporting increasing numbers of emigrants. The intellectual production related to these migration flows and the vicissitudes of both...
Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants ...But No Migration Policies
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is very lazy about ratifying international agreements. If it were just a matter of signing, our Presidents would spring forward, pen at the...
La Carpio: Sensationalist Reporting and Clear Voices
2005 Enero Costa Rica
A sprawling community called La Carpio has sprung up northeast of San José’s central canton. It is home to some 23,000 people, about half of them impoverished...
“Pardon me, I haven’t come to make trouble”
2004 Mayo Costa Rica
On nearly 400 occasions over the past two and a half years, César Meléndez has lived and relived the role of ”El Nica” in a two-hour monologue performed...
Migrants: Prejudice, Myopic Vision and Apathetic Policies
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
A large number of sources feed and reproduce the collective view of migration, and particularly of migrants. Researchers, politicians, international...
Globalization and Development Seen from Below
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua cambia—Nicaragua’s changing—was President Arnoldo Alemán’s slogan during his five-year administration (January 1997-January 2002), and...
Are We Costa Ricans “Exceptional”?
2004 Enero Costa Rica
Relations between Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans in Costa Rica have developed like a three-act play. Act One: Some intellectuals postulate that immigration—especially...
Why Do They Go? Theories on the Migration Trend
2003 Julio Internacional
Many research studies have sought to reveal the characteristics of those who emigrate: whether they are better or worse prepared than those who stay...
A Central American in the USA: Reflections on “The American Dream”
2003 Abril Internacional
Mark Twain traveled Nicaragua’s Río San Juan in 1886, when he was 51, 10 years after publishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. All that remains...
Could the Community “Over There” Depolarize Politics “Over Here”?
2003 Marzo El Salvador
Although there has been no formal census, it is commonly accepted that 25% of the Salvadoran population lives abroad. It is similarly, accepted that...
How Dollar Remittances Are Changing a Village
2000 Mayo Centroamérica
US Embassy Uses Carrot On Corruption…After very specific criticisms of the government’s laxity in dealing with corruption, US Ambassador Oliver...
Mitch, Foreign Debt, Disasters, Emigrants And Remittances in Central America
1999 Marzo Centroamérica
The design of Central America's reconstruction is almost a foregone conclusion. So what kind of reconstruction is being proposed? “The Strategy for the...