The Right to Stay Home — Derecho de no Migrar
by David Bacon
JUXTLAHUACA, OAXACA, MEXICO -– For almost half a century, migration has been the main fact of social life in hundreds of indigenous towns spread through the hills of Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s poorest states. That’s made the conditions and rights of migrants the central concern for communities like Santiago de Juxtlahuaca.
Today the right to travel to seek work is a matter of survival. But this June in Juxtlahuaca, in the heart of Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, dozens of farmers left their fields, and women weavers their looms, to talk about another right, the right to stay home.
In the town’s community center two hundred Mixtec, Zapotec and Triqui farmers, and a handful of their relatives working in the U.S., made impassioned speeches asserting this right at the triannual assembly of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB). Hot debates ended in numerous votes. The voices of mothers and fathers arguing over the future of their children, echoed from the cinderblock walls of the cavernous hall.
In Spanish, Mixteco and Triqui, people repeated one phrase over and over: the derecho de no migrar – the right to not migrate. Asserting this right challenges not just inequality and exploitation facing migrants, but the very reasons why people have to migrate to begin with. Indigenous communities are pointing to the need for social change.
El Tequio Junio - Julio de 2008
Contenido
SANTIAGO DE JUXTLAHUACA, Oaxaca, Mexico — The assembly of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB in its Spanish initials) met in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, one of the poorest areas in Mexico, on May 31. A large percentage of the indigenous population of Oaxaca and other states has left to work in northern Mexico and in the United States.