For men and women religious from across Latin America, the new U.S.-Panama deportation agreement is one more measure by governments to punish the poor for emigrating, while failing to offer solutions to the problems that force them to leave and failing to approve measures to help them cross borders safely.
In a July 14 statement, attendees at a continental seminar in Panama City organized by the Latin American Confederation of Religious, or CLAR, spoke out against governments “for not facilitating regular migration, for the lack of laws, of policies.”
Before the seminar on migrants, refugees and displaced people convened July 11-14, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced that the U.S. reached an agreement with Panama to prevent migrants from advancing across its southern border through the Darién Gap, a dangerous route shared by Panama and Colombia used to travel north.
“Irregular migration is a regional challenge that requires a regional response,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in his July 1 announcement. “As the United States continues to secure our borders and expel individuals without a legal basis to remain, we are grateful for our partnership with Panama to manage historic levels of migration across the Western Hemisphere.”
Seminar attendees in their statement denounced “government leaders who ignore the pain, suffering and threatening situations faced by many people and their families in situations of internal and international displacement in all countries of the continent.”
The CLAR group, made up of about two dozen religious men and women who work with migrants and refugees in Central and South America and the Caribbean, said it met in Panama with women, children and men who crossed the Darién Gap for various reasons. The U.S.-Panama agreement provides money to deport those who are caught crossing the jungle and who do not meet the requirements for asylum.
“In our meetings and dialogues, we renew and reinforce our commitment to our mission with migrants, refugees and displaced persons,” the CLAR statement said.
In an interview with Global Sisters Report July 9, Auxiliary Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera of Cuzco, Peru, general secretary of the Latin American bishops’ council, said that consecrated life has been “walking” with migrants in their difficult situation and that governments must do the same. Church organizations that help migrants are present “in the jungle, in the mountains, in the most difficult places” to reach, but the church “cannot meet a demand that grows and grows,” he said.
Bishop Estrada, in New York to meet with United Nations officials to discuss the worrisome outlook in Latin America — where joblessness, climate change, corruption and violence, along with growing discontent with governments, have forced millions of people to emigrate — said the region was experiencing a “moment of sadness” as people were forced to leave.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 25 million people will be displaced and stateless in Latin America and the Caribbean this year. Men and women religious, even though they have helped those who have been forced to leave, are also included in that number, said Bishop Estrada.
Countries such as Nicaragua have expatriated entire congregations of nuns, priests and three bishops. In places with increasing violence, such as Mexico and Haiti, nuns have stayed to help, and some have paid with their lives.
The Clamor Network, made up of Catholic organizations that promote social justice, expressed in a statement its concern about the Panama-U.S. agreement and pointed out that the problem is the inability of governments to recognize the “right to life, to a dignified life.” It also denounced certain media outlets for misinforming and weaving narratives that blame migrant populations for crime, unemployment and ecological destruction.
Immigration and the treatment of migrants and refugees have been a major concern for Catholic organizations across Latin America, as they also help those fleeing poverty, government repression or the environmental destruction of their communities and livelihoods caused by climate change.
At a meeting in Honduras in April with some 60 general secretaries, presidents of religious conferences and theologians from Latin America and the Caribbean, Sister Daniela Cannavina, secretary-general of CLAR, urged religious men and women in the region to continue speaking out in favor of those most affected by the ills in the region.
Sister Daniela, a Capuchin Sister of Mother Rubatto, said that consecrated life in the Caribbean and Latin America can help “the church of today to understand the spiritual and social implications of this moment,” in which it must “illuminate, encourage, accompany.”
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