I’ve been here, I’ve seen the pictures,’ Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan said to his audience at UCSD’s Institute of the Americas on Feb. 12. Sarukhan was discussing the cycle of booms and busts that has squeezed the middle class and increased the flow of illegal immigrants into San Diego from Tijuana during the past few decades.
‘Mexico needs to address its unwillingness and lack of capability to provide sustained economic growth at a rate that will bridge the asymmetry between Mexico and the U.S. and prevent 300,000 men and women from crossing the border every year,’ Sarukhan said. ‘Our loss is your gain. If we lose these talented men and women, we cannot sustain.’
However, migrants’ problems persist on the northern side of the border. Working to alleviate migrants’ health concerns, the Border Health Project, a UCSD School of Medicine program, provides free and confidential medical assistance to those working as farmhands in San Diego. In partnership with the project, Chicanos/Latinos for Community Medicine, a student organization, recruits Spanish-speaking translators and puts together care packages for migrants.
‘[Migrants’] living conditions [in Carmel Valley] are horrible, they live pretty much out in the wilderness in cardboard houses and little tents,’ Revelle College senior and CCM President Vania Frias said. ‘They don’t have access to bathrooms or clean water and that’s why they’re getting so sick. Their conditions are so unsanitary, but they’re afraid to seek help because they might get deported back to Mexico.’
The project holds semi-monthly clinics at the intersection of Carmel Valley Road and Interstate Highway 56, with the help of CCM and the Latinos Medical Student Association, to diagnose and cure basic injuries and diseases among migrants in the area. Project President Hyuma Leland said most of these migrants are too afraid go to a regular clinic or receive help where they live.
‘We have met them [at their homes] in the past and it’s kind of threatening,’ Leland said. ‘They generally live in canyons in Carmel Valley. Their neighbors sometimes call on them and they have their camps raided a lot. We give them care packets, like in early December we gave out tarps because of the rain.’
The project treats repetitive stress injuries, acute muscle pains and fungal infections, in addition to offering nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines. Anything more severe is referred to UCSD’s free clinics. Often, major diseases such as diabetes have gone unchecked, Leland said.
The project and its partners are doing as much as possible to alleviate the pressures immigrants are feeling in San Diego, bu
t according to Sarukhan, long-term solutions are still lacking. The failure to reform immigration has helped it remain a highly divisive issue, one unlikely to be resolved soon considering the problems facing the United States today, he said.
‘Latin America is not a priority,’ Sarukhan said. ‘We should not be surprised it’s not. With a deepening and widening recession in the U.S. and with the double helix of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a potentially nuclear Iran and with talks in the Middle East, it is not surprising Latin America will not be on the radar screen.’
As the principle orchestrator of President Barack Obama’s meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calder’oacute;n ‘mdash; Obama’s first with a foreign head of state ‘mdash; Sarukhan is looking forward to a new paradigm in the Obama administration. Nevertheless, Sarukhan acknowledged the many challenges in sparking bilateral relations, such as strengthening border communities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. ‘ This quarter, one of Sixth College’s Culture Arts and Technology classes has been traveling to Tijuana, observing living conditions, diversity and art in the crowded border town.
‘Tijuana is a cultural transition place, not so much a part of Mexico, but a huge merger of cultures,’ Sixth College Practicum Director Ebony Williams said. ‘We’ll be looking at how art is dealing with the tension. There are multiple cultures there that might not understand each other.’
Students are visiting Tijuana, an area recently characterized by surging violence and fear as a result of the newly constructed border fence and drug trafficking, to better understand the messy corners of immigration and border life, professor Patricia Montoya said.
‘There is fear and that influences the way the city works,’ Montoya said. ‘That to me is an indicator of consequence in the everyday life: drugs, random shoot-outs. Nobody knows who these people are that commit the violence.’
A rampant rise in drug trafficking and violence has become a major problem across the entire Mexican border and Sarukhan said U.S. and Mexican authorities must cooperate to find a solution.
Sarukhan said he remains optimistic that issues of trade, immigration and drug trafficking will be resolved, and is eager to work with the Obama administration.
‘And in everything, Mexico is willing to help,’ Sarukhan said.
Readers can contact Henry Becker at [email protected].