On March 27th, a fire broke out in the migrant center of Ciudad Juarez, just south of the border with the United States. Mexico’s National Immigration Institute states that the facility was housing 68 migrants from Central and South America at the time, with at least 39 having been killed and two dozen injured. Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, reports that authorities of the center believe the fire was started by an inmate in protest after having learned he was being deported. Al Jazeera states it has been unable to independently verify these claims. Footage verified by Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez shows guards fleeing from the fire, leaving migrants locked in their cells. Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the incident. President Obrador has stated there will be an investigation, and that “there will be no impunity for those responsible.” The fire comes after weeks of rising tension between the migrants and guards of the facility, and a recent riot in another holding center in Tijuana. The incident has led to renewed calls from various organizations over the poor treatment of migrants in these centers.
The article that Al Jazeera published focuses on the far-reaching effects of the incident on families across Latin America. The article quotes various family members of the victims from Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Honduras. The author connects this to the general effects of migration on families, saying that their “pain and uncertainty… underscore[s] how the effects of migration ripple far beyond the individuals who embark on the perilous journey north, touching the lives of people across the region.” The article explains that most of those in the migrant center were headed to the United States for work, or to visit family. Bacilio Saravia intended to visit his children, and three friends from Honduras planned to work in the United States and send money back to their families. While the article is objective in presenting facts, the author’s tone is sympathetic to the frustration of the victims’ families. The author mentions two Venezuelan siblings trying to apply for asylum in the United States. After months of unsuccessful attempts at registering for an appointment on a smartphone app, one brother was detained by border security and later caught in the fire. Aside from the difficulties of legally entering the United States, the article also highlights the frustration with the center security guards. “Their concern is matched by anger from watching guards run away from growing flames and thickening smoke rapidly encapsulating migrants.” Additionally, families were further stressed by the lack of helpful communication from the government.
Vanessa Buschschlüter’s article in the BBC takes a different approach in covering the event. Rather than zoom out and capture the wide-reaching effects of the tragedy, she uses the death of one man, Orlando José Maldonado Pérez, to open a conversation on the immigration system. Buschschlüter takes quotes from Pérez’s family to allow the reader to understand him. “Orlando was keen to avoid any trouble, his sister Mileyvi told the BBC. His aim was to cross into the US legally to earn a living so he could provide his six-year-old son with a better life.” Buschschlüter paints the image of an honest, hard-working man who is caught in a flawed system. “Under Mexican law, anyone whose migration status is irregular can be detained. Orlando was taken to a centre run by Mexico’s Migration Institute just south of the bridge on the US-Mexico border.” She discusses the lack of communication from the Mexican government. Pérez’s sister had to reach out to various embassies to help identify his body, and the government would not tell her where his body was or the cause of his death. Pérez’s family was outraged by the security footage showing security guards leaving the migrants trapped. “He was robbed of his life, he couldn’t even fight for his life, he was locked up and left to die.” Overall, the BBC article discusses less of the circumstances around the fire than the Al Jazeera article, but makes a more emotion-driven argument to discuss the flaws of the immigration system.
The main difference between the two articles lies in their approach to criticizing the immigration system. Al Jazeera’s article zooms out and discusses the wide-spread suffering that came from the tragedy, and migration in general. In contrast, the BBC’s article zooms in, and uses the example of Orlando Pérez to open a discussion on the failures of the system. This is important because it displays the different ways you can bring sympathy and awareness to the victims of a tragedy such as this. Often, from the perspective of the public eye, we become focused on the number of people being killed or injured in an accident. It becomes a game of statistics. Here, the authors are intentional in bringing humanity to those who were killed and injured. They want the reader to understand that each migrant had a reason for travelling to the United States. Not only that, they want the reader to see that the migrants were humans, that they were not ill-intentioned. This is especially important after years of the Trump administration’s aggressive pushback and rhetoric against immigration and Latin American migrants.
This incident cannot be analyzed without considering class, race, and the effects of colonialism and American intervention in Latin America. As shown in both articles, the common motivations for migrants travelling to the United States are work and family. If we zoom out, we know that the reason so many come to the United States for work is, of course, its status as a world superpower and its higher standard of living in comparison to other countries. A Latin American migrant coming to the United States sees an opportunity to make money, prosper, and maybe even bring their family to them. The reason that Latin American countries cannot compete with the United States economically is because they were never allowed to. Following the end of colonialism, newly liberated nations struggled with tumultuous political climates and constant armed conflicts. When the time came to industrialize, Latin America was pigeon-holed into selling raw materials, and was never allowed to commercially develop on pace with the United States. Years later, the effects of this neo-colonialist system continue. They are especially evident on the axis of race and ethnicity. Indigenous people in Latin American countries continue to struggle, and are most often the ones who choose, or are forced to migrate.
Sources
Al Jazeera. “Across Latin America, Families Reel from Migrant Centre Fire.” Migration News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/30/across-latin-america-families-reel-from-migrant-centre-fire
Al Jazeera. “Deadly Migrant Centre Fire in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: What We Know.” Migration News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 29 Mar. 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/29/deadly-migrant-centre-fire-in-ciudad-juarez-mexico
Buschschlülter, Vanessa. “Mexico Migrant Centre Fire: ‘They Didn’t Deserve to Die This Way’.” BBC News, BBC, 3 Apr. 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65148023