Front Burner - Travelling with the migrant caravan

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

A caravan of about 4,000 migrants is heading north through Mexico. Their journey has become heavily politicized. CBC's senior correspondent Susan Ormiston describes what she's seen during her travels with the migrants.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Right now, about 4,000 people are heading north through Mexico.

In the scorching heat, on foot for long stretches, many of them having fled Honduras and Guatemala. And this caravan, the caravan, is being described in such wildly different ways. To some, it's people on the run from danger or poverty, looking for a better life. To others, like the U.S. president, it's an invasion. Well, today we'll try and sort that out by establishing the facts on the ground. Who's on this caravan? How does it work? What dangers and opposition does it face? And we'll do that by talking to my colleague Susan Ormiston. She's been traveling alongside the migrants since Tuesday. This is not like a caravan of the past. It's bigger than the ones that we've observed in the past.

And we all know it's at a politically critical time for America. That's coming up on FrontBurner. I'm Susan Ormiston. I'm a senior correspondent at CBC News. And I'm here in southern Mexico traveling with this caravan of people, of migrants, who are wending their way very slowly through southern Mexico, trying to get north. Susan, thank you so much for talking with us today and making the time. I know you've been with the caravan for three days now. So

where are you right now? Yeah, it's an unusual place. We came to a place called Mateus Romero, which is in southern Mexico. We've been following the caravan on their journey all day today and they're just arriving and so are we. So I wish you could see me now. I'm sitting in the back of a car repair shop in an old rusted out rocker in the shade, just somewhere I could be quiet and talk to you about this amazing odyssey. What does it look like there? What's the weather like? How does it feel? What does it look like there? What's the weather like? How does it feel? Well, right now, just across the highway, there are literally thousands of migrants pouring in in small groups on the back of tractor trailers, walking with strollers. They're pouring into a large playing field, just like we would see back at home.

And they're pounding stakes into the ground to set up their small tarplins, which will be their place to sleep for the night. It's not a huge playing field, so it will be absolutely jammed when everybody manages to get here. But it will take hours more for people to come. It's a long walk and it's up and down hills and it's very, very hot. Do you have a sense, I know at its height, the caravan had about 7,000 people in it. Do we have a sense of the scope of it right now? When we arrived about three days ago, there was some kind of a police estimate back in Hushitan and they said it was about 4,500. Now there have been some

defections if you will, people going back home, people agreeing to stay in Mexico and try to get status here but I would say a fair number is around 4,000. I'm hoping that you can give me a sense of how this caravan works. I keep seeing images of it on the television, and I would love to get a sense of how it's working logistically. Yeah, you can hear them pounding away at a car over there. I'm sorry about that. I'm not going to stop their work. There's so little work here as it is.

How it's organized is one of the most fascinating questions about this caravan and it's one of the biggest mysteries too because I can't get a really firm answer. There's really no organization but it works. They do have clear goals that gather them together and make them go together. What I have observed is that it's very organic that in spite of what you might expect thousands of people are motivated to keep this caravan going and to provide some safety for the many families that are here so they self police so a scuffle broke up last weekend on a Saturday somebody accused somebody of something the details really don't matter but as soon as it became evident

a lot of the leaders in the group just stepped in and tried to douse the conflict because for two reasons. One, they're fleeing unsafe conditions, you know, lack of security in their own homes. And they need to know that they're safer on this journey. The other reason is that they also want to dispel the myth that this is an unruly mob, that these are invaders, you know, rushing the gates. Right. I want to get back to some of the images or rhetoric around the caravan. But first, can we elaborate a little bit on sort of what a day looks like for this group. You mentioned before that they're sleeping in tents in a field today. Are they often sleeping together?

Almost always. The whole purpose of traveling this way is safety in numbers. So they, and these days when they arrive at a town, the town knows they're coming. So they provided a public space for them somewhere. So in this case, it's a field. Last night, it was a bus shelter, a large bus shelter in an open field controlled by the city. There's always light. There's always noise. People are exhausted from walking eight hours.

So I've seen a lot of children and their parents, you know, hugging up together, sleeping spoon-like under these little blankets, trying to get as much sleep as they can. Is there any transportation available for them or are these families and children walking tens of kilometers every day in the heat? Well, that's an interesting question. Today, as an example, they thought they had, organizers tell us, 70 buses to transport the migrants here today. But late last night at midnight, we got information that the buses had been cancelled. They say it's because the Mexico government is forcing the hand of locals

who are trying to help them, saying don't help them, don't aid and assist them coming. We can't verify if that's true but that's what the organizers saying. So today they started out on foot but what you see along the road is really a hopscotch type of travel. They'll hail anything that's on wheels. Open flatbed trucks, trucks with market produce, trucks carrying cement. We had some fuel tankers with people riding on the top. We had a cement mixer with people literally leaping on the back of the cement mixer and holding on to grabbing anything they could and then it careening down the road. There is a kind of system that every once in a while along the way there's a stopping point and the women and children with strollers wait there in the shade hoping that some truck

will pass by that they can get a ride on and today that happened. You know we saw women and kids clambering into the back of trucks and throwing the strollers on top, really anything they can to avoid having to walk the entire distance. Are you finding that the people along the route, right now they're in Mexico, so the Mexican people are empathetic to this caravan? We saw lots of aid and assistance in Juchtitan, where we were for the last two days. They paused for a day and they got medical services, dental, food. A woman came with a crate of mandarins to get the children to have some vitamin C in their diet

after all the bread handouts that they're getting. And I saw that they are eating a lot of carbohydrates, so I bring some vitamin C. She was pretty interesting. She said, you know, we've seen migrations all through history. Modernity has made us see the reality now in a different way, but I think these things are normal. This is not abnormal. We think it is because today we have hard borders and we're meant to live within those borders. But really, this is a historical event that's happened many, many times. People moving to find a better life, to find better economic conditions. And really, Jamie, for most of the people here, that's what they're doing. So yes, they're getting a lot of help from just average

people, Mexicans, realizing that, as this woman told me, these aren't dangerous people, most of them, they're desperate people. And I just want to elaborate on that a little bit. When you're speaking to people and they're telling you why they're in this caravan, why they're taking this arduous journey, what are some of the stories that they're telling you? Well, why they're taking this arduous journey. What are some of the stories that they're telling you? Well, if there are 4,000 people in this caravan, there are 6,000 reasons why they're here. Everybody has a different story, but there are common themes.

One is that they're fleeing violence in their homes. They would go and knock on their houses and steal everything from what they got. They could not even leave a pair of shoes. And the other reason is that there's no employment that's steady, that has a future. Yeah, he was afraid because he would just only work two to three days per week,

and then the gang members would go and steal what they had. I guess I was struck the other day when I asked a father, why are you doing this? It's hard. And he just looked at me and he motioned to his children. He said, for them. To have his son and daughter. And I had this moment where I thought, oh my gosh, I have heard that so often from so many migrants from so many different places. The adults could probably stick it out at home, but they don't see any future for their kids.

So those are the types of people that are in this caravan. I think though it's naive to assume that there aren't other people here. I've also spoken to people who've admitted they've been deported sometimes several times, either from Mexico or for the United States. One man said he lived 17 years in the United States. He was deported. He couldn't get a green card and he's trying to go back in. Donald Trump, he's painting a starkly different picture of this caravan than what I'm hearing from you, that it's full of thugs and gang members and that they are essentially invading the border. Because many of those people are criminals and they want to come into our

country. And it's not happening on my watch. It's not going to happen. Can we parse out a little bit more how accurate or not accurate some of this rhetoric is? I think what isn't accurate is that the caravan is mostly made up of criminals and thugs. That's simply not true from what I have observed. There are many more families than I ever imagined and many more kids and toddlers. On the other hand there's no way that I can say reliably that there aren't thugs or criminals within the cover of this caravan. It would be a natural way for them to try to move further north. So I think in fairness to the US president there could be criminal elements within this group, if only for the reason that if they did want to leave the crime in Central America, they could be injured or killed if they did that.

So they're trying to get out, or they're trying to get to America to continue with their criminal ways. I think possibly that is part of the caravan, but I can't say I've seen evidence of it. Trump is now saying that he's going to send up to 10,000 to 15,000 troops to the border. That first number was stunning. A reminder, we have 14,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan. The president is talking about those level of numbers down at the U.S.-Mexico border. Are the people that you're talking to there, do they seem concerned about this? Do they know about what could be waiting for them? Yes, I think over the days we've been here, that message has been trickling down further.

More people seem to know that there's an active campaign against them getting to the border. And yes, many are worried. They don't like the sounds of that. And I think it's fair to say that they're now questioning their options. But where we're really seeing the effect, Jamie, is in the public response, the government response to this caravan. At first, the Mexican government was a bit confused about how they dealt with it. They tried to push them back at the Guatemala border. They were overrun. They tried to stop them on several points along the road. And now if we're to believe some of the organizers, they're trying to prevent local governments from helping them with transportation. And why do you think that the Mexican government is responding like this?

I know that there have been other caravans in the past. There doesn't seem to have been such a strong response from the Mexican government in those cases. This is not like a caravan of the past. It's bigger than the ones that we've observed in the past. And we all know it's at a politically critical time for America. So there's been a heightened response on both sides. Mexico has stepped up.

They have helped stop a lot of the transportation means of these individuals in these caravans, forcing them walking. They have helped stop a lot of the transportation means of these individuals in these caravans, forcing them walking. They have helped us. I was just wondering if you could tell me about any of the people that you've met. Is there a specific person or family whose story has really moved you? There was a woman we found, Fatima, in a medical tent. She's 19 weeks pregnant. She's 23 years old with her third child. And because there's been so much walking, she's been on the road. The nurses were telling her that the baby had already turned head down and that she had to be careful. She was resolute,

as many of them are, that she would continue. But it has to be hard to be pregnant to walk like this. And don't forget, she has to take care of her children on the route. It does beg the question, why are these people still doing this? And I think that's a fair question, because it's hard to see where this is going. I think that is the question that a lot of people might have here. We know the president is very clear that he is not going to let these people into the United States. And so where does this go from here? I think people expect that the caravan will split up and people will sort of disappear either into Mexico or make their way back home, most of them. I'm hearing quite a few people now questioning the reality of many of

these people even getting close to the U.S. border. It's still maybe 1,300 kilometers from here, and they're barely making it each day, finding enough places to stop and rest. So the question is, how will this play out? There will be some who will catch a train or catch a ride or make their way up to the U.S., but it won't be anything like the 4,000 who started out. For some people, they'll see this as a success, that they stopped the illegal movement of people in their eyes. For others, they'll see this as a failure, not for the people who tried, but for a system that can't help them get what they want, which is a better life.

He's going to give it all for his son and daughter because that's all he has in his life and that's what he wants. This group is a small fraction of the 40,000 to 50,000 people a month that the U.S. Border Patrol apprehends at that border with Mexico. So it makes it even more unusual that this has become sort of the poster child of caravans in this politicized environment because it's just a small part of them. Susan, I want to thank you so much for this conversation. I hope that you can get a little bit of rest and best of luck in the next couple of days. I look forward to continuing to follow your coverage. Thanks, Jamie. A few hours after Susan and I spoke, Donald Trump went on television.

He announced that he's finalizing a plan to crack down on asylum seekers. The caravan was a centerpiece of his address. He defended his plan by saying, quote, This is totally legal. This is an invasion. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle. That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed our first week of Front Burner. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Elaine Chao,

Shannon Higgins, and Sylvia Thompson, with sound design by Derek Vanderwyk. The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McKay-Blocos. And I'm your host, Jamie Poisson. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog.

She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay girl gone. Available now.