By Kovie Biakolo The Nation
Immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean who make the dangerous trek across the Americas to the US face racist policies and practices everywhere they go.
Julliana Essengue arrived in Tapachula, Mexico, from São Paulo, Brazil, in March 2020. She was broke but determined to reach the United States. After nearly two months traversing rain forests, borders, and rivers by bus, car, boat, and foot, she needed money. At first, Essengue and her travel companions squatted. “We slept on the floor for two weeks in a hallway,” she told me. “There were Africans, Haitians—everybody was sleeping on the floor.”
In Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, the United States operates what is effectively an open-air immigration prison by forcing migrants to wait to be granted refugee status in Mexico. When Essengue presented her documents to Mexican immigration officials, the conditions were grim. “Some people, they were sleeping in front of the immigration [building] in tents,” she said, “because they did not have money to rent a house.”
Essengue began working on a mango plantation, where she collected and selected fruit to be packaged and sent to the United States. She called it “horrible,” shaking her head as the memories returned. In addition to the intense sun, she faced discrimination in pay; Black workers like her would get less. “They’ll tell you that they will pay you this, and when the time reaches to pay, they will not pay you the amount,” she said.
