Words matter

The US and Mexico have reached a deal to better address the migratory crisis at the US Southern border by deploying Mexican troops to stop the flows coming in from Guatemala.

That’s in essence how some have described the agreement that Trump extracted out of Mexico, supposedly through tariffs threats though it appeared to have actually been negotiated months in advance. The thing is when you put it like this it sounds businesslike, just like when European officials talk about stemming flows from Libya or Australia builds temporary housing facilities on remote islands. It’s convenient, concise, sounds reasonable. The very words they use obscure the reality of what we are talking about, and make it acceptable when it should be profoundly revolting.

We are talking about people here. People who flee atrocious violence in Central America where, incidentally, the Trump administration is also cutting aid because addressing long-term issues is not as useful in the polls of today. People who look for a better life away from the consequences of the neocolonial policies of those who would rather see them stuck in Libya in modern-day market slaves than deal with their reality. The snow melting in the Alps at the moment reveals bodies of migrants who died trying to cross into France, and the number of those who died in the Mediterranean is insane. I do not want to live in a world where this can be made OK.

Talking about flows and crises is comfortable. You find a solution that keeps the problem away, preferably in another country where you don’t have to think about it, and life continues as it is. But these are people. People left to die, left to suffer, abandoned to horrible fates because populism works and most politicians are scared shitless of what is actually happening. Around the world, the term migrant has become an insult, a threat, a tool of populism, instrumentalized to win elections. But no one deserves to see their reality reduced to this. Demonizing an entire group of people, throughout the world, simply because they seek safety, seems to me like a very bad idea, the kind that history warns us about.

Every time the topic comes up, we need to remember that we are talking about individual human beings. And ask ourselves if we still feel comfortable with that reality.