MEXICO .- As soon as dawn breaks, Crino Jiménez, a former migrant from 77 years, take a bath and he dresses to flee his home in the town of Las Animas. He would like to have a coffee, have lunch and work on the farmland that he has next to his house, where he planted corn; instead, he has to go sit on a bench in Nochistlán, the municipal seat.
“I can’t be in town, it disgusts me,” he says in an interview with this daily.
In Las Animas the sewer pipes broke half a year ago. Since then the inhabitants of this town located south of the In the state of Zacatecas, they see a torrent of black water that runs from the drains down the hill, sprinkled with feces.
The sewer aroma is so intense that you can’t even eat it, your head hurts, you feel sick, you want to vomit. It invades the whole environment, enters houses and businesses, sneaks through the nose and few resist the whiff that causes a kind of jolt in the brain, as if they inhaled poison.
So most of the settlers, many of them former migrants who fulfilled their dreams of returning to their place of origin, prefer to set foot in the dust towards neighboring populations. Crino Jiménez goes to Nochistlán and hopes that “one of these days” the municipal presidency will fix it.
A few days ago, while resting on a bench in the municipal garden, he saw pass to Martha Ofelia Jiménez, activist of the Association of Nightclubs in Los Angeles, with a letter to deliver to the municipal president Antonio Durán.
She was hurried and upset. The maintenance of the sewage system is the responsibility of the municipality, although it was the idea of the migrants and they have sponsored part of the work through the defunct 3 × 1 program.
In the document, Martha Ofelia Jiméez, as a representative of one of the Las Animas hometown clubs, explained the community’s situation in a formal way, although the mayor was aware of it through informal talks.
More words, fewer words, he reiterated that the drain was thundered and now the Animeños live among the filth. Martha Ofelia Jiménez knows this because she constantly visits Las Animas from Los Angeles since her parents moved. They prefer to be in Zacatecas even though they have documents to live in California.
The affection for the Roots inherited it to their children like many other migrants to theirs who created the federations and clubs that from the United States that sponsored public works in Mexico until President Andrés Manuel López Obrador left the 3X1 program without funds.
To lift Las Animas out of poverty and marginalization, migrants in Los Angeles organized charreadas and dances and gave donations to collect the 25% of the budget required a public work according to 3 × 1.
This program responded to the initiative of the diaspora forcing the federation, the state and the municipalities to give the same amount of money for each peso that the natives contributed. With this, the settlers in Mexico and the migrants decided what to give priority to.
Generally It was for infrastructure such as paving streets and highways, water purification, rehabilitation of public spaces …
The animeños did that and more: they gave scholarships to boys and thus trained doctors, engineers, dentists and lawyers so that they would not have to emigrate for money and risk dying at the border.
“If we had not done all that, the migrant peoples would be like the beginning of the 20th century ”, says Martha Ofelia about the times of the Revolution. “And that is where we are going back.”
Before the investments of the migrants, Las Animas had a large septic tank that betrayed their presence from miles around.
In 1997, the activist was visiting her home in Las Animas when 20 women covered with red cloths knocked on the door. Martha Ofelia opened more out of fear than courtesy and her surprise was greater when she learned the cause of the break-in: they wanted help to stop the plague that was coming out of the septic tank and it caused skin diseases.
“I told them that I would do everything possible for me,” says Martha Ofelia Jiménez.
The symbols
What happens in Las Animas is an emblem of the neglect suffered by the works that were built in the 3 × 1 program. Efrain Jiménez, coordinator of the Council of Federations Zacatecanas in the United States tells that once the work sponsored by migrants was delivered to the municipalities or the state to its maintenance, began to deteriorate.
“The three levels of government have been guilty of the fact that the work of migrants is gradually falling,” he explains. “Sometimes the state road board does not maintain the roads or the National Water Commission abandons the water treatment plants or the municipality does not fix the drainage and so on.”
The disdain of the authorities has been such that some roads, such as the one that connects Las Animas with La Villita, were once again unpaved as in the old days because the asphalt gradually became detached and, torn to pieces, prevented the passage to the farmland despite the fact that the countryside is the main activity of this population.
This was witnessed by Rigoberto Jiménez , of 86 years, who returned to live in Las Animas after a lifetime of hard work in Estado s United, to be disappointed in their disarranged people: many immigrants dream of a dignified retirement in a dignified population with all services.
“ They let everything spoil what we build ”, he agreed in a telephone interview.
The message was transmitted by his daughter to the state governor, Alejandro Tello, when he went to Nochistlán to see the coronation of the queen of a celebration. Martha Ofelia dodged the surveillance of the state president and told him the details.
– Vine to a party, not to listen to the problems — he answered.
It is unknown if they have been negligent or have had other priorities or if the federation has turned its back budget to the state for being in command of an opposition party.
“No we are certain why they are abandoning the works built by migrants “, concludes Efraín Jiménez.
A study by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness explained that municipalities and states in Mexico provide the right environment for corruption in public works due to their fragile institutions that have unprofessionalized and diverse personnel s operational deficiencies. In addition, there are limited practices of opening and generating information on management and everything results in multiple cases of local corruption.
“This situation has dramatically affected the growth of Mexico and the quality of life of the population. ”
Crino Jiménez gives an account of it sitting on a bench with his wife. He hopes that the drainage that spilled on his street as a symbol of the country’s ills will be repaired because right now he cannot use his own kitchen or to eat, how to prepare food with the plague of Las Animas?
You can only return at night, when the sun that beats down in Zacatecas lowers its intensity and relaxes the commotion of aromas from the feces. So take your car and retrace your way like many others. “It’s totally inhuman and unfair,” thinks Martha Ofelia aboard a heartbroken van. So far from the United States where she is also a citizen!
System problems
The cancellation of the 3 × 1 Program killed hopes that some of this money could be used for rehabilitation because, although in Zacatecas the state government kept its promise to finance projects, it is not the same without federal resources . In addition, the state agreement with the migrants is of good will and today it depends on the money that the state and the spirit of the government in turn count on.
Without an endorsement in the law, it could be that the policies that David Monreal will bring, the incoming governor, from the Morena Party, is hostile to the diaspora.
The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the migrants aware through various officials of the Ministry of Welfare that canceled the program considering that it was part of a corruption gear and, instead of correcting it, making it more transparent or putting locks on it, it simply removed it from the budget in 1997.
A year earlier, although money was given to 3 × 1, the federation did diverted to attend to Central American migration with a technological trap: it prevented club and federation projects from uploading to the platforms and thus they fell into a sub-exercise that was left for use at the discretion of AMLO.
Two ways?
They say that the comparisons are not healthy. But for a community that has one foot in Mexico and another in the United States, it is impossible not to do them. Half of the Zacatecan population lives in the north (especially in Los Angeles and its surroundings) and the other in the south of the Rio Grande River and is constantly stamped with two diametrically opposed systems.
In one, the heart beats and in the other, the head.
Therefore, those who can, try to spend part of their time on both sides and have tried to build by starting double. Migrant clubs supported, for example, the construction of the Comprehensive Health and Rehabilitation Unit in the municipality of Nochistlán (to which Las Animas belongs) with money from their collections for program 3 × 1.
The work was inaugurated with great fanfare, the authorities attended. More than one official offered praise and flattery to the migrants whom they called heroes and applauded for the investment in Nochistlán. The state government took office and everyone was happy until the cooperating migrants and their families requested the services.
Two years ago, Rigoberto Jiménez broke a faucet. He fell while tilling the land to plant corn and could no longer get up. The laborers to whom he gave work took him to the bed of the house where he cannot live today because of the bad smell and then the family came to cure him in Los Angeles, where he has health services because he is a US citizen.
There they left him almost like new with the warning that he had to take rehabilitation therapy. That meant staying in the US for several months to attend the specialized clinic. He did not want. If you could do therapy in Zacatecas, where you like to be, why stay?
And somehow they had to make the most of their effort to build the specialized clinic. They had worked for something, for something their daughter Martha Ofelia was still fighting for the development of her place of origin. He packed his things and returned to Las Animas to appear at the Comprehensive Health and Rehabilitation Unit that s e built with the 3 × 1.
“We can’t attend to you”, they told him. “You are not affiliated, you are a migrant, you do not have social security here. Bring your papers and with pleasure. ”
I had no papers.
So she went back to Los Angeles for therapy. He took it for four months and returned to Las Animas. The earth calls. Two years later, two of her sisters suffered the same thing in a health systems mess that no one understands.
Carolina and María Trinidad Jiménez Oropeza were out on a walk in the Los Angeles subway When a ladder broke down, they became entangled with their feet and the electrical system, causing them to plummet for several meters. The ribs and neck were broken and the procedure was the same: they operated on them there and when they wanted to take therapy here they were stamped with the refusal.
– We can’t take care of them, “they said.
-Why? They are not affiliated with social security.
– Migrants built this for everyone.
– Who?
Martha Ofelia Jiménez says that health personnel do not know about the investment of migrants because on the plaque recognition were not recorded. “It seems that in Mexico they will never give us the recognition of our work to help him.”
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