341 / 30,000 Political Aslyum

¨La tierra es de quien la trabaja¨ Emiliana Zapata

I spent the weekend in the community of Amatlan, with indigenous people that can trace their history back four thousand years. We did a home stay , so everyone divided into groups based on Spanish and desired intensity level (running water, etc). I was with Becca and Anne and we had no running water. In fact, we never saw water for anything. It was like camping, only with the strongest 72 year old woman I have ever met/secretly hope to be.

She is a single woman who knows what she believes in. We had a lot of different questions for her because Anne spent time in Africa by herself and Becca traveled/lived in South America. Anne asked about the Zapatistas, a now un-armed revolutionary movement currently being fought in Southern Mexico- more on this later - and she told us her opinion and how she protests. She chained herself to a tree once with other woman to protest a development. They also successfully fought off a golf course development with other communities because it would destroy the ecosystem and aquifer - water is life here.


Amatlan has a messy history of resistance. The community is in the base of a mountain chain like nothing I have ever seen before, I can only describe it as cliffs that form mountains. This community believes that everything has a soul, especially the mountains. So, you have to ask permission to take a picture and be aware of how many you take, and what you will use it for, such as deleting them. You are taking a pìece of that object each time you snap the lens.

During the revolution and the civil war, guerrillas used the mountains to hide in and fight from. We hiked Saturday morning, and were shown all the medicinal plants (the town is famous for them) and told how Amatlan has felt the affects of the revolution. They took back their land during the revolution, because it was stolen from them. Not only that, it was land that had been in their family for four thousand years! Their land is literally their life, it supplies food and water for them, without it they starve.

We ate our meals with the family, had biology class, and visited a medicinal clinic, the fertility stone, and a farmers union this weekend.

I personally enjoyed hearing how immigration, out-migration, has affected even this small indigenous community. Clemente, a guide on the tour, told us how he worked a year in Arizona. Yes, illegally.

I believe we cannot have an open border, we cannot let just anyone in, we need to try and stop the drugs and crime. But, allow me to give you some things to think about.

From 1980 to 1986, only 341 applicants out of THIRTY THOUSAND have gotten political asylum. And these people were seeking political asylum, not economic relief, because during this time they were fleeing wars fueled with blood money. Not a cut and dry war, but messy ones that blurred the lines between the military and civilians. One that left death squads to decide who was who.

I find it ironic that these people come here seeking basic human rights, life. Away from death squads, a violence that is saturating even the smallest of communitites. Completing a sick cycle - we help to push them out of their homes, and then fight back when the come to us seeking life.
Even the human rights workers are threatened, no one is safe: ¨while I was typing this testimony, an explosion went off in front of the building. One side of the office collapsed and several persons were wounded. I was frightened, confused, and hardly able to speak. There was rubble everywhere. Three unidentified dead bodies, covered with acid, had been thrown on top of the rubble. One top of the bodies, a note signed by the death squad stated, ¨this is going to happen to you all.¨That day I had to decide whether I was going to continue working in that office or not.¨Pedro, page 8 of Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad

So, I was able to learn about why people like Clemente leave and then left to think about how we treat them. Americans think they are dirty and stupid, but of course not lazy, because we see how many of the jobs they do for us. I wonder how many stories we leave untold by simply reducing these people down to a simple quest for money. It is so much more. Who knew that the worker in Arizona was an indigenous Mexican, who can heal with medicinal treatments, that have been handed down for thousands of years. When did we allow his wetback to blind us from his life, his struggle?

¨La tierra es de quien la trabaja/ the land belongs to those who work it¨Emiliano Zapata