Journey without End

Rob Curran, Andrew Nelson

Description

Journey without End chronicles the years-long journey of "extracontinentales"—African and South Asian migrants moving through Latin America toward the United States. Based on five years of collaborative research between a journalist and an anthropologist, this book makes an engrossing, sometimes surreal, narrative-driven critique of how state-level immigration policy fails extracontinental migrants.

The book begins with Kidane, an Eritrean migrant who has left his pregnant wife behind to make the four-year trip to North America; it then picks up the natural disaster–riddled voyage of Roshan and Kamala Dhakal from Nepal to Ecuador; and it continues to the trials of Cameroonian exile Jane Mtebe, who becomes trapped in a bizarre beachside resort town on the edge of the Darién Gap—the gateway from South to Central America.

Journey without End follows these migrants as their fitful voyages put them in a semi-permanent state of legal and existential liminality. Mercurial policy creates profit opportunities that transform migration bottlenecks—Quito's tourist district, a Colombian beachside resort, Panama's Darién Gap, and a Mexican border town—into spontaneous migration-oriented spaces rife with racial, gender, and class exploitation. Throughout this struggle, migrant solidarity allows for occasional glimpses of subaltern cosmopolitanism and the possibility of mobile futures.
On the night of Monday, July 9, 2018, a local smuggler made his second attempt at the crossing with Kidane and about ten other Eritreans—in Colombia, smugglers often divide the migrants by nationality to make communication easier. Kidane and his compatriots were wearing life jackets of the bright orange variety that slip over the head. As the small motorboat entered the open Caribbean, the waves picked up. Near Capurganá, several hours northwest of Turbo, wave crests are often ten feet high. The boats take the waves at speed; for the passenger, it feels like an extreme fairground ride, with a rush to the stomach as the boat climbs the face of the wave, then the sensation of floating in air as it reaches the peak, followed by a plunge down to a hard landing. Even the ferry-sized high-horsepower boat that carries the tourists arrives drenched in spray. On smaller boats—lanchas as they are called in Latin America—the engine’s roar often kicks up an octave from the strain of climbing the rolling hills. On the way back down, the engine often stutters as it tries to find purchase, and the passenger’s heart does the same.

When Kidane’s boat stopped, it was still some way short of the beach near the Capurganá harbor. The smuggler ordered his passengers to jump into the sea with their life jackets. Those who did not jump were pushed. They had to swim to shore, carrying backpacks with them.

Kidane, who can swim, remembers the boat stopping about ten yards short of the beach. Some of the non-swimmers on the boat described it, with horror, as being more like fifty yards.

By the time we met Kidane and his group the next day, he and his compatriots, only a handful of whom he had known before Turbo, were drying their clothes on the downstairs railings of a safe house in Capurganá. They were sitting together in an exterior covered porch near the railings, talking over the near disaster of the previous night. The hotel was not that different to the lodges where European and American twentysomethings were vacationing nearby: a brightly painted clapboard building overlooking a sheltered fishing dock. It was a Caribbean idyll. But the dripping clothes provided a glimpse of an experience as far removed from the tourists’ Capurganá as possible. Kidane and his friends were on a months-long journey but only carried enough clothes between the eleven of them to cover twenty feet of railings.
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Leaving Business
Chapter 2: Entering the Americas: Into the Paws of the Coyotes
Chapter 3: Quito's Little India
Chapter 4: Self-Catering on the Ecuador-Colombia Border
Chapter 5: Gulf of Urabá: The Two Faces of Paradise
Chapter 6: The Darién: The Land of the Dead
Chapter 7: Central America: Controlled Flow
Chapter 8: The Waiting Cell of Tapachula
Chapter 9: The Road Trip to End All Road Trips
Chapter 10: "Welcome to America": Zero Tolerance in the Immigration Gulags
Conclusion: Destination Liminal
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• México
• Canadá
• South Asia
• Eritrea
• Borders of the United States
• Border Patrol
• Trump
• East Africa
• Nepal
• Emigration
• West Africa
• United States Department of Homeland Security
• Panama
• Latin America
• Anthropology
• United States Border Patrol
• Canada
• Mexico
• Ecuador
• Colombia
• Immigration
• Guimbarde (instrument)

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826504876
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

JOURNEY WITHOUT END
Journey without End
Migration from the Global South through the Americas
ROB CURRAN AND ANDREW NELSON
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
Nashville, Tennessee
Copyright 2022 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First printing 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Curran, Rob, 1975– author. | Nelson, Andrew (Lecturer of anthropology), author.
Title: Journey without end : migration from the Global South through the Americas / Rob Curran and Andrew Nelson.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Vanderbilt University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022010477 (print) | LCCN 2022010478 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826504869 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780826504852 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826504876 (epub) | ISBN 9780826504883 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Immigrants—United States. | Immigrants—Latin America. | Immigrants—Developing countries. | United States—Emigration and immigration. | Latin America—Emigration and immigration. | Developing countries—Emigration and immigration.
Classification: LCC E184.A1 C875 2022 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 305.9/069120973—dc23/eng/20220826
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010477
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010478
Cover photo: The open road in Peru's southern desert.
Courtesy of Rob Curran.
For Catherine “Creina” Curran and Don Nelson
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
1. The Leaving Business
2. Entering the Americas: Into the Paws of the Coyotes
3. Quito’s Little India
4. Self-Catering on the Ecuador-Colombia Border
5. Gulf of Urabá: The Two Faces of Paradise
6. The Darién: The Land of the Dead
7. Central America: Controlled Flow
8. The Waiting Cell of Tapachula
9. The Road Trip to End All Road Trips
10. “Welcome to America”: Zero Tolerance in the Immigration Gulags
CONCLUSION. Destination Liminal
EPILOGUE
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have materialized if it weren’t for the support and encouragement of many.
One of the greatest joys of working on a multi-year and multi-country project is the opportunity to meet so many people along the way. Todd and Lorena Johnson not only gave us a place to stay in Quito, but also served as our guides to the city. It was a serendipitous encounter to meet the American hotel owner in Capurganá, who offered us a perfect base for our research and formative advice. It was a similarly fortuitous twist of fate that led us to Mama Africa’s restaurant during our first hour in Tapachula, where we received the global hospitality of Etelvina Hernández López.
To the many migrants we met in Quito, Capurganá, and Tapachula, words cannot sufficiently express our appreciation for their willingness to share their experiences with us. We can only hope that this book expresses some shred of truth to their amazing stories, and contributes to the growing call for the United States, among other countries, to examine the brutality caused by their immigration policies. To Kidane Okubay, in particular, we are heavily indebted for his fearless and selfless willingness to tell his story.
We would like to thank all the photo subjects who appear in the book for their permission to photograph them.
We could not have sustained this project were it not for the patronage of Elizabeth Souder, the long-time Points opinion-page editor of the Dallas Morning News . By publishing a series of articles over a number of years that would come to form the core of this book, she took great risks at a time when pro-immigrant perspectives were not popular. Ms. Souder’s faith in the project kept us going at times when our own foundered. Thanks also to Katie Zanecchia, who first gave us the idea that our project might make a good book.
Between trips to sites along the camino duro , we continued to learn about the journey thanks to the groundbreaking reporting and informative research of many journalists and scholars. In particular, we are indebted to the scholarship of Soledad Velasco Álvarez, Caitlin Fourratt, Elizabeth Nimmons, Juan Thomas Ordóñez, Nanneke Winters, Caitlyn Yates, and Jonathan Echeverri Zuluaga. While we had hoped to meet in-person for a workshop initially planned for April 2020, the virtual conference of August 2020 provided a welcomed exchange of ideas.
Andy would like to thank his colleagues at UNT. He is particularly grateful for the generous support of the Department of Anthropology, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and the Office of Faculty Success. Special thanks are due to family—to Carol Nelson-Rea, Sara Nelson, and Scott Nelson for inspiring a desire to travel; to Abraham and Blanca Arellano for providing a loving second home in Miami; and finally, to Melissa and Mateo, the loves of his life.
Rob would like to thank his wife, Sara Fanning, and all the Currans, Moores, and Fannings for their love and support throughout the research and writing process.
INTRODUCTION
Exile is when you live in one place and dream in another. Exile is a dream of going back home. In exile, one is possessed by longing, no matter where the exile takes place. The whole world becomes a prison. Neither Calypso’s beauty and passionate love nor a pleasant life on her island could relieve Odysseus’s longing for Ithaca. A life in exile is like being condemned in purgatory, a state between life and death, a limbo between here and there.
—SHAHRAM KHOSRAVI, “Illegal” Traveller , 2010
It costs about $30 to ride the tourist boat from the Colombian port of Turbo to Capurganá, on the border with Panama. For migrants like Kidane Okubay, who do not have the documents to take the tourist boat, it costs about $550 to take the same ride in the middle of the night, as part of a trans-rainforest smugglers’ package. With this boat ride across the heaving Caribbean begins the most treacherous leg of a death-defying journey.
The Gulf of Urabá is shaped like a fishing hook with Turbo on the up-swoop near the tip and Capurganá on the opposite side, near the tie-off. The boats cut through the diagonal, beginning in the brown silty headwaters of the Atrato River and the rolling sapphire Caribbean. For migrants, it’s a rough crossing in an open-topped skiff with an outboard motor, a boat more suitable to carry a couple of fishermen than a dozen passengers, huddled with their luggage. The smuggler’s boat offers no refunds when the trip is not completed, although there is an understanding that migrants are entitled to a second attempt if the first fails, as Kidane discovered.
On the night of Monday, July 9, 2018, a local smuggler made his second attempt at the crossing with Kidane and about ten other Eritreans—in Colombia, smugglers often divide the migrants by nationality to make communication easier. Kidane and his compatriots were wearing life jackets of the bright orange variety that slip over the head. As the small motorboat entered the open Caribbean, the waves picked up. Near Capurganá, several hours northwest of Turbo, wave crests are often ten feet high. The boats take the waves at speed; for the passenger, it feels like an extreme fairground ride, with a rush to the stomach as the boat climbs the face of the wave, then the sensation of floating in air as it reaches the peak, followed by a plunge down to a hard landing. Even the ferry-sized high-horsepower boat that carries the tourists arrives drenched in spray. On smaller boats— lanchas as they are called in Latin America—the engine’s roar often kicks up an octave from the strain of climbing the rolling hills. On the way back down, the engine often stutters as it tries to find purchase, and the passenger’s heart does the same.
When Kidane’s boat stopped, it was still some way short of the beach near the Capurganá harbor. The smuggler ordered his passengers to jump into the sea with their life jackets. Those who did not jump were pushed. They had to swim to shore, carrying backpacks with them.
Kidane, who can swim, remembers the boat stopping about ten yards short of the beach. Some of the non-swimmers on the boat described it, with horror, as being more like fifty yards.
By the time we met Kidane and his group the next day, he and his compatriots, only a handful of whom he had known before Turbo, were drying their clothes on the downstairs railings of a safe house in Capurganá. They were sitting together in an exterior covered porch near the railings, talking over the near disaster of the previous night. The hotel was not that different to the lodges where European and American twentysomethings were vacationing nearby: a brightly painted clapboard building overlooking a sheltered fishing dock. It was a Caribbean idyll. But the dripping clothes provided a glimpse of an experience as far removed from the tourists’ Capurganá as possible. Kidane and his friends were on a months-long journey but only carried enough clothes between the eleven of them to cover twenty feet of railings.
We had been staying at a neighboring hotel, when the hotelier, who knew we had come to Capurganá to interview migrants, told us about a group of Eritreans recently arrived next door. We addressed the group across the hotel railing, introducing ourselves as a journalist and an anthropologist. We told them we were writing about the journey migrants from all over the world were taking to the US. This prompted a somewhat tetchy debate among the group as to whether they should even talk to us. In the end, about half the group withdrew to talk among themselves around the picnic tables in the common area. A handful, including Kidane and others, came forward to talk. We listened and tried to transcribe, leaning against the top of the railings at times as we scribbled furiously. One pen had to be tossed back into the waterproof zip bag after the ink went faint. We didn’t want to miss anything. We divided micro-interview duties. Kidane waited patiently while we interrup