A movement in motion: collective mobility and embodied practice in the central American migrant caravan

Abstract

In this article, I examine the psychosocial and phenomenological implications for the lived experiences of collective mobility among Central American asylum seekers and irregular migrants bound for the United States. I argue that attentiveness to migrants’ embodied practices and encounters with the material world engender novel insight into the generative and productive potential of collective journeying. I focus on migrant caravans through Mexico that have surged in recent years in response to escalating rates of gang violence, extreme poverty, and environmental devastation in Central American countries. The analysis reveals that the transformative power of the caravan lies in its capacity to disrupt patterns of collective trauma by bearing witness to the atrocities migrants have suffered and giving meaning to their collective struggle. Close examination of how these processes unfold en route may help explain how and why collective mobility promotes resilience among participants and their ability to resist the effects of long-term collective trauma.

Introduction

It was the first Sunday of the Holy Week in 2017 when a caravan of around fifty Central American migrants and a handful of supporters departed from a migrant shelter run by the Scalibrini order in Tapachula, Chiapas, along the Southern Mexico border. At the front of the procession, a migrant caravan participant (henceforth referred to as caravanero) carried a large, wooden cross, carefully balanced against his chest, followed by two other caravaneros bearing a large white banner that stated ‘No hate of migrants’ in bold red and black letters, with a simple red cross painted in the center.

Nearly three weeks later, the caravan had grown to over 350 people. Despite days of physical hardship, hours upon hours of walking under the heat of the sun, on a trek that passed through the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, the caravan reached Latin America’s most revered Catholic shrine, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Many of the caravaneros beelined to the basilica to attend the hourly mass, giving thanks for their safe arrival; others stretched out under the shade of the awning and cool tiled floor at the church’s entryway to rest aching feet and sore backs. Some played the part of the tourist and wandered around the premises, snapping selfies in front of the Basilica and other sites. It was a moment of celebration and respite before continuing what would still be a long journey north to Tijuana, where many of the caravaneros placed hope in the opportunity to request asylum at the United States (US) Port of Entry. Later that day, we retired to the nearby migrant shelter, the main hall now filled with hundreds of tarps and sleeping bags strewn out upon the floor. I sat with Lucy, a Honduran refugee in her mid-40’s, and her three adolescent children, chatting about the journey ahead. She confided that she had fears and many uncertainties about what was to come ahead, but stated with calm resolution: ‘Yeah, it’s difficult, but we are going to keep walking, that’s what matters; God will give us the strength to know where to go and to keep walking this path’.

The migrant caravan is a collective migrant journey and social movement that arose in the early 2000’s in direct response to the transnational policies of migration control and refugee management in the US and Mexico. These policies deliberately impede the efforts of migrants to reach their intended destinations through tactics of forced immobility, militarization, and heightened exposure to risk. The elevated numbers of checkpoints in southern Mexico, for example, along with other Draconian security measures throughout the country, funnel migrants onto increasingly dangerous clandestine routes rife with risks of police abuse and detainment, gang violence, environmental hazards and organized crime (e.g., kidnapping, extortion, and robbery). In response, the migrant caravan movement draws on strength in numbers, solidarity of transnational organizations, and the watchful eye of international press to mitigate the risks of covert mobility and improve access to basic human rights, such as the ability to apply for international asylum protection and to pursue dignified work in North American countries.

The caravan is comprised of Central American migrants who journey from the Mexico-Guatemala border in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, to the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California over a period of approximately 6–8 weeks. Since the initiation of the first official border-to-border caravan in 2011, the size of the group has ranged from 200 to 1,500 migrants, although the ‘exodus’ in 2018 began with upwards of 7,000 people. In the early years, caravans were primarily organized by a network of Catholic migrant shelters and independent activists. Over the past few years, secular human rights organizations have taken on a more central role. Organizers help coordinate logistics and mediate communication between caravan participants and external actors, such as government officials, migration agents, shelter workers, journalists, and local community residents. However, the nature and extent of the role of organizers has remained intentionally inchoate and fluid, an approach that is fundamental to their commitment to support the autonomy and self-organization of caravan participants. To this end, coordinators adamantly assert that rather than top-down leadership, their primary objective is to provide accompaniment, an approach that emerged from a long history of liberation psychology in Latin America (Fanon 2004; Martin-Baro 1995), and continues to inform practices of refugee and migrant assistance in organizations across the world (Watkins 2015). Accompaniment is rooted in decolonized, culturally specific practices of solidarity and physical presence, which replaces armchair expertism with the practice of walking ‘in the company of others’ (Fanon 2004, 238), to ‘be present on a journey with a beginning and an end’ (Farmer 2013, 234). As demonstrated in the caravan, it is simultaneously a psychological, logistical, and embodied practice of support.

During the course of the trajectory, the group participates in countless marches across migratory checkpoints and major cities throughout Mexico. Depending on the size of the group, the caravan rests in migrant shelters located along the route or, more commonly, in outdoor public spaces, such as school courtyards, sports complexes, central plazas and city parks. The caravan occasionally settles for a few days at a time in local villages to rest, care for blistered feet, and attend to other quotidian needs. Upon the final arrival in Tijuana, caravaneros typically reside in migrant shelters while attempting to apply for asylum in the United States. However, as the asylum process has become increasingly complicated by the US government’s Migration Protection Protocol (MPP) policy, many migrants are forced to reside in makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the US-Mexico border and to seek temporary employment until their court hearing.

Although the migrant caravan is not a new phenomenon, it has received increasing global attention within recent years, particularly since President Trump first tweeted about the impending ‘invasion’ of a ‘mob’ of Central American migrants in 2018. Expanded coverage of the plight of Central American refugees, along with substantial growth in the size and frequency of migrant caravans through Mexico, has shifted public perceptions of the caravan from a largely symbolic and discreet event organized by small-scale migrant rights activists to an ongoing exodus and humanitarian crisis driven by the desperation of ‘hunger and death’ (Gonzalez 2018). Yet what is often obscured by the news hype surrounding the caravan movement is the long history of collective mobility from which the movement has arisen and taken shape, dating back much farther than the original Viacrucis caravan that began nine years ago (personal testimony 2017). Such oversight causes other frameworks to be overlooked, including those that might illuminate the spiritual, socio-cultural, and embodied aspects of collective mobility. A close examination of ‘on the ground’ experiences within the specific historical and cultural context can provide a critical intervention for understanding the dynamics and long-term implications of migrant caravans, and how the collective journey itself is constitutive of new forms of subjectivity and social transformation.

In this article, I draw on frameworks of liberation psychology (Hollander 1997; Martin-Baro 1995; Bulhan 1985) and the role of religion in political protest (Matovina 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo et al. 2004) to shed light on how group mobility can be a profound source of coping and resilience against long-term collective trauma. Scholars of Central American transit migration have discussed the transformative potential of the migrant journey (Brigden 2016; Ruiz Marrujo 2008), as well as the role of religion in how migrants cope with hardships that arise in route (Straut Eppsteiner and Hagan 2016; Hagan 2008). However, these studies are generally limited to either individual-level subjective and inter-personal experiences of transit migration or the place of organized religion in providing spiritual and material support along migratory routes, with little attention to how processes of coping and resilience occur on the level of the collective. Furthermore, despite the centrality of bodily experience in studies on pilgrimage (Sennett 1994), rarely has the role of bodily practices and sensations been explored in the context of migrant mobility.

My analysis is informed by an ‘experience-near’ ethnographic approach to the caravan movement, with particular attentiveness to the role of collective emotion and encounters with the material world in how new moral landscapes are shaped and become known. I recognize that rituals and teachings of organized religion, as well as political objectives, are important sources of support and motivation for caravaneros throughout the trek. However, I argue that it is through the corporeal encounters with a mobile community in situ that historical memory and the spiritual resonance of collective journeying is enlivened, giving caravaneros a sense of meaning of their forced displacement and the strength to cope with crisis.

To develop this insight, I draw on theories of liberation (Hollander 1997; Martin-Baro 1995; Bulhan 1985), which emphasize the collective nature of trauma and suffering. According to liberation frameworks, oppression is produced and maintained through the interplay of individual psychological patterns (e.g., internalized oppression) and meso- and macro-level structures and ideologies (e.g., racism, economic exploitation). Interventions, therefore, center on two primary concerns: first, raising critical consciousness in individuals and their communities through modes such as education and discourse about the roots of social inequality; and, second, by transforming the social conditions and structures of oppression that exist within society. Given the diverse circumstances and cultural specificity through which oppression occurs, strategies for transformation vary widely based on the experiences and historical contexts of the communities involved. As discussed by the feminist psychologist Starhawk: ‘A psychology of liberation is one whose primary focus is the communities we come from and create. Our collective history is as important as our individual history … A liberation psychology is more concerned with ways of creating communal healing and collective change’ (Starhawk 1987, 23). The collective nature of the migrant caravan, which fuses collective and religious practice with political protest, opens up the possibility for disrupting processes of isolation and invisibility that sustain the trauma produced by ongoing cycles of terror and violence present in migrants’ everyday lives.

Methods

This study is part of a broader research project involving a year of fieldwork along the Southern Mexico border in Tapachula, Chiapas. The findings presented in this article draw on approximately six non-consecutive weeks of research during two separate migrant caravans carried out respectively in 2017 and 2018. During this time, I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 35 Central American caravaneros and 11 professional informants, primarily caravan coordinators and volunteers. As a human rights observer in both caravans, I was able to use a variety of access points in addition to formal interviews, including informally speaking with caravaneros, participant observation through deep ethnographic immersion (such as sleeping in parks, playing with children, cooking with and marching alongside caravan participants), and close observation of organizing activities and discursive frameworks.

In addition to participation in the caravan at the onset of the journey at the southern Mexico border and continuous trekking for more than a week at a time, I also accompanied caravaneros for nearly a month following their arrival in Tijuana in 2018. I volunteered with a prominent migrant advocacy and refugee rights organization to help prepare and organize caravaneros who wished to file claims for asylum in the United States, such as through know-your-rights workshops and logistical support (e.g., temporary housing, migrant accompaniment in institutional settings). This also included efforts to denounce and resist unlawful actions taken by US migration agents to deter asylum seekers, such as collecting information from asylum-seekers turned away by agents at the US border (which eventually resulted in a law suit against US Border Patrol), and by participating as a Human Rights Observer in a week-long sit-in at the San Isidro Port of Entry at the San Diego/Tijuana border.

A number of recent studies on Central American transit migration have demonstrated the methodological and analytic utility of multi-sited research (Brigden 2018; De Leon 2015; Holmes 2013). Although I agree with Vogt’s perspective that an in-depth understanding of transit migration does not require the researcher to ‘be constantly on the move’ (Vogt 2018, 13), the experience-near approach of caravan participation unveiled unique insights into critical dimensions of collective journeying, ones, I assert, that could not be fully grasped without immersion into the quotidian, embodied practices of mobility in-situ. It is those moments of ephemeral community and intimate social exchange rendered in route that this analysis aims to capture.

Theoretical framework

The nature of transit migration in Mexico has shifted dramatically alongside major regional changes in migration and refugee policy. Every year, tens of thousands of Central Americans cross the southern Mexico border, the majority in search of safe haven in the US. Indeed, since 1990, the number of Central American immigrants in the US has tripled, making Central Americans the fastest growing Latin American immigrant population in the US over the past decade (Olayo-Méndez, Haymes, and Vidal de Haymes 2014). In response to US pressure to curb northbound migrant flows since the early 2000’s, the Mexico state has initiated various measures of enhanced militarization throughout the country, such as the US-backed Plan Frontera Sur, which was commonly attributed by the Mexican government to efforts to crack down on drug exportation and organized crime. These initiatives led to an increase in migratory checkpoints, immigration raids, police surveillance, and skyrocketing rates of deportation of Central Americans from Mexico.

In response, a surge of humanitarian organizations have surfaced along dominant migrant routes to help migrants meet basic needs, such as food, shelter, and personal security. There has also been significant institutional development within both government and non-government arenas to manage the swell of Central American migrants seeking refugee status. However, ongoing efforts to retain refugees within Mexico’s southern states has resulted in significant delays in settling refugee claims, which has generated increasing criticism and dialogue surrounding the conditions in which refugees are received by countries of asylum, as well as the broader political implications of the ongoing precarity and violence that refugees face while awaiting case resolution.

Alongside the dramatic changes that have occurred in transit-migration, scholars have begun to pay more attention to journeying itself. Although anthropologists have long examined the complex ways that migration drives social change, such as shifts in family composition, reconfigured gender roles and altered labor dynamics (Yeats 2009; Mahler and Pessar 2006), scholarship has tended to focus on social processes that occur within sending and receiving communities. Only recently have the ‘lived realities of transit’ migration become regarded as a crucial site for novel theorizations about the transformative, productive, and contentious aspects of the migrant journey en route and what this insight reveals about broader claims over rights, citizenship, and sovereignty (Vogt 2018, 5; Balaguera 2018b; Andersson 2014).

The migrant journey is rarely a straight shot from point A to point B, but rather is punctuated by intermittent periods of immobility and movement that can span months, or even years (Mainwaring and Brigden 2016; Basok et al. 2015). Throughout the course of this trajectory, migrants encounter a range of diverse social actors and environments that may catalyze processes of transformation and adaptation, such as through the ephemeral communities and partnerships that form in migrant shelters along the route (Frank-Vitale 2011), or by performing specific nation, racial, or gender scripts in order to mitigate the risks of irregular mobility (Brigden 2018). Although these spaces and practices can be liberating, they nearly always unfold within a context of profound insecurity and violence, in which the potential for transformation is limited by the constraints and invisibility of ‘illegality’. From such margins, opportunities to create networks of solidarity and to assert a collective voice are often outside one’s reach.

Collective journeying provides a unique remedy to the isolation and vulnerability of irregular migration by creating a platform upon which diverse actors from a wide range of backgrounds can come together under a common cause. It is a particularly powerful form of mobilization for Latino communities because of the long-standing historical legacy of pilgrimage and other ethno-religious ritual practice. In Latin America, pilgrimages to sacred sites have occurred since pre-Columbian times and continue to be a common practice in the contemporary era, especially among Catholic and Christian denominations (Crumrine and Morinis 1991). It is customary for people to walk through the streets, from house to house or from town to town, to commemorate religious festivals and remembrances, such as the walk of Christ along the Twelve Stations of the Cross. Every year tens of thousands of people travel for days, even weeks, to visit revered shrines such as the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico or the Bom Jesus in Brazil.

Despite common assumptions that, historically, pilgrimage used to be a purely religious event aimed towards personal and spiritual transcendence, comparative case studies have revealed that even in pre-modern times pilgrimage was leveraged for political purposes. For instance, pilgrimage can serve as a public stage upon which collective ideals are performed, communicated, and contested, often reflecting shifting dynamics and power struggles that occur within the broader social context (Crumrine and Morinis 1991). Social groups have drawn upon the powerful cultural resonance and wide visibility of pilgrimage to challenge the current social order and assert political claims, particularly when other channels of political dispute have been restricted or denied, such as in cases of state oppression or transnational displacement.

Numerous studies have explored ways in which collective journeying has been tied to contexts of forced displacement and the struggle for human rights, revealing the crucial role that religion has played in fueling popular mobilization. During the era of civil war and political persecution that ravaged the majority of Latin America throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, collective action to oppose violence and displacement was informed and galvanized by the surge of liberation theories that surfaced within the particular historical moment. Religious figures, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and Ignacio Martin-Baro were at the forefront of promoting key tenets of liberation theology (e.g., social justice, critical consciousness) as a means to resist growing inequality and oppression of marginalized people (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2020). Concurrently, a group of psychoanalysts that had fled political persecution in the Southern Cone and were exiled to Mexico drew upon similar frameworks to advance new theories for the psychological treatment of trauma, approaches that were adopted by and applied towards Central American populations and continue, today, to inform psycho-social interventions in social work, activism, human rights, and other arenas of humanitarian assistance (Hollander 1997).

Although liberation theories emerged from Latin America, they quickly gained popularity in movements across the US, particularly within the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980’s. The Sanctuary Movement was a political and religious campaign in the Southwestern US to provide assistance and safe-haven to Central American refugees fleeing political turmoil. Protestant and Christian churches organized caravans to transport Central American asylum seekers to other parts of the country to seek refuge. Sanctuary activists also provided accompaniment to displaced Central Americans during efforts to repatriate to their home communities following civil unrest. These organized groups of returning refugees and international, inter-faith supporters used mass movement, organizational partnerships, and global media attention to protect themselves against state resistance and ongoing warfare – similar tactics reflected in the contemporary caravan movement.

Although the formal pedagogy of liberation theology has since declined, its legacy continues to resonate in contemporary social movements in Latin America and to inform the interpretative frameworks through which people make sense of social struggle and political resistance (Mackin 2015). Murals and photos of Oscar Romero can be found in social service organizations throughout Mexico and Central America, such as the La 72 migrant shelter in Tenosique, Tabasco, near the southern Mexico border. The work of Sanctuary Movement activists has been passed down to subsequent generations through contemporary US-based programs, such as the US-El Salvador Sister Cities committees network (https://www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org/), and is reflected in ongoing practices of accompaniment espoused in refugee assistance programs (Olayo-Méndez, Haymes, and Vidal de Haymes 2014) and transnational movements for migrant and refugee rights (Hondagneu-Sotelo et al. 2004).

Furthermore, several recent studies on migrant mobilization have traced the powerful role of religious practice in carrying out social justice work, both in collaboration with and separate from formal religious institutions, as has been noted in the Posada Sin Fronteras marches at the US-Mexico border (Hondagneu-Sotelo et al. 2004); the caravan of Central American mothers searching for disappeared loved ones (Rivera Hernandez 2017); and in the humanitarian work of local Mexican communities, such as the Patronas in Veracruz or the local church committees in Tenosique who assist migrants en route (Montes and Paris Pombo 2019; Wurtz and Wilkinson 2020). Although scholars have underscored the therapeutic effects of combining religious practices and political protest, such as through experiences of catharsis and shared suffering, the transgression of social roles, and increased community cohesion (Matovina 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo et al. 2004), there is limited understanding of how the corporeal experience of the collective journey itself becomes a source of coping and resilience.

In this article, I explore the migrant caravan as a site of both political and moral transformation that transpires over time through the embodied experiences and material practices of a mobile community in situ. I argue, that through an assemblage of culturally and historically resonant rituals, discourse, images, and the collective traversal of space within powerfully symbolic sites, caravaneros encounter a form of ephemeral transcendence from the alienating bonds of generalized terror and violence that have plagued their recent lives. As the theologian Motavina has observed in his analysis of the spiritual meaning of protest: ‘These rituals are not only an experience of political protest, nor merely sources of cultural affirmation and retention, but practitioners’ treasured means of encountering the sacred in their lives’ (Matovina 2003, 67).

Building on Hagan’s understanding of ‘everyday religion’ (Hagan 2008), I argue that in the context of the caravan, the sacred is not of extraordinary spiritual prowess or ethereal realms, but rather grounded firmly in relations and practices of everyday life, those taken-for-granted threads of our social fabric that often go unnoticed until they are taken away: physical proximity to others, collaborative activities, mutual trust and dependency, a sense of cultural identity and recognition. In this regard, the caravan is embodied resistance against the psychological and social ruptures of violence and displacement; it is an opportunity, albeit effervescent, to inhabit a different migrant imaginary that transforms a narrative of covert action driven by personal motives to a collective struggle and exodus of a people in search of survival and the means to build a better life.

Sacred encounters in collective mobility

The social ruptures of violence and displacement

In order to fully grasp the healing potency of the migrant journey, one must first examine the roots and realities of collective trauma that have spurred the massive outmigration of Central Americans in the contemporary era. Regional literature on the cultural dynamics of violence illustrates that widespread, long-term exposure to a generalized state of terror creates significant ruptures in the daily rhythms and relations of everyday life, which profoundly affects how people think about and inhabit their surroundings (Rivera Hernandez 2017; Matovina 2003; Ramirez 2003). The social fabric of communities, founded on shared identity, collective engagement, and the capacity to aspire, is eviscerated by rival gangs and corrupt authorities through actions that range from control over land and local industry to torture and death – the ultimate expression of social alienation. The process of displacement, therefore, begins long before one actually flees the country, with violent tactics of control and terror that estrange individuals from their communities, as well as from one’s own sense of self.

Systematic, long-term violence, such as that found in the conditions of forced displacement, structures how and when people are able to move through social and economic spaces. As I have found in my research, for people living in Central American countries, denied access to public places limits opportunities for meaningful social interaction and dignified work. Those who live in ‘red zone’ (high risk) communities experience a combination of physical violence, stigma, and structural constraints that limit their ability to find jobs, foster social relations, and secure reliable transportation. Youth migrants, for example, frequently discussed with me their inability to develop important social skills and future aspirations due to the loss of social spaces of scholarship and diversion within their communities. In many communities, for example, people will not leave their houses after dark. One young woman in her early 20’s from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, reported that even after ‘moving’ to a ‘safer’ neighborhood (her entire household was internally displaced by gang violence), she would still only leave the house between certain hours of the day in order to buy groceries or go to church.

People are constantly reminded of the impending threat of danger within their communities by the sound of gunshots, the scars that their neighbors bear, and the dead bodies that randomly appear in the streets near their homes, in their parks, and by their rivers. Many people are forced to drop out of school, and to abandon their jobs or their homes as a result of extortion and threats of violence. Community members are often forced by gangs to act as spies and messengers, deteriorating neighborly trust and solidarity with suspicion and fear. As one Salvadoran woman, Novia, shared about her social and psychological withdrawal after her son became the target of death threats and his teacher began to inquire about his continued absence in school: ‘His teacher called me two times that night and with such insistence … and I don’t know, maybe everything going on made me go crazy, but I couldn’t trust anyone in the community … I couldn’t sleep; I kept the door under a double lock and didn’t draw the window shades. It was completely dark in the house, but I couldn’t bring myself to sleep.’

Others with whom I spoke experienced physical changes as a result of violence – traumatizing bodily experiences that threaten a sense of personhood and identity. One young man from El Salvador, for instance, whom I met in a migrant shelter in Tapachula, had developed a nervous tick in his left eye after he had witnessed the murder of a former classmate; a young woman from Honduras residing at the same shelter was confined to a wheelchair after being shot in the spine by the father of her jealous ex-boyfriend. In such cases, events of violence often lead to months of hiding and displacement involving long periods of reclusion within ‘safe houses’ of friends or family, punctuated by chaotic moments of flight without warning. Families are torn apart in the process: young adults leave behind their ailing parents who cannot weather the journey; mothers must choose which and how many of her children she can afford to take with her; any semblance of ‘normalcy’ and routine is lost to the exigencies of survival.

The cumulative effect of the ongoing, quotidian, and overlapping forms of violence found in these communities is what Martin-Baro (1994) interprets as a type of chronic psychological warfare and social control that is experienced en carne propia, in which the ‘lived body is shot through with anxiety, terror, and despair’ (Jenkins 1991, 149). In such conditions, violence interrupts the continuity of life course events and important processes of growth and development, and this has a profound effect on how one sees him- or herself within the daily routines and imagined futures of their surrounding life-worlds. It was not uncommon among my informants who recounted their return to Honduras or El Salvador after attempted migration to describe having experienced feelings of depression and hopelessness upon their return because they could not envision a future for themselves in their current circumstances. People’s relationships with the past and future are displaced by a ‘perpetual present’ consumed by the emotional and material demands of managing daily hardship and struggle (Sanchez 2003).

As a result of ongoing pervasive violence, people are estranged from the everyday; the safe haven of ‘home’ can no longer be assumed, nor the autonomy over how one moves through time and space within quotidian practices. Existential longings to aspire, to grow as an individual and deepen family or community roots, lose foundation when even the most mundane tasks become difficult to achieve. As a result, citizens become psychologically trapped in a constant state of alert and loss of autonomy that erodes a sense of identity and recognition. As Hollander (Hollander 1997, 111) found in her work on the ‘dirty wars’ in South America: ‘This personal vigilance led to the conscious creation of a false self, a partial and unrepresentative public portrayal of one’s personality that was manufactured in order to survive the impingements of an environment that demanded extreme measures of adaptation’.

Even when Central Americans manage to flee their countries of origin and cross into Mexico, they continue to experience a continuum of violence that results in similar processes of restricted movement, hyper-vigilance, fear, and invisibility. Many undergo weeks of imposed immobility and self-isolation along the Southern Mexico border, where they are forced to reside throughout the duration of their application for refugee status – an experience commonly delineated by fear, boredom, and existential angst caused by the precarious and dangerous conditions of the borderlands (Wurtz 2018). One Guatemalan caravanero, who joined the caravan after being denied refugee status in Mexico, described the time he spent waiting for case resolution as a form of institutional violence, an imposed period of ‘wasted’ time and social paralysis defined by rampant discrimination, unemployment, and immobility: ‘It’s like, we flee from our countries just to be locked up by another’.

Migrant shelters are also highly restrictive. In many cases, migrants are required to leave the shelter during daytime hours; they then have to return at a designated hour in the late afternoon in order to receive food and shelter for the night. After that hour, shelter doors are locked and entry denied. Furthermore, migrants are often restricted to certain spaces within shelter walls, generally based on gender and/or family composition, and must adhere to certain rules regarding behavior, mealtime procedures, and even, in some cases, physical appearance. Migrant shelters and aid organizations throughout Mexico have been criticized for paternalistic and exclusionary practices (e.g., refusing shelter to transgender migrants) and a denial of migrant agency and autonomy, their practices even being compared to carceral or panoptic conditions (Balaguera 2018b). Those who secure independent housing through humanitarian assistance find it difficult to exercise spatial independence as they struggle with a lack of resources and transportation, in addition to well-justified fear of moving through public space.

Those who opt to continue North through their own means often endeavor to conceal their Central American identity and maintain anonymity in order to mitigate vulnerabilities to violence and crime (Brigden 2016). Furthermore, through a discourse of ‘illegality’ and criminalization, the realities and roots of migrant suffering (and their struggles to overcome them) are completely disavowed. In these circumstances, the conditions of collective trauma are prolonged and reproduced by the very states to which migrants turn for protection. The transformative power of the caravan lies in its capacity to disrupt patterns of collective trauma by bearing witness to the atrocities migrants have suffered and giving meaning to their collective struggle. This is achieved through an assemblage of discourse, symbols, bodily practices, and engagement with the material world that is specifically shaped by the unique context of collective travel.

Sites, practices, and materiality of resilience and collective healing

Previous studies on Mexican and Central American migration have examined the integral role of religion and spirituality in the migrant undertaking. Hagan (2008) found that prior to their departure, many migrants and their families underwent pilgrimages or visits to sacred sites to seek God’s blessing for a safe and fortuitous journey. During the trajectory, they also engaged a number of religious practices to cope with hardship and uncertainty, such as erecting popular shrines from their communities; praying with spiritual companions; and through the use of material objects, such as medallions or prayer cards. Hagan describes that such practices and frameworks, while influenced by institutional contexts, often took form through ‘folk, popular, and domestic activities’ closely tied to concepts of home and belonging, which were continuously modified and remade through the journey itself. She asserts:

These everyday coping activities reflect cultural practices and familiar memories unique to their home communities, memories and practices that are often appropriated in times of need and transformed and shaped by the social context of the journey. In this sense, religion is a dynamic process that cannot be separated from the journey or the actions of the traveling migrants (2008, 115).

In addition, ritual symbols and practices of pilgrimage are commonly deployed in movements to raise awareness of the plight of migrants and calls for social justice, such as the 2019 Jornada por la Justicia at the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border. In this event, hundreds of Catholics participated in a walk through El Paso and across the border in response to the inhumane treatment of migrants and the recent massacre of 22 Latinx individuals in the border community. Bearing a banner of Guadalupe, the group stopped at several sites of ‘hope and transformation,’ where they engaged in group prayer and religious blessings, followed by the physical accompaniment of 15 Central American asylum-seekers at the US Port of Entry (ISN 2019). Hondagneu-Sotelo and colleagues refer to this as ‘politicized spirituality’ – a collective endeavor that occurs within a public venue and is ‘directed at a social and political issue, but yet resonates with religious beliefs’ (2004, 154).

Similarly, the migrant caravan – often referred to as ‘Viacrucis’ (the Stations of the Cross) – draws upon the walk of Christ to symbolize the sacrifice of migrants and the suffering that they endure ‘en el camino’, or while on the road, in their endeavors to seek a better life. Caravan trajectories are mapped upon the ‘sacred geography’ (Hagan 2008) of migrant shelters that have surfaced along popular migrant routes. Like the religious ritual of the Stations of the Cross, in which practitioners stop at each station to pray and reflect, caravaneros stop at the shelters along the way to rest and rejuvenate. Throughout the long northbound journey, caravan participants encounter religious shrines and murals, engage in prayer, and receive blessings by local priests at the various migrant shelters, churches, and local communities that are willing to provide aid. Although religious practice varies widely across the caravan population, Christian beliefs are a common source of strength and perseverance, many attributing to God for their ability to withstand hardship and to have the psychological will to press on, both physically and emotionally. In the words of a caravanera named Maya from El Salvador: ‘God loves me and I know that I need him at my side, because he gives me strength to go on, and because life goes on and there is no sense in turning back to the past’.

The fact that the caravan travels along dominant migratory routes and engages in similar modes of mobility as migrants traveling through irregular means is important both for political expression and personal coping. Along the journey, the caravan engages in the continuous occupation of public spaces: they walk for hours down highways, often resting beneath the shade of major bridges before proceeding through migratory check points; they set up camp in schools, central plazas, and sport complexes of local villages; they negotiate rides with local buses and vans, and travel atop the northbound freight train. However, in stark contrast to the effects of state and humanitarian practices that push them into the shadows or hide them away behind shelter walls, caravan participants demand recognition by taking back public space, evoking what Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1979) calls symbolic power, or ‘the power to consecrate or to reveal things that are already there’ (pg. 23) by inhabiting spaces from which they had been previously denied and in ways they had never had the freedom to explore.

Studies on clandestine transnational migration have described the efforts of migrants to ‘pass’ as Mexican citizens in order to avoid detection (Brigden 2016; Menjivar 2000), for example, by altering the way one dresses or speaks. In contrast, the caravan presents a rare opportunity for participants to publicly exercise self-representation and to embrace national affiliations and other social scripts in ways that resist the repressive forces of containment and invisibilization. This is enacted through a range of embodied and material practices involving modes of self-expression (e.g., dress, speech), affirmation of ethic identity through positive public discourse and recognition, and by inhabiting otherwise ‘forbidden’ spaces (e.g., migrant check points), replacing fear and humiliation with the ‘pride in belonging to a people’ (Martin-Baro 1995).

Images of the caravan, for instance, reveal a material and stylistic diversity that departs drastically from those commonly portrayed by the media and popular culture of migrants in discrete, humble attire, faces hidden beneath a baseball cap or nestled beneath a child. Rather, images from the caravan depict an assortment of materialistic styles: caravaneros donning hip-hop styles and country-specific garb; the group of transgender women dressed to the nines, after swapping wigs and makeup tips; and several Central American flags circulating in the crowd. Instead of dodging immigration enforcement agents (la migra) or hiding in the back of a truck, they pass through checkpoints with banners raised; chanting; zooming by on skateboards with arms raised in victory; some snap photos of migration agents and police officers who watch the caravan go by from afar. Here, we see a direct and visible shift in power dynamics: it is now the migration agent who is depersonalized and objectified by the migrant gaze; it is the migrant agent whose body is suspended by inaction and whose mobile (and political) potency is denied.

Pilgrimage scholars have discussed the symbolic power of place and ritual practice in processes of healing and spiritual growth (Crumrine and Morinis 1991). Pilgrimages that center on commemorating and healing from trauma often traverse sites ‘desecrated by sin’ (Cardinale & Francesco 1998), such as mass graves, sites where violence or homicide has occurred, or locations of state oppression (e.g., national borders). Through the traversal of dominant and heavily symbolic sites along migratory routes that are commonly riddled with danger, violence, and shame (esp., trains, highways, checkpoints), the collective trauma of the migrant condition is imbued with political meaning.

Wood (Wood 1990) has described such actions as a ‘vector of memory,’ or a type of ritual performance that promotes a collective view of the world and helps construct a common identity. In the migrant caravan, participants not only draw attention to historical context; they also rewrite the present by constructing a new narrative – a narrative in which they are not ‘bad hombres,’ irresponsible parents, or helpless victims, but a people united by shared experiences and common goals, demanding accountability and recognition. This is often reinforced by the words and conviction of movement leaders who galvanize collective emotion and solidarity through recognition of a shared struggle.

For example, in 2018, over 1,000 caravaneros congregated in an empty stadium in a small town in central Oaxaca for a public forum to discuss the caravan’s next steps. Manuel, one of the movement’s most active and experienced coordinators, hollered out to the crowd: ‘Trump thinks we’re all going to invade the country to take advantage of DACA … how many of you know what DACA is? (silence) Okay, three people; but there [in the US] it’s all about DACA, DACA, Da … cabrón [bastard]!’ The stadium resounded with laughter. ‘Now, how many of you are familiar with the violence that has plagued your countries?’ (an uproar of consensus). ‘So what do we want? We want to live without fear; we want our children to be able to go to school without worrying that they might be killed … we have rights to the land; we have rights to our families; and we are going to look for a way to live in peace, respecting the law … if they give us the opportunity!’

Liberation psychologists assert that the disavowal of the roots and realities of trauma is key to sustaining terror and victimization. Therefore, public recognition and visibility of what victims of social trauma have suffered is an important step towards collective healing. Through a mix of humor and a discourse of rights, Manuel and other caravan leaders give voice to power and initiate processes of raising critical consciousness about the roots of inequality and oppression.

Critical discourse and actions that make visible migrant struggles throughout the course of the journey are central to the caravan’s transformative potential. However, as pilgrimage scholars have discussed, it is the collective and ritualistic practices that participants undergo that set the journey apart from other forms of mobilization, often through the way that practices incite new, intense bodily and sensorial experiences (Sennett 1994). This includes physical pain and expressions of sorrow (e.g., mounting stone stairwells on bare knees), as well as shared conviviality and celebration (e.g., feasts, dances, intoxication). Such practices impart a sense of the extraordinary, of ‘otherworldliness’ (ibid), something that lies outside of the ordinary spatio-temporal order, but which is socialized and made manageable through communal practice. New modes of being, such as communal living, new food or dress codes, unique relationships or roles that are formed, all serve to induce an altered state of consciousness that allows the individual to access their inner power, resulting in increased resilience and other positive psychological and somatic effects. Heightened sensorial experience also has the potential to increase receptivity to personal revelations and collective messages conveyed en route by cultivating ‘a new way of seeing and organizing thoughts and experiences’ (Slavin 2003, 11; Urry 2002). Individual suffering is transformed into meaningful shared experience: this is, embodied solidarity through a shared sense of danger and mutual need.

Attentiveness to the specific modes of motion in which travellers engage is central to illuminating the role that bodily experience plays in generating social and political transformation through collective mobility. For example, long walks in precarious circumstances typify the experience of transit migration through Mexico. Generally, this is one of the most dangerous aspects of the migrant journey as migrants are increasingly forced to walk along routes riddled by gang violence, police abuse, and environmental hazards (e.g., heat exhaustion, falls, snake bites, speeding traffic). For caravan participants, walking was a process of both enriching socialization and suffering. At times, it created opportunities for interaction among people from diverse backgrounds who might not otherwise interact – akin to what Turner & Turner described as communitas – and often stimulating critical and reflective dialogue across social divisions (Turner and Turner 1987). Topics that might not be broached in an everyday setting seemed to arise frequently, as with the long conversation I engaged in with a handful of women and trans-women from El Salvador and Honduras about gender- and sexuality-based violence, while we rested beneath the shade of a mango tree and indulged on fallen fruit. However, walking was also a source of endangerment and pain. Even though the group frequently departed in the early dawn to beat the insatiable heat of southern Mexico, the combination of physical exertion, dehydration, and lack of appropriate materials, sometimes resulted in people fainting, incurring painful blisters and bleeding of the feet, and even experiencing robbery and assault when they fell far behind the group.

For logistical and symbolic motives, the caravan tends to begin with long stretches of walking down highways and through the villages and cities that mark the route. At the head of the march, a man bears a wooden cross, a symbol of Jesus’s suffering as recounted in the holy ritual of the Stations of the Cross. Suffering and hardship are key features of traditional pilgrimages; the struggles one endures along the way are often justified and given meaning through religious beliefs and practice. In the case of the caravan, the combination of religious representations with symbolically imbued modalities of movement probe society’s moral conscious, challenging dominant narratives of the migrant condition, while reinforcing a sense of collective identity. Furthermore, it is simultaneously an individual and social experience, generating both a sense of independence, as well as collective agency. The following quote by a caravan organizer reveals some of these themes in which the physical body and the metaphorical body e/merge through motion.

… Walking is important because of the occupation of physical space, and because of the physical manifestation of walking, and the experience of walking … the difficulty of … like every single person … every single human being walking is putting in their own effort in order to advance. Nobody can walk for you. Somebody can drive a car for you, but nobody can walk for you. And everybody walking together is everybody putting in their bit of effort to move forward as a group (male, US).

Train travel was also central to participants’ accounts of the caravan and is perhaps the mode of mobility most emblematic of the role of psychosomatic experience in catalyzing social transformation. One of the primary modes of transportation for irregular migrants in transit is atop a network of northbound freight trains, infamously known as La Bestia (The Beast). Like the covert migratory walking trails riddled with violence and crime, La Bestia looms large in the public imaginary, generally associated with violence, dismemberment, and death. It is common to see images circulated through the media of mutilated bodies lying across the tracks, or solemn women atop the train holding tightly to their children. La Bestia also features prominently in discourse about the increased militarization of migration control. It has become a primary target of repressive measures instigated by the Mexican government in order to stem northbound migration, including the construction of large rock pillars set along both sides of the tracks and low hanging structures that the trains must pass through in efforts to deter migrant mobility. There have been increased government raids of the freight train, as well as accounts of immigration agents using TASERS to remove people from the moving vehicle (Nazario 2015).

Despite the risks, train travel was considered essential to the caravan’s success, not only because of sheer logistical concerns with how to move hundreds of people across a massive country within a matter of weeks and with limited support for transportation, but also as a result of its symbolic power in constructing new narratives through the visualization of migrant mobility and collective action. Brigden (2018) provides similar insight in her discussion of La Bestia as both a logistical site of information and networking among traveling migrants, as well as a political tool of activism and resistance. She states: ‘The tactical and political worlds become one social reality along the route’ (84), as migrants pursue train travel as a resource for survival, while activists, reporters, and researchers engage its folkloric and symbolic power to decry human rights abuses and make ‘ ‘invisible victims visible’ (ibid).

My analysis of the caravan departs from Brigden’s observations in two critical dimensions. First, in the caravan, the political potency of the train was not made through photos and reports to appeal to public spectators; the political was enacted in situ through direct action and collaboration with the caravaneros – actions enhanced by the visibility of the media, but grounded in the legal demand for and exercise of refugee rights. As one coordinator relayed:

For me, direct action on the train … is at the heart of the battle … We have to organize where the people are at, which is the train, the vertebral column of the migrant journey … you have to organize en el camino … where the people are at, where the danger is at. If you are able to do that, you have the power (male, US).

Here, a much different narrative emerges; through collective mobility, La Bestia is transformed from a space of death to a critical site of social and political engagement. Coordinators conducted interviews and provided asylum training while riding atop the train. They disseminated information about the asylum process and how to prepare for the dreaded ‘credible fear’ interview. Far from what would be considered ideal by most for such type of work, as the coordinator suggested in the above testimony, the train is where the people are at – literally, yes, but also in terms of a deep sense of presence, intensified by heightened sensorial experience.

This leads to my second point not captured in other accounts: through collective travel, the train, like the caravan, also became a conduit of social and personal transformation. Something that almost ubiquitously emerged in discussions with informants about train travel was the intense visceral quality of the experience – the heat of the metal, the bone-chilling rainy nights, the discomfort of congested bodies, the gut-wrenching fear of unsteady steps or shady looking men with long sideways glances. However despite these extremes (and perhaps because of them) many caravan participants described the experience as unforgettable and the pinnacle of solidarity and unification throughout the course of the journey. As Julia, a Honduran woman who participated in the 2018 caravan explained:

… In our country they say that La Bestia is dangerous, that many people have died. But, honestly, it was a great experience, an experience in which you learn to share with others. It taught us how to be more humane; to be able to feel what others feel; to be able to understand each other and to support each another in difficult moments; to encourage each other to stay positive … these are moments that we’ll never forget, that will always be with us.

Danger and hardship are particularly pronounced on the train, setting into stark contrast the power of mutual aid and shared struggle, while increasing receptivity to the messages conveyed. In pilgrimage studies, this is often described as the power of the pilgrimage to mediate poles of the sacred and the profane; as a privileged site where an otherworldly quality or grace is made accessible amidst the ‘entanglements, confusions, and sorrows’ of the profane sphere (Crumrine and Morinis 1991, 10). By giving meaning to experiences of suffering and the power of solidarity, migrants and activists tap into the sacred as a unifying and collective force. Even despite its ephemerality, this provides an alternative framework for how migrants think about and engage mobility, which has important implications for how they remember the journey and the broader public narratives that emerge from their recounting these events to others.

Conclusion

Caravaneros’ embodied experiences and encounters with the material world play a critical role in the social and political transformative potential of collective mobility. By drawing on cultural and historical frameworks that resonate with the collective memory of Central American struggle and solidarity, the caravan movement provides a profound source of coping with the hardships of forced displacement and a potential conduit for overcoming the sequelae of collective trauma. This is accomplished primarily through the movements’ efforts to expose the roots of violence and precarity that have driven migrants from their homes and to bear witness to their suffering, as well as through the psycho-sensorial experiences en route that create a sense of unity and collective struggle. As Hollander reminds us, ‘Trauma is by its very nature something that resignifies one’s life, not in the symptoms or the sequelae of the injury, but by the meaning one attributes to it through the psychic elaboration of the experience’ (1997, 143).

Many caravaneros continue to engage in acts of collective struggle while awaiting asylum cases in the US, such as the Adelanto Hunger Strike of 2017, a protest organized by former caravaneros to denounce the egregious conditions of US immigration detention facilities (Balaguera 2018a). Several former caravaneros have joined the ranks of migrant rights advocacy organizations, which spearhead letter writing campaigns and fundraisers for refugees in detention. Some continue the struggle and the process of healing through other means, such as the case of Manuel, who is pursuing studies to be a human rights lawyer, or Vanessa, who has participated in various advocacy campaigns to educate the public about the realities of transgender asylum seekers. A crucial step to overcoming collective trauma lies in the ability to regain a sense of control over one’s ability to change the current circumstances and help construct a better future (Hollander 1997).

Unfortunately, for many, the possibilities and hopes that the caravan movement represented only recently have since been diminished, if not completely destroyed, by increasingly restrictive US instigated transnational migration policies. Arrival at the pilgrimage’s ‘sacred center,’ which for so many on the caravan was defined by the US-Mexico border, increasingly leads to significant retraumatization through practices of denied entry, forced immobility, family separation, and ongoing acts of violence and discrimination. More recently, even the possibility of arriving at the border through collective travel has become a pipedream. One of the most recent migrant caravans in January 2020, consisting of 4,000 Central American migrants, was met by the Mexico state with an ‘iron-fisted’ response of pepper spray and physical force (Semple and McDonald 2020). As a result, the caravan was effectively dismantled at the southern Mexico border, with hundreds of migrants being deported or detained. As this analysis has shown, collective practice and solidarity provide powerful tools for coping with the collective trauma of generalized terror and violence. However, communities must constantly endeavor to find new ways to leverage the emancipatory potential of collective struggle and to recognize the sacred potency of the strength within their movements.