Thinking About Why People Flee Persecution in Latin America To Come to America / Immigration #2)

Tonight I attended an event at my church which could well have served as a prequel or sequel to Wednesday night's event, protesting the for-profit family detention center near Hutto, where 27 women started a hungry strike last night. (Which, reportedly, a prison spokesman told the media today is "just a rumor")  

Tonight we watched the 1 1/2 hour film “Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley” detailing the 2009 coup in Honduras. It is a sobering, engaging, disturbing documentary depicting how some families in Honduras were/are getting regularly screwed out of not just jobs but land and opportunities not to mention things like health care. Not to mention elections that are fraudulent and those who raise questions about the government being found murdered.  

There were comments, and questions answered, after the film by María Luisa Rosal, a Guatemalan-American whose family sought political asylum in the U.S. after her father was disappeared during the worst intensification of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala during the 80s.  

These days she is a field organizer for the School of Americas Watch, using her firsthand knowledge and Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and Masters Degree in Human Rights and Democratization in Latin Amercia and the Caribbean from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  

Some of the key leaders destroying and disrupting life in both Guatemala and the Hondursas were products of the long controversial School of the Americas.  

It was while she was talking that something clicked that made this more than just two nights in a row of social action work for me. It was when she began talking about the increased level of immigration efforts last summer not just from Mexico but from people of Central American nations like, yes, Guatemala and the Honduras.  

That's when I clicked that in a way that I had gone, essentially, full circle. She explained about the increasing numbers of not just families trying to immigrate from Central America to America but a hike of unaccompanied minors coming across the border.  

And where are some of those folks being caught being put?  

Well, some of the women have been placed, without bond and with processing often taking longer than one year, in the very detention center I joined Grassroots Leadership and others in protesting last night.  

Indeed, the 27 women risking retribution by going on the hunger strike are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil and Europe.  

And if the families had kids they may well be placed in a for-profit family detention center near Dilley, Texas, where Grassroots Leadership and other groups helped organize a protest For that one 600 people marched together... and it made headlines nationwide and offered hope and inspiration for many.  

So, yes, I'm not sure it was planned that way but the events of Wednesday and Thursday were like connecting jigsaw puzzles Sometimes when you read the news it's hard to see how one story connects to another. Not this time.