Nicholas D. Natividad (Arizona State University, USA)
Erasing the Line in the Land: Transborder Communal Justice and the Human Rights of Migrants
Over the last decade governments throughout the Americas have implemented increased border security measures. The result has been one of the most egregious human rights violations toward migrant populations. It is estimated by the human rights organization Coalicion De Derechos Humanos that since 1995 more than 5,000 migrant deaths have occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border. In a recent study by the Population, Borders and Migration Issues Commission of the Mexican Congress 200 Central American migrants die each year in Mexico. Although undocumented migrants face brutal conditions in immigrant detention centers, abuse by military and police officials, intolerable weather conditions during crossing, vigilante killings, and rape and murder at the hands of human smugglers, the El Salvadorean government estimates that at least 50,000 Central Americans still attempted to migrate north between 1997 and 2005. However, a growing trend has occurred in communities situated in close proximity to national borders. Transborder coalitions have formed to assist migrant populations, resist government restrictions, and build coalitions across borders for purposes of defending the freedom of movement. This essay examines transborder communal justice by emphasizing claims by transnational coalitions that are based on the notion that transborder communities are cohesive units rather than divided entities. It explores the tension between national policies on immigration and border communities opposition to such policies. One such coalition formed on November 7, 2006 when 19 Indigenous Nations gathered on Tohono O’odham tribal land, which is split by the U.S.-Mexico borderline, for the first Indigenous Peoples’ Border Summit of the Americas. The Summit focused on strategies for indigenous peoples of border regions to defend their migratory rights in international human rights law. This paper aims to uncover the processes by which such coalitions throughout the Americas build their claims, conceptually and methodologically resist, and seek legal redress.
