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University of Nevada, Reno

Guardians of their Own Survival: Los Jóvenes Emprendedores de Centroamérica and their Interactions with the United States Immigration Regime, 1970-1995

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in History and the Honors Program

by

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez

Dr. Emily Hobson, Thesis Advisor

May, 2015

2

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA THE HONORS PROGRAM RENO

We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by

IVÓN PADILLA-RODRÍGUEZ

entitled

GUARDIANS OF THEIR OWN SURVIVAL: LOS JÓVENES EMPRENDEDORES DE CENTROAMÉRICA AND THEIR INTERACTIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION REGIME, 1970-1995

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

BACHELOR OF ARTS, HISTORY

______Emily Hobson, Ph.D., Thesis Advisor

______Tamara Valentine, Ph.D., Director, Honors Program

May, 2015

i

Abstract

Between 1970 and 1990, civil wars plagued Nicaragua, El Salvador, and

Guatemala. This study explored the impact U.S. military intervention in the wars had on

Central American migration, particularly that of young children, and U.S. immigration policies between 1970 and 1995. It (1) examined how immigration of Central American youth shaped U.S. immigration policies, (2) examined how states responded to their presence, and (3) used a child-centered approach to migration scholarship to analyze how youth interacted with the U.S. immigration system and law enforcement in their own countries. The central contention of this research is that migrant children fleeing the

Central American civil wars acted as stand-alone, rights-bearing guardians of their own survival. These jóvenes emprendedores—incredibly resourceful, adaptive, resilient, and initiative-taking youth—were highly aware, independent decision-making agents. They are termed jóvenes emprendedores because of the significance of their dual points of view represented by their bilingualism and binationalism.

ii

Acknowledgements

I must first thank Dr. Emily Hobson in the Department of History and the Gender,

Race, and Identity program for spending the time to mentor me throughout my undergraduate career, senior thesis process, and graduate school decisions. Dr. Hobson played a crucial part in my success as an undergraduate student. Her resourcefulness and insistence on challenging the way I approached historical inquiry have made me a better scholar and activist. I could not have accomplished what I have without her unwavering commitment to my interests and ambitions. Her mentorship was invaluable.

Secondly, I am extremely grateful to the individuals who allowed me to listen to, learn from, and document the stories of their childhood and immigration journeys for my research. Their generosity, humility, and openness deeply inspired me and reaffirmed my passion for the history and betterment of Latino immigrant communities. Without them, this project could not have come to fruition. Their stories and my newfound friendships with them are at the heart of this study.

My expression of gratitude must also be extended to the staff of the Latino

Research Center. Most notably, I give thanks to Dr. Emma Sepúlveda, the Center’s

Director for having given me the opportunity to conduct research under her watchful eye before navigating the thesis process. Dr. Sepúlveda’s guidance also helped me confirm my passion for migration studies and my thesis topic.

Lastly, I must thank the Department of History; the Gender, Race, and Identity program; the Office of Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Research; the Honors

Program; and the University of Nevada, Reno as a whole for giving me a space and the resources with which to pursue my interests, passions, and dreams without impediment. iii

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………... i

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………. ii

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………... iii

INTRODUCTION: EL JÓVEN EMPRENDEDOR (THE ENTERPRISING YOUTH) AS

THE PRIMARY CASE STUDY………………………………………………………... 1

PART I: UNITED STATES INTERVENTION IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE

AFTERMATH OF THE WARS, 1970-1995

Chapter One: The Civil Wars of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and

Guatemala……………………………………………………...……………..… 4

Chapter Two: Displacement and Subsequent Migration……………………….. 20

Chapter Three: United States Immigration Policies and Reception of Central

American Refugees in the Late Twentieth Century…………………………….. 30

PART II: CHILD MIGRATION AND INTERACTION BETWEEN THE STATE AND

CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANT YOUTH

Chapter Four: An Overview of Child Migration ………………………………. 39

Chapter Five: Young Central American Guardians of their Own

Survival and their Perception as Accessories ………………………………….. 45

PART III: MOVING FORWARD……..……………………………………………...... 60

Interviews by Author & Works Cited……………………………….………………….. 62

1

INTRODUCTION: EL JÓVEN EMPRENDEDOR (THE ENTERPRISING YOUTH)

AS THE PRIMARY CASE STUDY

In the late 1970s, Central American migration to the United States began to increase dramatically in response to the civil wars and violence in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and

Guatemala. These events, which were fueled by United States intervention, pushed thousands of Central Americans—including children and their families—to leave their homes in search of refuge in the north. Consequently, refugee policy in the U.S. and international human rights laws began to change and develop quickly to address the migratory status quo of the time. Such policies profoundly impacted the experiences of child migrants and the complex legal and humanitarian dilemmas that resulted from their continued migration. This investigation delves into the following questions: How did immigration policies, legal officers, and the state as a whole view and interact with

Central American migrant youth and their families who sought refuge and asylum between the 1970s and 1995? How did the immigration policies of the time impact how youth and their families (1) navigated the U.S. immigration system and (2) negotiated their conceptions of refuge, citizenship, and their futures? The central contention of this research is that migrant children fleeing the Central American civil wars of the late twentieth century acted as stand-alone, rights-bearing guardians of their own survival.

These jóvenes emprendedores—incredibly resourceful, adaptive, resilient, and initiative- taking youth—were highly aware, independent decision-making agents. They are termed jóvenes emprendedores because the significance of their dual points of view— represented by their bilingualism and binationalism—must be mentioned to more accurately capture their experiences. Consequently, they should be perceived and treated 2

as such by migration scholarship and legal institutions in the United States rather than the reality they faced: being discerned as accessories to adults. A child-centered rights approach may better equip migration historians and current public policy leaders in dealing with these vulnerable youth and their protection needs.

The methodology for this research consisted of three aspects: (1) literature reviews,

(2) oral history interviews with Central American immigrants, and (3) primary source analyses. This investigation will add to existing scholarship by historicizing a significant contemporary issue of unaccompanied child migration to the U.S. and shifting the focus of migration and history scholarship to the experiences of children who are constantly viewed not as rights-bearers in themselves, but as accessories to immigrant adults.

Migration studies research generally relegates the child to a mere accessory of their parents, the primary rights-bearers. So, while Central American immigration research is prevalent, scholarship that presents children as rights-bearing agents is a gap that must be filled. This research hopes to make a contribution to further bridge this gap in scholarship so that the child receives his and her due attention as a stand-alone rights-bearer.

Currently, this topic is one of significance as the debate surrounding immigration carries widespread recognition on the national stage in 2015.1 Between 2003 and 2011, about

8,000 to 40,000 unaccompanied child migrants—most from Central America—were apprehended at the United States-Mexico border annually.2 Last summer, a huge influx of lone child migrants left their countries in Central America, escaping gang violence

______1 Krogstad, Manuel Jens; Ana Barrera-Gonzalez and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Children 12 and under are fastest growing group of unaccompanied minors at U.S. border,” Pew Research Center (2014), 1. 2 Ibid. 3

and extreme poverty, to reach the southern United States border in search of refuge and/or family reunification.3 Thousands of unaccompanied children caught at the United

States-Mexico border are generally forced to face an immigration judge without representation and are subsequently deported. Then, reports that recently deported youth had been killed in Central America come to light. In order to begin to understand this contemporary issue of the immigration of unaccompanied, vulnerable youth from Central

America, the historical roots of the problem must be analyzed to better propose policy alternatives to the current handling of these children and their protection needs.

This project paid special attention to the impact of the U.S.’ involvement in the

Contra War of Nicaragua, the civil war and paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, and the United States-supported coup and “scorched-earth” campaigns in Guatemala in Part I.

The domestic and international immigration policies that attempted to address these war- induced displacements are also discussed in the first third of this work. In Part II, an overview of different types of child migration, child-centered legislation, and first-hand accounts of immigrants involved in these migratory flows as children in the late twentieth century are included. Part II analyzes how los jóvenes emprendedores de centroamérica

(the enterprising youth of Central America) became guardians of their own survival and how the U.S. immigration regime perceived them. Part III, the conclusion, echoes the thesis of this work and presents questions that may be answered in future investigations of this topic as historians, legislators, and the public move forward on this issue.

______3 Elizabeth Kennedy, “No Childhood Here: Why Central American Children Are Fleeing Their Homes,” Immigration Policy Council (2014), 3-4 4

PART I: UNITED STATES INTERVENTION IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE

AFTERMATH OF THE WARS, 1970-1995

Chapter One: The Civil Wars of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala

From 1897 to the start of World War I, the United States’ investments in Central

America grew from $21 million to $93 million.4 British investments, on the other hand, were beginning to diminish in comparison to the United States’ financial ventures in the region. The prospect of constructing the Panama Canal, too, was looming in hopes of

“injecting U.S. power into Central America.”5 In an effort to push British influence out of the region and protect the United States’ investments and hopes of building an isthmian canal, Theodore Roosevelt issued his Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The Roosevelt

Corollary asserted that it was the United States’ right as a “police power” to intervene in

Central America to ensure that Europeans would stay out of the region and maintain order for “revolutions were dangerous to [Roosevelt’s] nation’s interests.”6

Decades later in the 1930s—once years “of mounting Latin American anti- imperialist resistance, including armed resistance, [forced] Washington to abandon its militarism”—President Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Latin America that in moving forward the United States would be a “good neighbor” to its friends in the south.7 The

U.S. would actualize the rhetoric of the “Good Neighbor Policy” by acknowledging and respecting the sovereignty of Latin American nations and abandoning its claim to military

______4 Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W. W. Nortan & Company, Inc., 1993), 35. 5 Ibid., 37. 6 Ibid., 38. 7 Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: A Metropolitan/Holt Book, 2006), 3. 5

occupation. As the history of U.S. intervention in the region would later unfold and as historian Greg Grandin and others have noted, “rather than weaken U.S. influence in the

Western Hemisphere, this newfound moderation [the Good Neighbor Policy] in fact institutionalized Washington’s authority… providing a blueprint for America’s ‘empire by invitation.’”8

Diplomatic declarations like that of the Corollary and Good Neighbor Policy served as backdrops for the future of U.S. intervention in Central America. When it came to Nicaragua, the two major time periods that shaped the Nicaragua the world knew in the late twentieth century were U.S. military occupation between 1911 and 1933 and the reign of the U.S.-supported Somoza family from 1934 to 1979. During the latter era of

U.S. military occupation, the affluent Somoza family ruled Nicaragua through a family dictatorship that confiscated a majority of the nation’s wealth and arable land. Their possession of a majority of the country’s riches led to enormous wealth disparities.

Hundreds of thousands of peasants had no land on which to survive so they were compelled to migrate internally to secure one of the few jobs available in the nation’s urban centers or squat unlawfully on farmland for survival. 9

In addition to commandeering the nation’s wealth and acreage, the Somoza family controlled the National Guard. When Anastasio Somoza García was murdered in 1956, his son, Luis, replaced his father as dictator of their family’s “personal fief called

Nicaragua” and Anastasio Jr. remained the chief of the National Guard.10 In 1966, then-

______8 Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 3-4. 9 María Christina García, Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 14. 10 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 162. 6

president René Schick died and Anastasio Somoza Jr. regained the presidency for the

Somoza family. Anastasio Somoza Jr. triumphed during the general election of 1967, but only after utilizing the National Guard to quash rebellion through violent backlash.11

Possessing an ardent hatred for dissent, Somoza Jr. was not entertained by the rise of a new guerrilla organization, the National Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN). Having been born out of leftist movements in Cuba and Nicaragua, FSLN took the name of a

Nicaraguan nationalist, Augusto César Sandino. In 1926, after Emiliano Chamorro had been defeated in a Nicaraguan presidential election, Chamorro overthrew the government of Carlos José Solórzano. State Department officials refused to recognize the government of Chamorro. Making matters worse, Chamorro’s overthrown vice president Juan B.

Sacasa sought assistance from revolutionary Mexico, which the U.S. considered much too radical at the time.12 When the U.S. succeeded in slowing down Sacasa and General

José Moncada’s (the man who led Sacasa’s army) advancements by making Adolfo Díaz president, Augusto Sandino’s desire to end U.S. intervention did not abate. Sandino was previously one of Moncada’s officers, and a former employee of Standard Fruit and U.S.- owned mining companies. He had developed an “anti- Yankeeism” that informed his opposition to U.S.-intervention in the region up until he was murdered by Somoza Jr. in

1934. Sandino was considered a revolutionary hero whose efforts would be honored and continued by FSLN.13

When FSLN was being founded in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States

______11 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 163. 12 Ibid., 66. 13 Ibid., 68-70. 7

considered FSLN a “small, innocuous, and illegal Communist party” absent of a significant threat. 14 The United States government thought the extremely powerful and

U.S.-trained Nicaraguan National Guard could take on the radical, militant, and communist FSLN, which was now only being founded. To ensure this would be the case, the United States gave millions of dollars to Nicaragua’s defense budget and contributed to the training of the National Guard. In fact, the militaries of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala received their U.S. training from the School of the Americas, which trained Latin American soldiers and police in counterinsurgency and combat skills. 15

At a time when the United States was staving off ideological radicalism, upheaval, and instability, the Somoza family’s compliance with the U.S.’ desires, in exchange for military and economic aid, was a welcome addition to the U.S.’ Cold War, anti-communism, and ostensibly pro-democracy and human rights agenda. This is not to say, however, that the United States’ presence in the lives of everyday Nicaraguans produced social mobility, tranquility, or better circumstances. For example, the majority of Nicaraguans in the late twentieth century were impoverished, landless, and illiterate despite the millions of dollars poured into the country by the United States government.

In spite of the economic aid provided by the United States, the same two percent of families in Nicaragua controlled almost all of the nation’s opportunities and resources.16

The wealth disparities and notable political corruption that permeated throughout

Nicaraguan society at its highest echelons galvanized students, labor organizers,

______14 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 165. 15 Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 27-28. 16 García, Seeking Refuge, 12. 8

journalists, and others to action in the late twentieth century. In order to quell evidently unwanted uprisings, the U.S.- supported Nicaraguan National Guard instilled fear into these activists to keep them submissive by murdering or forcing them out of the country.

Some of FSLN’s exiles, to the chagrin of the Nicaraguan government and National

Guard, formed bases abroad in Cuba and even in the U.S.’ Bay area in the 1970s. 17

Over the next few years, FSLN would continue to strengthen its movement in

Nicaragua and utilize aggressive tactics in its opposition to the Somoza dictatorship.

Although Nicaragua (next to Costa Rica) was perceived as the Central American country least vulnerable to revolution due to the Somoza’s strong-armed rule, in 1979, FSLN rebels succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza government through their “nation-wide insurrection.”18 Thereafter, a coalition of leftists and moderates established a new government: the Government of National Reconstruction.19

Once Ronald Reagan entered the scene in 1981 U.S.-Nicaragua relations crumbled in the hands of administration officials like Jeane Kirkpatrick who viewed the revolution in

Nicaragua as a nationalistic struggle informed by Cuban, Soviet, and East European influences. In Congress, then, an embargo was placed on the Nicaraguan government— which was labeled a hotspot for communism and terrorists20—and redirected to the contra-revolucionarios, the “Contras,” to undermine the new government and eventually stem the flow of resources of the Sandinista government to the FMLN guerrillas in El

______17 García, Seeking Refuge, 14. 18 Ibid., 15. 19 Ibid. 20 Robert Parry, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, The Press & Project Truth (Arlington: The Media Consortium, 1999), 37. 9

Salvador.21 It soon became clear that the aid flowing into Nicaragua from President

Reagan’s administration was meant to help create an intolerable and politically unstable climate in Nicaragua so as to eliminate the Sandinista’s legitimacy among the masses.

From 1982 to 1984, the U.S. issued a series of Boland Amendments to cripple the

Sandinista’s authority and support base.22 The controversial but-eventually-enacted

Boland Amendment to the 1982 House Appropriations Bill prohibited the United States from providing military support to the Contras with the expressed interest of overthrowing the Sandinista regime. In spite of the restrictions of the Boland

Amendment, the United States Congress continued to provide millions of dollars in

“humanitarian” support to the Sandinista’s opposition.23

In another effort to circumvent the legal restrictions placed on the Central

Intelligence Agency and other government entities, the U.S. discreetly supported the

Nicaraguan Contras by means eventually revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1985, the administration decided to unlawfully sell arms to Iran in order to redirect the profits to the Contras. William Casey and Oliver North of the Central Intelligence Agency used this scandal to divert funds earned from the unlawful sale of arms to purchase military supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua despite the congressional ban and domestic and international pressure. Journalist Gary Webb would later reveal the most contentious aspect of this scandal. Webb argued that the CIA was complicit in a drug-trafficking ring

______21 García, Seeking Refuge, 18. 22 Ibid., 19. 23 Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: A Metropolitan/Holt Book, 2006), 136. 10

in California that diverted the funds made from cocaine sales to the Contra-affiliated

FDN, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force.24 Although President Reagan never admitted to knowing of these illegal proceedings, he did purport that it was the Sandinista leaders who were responsible for the “[exportation of] drugs to poison our youth” and not the

CIA—furthering the perception of the corruptive Sandinista government.25

This episode of U.S.-Central American history is described by journalist Robert

Parry as one characterized by the overstated maxim: “the end justifies the means.” In the case of the Iran-Contra scandal, the United States government engaged in illicit means justified by their egalitarian ends of overthrowing a communist government in Nicaragua in exchange for a much more moderate, conservative and pro-business regime.

President Reagan and his administration would eventually face an enormous amount of criticism for the Iran-Contra scandal—as revealed to the masses through public hearings and the congressional investigative report on the “Iran-Contra Affair”— and policies in Central America.26 Reagan’s opponents maintained that U.S. policy in

Nicaragua contributed to the increase in extreme poverty and displacement in the nation.

By attempting to destabilize the Sandinista government and effectively creating new homeless populations throughout the country, the United States was producing the region’s migrants searching for refuge. Subsequently, organizations such as Amnesty

______24 Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998) 45-48; Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 9-10. 25 García, Seeking Refuge, 20. 26 U.S. Congress. “Report of the Congressional Committee Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair.” United States Government Printing Office. November 17, 1987. 11

International, Americas Watch, Church World Service, and the International Red Cross in addition to a small but vociferous minority shed light on the human toll caused in

Nicaragua by the United States’ militarization of the nation.

In addition to the presence of humanitarian organizations, the involvement of several nations in the Central American refugee crisis that escalated in the 1980s and

1990s made it evident to the international community that a peace plan was crucial if the survival of Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans was expected to continue.

Therefore, in 1983, representatives from Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia met to create a regional peace plan. They proposed that foreign military advisers and personnel be removed from Central America, democracies be reinstated, and socioeconomic progress be made.27 One of the reasons the Group excluded the United

States from its talks was because they intended to recognize the Sandinista regime and put an end to the United States’ intervention in the region. In 1984, monitored elections were held and Daniel Ortega and the FSLN triumphed in Nicaragua. The United States succeeded in preventing the passing of the Group’s recommendations in 1985, though.

But a peace agreement was finally signed in 1987 at Esquipulas thanks to the leadership of Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias Sánchez. The Arias Plan, as it was termed, established that the Contras would disarm themselves in exchange for amnesty while the

Sandinistas would hold honest elections.27 The Esquipulas II or Arias Plan would also be signed to address the termination of aid to groups like the Contras and economic development.

______27 García, Seeking Refuge, 40-43. 12

While this political climate gave domestic and international leaders hope, the Contra soldiers and Sandinista leaders subsequently refused to honor all aspects of the agreement. In 1989, the Central American presidents were again compelled to meet. The

Sandinistas then agreed to move up the elections. In this agreement, the United States and

Honduras were expected to rescind their support to the Contras. While the U.S. cooperated in the face of surmounting pressure from the international community, the

Contras refused to disband themselves, so the United Nations Observer Group stepped in to monitor compliance with the peace negotiations.28

When the Sandinistas held their elections in 1989 in compliance with the Arias

Plan, the United States funded the opposition parties to ensure the outcome they desired succeeded. In early 1990, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was elected president of

Nicaragua as a member of the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Opositora,

UNO) and the Sandinistas were defeated. The election of UNO, a coalition of fourteen political parties, to the presidency was followed by the United States lifting its economic sanctions and providing billions of dollars in financial aid to help reconstruct the nation they helped debilitate. By the time of UNO’s electoral triumph in 1990, 30,000

Nicaraguans were dead; 50,000 were injured; 300,000 were internally displaced; and

500,000 had already immigrated elsewhere.29

As in Nicaragua, the civil war El Salvador experienced in the late twentieth century was fueled by the disparity in both wealth and power. Not only did the Fourteen

Families—the wealthiest two percent of the nation—control most of the country’s

______28 García, Seeking Refuge, 38. 29 Ibid., 42. 13

most valuable land, but they also held in their possession control of the nation’s banking system and other major industries. Since 1932, El Salvador was ruled by generals with close connections to the oligarchy. Both the oligarchs and the generals effectively in control of the nation protected each other’s interests and silenced the opposition.30

In 1972, the oligarchs staged a series of fraudulent elections, causing many

Salvadorans to protest the government then led by Fidel Sánchez Hernández. During the time of these demonstrations, the Catholic Church held tremendous influence, having recently been transformed by a “theology of liberation.” This theology encouraged its audiences to believe that poverty and repression are not part of God’s plan and as such,

God’s children are within their right to challenge oppressive institutions in order to secure their rightful liberation.31

Because the liberation theology was viewed as radically subversive, those in positions of power viewed it as threatening to their societal status. The archbishop of San

Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, used his weekly radio sermons to chastise the

Salvadoran government’s wrongdoings. Having been the highest-ranking clergyman in El

Salvador at the time with immense public visibility through his popular radio program,

Romero posed a threat to the comfortable and privileged status quo that El Salvador’s government officials had constructed. Not to mention, Archbishop Romero used his platform to not only condemn the actions of the privileged few, but to call on President

Carter in the U.S. to withdraw military aid and honor his commitment to human rights.32

______30 García, Seeking Refuge, 20. 31 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 220; Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 146. 32 García, Seeking Refuge, 21.

14

In the midst of the rise of liberation theology and the advent of the Sandinista and

Cuban revolutions, El Salvador also became a breeding ground for advocacy and social justice-minded organizations like the People’s Revolutionary Block, the Front of United

Popular Action, and the Popular League of February 28. Individuals from all corners of

Salvadoran society composed these organizations: educators, students, unionists, the poor, etc. In an effort to protest the abuses of the Salvadoran government and its wealthy few, these newly formed organizations in addition to guerrilla armies galvanized support to practice civil disobedience and engage in guerrilla warfare.

In late 1979, a military civilian junta challenged and defeated the abusive government of General Carlos Humberto Romero, who had triumphed in a fraudulent election.33 The junta was led by a diverse group of people who aspired to implement a minimum wage, agrarian/monetary reforms, and a ban on paramilitary groups to change the conditions of Salvadoran society. However well-intentioned these reforms were, the policies that were actually implemented were not enforced and therefore did not reach the millions in the Salvadoran society desperately hoping for redress and relief. Within months of the passage of these reforms, the church officials and civilians who had initially subscribed to the values, goals, and actions of the new military junta resigned and rescinded their support from the junta. Because of the instability of the military junta and those who unsuccessfully continued to attempt to implement reforms in El Salvador between 1979 and 1982, the National Guard maintained its authority.34

Meanwhile, entities like the Salvadoran National Security Agency (ANSESAL)

______33 García, Seeking Refuge, 21. 34 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 25. 15

and the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN)—organizations composed of government informants and paramilitary groups—were using violence to subdue any hint of subversion. Peasants, students, teachers, and union leaders who decided to mobilize themselves by forming unions, for example, would eventually

“disappear” as they were abducted or murdered by ORDEN or ANSESAL. These counterinsurgency forces in addition to the Salvadoran military were supported by the

United States through School of the Americas training, financial aid, and mission assistance.35 The paramilitary groups that received monetary aid from the United States during the time were popularly referred to as escuadrones de la muerta, “death squads.”36

President Carter continued to ask the U.S. Congress for millions of dollars in aid to help strengthen the army’s “role in reforms.”37 In response to the United States-funded national security agencies’ actions, revolutionaries, activists, and reformers unified.

Political parties, unions, peasants, and religious organizations collectively formed the

Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR). FDR was formed by sixteen organizations and led by Guillermo Ungo, Enrique Alvarez Córboda, and Rubén Zamora.38 In a similar effort to form a revolutionary coalition, five guerrilla groups united under the Farabundo

Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN and FDR would eventually reach a compromise to join forces, as well, despite possessing different origins and ideology

(FDR arose out of the moderate Social Democrat and Christian Democrat movements while FMLN was inspired by Marxist groups and guerrilleros). They united because

______35 García, Seeking Refuge, 23. 36 Ibid. 37 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 251. 38 Ibid., 253. 16

they had larger goals in common: replacing the oligarchy’s laws with land reforms and other programs to benefit disadvantaged Salvadorans.

In 1984, the military junta government appointed José Napoleón Duarte as president; both Presidents Carter and Reagan believed that Duarte was a useful alternative to the leftists found in the FDR-FMLN coalition. The belief and support placed in Duarte proved to be yet another failure of foreign policy in El Salvador, for his presidency did very little to minimize the human rights violations pervading the nation.

The massacre known as El Mozote alone killed almost 1,000 villagers in Morazán.39

Even in the face of these human rights abuses, U.S. military aid to the Salvadoran government continued. Due to the ideologies of the FDR-FMLN, officials in the United

States claimed the Salvadoran civil war was yet another extension of the East-West struggle in which the United States had a responsibility to ensure Soviet and Cuban influence did not expand further than it already had. In an effort to oppose U.S. intervention in El Salvador, in 1980, Canada and Mexico supported a United Nations resolution and ended the practice of sending El Salvador monetary aid during its civil wars.40 Further, in 1981, Mexico and France officially recognized the FDR-FMLN.

Despite international opposition, the U.S. Congress sought evidence that El Salvador was making meaningful gains in the area of human rights. By the time of Reagan’s presidency, members of his administration told Congress that El Salvador was accomplishing the human rights strides articulated by Carter and ostensibly promoted by

Reagan. In reality, María Cristina García argues, President Reagan was “downplaying

______39 Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 102 40 García, Seeking Refuge, 24. 17

news report[s] of civilian causalities, claiming that only leftist guerrillas were caught in the crossfire.”41 Congress continued to approve the disbursement of military aid to El

Salvador. In the end, El Salvador turned out to be one of the most financially supported nations in the world to receive help from the U.S. through its own economic and military aid or through the transfer of millions of dollars from the World Bank and International

Monetary Fund throughout the twelve-year civil war of El Salvador.42

When it came to Guatemala, Guatemalans sought agrarian land reform to eradicate the blatant wealth and land disparities found in the nation in the 1940s. During this time, two percent of the population controlled a majority of the arable land.

Additionally, a majority of Guatemalans earned only a couple dollars a day harvesting crops while enduring inhumane living and working standards. After a decade of attempted reforms to address the plight of everyday Guatemalans, a CIA-sponsored coup overthrew the government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzman. Although Árbenz’s presidency was a democratically elected one, the military coup that ended his term then put into place a series of military officers who would subsequently run Guatemala.43

The overthrow of the Árbenz government succeeded in sabotaging the

Guatemalan national economy. Accompanied by the vast rates of illiteracy, infant mortality, and lack of life expectancy, the indigenous population of Guatemala was left without land and exploited. The government was deeply aware of the situation of the

______41 García, Seeking Refuge, 25. 42 Ibid. 43 Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 4-12. 18

Mayans in Guatemala and believed that their susceptibility to victimization made them predisposed to rebellion. As a result, beginning in the 1960s, the Maya living in the highlands, who attempted to organize themselves by forming political organizations or unions, were kidnapped and murdered. Thousands of people were killed in these injurious endeavors. In fact, Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio, president of Guatemala in 1970, was nicknamed the “Butcher of Zacapa.”44

Comparable to the reactions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, throngs of people decided to unite under the auspices of guerrilla groups to fight back during the 1960s and

1970s. Their aim was to challenge the unjust actions of Guatemala’s rulers. In 1982, the

Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) was created. URNG was formed by a coalition of four guerrilla groups. Together, they promoted a manifesto of equality, agrarian reform, and individual rights. The groups’ efforts were thwarted by a series of government programs that sought to control the Guatemalan masses and dissolve the influence of the guerrilla groups.45

Between 1981 and 1984, the violence endured by those labeled as insurgents reached new heights of brutality. During the times of mass killings, U.S. presidential administrations supported Guatemala’s government with unfettered military aid. And during times when Guatemalan factory workers unionized, the Guatemalan government and U.S. American officials acted as allies to protect their interests. As the numbers of those disappeared, tortured, or murdered continued to proliferate, so did the economic

______44 Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York: Penguin Books 2011), 138. 45 García, Seeking Refuge, 26-27. 19

crisis in Guatemala. The U.S. was nevertheless resistant to ending aid to the country.

Even when United States aid was finally cut off in 1977, the U.S. insisted on providing other forms of assistance to officials in power and the armed forces.46

Foreign policy in Guatemala drew much criticism from those directly impacted by the U.S.’ intervention and various people in the north. Rigoberta Menchú, a Nobel Peace

Prize recipient, documented many of the government’s barbaric actions. Internationally,

Canada cosponsored a U.N. resolution in 1982. Mexico, however, did not openly condemn Guatemala’s tumultuous situation because they feared that the revolution would spread past the Guatemala-Mexico border. This was a legitimate worry for Mexican officials, considering several Guatemalans had taken refuge in Chiapas. Guatemalans were suspected of inculcating further subversion into Mexico’s opposition groups. As a result, restrictive border policies and immediate deportations were favored.47

Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala ultimately became a stage for, as Greg

Grandin put it, “Latin American’s role in the formation of the U.S. empire.”48 These three

Central American nations were workshops for the U.S. empire that resulted in rampant socioeconomic inequality and crime. Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala throughout the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s became foreign policy quagmires for the U.S. in which the U.S. tested its warfare and hegemonic capabilities in a regional workshop aimed at vindicating the Cold War’s East-West struggle. Such an imperial workshop created hundreds of thousands of refugees who immigrated for survival.

______46 García, Seeking Refuge, 29. 47 Susanne Jones and Nestor Rodríguez, Guatemala-U.S. Migration: Transforming Regions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014) 110. 48 Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 7. 20

Chapter Two: Displacement and Subsequent Migration

Prior to 1960, internal migration among nearby Latin American nations was quite ubiquitous. Many Central Americans crossed borders close by, looking for temporary work to support their families. Salvadorans were known to have partaken in this economic immigration for the longest amount of time. In fact, the Salvadoran government encouraged its rural and unemployed citizens to seek seasonal or permanent work by migrating across different borders. They believed this encouragement would preempt uprisings spurred by dissatisfaction with their socioeconomic situation.

Salvadoran immigration to Honduras, for example, was so prevalent that by the 1960s, almost 400,000 Salvadorans had settled there.49 Moreover, in light of this large influx of

Salvadoran immigration, the Honduran government attempted to discourage future immigration from El Salvador by prohibiting those who were not born in Honduras to own land. Aside from the land-holding restrictions placed on Salvadorans, more than

100,000 immigrants were forcibly removed from Honduras through deportation.50

As noted earlier, due to the especially vulnerable status of the indigenous

Guatemalan community, Guatemalans, too, were known to have participated in the long tradition that was inter-Latin American migration. Maya Indians immigrated to southern

Mexico where their culture and way of life was practiced—largely because Mexico’s

Soconusco region and Chiapas were once part of Guatemala until early in the nineteenth century. Mexico became home to thousands of seasonal Guatemalan workers that became the backbone for the nation’s agricultural industry. In a similar fashion to the U.S.,

______49 García, Seeking Refuge, 30. 50 Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 133. 21

unauthorized immigration to Mexico was wanted, so long as low-wage labor to produce coffee beans, sugarcane, and other products was necessary. Border security along the

Guatemala-Mexico border was fairly lax while immigration was wanted for agricultural needs. As a result, business and family ties extended across these borders freely.51 But, as immigrants became more visible in everyday life, they were soon unwelcome.

Despite these historic migratory traditions, receiving Latin American nations found themselves insufficiently equipped to deal with the massive influx of immigrants searching for refuge between the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Millions of Central Americans were forced to flee for safety by engaging in internal and international migration. While this new migration grew out of a need to survive, it nevertheless followed the established structure of immigration known to these immigrants before the 1970s. Central Americans first moved to locales where they had family, friends, or knowledge of employment opportunities. Salvadorans continued to immigrate to Honduras and Guatemala while

Maya Indians and other Guatemalan refugees fled to southern Mexico. 52 As the years went by and deportation regimes made immigration and permanent relocation much more precarious, immigrants from El Salvador, for example, began to search for safe havens in

Mexico, Nicaraguans in nearby Costa Rica, and Guatemalans in Belize.53

When it came to Nicaraguans, their first significant wave of immigration began during the middle of the 1970s when the Sandinistas and the Somoza dictatorship’s all- out war was in full throttle. About 200,000 Nicaraguans were displaced just in this first

______51 García, Seeking Refuge, 31-32. 52 Ibid., 33. 53 Ibid. 22

wave of immigration. The second wave of Nicaraguans occurred after the Sandinista’s victory in 1979 due to the tumultuous nature of the United States-sponsored Contra war.54

Most of the privileged Nicaraguans of the higher echelons of society immigrated to the

United States cities of Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston. Other refugees or exiled

Nicaraguans with fewer resources and networks immigrated to closer countries with much more familiar cultures and language: Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica.

In a similar trajectory, after 1979, Salvadoran immigration began to increase to unprecedented levels in response to the civil wars. In just three years after 1979, 500,00

Salvadorans had become displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.55 And by the end of the 1980s, that statistic had risen to one million people having been forced to flee El Salvador. Guatemalan migration comparably skyrocketed between 1982 and 1984, when the administrations of Ríos Montt and Mejía Víctores intensified the country’s counterinsurgency efforts. In the 1980s, more than one million

Guatemalans had been forced to migrate internally in search of refuge.56

The countries prior to the United States that served as the first respondents were reluctant to assist and protect the thousands of refugees that began to pour across their borders. Traditional xenophobic logic then followed, as government officials in the receiving countries became concerned that these immigrants would stay permanently in their countries and compete with citizens for social services, employment, and housing.

They also took into consideration political fears, and not just economic ones; politicians

______54 García, Seeking Refuge, 34. 55 Ibid. 56 LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 257. 23

worried that the immigration of insurgent individuals from other Latin American nations would erode the government’s base and authority, thereby delegitimizing their regimes.57

While socially and even journalistically, these immigrants were labeled as refugees, legally, their status was incredibly uncertain. According to the 1951 United

Nations’ “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees” Article IA(2),

“…the term ‘refugee’ shall apply to any person who: (2) …owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”58

Most Central American nations signed onto this convention/protocol but, in practice, their individual constitutions at home did not possess established legislative pathways with which to execute the rhetoric of the 1951 Convention. In addition to lacking the legislative tools necessary to assign asylum formally, various nations that signed the 1951

Convention held different levels of commitment to the convention’s propositions.59

The definition of the term “refugee” in the United Nations’ 1951 Convention itself did not provide would-be refugees with the protections they needed because most immigrants fleeing Central America at the time could not necessarily demonstrate they

______57 García, Seeking Refuge, 35. 58 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.” The United Nations Refugee Agency. July 25, 1951. http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html, 14. 59 García, Seeking Refuge, 36-38. 24

had a “well-founded fear of persecution” relevant to the listed characteristics.

Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans were leaving due to a general—yet highly palpable on the individualized level—environment of widespread violence.60 But, according to the criteria, the violence must have been individually targeted for it to have qualified as a “well-founded fear.” A general climate of danger was insufficient.

The Matter of Sanchez and Escobar (1985)—a U.S. Board of Immigration

Appeals (BIA) decision made on behalf of Luis Alonzo Sanchez-Trujillo and Luis

Armando Escobar-Sanieto, two Salvadorans who entered the United States “without inspection” in 1979 and 1980, respectively—illustrates this insufficiency.61 The co- respondents were seeking an appeal on their deportation order in 1982 through a request for asylum and cancellation of deportation. They argued they belonged to a “legally cognizable ‘particular social group.’”62 Based on their membership to a targeted group of the Salvadoran civil war, they asserted that they felt a “well-founded fear of persecution based on actual persecution prior to their departure from El Salvador, and that respondent

Sanchez has a well-founded fear of persecution based on his religion and membership in his church’s ‘Christian community’ or ‘youth group.’”63 The BIA, in their decision, maintained that the respondents held the burdens of proof, meaning that the “alien’s facts must establish that it is more likely than not he would be subject to persecution for one of the grounds specified. INS v. supra, at 429-30.”64 To meet their burdens of proof

______60 García, Seeking Refuge, 32. 61 Matter of Sanchez and Escobar: In Deportation Proceedings (Board of Immigration Appeals, 1985), 276-289. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol19/2996.pdf, 277. 62 Ibid., 278. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 25

standard, Escobar noted that in April of 1980, he “was attacked by two men in civilian clothes who placed him in an unmarked van…. beat him, questioned him with regard to guerrilla activities, robbed him, threatened him with death, and threw him from the van approximately an hour and a half later. He subsequently recognized one of his assailants who was riding in a vehicle, which belonged to the municipal police. The respondent participated in two demonstrations while in El Salvador… The respondent testified that three of his young male friends had been killed in Santa Cruz Michapa by the national guard…”65 Much of what both Sanchez and Escobar declared evidence of their qualification under the definition of a “refugee” concerned the general conditions of violence in their country.66 Because the Board of Immigration Appeals found the dangers faced in their case to be general, “coincidental violence of country-wide civil strife,” the

Board of Immigration Appeals decided that “a purely statistical showing is not by itself sufficient proof of the existence of a persecuted group.”67 They argued that in order to secure asylum, an aspiring refugee must be able to demonstrate that they have a well- founded fear because of their individual identifying characteristics attached to a particular group. The incidents they experienced did not constitute an act of persecution nor, according to the Board of Immigration Appeals, was there substantial evidence of directed violence against them because of their young age; it was all “happenstance of time and location” even if many youth were being killed or disappeared during the time.68

The Matter of Sanchez and Escobar is only one example of how the definition of

______65 Matter of Sanchez and Escobar, Board of Immigration Appeals, 280. 66 Ibid., 282. 67 Ibid., 282-285. 68 Ibid., 288. 26

“refugee” found in the United Nations’ 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, which was later adopted by United States legislation in the final year of the Carter administration, was insufficient in recognizing the plight and protection needs of would-be refugees.69

When, in 1980, the United Nations recognized the 1951 Convention and 1967

Protocol were inadequate at protecting refugees, some years later, in 1984, the Cartagena

Declaration on Refugees was adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America. Representatives from Mexico and Panama asserted that immigrants could legally qualify as refugees if they felt they had “…been threatened by generalized violence… which… seriously disturbed public order.”70 The Cartagena

Declaration, in the later years of the Central American refugee crisis, attempted to provide guidance to immigrant-receiving nations at the time.71

But before the drafting of the Cartagena Declaration, individual nations that received Central American immigrants looking for a new country to call home began to have heated discussions about who qualified as a refugee under the United Nations

Convention and their own determinations. Additionally, they debated about what type of assistance should be extended to these immigrants. And, in order to distance themselves from broad-ranging obligations to these refugees, most immigrant-receiving countries argued that the individuals fleeing civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala

______69 Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 138. 70 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Cartagena Declaration on Refugees.” The United Nations Refugee Agency. November 22, 1984. http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html, 33-39. 71 Musarat-Akram, Susan, “The World Refugee Regime in Crisis: A Failure to Fulfill the Burden- Sharing and Humanitarian Requirements of the 1951 Refugee Convention” (American Society of International Law 93, no. 1 1999): 213-216. Accessed April 27, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25659295.

27

were merely economic immigrants searching for social mobility. To justify such contentions, immigrant-receiving countries strategically used statistics that continued to understate the amount of individuals displaced, abused, and murdered by the civil wars in

Central America. For example, in 1982, the United States Department of State estimated that 225,000 Guatemalans had been displaced while other sources documented as many as one million displaced peoples.72 And, of course, just as tabulating the number of undocumented persons currently living in the United States is nearly an impossible task to do with precision and accuracy, definitively documenting facts about this inherently transient group of people was also a task ridden with obstacles. But the quantitative evidence put forward by the United States consistently purported fewer numbers of atrocities than did the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other

NGOs.73 To further add to the United States’ unwillingness to categorize the Central

Americans of this era as refugees, was the fact that the United States would not reveal that it was their own military intervention that contributed significantly to the production of this forced migration and human rights records.

Due to the United Nations’ awareness of the extent of the damage that had been done in Central America by the political upheaval of the late twentieth-century, their advocacy at the time centered around encouraging Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and

Guatemalans to seek refuge in neighboring countries so they would eventually have the opportunity to go home. As a result, a number of camps that varied in the quality of living standards were constructed in the region. Many of these camps, unfortunately,

______72 García, Seeking Refuge, 33. 73 Ibid., 34-36. 28

were overpopulated, grossly underfunded, and had little opportunity for educational access. In light of the living conditions in these camps, many refugees decided to live as undocumented immigrants in the countries to which they immigrated.

Camps along the Honduras-Nicaragua border restricted the freedom of movement of its inhabitants, and subjected them to deportation and the forfeiture of their refugee status. Salvadorans and Guatemalans had no access to employment opportunities that would make their life in the camps sustainable. Salvadorans and Guatemalans were also prohibited from living and working among the Honduran population. On the other hand,

Nicaraguans had access to settlements on which to live and engage in agricultural work.74

The army that oversaw the Honduran camps instructed border residents not to help vulnerable refugees. In 1980, when an enormous group of Salvadorans attempted to cross into Honduras to escape a death squad campaign, the Honduran military did not welcome the group of refugees into one of the camps on the border; rather, they repatriated these

Salvadorans at gunpoint. Others were not so lucky, though. Other immigrants who attempted to secure refuge in Honduras were shot as they tried to cross the border. With corroborating evidence of this treatment in hand, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees subsequently wanted to garner protections for this particular group of

Central American refugees. The agreements they reached were constantly violated.75

United States intervention in Honduras, too, did not make this nation the most ideal safe heaven for repeatedly discriminated against Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and

Nicaraguans. But even in the case of Costa Rica, a nation with a stable and democratic

______74 García, Seeking Refuge, 36-38 75 Ibid., 37. 29

government, balancing domestic concerns with the humanitarian needs of the larger, international community proved quite troublesome. The Costa Rican government, to a much greater extent than their Honduran counterpart, found a way to reconcile the needs of its citizens while providing assistance to incoming refugees. Despite being a site for low-wage domestic work and racism for Nicaraguans, compared to Honduras, Costa Rica offered Central American refugees some safety and socioeconomic opportunities.

By 1989, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Belize had become homes to almost one million displaced Central Americans. Very few were formally recognized as refugees and offered the assistance owed to them as such.

Because of the widespread economic devastation of Central America in the late twentieth century, meaningful reforms and democratization did not happen as quickly as they had hoped. The illiteracy, impoverishment, and unemployment that afflicted the region continued to negatively impact the advancement of Central Americans.76 Even after Violeta Barrios de Chamorro earned the Nicaraguan presidency with the help of the

UNO coalition and the FMLN in El Salvador gained seats in the national legislature,

Central Americans continued to disappear and be killed.77 Various NGOs continued to funnel millions of dollars in aid to the region in the early 1990s to subsidize the reintegration of Central Americans. Many of the displaced individuals did not return to their countries of origin until 1996, when they believed it was safe to return due to the end of the wars. Others permanently relocated to neighboring Latin American countries,

Canada and the United States—even if it meant doing so unlawfully.

______76 Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 204. 77 García, Seeking Refuge, 42. 30

Chapter Three: United States Immigration Policies and Reception of Central

American Refugees in the Late Twentieth Century

By 1987, nearly ninety percent of the immigrants who had opted for international migration had traveled to either Mexico or the United States.78 These two nations became the two most prominent refugee-receiving countries outside of Central America. Before the 1970s and 1980s, Central American immigrants commonly visited their neighbors in the north: the United States and Mexico; so, this certainly was not a novel migratory pattern. Before the rates of Central American refugees had skyrocketed, the relatively fluid and unfettered border crossings to the United States and Mexico in addition to the cost-effectiveness of the trip had made immigration to the United States and Mexico immediately desirable and feasible. Moreover, the heightened economic opportunity and security offered by the United States and Mexico made these two countries highly sought after destinations for those looking for refuge outside of their countries of origin.

While the United States and Mexico, on the surface, provided Central American immigrants with more security and economic opportunity than what could be found in their home countries, the percentage of Central Americans who received immigrant visas, refugee status, or asylum was actually quite low.79 Many of the individuals who fled

Central America in the late twentieth century arrived in the United States and Mexico with some kind of temporary visa—which for many of them would later expire—or crossed the border to their intended safe haven illegally. And no one type of Central

American fled during these decades; rather, a diverse group of Nicaraguan, Salvadoran,

______78 García, Seeking Refuge, 85. 79 Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 131. 31

and Guatemalan societies were represented. In fact, both urban and rural inhabitants, students, youth, older generations, workers, union leaders, leftists, rightists, and religious officials immigrated to the United States and Mexico during these years.80

As the United States started to see more and more immigrants crossing their borders in search of the “American Dream,” at a proportionate rate, immigration policies began to spring up that were not wholly amenable to the presence of outsiders. During the time of these migrations, the 1965 Immigration Act was in place in the United States.

Otherwise known as the Hart-Cellar Act, the 1965 Act abolished the discriminatory national origins quota and put in place a new system of quotas. This new system applied to all countries in the globe and evenly distributed the amount of visas at a cap of 20,000 per country. The Hart-Cellar Act also placed an overall ceiling on all admissions and gave preference to immigrants based on family or occupation connections. Because the

1965 Immigration Act ceased to admit immigrants based on racial desirability and ostensibly implemented policies rooted in equality, immigrants from eastern and southern

Europe and Asia now could travel to the United States with greater ease.81

Despite the rhetoric about abolishing racially discriminatory quotas, however, the

1965 Immigration Act, for the first time in history, uniformly placed numerical restrictions on the new class of racial undesirables: those who immigrated from the western hemisphere—particularly immigrants from Latin America. And, as historian Mae

Ngai put it, the consequences of this new set of numerical restrictions on the western

______80 García, Seeking Refuge, 85. 81 Mae Ngai. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 226-8.

32

hemisphere would “reproduce the problem of illegal immigration… to the present day.”82

In light of the 1970s recession the United States experienced, the refugee crisis that began to develop over the next couple decades served as further fuel to xenophobic rhetoric that only saw Central American immigrants as burdens to the U.S. American society. Those who believed that, on the contrary, the United States had a moral obligation to offer a save haven to these immigrants because of the U.S’ involvement in the production of this crisis would later become an influential and outspoken group of advocates opposed to the U.S’ foreign policy and immigration agendas.

Neoliberal economic policies in Latin America during the late twentieth century were the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy that drew much criticism at home and from the international community. In the 1980s, neoliberal economics equated economic stability with democracy. Many economists, policymakers, and world leaders believed that economic stability would not only support the emergence of democratic institutions, but also prevent migration flows.83 And yet another tactic that was pursued, not for the good of the refugees but to accomplish the goal of stemming immigration waves, was the contribution of billions of dollars to the UNHCR and the Red Cross to aid displaced peoples outside of the U.S. This way, officials in Washington could argue that sufficient help was available for these populations in Latin America. This was ultimately the same logic that allowed U.S. officials to assert that Central American refugees of this time were economically motivated.84

______82 Mae Ngai. Impossible Subjects, 228. 83 Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, 190-194 84 García, Seeking Refuge, 86-87.

33

As a result of this logic and the labeling of these immigrants as economic rather than political refugees or exiles, a drawn-out debate about whether or not to extend them legal protection in the form of refugee status began. In the U.S., under the criteria put forward by the 1980 Refugee Act, most Central Americans did not quality for asylum because the 1980 Act modified the definition of a refugee from the 1951 Convention and

1967 Protocol Relating to the States of Refugees.85 Prior to the 1980s, those escaping communist countries like Cuba were essentially offered automatic admission into the

U.S.—a privilege not offered to those fleeing right-winged regimes allied to the U.S.86

Because the United States pursued restrictionist policies when it came to Central

American refugees, policymakers in the United States constantly clashed with the more tolerant policies of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In the 1980s, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees publicly acknowledged that the

1951 Convention and subsequent 1967 Protocol were insufficient in addressing the needs of would-be refugees from Central America. During the same time when the United

Nations was advocating for a blanket extension of refugee status to a “prima facie group” of Salvadoran immigrants who would likely experience violence or even death if deported to their home country, the United States was adopting even more stringent practices and interpretations.87 In fact, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State was quoted in October of 1985 in a New York Times letter to the editor explaining the standards a refugee must achieve in order to gain legal recognition and protection as such: “It is not

______85 Musarat-Akram, Susan, “The World Refugee Regime in Crisis,” 213-216. 86 Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 138. 87 Ibid.

34

enough for the applicant to state that he faces the same conditions that every other citizen faces. Why are you different from everyone else in your country? How have you been singled out, threatened, imprisoned, tortured, harassed?”88 The United States demanded a standard that was much more challenging to reach than that of the United Nations. For officials of the U.S. Department of State, an aspiring refugee and asylum seeker had to prove they were subject to individual, special, and targeted persecution. Their being a member of a particularly vulnerable class of people was insufficient, in the eyes of the

United States government, to warrant formal, legal protection. The Deputy Assistant

Secretary of State’s assertion that “the political asylum program was never meant to serve as a magnet for people from Nicaragua or anywhere else… Most Nicaraguan asylum applicants state that they do not like the Sandinistas, do not want to serve in the military and have come to the U.S. because we are a free country”89 is further indicative of the whole of the Reagan Administration’s rhetoric and insistence on either overgeneralizing or understating the plight of Central American asylum seekers. The Reagan administration hoped to justify its own ambivalent agenda—one in which the internal strife of these Central American nations was problematized as an “East-West” struggle but refugees fleeing the aftermath of these struggles still were not privileged in the way

Cuba or Eastern bloc immigrants were.

Similar to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State’s arguments, in the Matter of R-

R-, the Board of Immigration Appeals decided on the deportation of a Nicaraguan citizen

______88 Laura J. Dietrich, “Political Asylum: Who Is Eligible And Who Is Not,” New York Times (New York City, New York), Sept. 13, 1985, 1. 89 Ibid. 35

who had entered the United States unlawfully in 1989.90 The respondent claimed he possessed a well-founded fear of persecution because he refused to serve in the

Nicaraguan military and was subsequently sought after by the military and even

“[stricken]… on the head with a rifle butt.”91 The Board of Immigration Appeals then established that the Sandinista government did not target citizens who refused to engage in military duty. Moreover, the Board claimed that “the Sandinista Party no longer

[controlled] the Nicaraguan Government… [thus they did] not find any basis for the respondent’s claim that he has a well-founded fear of persecution.”92 While this administrative decision was made after the Sandinistas had lost their election to UNO, similar rhetoric to that of Laura Dietrich’s was used to argue that one could not obtain refugee status unless the applicant could demonstrate individual and essentially targeted

“prima facie eligibility for the relief sought.”93

After not following through on its commitment to the United Nations’ non- refoulement (no forced return) principle, the United States government began to offer a temporary protected status to Central American asylum seekers known as Extended

Voluntary Departure at the behest of the United Nations’ criticisms of the United States’ deportation practices (like those ordered by the Board of Immigration Appeals, for example). Extended Voluntary Departure (EVD) is a discretionary act of relief extended to individuals for whom it has been deemed too dangerous to return to their country of

______90 Matter of R-R: In Deportation Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1992. 547-552. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol20/3182.pdf, 548. 91 Ibid., 550-551. 92 Ibid., 551. 93 Ibid., 552. 36

origin. During the Central American Refugee crisis, EVD was not a new phenomenon.

Since the 1960s, it had been granted to various immigrants from many nationalities. To the misfortune of many Central Americans, however, the Reagan administration continued to purport that the situation in Central America for Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans was not significant enough to justify the extension of EVD.94 They continued to downplay the impact deportation could have on these would-be refugees.

In addition to the deficiency associated with EVD, abuses committed at United

States-Mexico detention centers spurred the rise of litigation battles in court. Noe Castillo

Núñez, et. al., v. Hal Boldin, et. al. (1982), a class action lawsuit comprised of

Salvadorans and Guatemalans whose fundamental rights were violated, concluded with the court mandating that Immigration and Naturalization Service stop denying the rights of detainees. Orantes- Hernández,et. al., v. Smith, et. al. (1988), similarly claimed that

Immigration and Naturalization Services had failed to respect the rights of those in custody.95 While the courts ultimately issued a permanent injunction against the

Immigration and Naturalization Services, INS continued to violate the rights of those detained in detention centers. Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Cardoza-

Fonseca (1987) would succeed in creating a new interpretation of the 1980 Refugee Act to more adequately address the needs of aspiring refugees.96

With the inadequacy of both immigration policies and court decisions in stopping the deportations of vulnerable Central Americans, though, immigration reform soon

______94 García, Seeking Refuge, 89. 95 Ibid., 108-112. 96 Ibid., 108-110.

37

became a primary issue of concern for the Reagan administration. In 1986, the

Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was implemented to curb unauthorized immigration by adding more resources to border security and punishing employers that hired unauthorized workers.97 One of the main aspects of the IRCA was an amnesty initiative that allowed undocumented immigrants to access a path of legalization if they could demonstrate they entered the country before January of 1982. Under this amnesty program, few Central Americans relative to their overall presence were able to gain legal status. Most Central Americans who arrived in the United States as a response to the civil wars in Central America came to the United States after January of 1982.98

After the development of these court decisions and the advent of the Immigration

Reform and Control Act, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990. This

Immigration Act established a temporary protected status (TPS) that afforded refugees and asylum-seekers a “statutory basis for safe haven.”99 Before this temporary protected status was supposed to expire, Central American refugees without legal status could defer their deportation for a year until 1993 and then become eligible for Deferred Enforced

Departure.100

In the midst of these policy changes, many Central Americans began to return to their countries of origin as soon as tranquility had settled in the early 1990s. Others either stayed in the United States with some type of legal status or lived their lives in the shadows as undocumented immigrants. As the civil wars in Central America began to

______97 Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire, 142. 98 García, Seeking Refuge, 130-131. 99 Ibid., 112. 100 Ibid. 38

wane and so-called normalcy was restored, the United States then began to scale back and completely eliminate special programs it had created to deal with the refugee crisis.

In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act

(IIRIRA) was enacted. The implementation of the IIRIRA came to the detriment of undocumented immigrants as it allowed removal to occur with the absence of judicial oversight and strengthened the nation’s deportation capabilities.101 Nicaraguans who could provide evidence that they were present in the United States as of December 1,

1995 would then become eligible for the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American

Relief Act (NACARA), a law that resulted from the lobbying efforts of committed elected officials.102

Ultimately, the United States’ intervention in the Central American civil wars helped produce the migration that resulted from the displacement of thousands of

Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans. Migration turned out to be an instrument and by-product of public policy, as political rhetoric contributed to the modification and implementation of immigration policies in the late twentieth century. The immigration policies that ultimately attempted to address the legal plight of Central American refugees—beginning with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and Refugee Act of 1980 and ending with the likes of the IRCA, IIRIRA, and NACARA—transformed the way in which refugees of all genders, ages, and backgrounds were protected, dealt and interacted with as they sought a safe haven.

______101 García, Seeking Refuge, 116. 102 Ibid., 118. 39

PART II: CHILD MIGRATION AND INTERACTION BETWEEN THE STATE AND

CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANT YOUTH

Chapter Four: An Overview of Child Migration

In migration studies, there is an abundance of scholarship that historicizes and problematizes migration as a phenomenon largely of concern to adult men and women and even entire families. The humanitarian and legal complexities that arise out of the plight of individual and collective child migration—whether or not migrant youth are accompanied by adults or not—have been largely overlooked not only by the academy but also by the receiving legal institutions in the United States. The significance of the case of the child migrant must continue to be analyzed by the historian and public policy officials as a primary case study in which they are not accessories to their parents, but instead, rights-bearing agents in their own right.

In the 1980s, international law finally and definitively began to recognize children as fundamental rights-bearers in themselves. In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the

Child highlighted children of all nationalities as primary concerns to the legal and international community. The 1989 Convention contended that current legal protections for children must be extended further than merely affording citizen children safeguards against harm; rather, the Convention advocated for the defense of institutional provisions of the rights of noncitizen children, as well.103 With the passing of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the progression of the 1990s brought with it an increasing assigned importance to child migration as a topic of upmost societal concern. Moreover,

______103 Jacqueline Bhabha, Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 3. 40

it allowed previous thinking about immigration to make room for child migration and welfare as central issues of concern. And, actually, before the 1990s, the immigration of children was largely included under the umbrella of family migration, where children yet again were relegated to mere add-ons to their parents or adult caregivers.

There are, of course, different forms child migration may manifest itself through.

According to Jacqueline Bhaba, “child migration [can be organized] into three nonmutually exclusive groups:” family-related migration (comprising of family reunion, family-related deportation, and intercountry adoption); exploitation-related migration

(including child trafficking and recruitment related to armed conflict and sometimes transnational adoption); and survival-related migration (covering refugee- and asylum- driven migration, and economic migration).”104 Furthermore, these three different types of migration can occur as children immigrate with families or are adopted; are guided by smugglers known as “coyotes” into the United States unlawfully; and immigrate unaccompanied—without the supervision of an adult.

Family-related migration, as Bhaba terms it, is the most documented and understood manifestation of child migration. The family is so deeply recognized that the

Supreme Court has taken it upon themselves, too, to confirm that the “Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.”105 This, coupled with the widespread subscription of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, could prompt one to believe that the United States legal and immigration systems would uphold family unity

______104 Jacqueline Bhabha, Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age, 9. 105 Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503-504 (1977). 41

in nearly every case; but, in fact, it is more often than not state policies and practices that contradictorily lead to family disunity.106 While there are widespread, international accords concerning the significance of family unification, the reality of immigration policy prerogatives has also had to deal with competing national security and sovereignty concerns. In considering offering admission to an immigrant or group of immigrants, despite the salient and complex humanitarian dilemmas at hand, governments must balance their sympathy with their desire to maintain effective control of their borders.

And, sometimes, these sovereignty-driven ideals and practices come at the cost of human rights and refugee obligations. Part of the problem, too, is the perception child migration, in particular. Bhaba compellingly summarizes this perception in the following way: “I suggest that the approach to ‘other-ness’ in our societies is ambivalent—caught between an identification of the other as ‘human like me’ and a hostility or indifference toward the other as separate or dispensable or threating. This is particularly so for migrant children, where perceptions of vulnerability (‘poor and innocent children’) and otherness (‘not really like our children’) coalesce.”107 Here, Bhaba succinctly describes the overall perception of children by general law and immigration officials, especially in the United

States. For them, humanitarian concerns are potentially overridden by the otherness of a migrant child. And, unfortunately, humanitarian protections and sovereignty/national security concerns are mostly mutually exclusive endeavors.

It is with this critical lens that Bhaba argues that children that migrate in families—whether because of potential or actualized exploitation or the need to

______106 Jacqueline Bhabha, Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age, 22-23. 107 Ibid., 13. 42

survive—have constantly been viewed ambivalently by refugee law. In theory and on paper, refugee children and their parents are afforded family unity safeguards in international law. Bhaba, as other immigration-related scholars have, makes reference to the 1951 United Nations Convention and the 1967 Protocol, which require that the right to family unity be respected.108 Bhaba goes on to confirm what several legal historians before her have analyzed—only this time from the perspective of the child: immigration authorities have deliberately neglected the needs of children in their custody.109 In effect, immigration authorities have concluded that because these youth were under the umbrella of the family unity category and are in a detention facility with their parents, for example, the deeply scarring effects of imprisonment are now suddenly nonexistent.

Many refugee families, in an effort to protect their children and attempt to secure a better life for them, hire a human smuggler to guide their children across a border and into another nation. This was and continues to be a common practice along the U.S.-

Mexico border. In the care of these individuals, young children with and without their parents have made the trek across the U.S.-Mexico border—including many vulnerable and disadvantaged Central Americans without access to formal legal avenues for admission into the country or asylum (as previously stated, the rates of success were low compared to how many individuals the U.S.-propagated civil wars produced).

Another practice that was looked upon as “protective,” only this time by assuming legal institutions, was transnational adoption, particularly when it came to Salvadoran and Guatemalan children. For hopeful adoptive parents in the U.S., transnational

______108 Jacqueline Bhabha, Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age, 27. 109 Ibid., 32. 43

adoption became an alternative to the foster care system in the U.S. Unbeknownst to U.S.

American parents, transnational adoption often involved child abduction, retaliation from the adoption agency if biological parents attempted to regain custody of their children, and compliance on the part of law enforcement.110 Judges and other law enforcement actors believed that the kidnapping was entirely legally justifiable because the parents of children were terrorist insurgents with no rights to their children anyways.111 What

Briggs seems to overlook, however, is the question of whether or not these Central

American children, in particular, have an individual right against abduction independent of the rights (or lack thereof) of their parents. Are they not more than just accessories to their parents? Are they not rights-bearers in themselves who deserve family unity from their perspective as opposed to from the perspective of their parents? It is clear that the law enforcement in these processes yet again viewed children as appendages to adults.

With such high levels of authority ultimately acting in accordance with the ostensibly justifiable abduction of their children, many parents and families felt they could not trust law enforcement to protect them against these injustices. Instead, they decided to take it upon themselves to make their voices heard and regain rightful custody of their children.

Throughout Latin America (including in Argentina and Chile, most notably), the late twentieth century saw a slew of movements arise to find disappeared children.

Organizations like La Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos were founded to search for children who had disappeared during Central America’s wars.112

______110 Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 205. 111 Ibid., 170. 112 Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children, 173. 44

Another traumatizing experience Central American children from Nicaragua and

El Salvador, in particular, faced at the hands of complacent law enforcement was conscription by war forces. Children around the age of 12 were forcefully recruited by the Nicaraguan or Salvadoran National Guards to fight in combat. The taking of these children to convert them into child soldiers created grief, fear, and retaliation among parents of Nicaraguan and Salvadoran children who either hid their children during the known hours of conscription or helped them migrate to another country.113

Overall, children and their families experienced a tremendous amount of agony due to domestic strife in their countries. And in the case of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and

Guatemala, migrant children, their experiences, and their rights have been subsumed by the power of ambivalent laws. The tensions that existed between international law and a particular nation’s contentious view of humanitarian dilemmas and their sovereignty have proven injurious to the Central American child migrant. This ambivalence that Jacqueline

Bhaba notes, coupled with historian Mae Ngai’s argument of undocumented immigrants’ nature as “impossible subjects,” has led to the effective nullification of children’s protective needs when fiscal and national security considerations are in effect. In these circumstances, children are relegated as accessories of their parents and pawns of an increasingly unsympathetic immigration system, particularly in the United States.

______113 José Hernández, personal interview by author, February 9, 2015; Juana Martínez, personal interview by author, February 25, 2015; Antonio Calderón, personal interview by author, March 17, 2015; Agustín Sánchez, personal interview by author, April 15, 2014; Marcos Díaz, personal interview by author, March 17, 2015; Rodrigo Mora, personal interview by author, April 18, 2015.

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Chapter Five: Young Central American Guardians of their Own Survival and their

Perception as Accessories

In the historical accounts of the experiences of child migrants, they have been reduced to mere goods or attachments to ostensibly broader, more powerful forces instead of human beings with fundamental rights in themselves. As such, migrant youth—particularly the most socioeconomically disadvantaged—have had to become guardians of their own conceptions of what “home” and refuge are and, ultimately, their own survival and future. In some cases, they even exhibited astounding resiliency by taking charge of their parents’ survival and future in their home countries and within the convoluted immigration process that is the United States’ legal maze. There are therefore worthy of being labeled jóvenes emprendedores (enterprising youth) who overcame tremendous obstacles and still exhibited demonstrable levels of agency.

Take, for example, the case of José Hernández, an immigrant from El Salvador who currently resides in the United States. Hernández immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 from El Salvador in 1981 only a couple of years after the start of the

Salvadoran civil war. Hernández, the son of a targeted policeman and mother who herself immigrated illegally and permanently to the United States in 1970, was a member of a

Salvadoran working-class family in La Libertad. Hernández spent most of his childhood and formative years in El Salvador before immigrating to the United States when the political and armed conflict in his country began to escalate.114

Hernández—just like other individuals I interviewed: Juana Martínez

______114 José Hernández, personal interview by author, February 9, 2015.

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(Nicaragua), Antonio Calderón (El Salvador), Marcos Díaz (Nicaragua), Estella Gutierréz

(El Salvador), Sebastian Ochoa (Nicaragua), Michael Castillo (Nicaragua), Rodrigo Mora

(Nicaragua), and Agustín Sánchez (El Salvador)—still has vivid memories of children being recruited by the military forces at school and out on the street to fight in the civil war. As Hernández’s friends were continually disappearing from school, Hernández’s policeman father began to train Hernández to spot guerrilla members their family believed to be “terrorists.” As such, Hernández, insightfully remarked that as a child, him and many of his peers were “metiches and callejeros” (nosey street youth) who would view the aftermath of a particular violent struggle only after Hernández deemed it safe.

Hernández and his friends enjoyed playing in the streets and while at first being terrorized by the violence they witnessed and heard, they later learned to become accustomed to the “normalcy” of the wars.115

Both at home and in school, Hernández addressed the violence and injustice he witnessed by taking matters into his own hands. His heightened sense of awareness of his surroundings were facilitated by his father’s trainings, which advised him on how to identify intruders and threats as opposed to members of the Salvadoran military, which were considered allies to his family. Because Hernández’s family was not wealthy and his father constantly had to be at work to provide for their family, Hernández took care of his family and home when his father was absent. In particularly severe and retrospectively traumatizing moments, Hernández became the epitome of a guardian of his own survival and, perhaps more significant than that: the guardian of the security of

______115 José Hernández, personal interview by author, February 9, 2015.

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others around him. Hernández had many direct experiences with guerrilleros and members of the military growing up due to his father’s occupation. One day, a man

Hernández immediately identified as an intruder in his home, when he and his sister were home alone, forced himself inside and attempted to rape Hernández’s sister. In response,

Hernández called on the training his father instilled in him—only this time it concerned proper gun use—and found his father’s machine gun. Hernández ended the life of a man threatening his sister.116 Likewise, Antonio Calderón of El Salvador knew when to be careful when speaking to cops and learned to discern how far a dangerous confrontation was.117 Even Estella, who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in 1995, was trained to use a gun for survival at the age of six and spot buried grenades in the ground.

She was constantly vigilant and conscious of her surroundings.118 Such vigilance would later carry into these children’s migratory experiences.

Other unknown but identifiable individuals who forced their way into

Hernández’s home hardly took notice of him and his sister. Just as the United States immigration system would later view these child migrants as accessories to their parents, law enforcement officials and guerrilleros who entered Hernández’s home only cared to acknowledge him if they did not immediately find his father (whom guerrilla members constantly tried to murder). Just as Hernández did with the intruder that threatened the livelihood of his sister, Hernández attempted to carve himself into a sphere of decisive influence, especially when it came to encroaching guerrilleros, by convincing the

______116 José Hernández, personal interview by author, February 9, 2015. 117 Antonio Calderón, personal interview by author, March 17, 2015. 118 Estella Gutierréz, personal interview by author, March 23, 2015.

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guerrilla members that no one with the name they were searching for lived in his home.

This was a common tactic for Hernández in the streets, too. If an unknown person outside of his home asked for his father, Hernández’s awareness immediately kicked into gear and alerted him that this person must be someone from outside the town—someone not to be trusted—for their town was small enough that everyone knew all of the residents.

Before Hernández immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 to escape the impacts he claims had disproportionately negative effects on highly aware Salvadoran children, he exhibited a demonstrable amount of agency as a rights-bearer in his own country. Later in his life, when he further regularized his immigration status in the United

States, he carried the memories of the wars with him while viewing himself as an agent capable of securing his own security and nationality: “solicité solo a la ciudadanía” (I applied for citizenship alone).119

Similarly, Agustín Sánchez was a Salvadoran immigrant who journeyed to the

United States as a young child and acted as a purposive agent who secured his own continued existence. His memories of when he saw his classmates recruited to join the

National Guard while in school continue to remind him of the palpable nature of his fear of turning twelve, the age at which the Salvadoran National Guard found it optimal to enlist children in their ranks as young soldiers whose duty it was to “defender la patria”

(defend their homeland). While Sánchez’s mother and grandmother made a living selling various commodities such as clothes, women’s accessories, and food, Sánchez took it upon himself at eleven years old to supplement his mother’s income so she would not

______119 José Hernández, personal interview by author, February 9, 2015.

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have to struggle to provide for their family as much as she did. He subsequently garnered employment with a local bus driver. In his role, he would hang from the door of the bus and announce the bus’ route and stops. “[Riding with] the bus driver was my favorite job because I felt free hanging from the door,” Sánchez claimed. 120 Similarly, when he was tasked with selling earrings and hairclips, he was approached by a stranger who attempted to cajole him into giving up his sellable items for his own personal benefit.

This man persuaded Sánchez to believe the nearby church would offer him a bicycle and clothes if they thought he was severely impoverished. In the moment, all Sánchez could think about was riding his bike in his new clothes. For him, “…anything with wheels you could travel and go away [with]” signified freedom for youth trapped in the midst of these wars. Just as the bus did, Sánchez, at a very young age, saw the potential of a bicycle as much more than an instrument for fun and games; he saw “anything with wheels” as a tool for freedom—indicating his acute and heightened sense of freedom— that would ultimately facilitate the escape and survival he sought.121

Like Hernández, Sánchez, too, played games in the streets and continued to employ his imagination even beyond conceiving of vehicles as freedom-inducing mechanisms. “The games that we invented, it was more than just to play; it was actually to survive… We used to create all kinds of games…”122 For Sánchez, a game transcended its meaning in war-ravaged El Salvador. Games devised by children in El Salvador during the civil wars were meant not only as methods of entertainment that effectively

______120 Agustín Sánchez, personal interview by author, April 20, 2015 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid.

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served as escapes from the wars, but as techniques for survival, as well. In fact, Sánchez and many of his male friends devised a game that involved “hiding on top of the roofs

[which] started as a hide and seek game… but we figured out that it was a good hiding place [we could use to our advantage]… as conscription came.” 123 Youth like Sánchez were incredibly inventive through their games: “we used to make cities, and towns, and roads” with just the “surroundings and environments” in front of them. Incredibly enough, even without a father in his life, Sánchez knew when to seal himself and his siblings underneath their mattresses to avoid coming in contact with the nighttime’s flying bullets (as did Juana Martínez of Nicaragua). Here, games played a role, too, for

“during shootings, I’d create circuses inside our [fort] to avoid the war and make magic

[instead]; we used what we had around us to escape the ugliness and pain and everything else… the adults created for us.”124 To safeguard his and his sibling’s childhoods and lives while literally in the face of death as bullets flew around his home after curfew,

Sánchez used games as a method of escape and survival to deal with his violent surroundings. In addition to creating a series of escapes, Sánchez learned to “numb

[himself because that was] the only way to survive.”125 Like him, Rodrigo Mora of nearby Nicaragua, too, played games as a method of survival by conceiving of his own reality much like Sánchez did when he created entire towns to fashion a new life, even if just imagined. Mora claimed that he and his friends “played [a] cowboys and Indians[- style game] but one played the Contras and the other the Sandinistas.”126

______123 Agustín Sánchez, personal interview by author, April 20, 2015. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 Rodrigo Mora, personal interview by author, April 18, 2015. 51

In one particularly chilling memory of Sánchez’s, a young boy who was terrified of joining the army attempted to run away from the recruiting forces. As a result, members of the army went after the child, armed, and almost ended his life during the struggle to enlist him. For members of the National Guard, these children were merely pawns of the nation’s civil war. These children were not afforded basic human rights owed to them as innate rights-bearers. They were accessories to the war the adults had created. Young boys who were recruited to join the military were effectively abducted children whose attempts to escape conscription was a deliberate act of agency.

In another confrontational episode that Sánchez has in his memories, he recalls his young, rebellious tendencies: “as a twelve-year-old boy trying to protect your family and define yourself as a man; it’s almost an impossibility not to be rebellious and try to challenge the system [when] men [are] trying to suppress you.”127 Sánchez would sometimes walk by the government police forces stationed in his community while outwardly playing radio programs and songs that were banned by these same police forces. “I would listen to music and stations I wasn’t supposed to; I didn’t mean to get in trouble but instead to defy authority; I wanted to feel I had a voice to say yes or no.”128

Here, an acute sense of rebellion and, more importantly, one’s voice becomes evident.

Comparably, when young Rodrigo Mora of Nicaragua was coerced into singing the anthem of the Sandinistas while in school—which he did not want to do—he remained silent as his “own idea of rebellion” and survival.129 And yet another parallel can be

______127 Agustín Sánchez, personal interview by author, April 20, 2015. 128 Ibid. 129 Rodrigo Mora, personal interview by author, April 18, 2015.

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drawn to Marcos Díaz’s experiences in Nicaragua. Díaz decided to “[seguir] el corriento”

(go with the flow) when it came to learning about Sandinista ideology he did not want to adopt.130 His decision to “go with the flow” may, to some, indicate an example of complacent and passive decision-making as opposed to the actions characteristic of a young emprendedor. On the contrary, because children like Díaz understood that doing otherwise might jeopardize his survival and future, he decided to “go with the flow” due to his profound awareness of his external circumstances.131 Youth like Sánchez, Mora, and Díaz not only understood their desires for freedom, but also their desires for a voice or source of rebellion as yet another mechanism for their continued survival.

Another young man, Raúl Salas of Guatemala, who immigrated to the United

States in 1981 at thirteen years old, showed signs of resourceful and inventive rebellion to secure his survival. In an enterprising fashion, Salas constantly ran away as an act of

“rebeldía” (rebellion).132 And despite the lack of resources he had at home, he constantly found ways to ingeniously repurpose objects for his desired uses. For example, upon running away “to defend himself,” he wrote in the sand: “me fuí” (I left). Similarly,

Michael Castillo of Nicaragua continuously “had to improvise” and did so by “showering with dish soap” when he did not have body soap, for example. He, too, believed that “you

[did] the best you [could] to survive,” even if it [meant] improvising and repurposing an object uncomfortably for a use other than its intended use.133 And, to return to the childhood of Salas, something else he repurposed was the English language. After

______130 Marcos Díaz, personal interview by author, April 17, 2015. 131 Ibid. 132 Raúl Salas, personal interview by author, April 15, 2015. 133 Michael Castillo, personal interview by author, April 17, 2015. 53

travelling illegally to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border (at which point he described the way the adults perceived him: literal baggage to the adults on the journey, “yo era una carga para ellos”), Salas describes why he learned English upon his arrival: “solo sabía lo minimo pero aprendi Inglés para defenderme” (I only knew the minimum, but I learned

English to defend myself).134 For Salas, English was a linguistic tool—which for most in the U.S. is overlooked as simply a method of communication—to secure his defense in a society that was not socially—even if purportedly legally—amenable to the child “other.”

For these reasons, he was not a mere accessory or “carga” as the adults on his migratory journey saw him, but a purposive agent.

In addition to being resourceful and inventive emprendedores, Central American youth who lived through the wars of their home countries also had an unprecedented and sophisticated understanding of the precariousness of their futures. Antonio Calderón maintained that, “In El Salvador, he would not have reached twenty years old… He felt he had no future.”135 And Rodrigo Mora went even further in describing a particularly notable event of his childhood. When he was growing up in Nicaragua after the

Sandinistas had taken control of the nation, the government had a program where they offered a “canasta básica (basic basket) with essential household items.” Mora, however, refused to accept the offer of the “canasta básica:” “I had always felt independent because my parents were gone most of the time… [and as a result of my independence] I [wanted] to work for what I [had]; I [would] not stand in line to get la canasta básica just because I

______134 Raúl Salas, personal interview by author, April 17, 2015. 135 Antonio Calderón, personal interview by author, April 17, 2015.

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[was] alive.”136 Mora insightfully noted that to him, a secured future meant much more than the “canasta básica” or simply being alive. He interpreted a desirable future to mean one in which he is doing more than merely living but instead, one in which he is thriving.

It is important to note, though, that not all Central American children fleeing the wars of the region exhibited characteristics of emprendedores nor were they all

“guardians of their own survival.” Those who experienced debilitating adversity and survived to tell the tale were simultaneously the youth with more room to become

“jóvenes emprendedores,” for their resourcefulness, initiative, and ingenuity facilitated their survival. Children in Central America who perhaps grew up with more privilege and opportunities than some of their peers had entirely distinct character and personality traits. Due to his firsthand, personal experiences, Agustín Sánchez of El Salvador believes that, “[this is] inevitable. Those fortunate enough who were born in different circumstances struggled less because they could travel outside of their country.”137 And in fact, Sebastian Ochoa, an immigrant from Nicaragua who immigrated to the United

States in 1979 at ten years old, had this experience. Ochoa’s father was a topographical engineer and his mother was a lawyer in Nicaragua. His parents’ successful socioeconomic position and the fact that his father “knew the President of Nicaragua,

[Somoza]” allowed his family to travel whenever they pleased. As a result, Ochoa, as a young boy, experienced a reality and a set of wars in his home country many other youth his age did not have the luxury of experiencing. Ochoa did “not have much responsibility” growing up for his parents had enough with which to provide for him and

______136 Rodrigo Mora, personal interview by author, April 18, 2015. 137 Agustín Sánchez, personal interview by author, April 20, 2015. 55

shelter him, to the extent that they could, from the wars.138 What is true for Ochoa, perhaps, is that because of his circumstances, he may actually have been an accessory to his parents.

Once these youth were forced to navigate the United States immigration regime, here, too, they were viewed as mere accessories as opposed to the primary agents of concern. Documented decisions of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of

Immigration Appeals offer its readers insights into how the United States immigration regime interacted with Central American youth and families during this era.

In the Matter of Hernandez, the petitioner was a citizen of Guatemala who was admitted into the United States in 1975. “The beneficiary is a… citizen of Guatemala who was born out of wedlock to the petitioner and a woman named Gloria Mazariegos

Alvares in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on January 8, 1974.”139 In this particular visa petition proceeding, the Board of Immigration Appeals attempted to discern whether or not the Guatemalan child qualified as a beneficiary of a visa petition based on the application of her parents in the United States. The question asked whether or not the child was a “legitimate” offspring of her parents due to her having been born out of wedlock. “The Acting District Director denied the visa petition ruling that the beneficiary was not entitled to preference immigration status because she was never legitimated.”140

The daughter in question was never referred to as a “daughter” of the petitioner. Instead, she was referred to as “a beneficiary” who “qualifies for preference immigration purposes

______138 Sebastian Ochoa, personal interview by author, April 6, 2015. 139 Matter of Hernandez: In Visa Petition Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1979. 280- 282. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol17/2712.pdf, 7. 140 Ibid., 8. 56

as the ‘child’ of her lawful permanent resident father as defined in section 101(b)(1) of the Act because she was legitimate at birth under Guatemalan law.”141 Given the nature of this visa petition proceeding, it is, of course, relevant and important to bring up the parents of this Guatemalan “beneficiary.” But the distant rhetoric used, careful choice of words utilized, and lack of a referral to the child’s name begins to give us clues about the perceptions of these migrant youth by the state. Throughout the decision, they were viewed as accessories to their parents and actual dependents or potential dependents of the state. Similarly, some immigrants in deportation proceedings in the 1920s and 1930s were expelled from the country because “…[they] were judged as LPC at time of entry.”142 An individual labeled as an LPC, “liable to become a public charge at time of entry,” was seen as possessing “criminal tendencies” or being of “weak moral nature.”143

Such individuals were suspected to become members of the United States’ prison or welfare system and therefore were considered undesirable immigrants. In the Matter of

Hernandez, the judge’s treatment of the Guatemalan daughter as an accessory to her parents and potential dependent of the state paralleled LPC rhetoric.

Further, not much more about the child’s individual, rights-bearing identity was said in the document, unless it benefited the visa petition that was being decided on from the perspective of the parents. The “beneficiary” of her parents’ actions even had to be determined “legitimated” by the law in order to secure access into a country where she was seeking safe haven. The subject of this petition was ultimately the Guatemalan child,

______141 Matter of Hernandez: In Visa Petition Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1979. 280- 282. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol17/2712.pdf, 7. 142 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 79. 143 Ibid., 77-79. 57

but it was clear that the Board of Immigration Appeals deliberatively made the decision with respect to the parents of the child.

In the Matter of Tomas, a migrant Guatemalan family whose deportation hearings were heard in June of 1983 and August of 1984, the couple’s fifteen-year-old daughter was not mentioned in the decision—despite it having a strong impact on her life, too— until she became useful to her parents. The adults in this case were initially given a continuance to obtain an attorney and adequate translator. The Guatemalan couple, who spoke Kanjobal instead of Spanish, experienced tremendous challenges trying to express their concerns in court for their language was not spoken by many. “During the hearing the respondents stated repeatedly that they were unable to communicate fully with the interpreter who spoke Spanish.”144 Once the judge realized that numerous appeals and justifications for remaining in the country had gone by, he “determined that the respondents could sufficiently present their case in Spanish with the help of the 15-year- old daughter who spoke Kanjobal and Spanish.”145 This is the only instance in which the judge revealed that they even had a young, fifteen-year-old girl in their presence. And yet, she served as the resourceful emprendedora who accomplished what the state could not: competent interpretive services that allowed her parents to share and express their testimony, giving them a fair trial. Their bilingual fifteen-year-old daughter ultimately facilitated her parents’ due process in court and their survival.

In the Matter of Ramirez, the legitimation of a Salvadoran child was also of

______144 Matter of Tomas: In Deportation Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1987. 464-466. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol19/3032.pdf, 465. 145 Ibid.

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contention in a visa proceeding. “If a child has been acknowledged by both his parents, then their subsequent marriage legitimates him by operation of law.”146 In this case, it was the parents who yet again had to acknowledge the child in order for the child to be considered legitimate in the eyes of the law. The decision went on to repeat familiar non- child-centered language by stating that a child could be “voluntarily acknowledged by his or her parents” to be legitimated as the child.147 The child’s protection needs were not directly taken into consideration. Instead, the youth was discussed from the lens of his/her parents’ acknowledgement. Without their acknowledgement, the child could not even be “legitimated,” stripping him of his identity and status as an individual rights- bearer independent of his/her parents.

It is not the norm that young children must fend for themselves by not only providing economically for themselves and their families, but also by literally guarding their survival when their lives are at risk and their survival is threatened. But such was the case of thousands of migrant youth from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala between 1970 and 1995 who were displaced as a result of the strife their countries of origin were experiencing. Individuals such as Agustín Sánchez, Estella Gutierréz,

Antonio Calderón, José Hernández, Juana Martínez, Marcos Díaz, Michael Castillo, Raúl

Salas, and Rodrigo Mora demonstrate this best. They were forced to become guardians of their own survival because the wars had propelled them to the center of a conflict created by the adults around them. And whether it meant working in our out of the home or

______146 Matter of Ramirez: In Visa Petition Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1977. 222- 225. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol16/2586.pdf, 223 147 Matter of Ramirez: In Visa Petition Proceedings. Board of Immigration Appeals. 1977. 222- 225. Web. http://www.justice.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol16/2586.pdf, 224. 59

protecting themselves or their community with a loaded weapon, these youth became unlikely guardians of survival. Their sophisticated and acute sense of the meaning of freedom and their futures, too, points to these youth having developed unique capabilities that allowed them to navigate their own continued existence. Their resourcefulness, ingenuity, and sense of initiative ultimately makes them characteristic of jóvenes emprendedores. Unfortunately, however, law enforcement in their home country and the

U.S. immigration regime did not acknowledge them in this way. In fact, the Board of

Immigration Appeals was adamant about relegating these youth to add-ons of their parents and not as rights-bearing agents in themselves whose cases deserved to be evaluated from their perspective in addition to that of their parents. Even when judges noted in their decisions that the children in the family were acting as the representatives of the family as a jóven emprendedor would, they nevertheless continued to dismiss the case of the child’s importance and returned to the case of the primary agents of concern: the parents. Youth who, with their parents, were later deported or denied a visa because, for example, they could not be “legitimated” saw firsthand the repercussions of a non- child-centered approach on impactful and life-changing immigration decisions.

60

PART III: MOVING FORWARD

The U.S.-funded civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala impacted the lives of thousands of residents who would later become internal and international immigrants looking for safe haven elsewhere. And while some believed that the United

States, in particular, had a moral obligation to provide them with refuge, the asylum rates proved to be low and inaccessible. The definitions of the term “refugee” that were taken from international law were insufficient at securing legal recognition for these individuals escaping a general climate of violence and so, they received varying levels of commitment from adoptive constitutions. And while a variety of immigration reform bills attempted to address the plight of displaced Central Americans, tranquility would not be ensured in their home countries until the end of the civil strife in the 1990s.

Disadvantaged youth entangled in the midst of these confrontations or those actively recruited to participate in these battles would prove to be guardians of their own survival. At a young age, would-be Central American migrants in their home countries had to develop an understanding of survival for the sake of their futures and the future of their family unity. These youth worked to provide for their home and even murdered to stave off their inexistence. They exhibited rebellious natures, too, as another mode of survival to create a space for themselves in the wars that had been imposed on them.

They were inventive and ingenious in that they constructed entirely novel realities to deal with the hand life had dealt them. These youth acted as independent, decision-making agents and resourceful emprendedores who learned to suppress fear and become highly aware of their surroundings in an instant. And while they should have been viewed in this capacity throughout their journey to the U.S. and navigation of the U.S. immigration 61

regime, they were not. The Board of Immigration Appeals was notorious for considering these youth accessories to their parents instead of young guardians of the survival of those around them and themselves. When these youth were denied visas or the cancellation of their deportation orders, they were hardly mentioned in the BIA decision and, in effect, not taken into consideration as individual rights-bearers. Instead, their fates were decided upon as appendages to their parents. Such treatment of these jóvenes emprendedores negatively impacted the procurement of their citizenship, refuge, and futures; it dismissed their protection interests because they were ostensibly covered under the umbrella of their parents’ rights. If immigration regimes are to adequately identify and address the protection needs of Central American child migrants, they must adopt a child-centered approach to compliment its visions of the family and children’s parents.

As for further investigations on this topic, a fuller, more comprehensive research project may look at the histories of unaccompanied children from other regions of the world, a history of the legal and social status of childhood, and an extensive exploration of the concept of transnational actors and networks. One notable question left unanswered by this work that could be investigated in future research concerns the significance of gender when tracing Central American child migration in the late twentieth century. Why is it that mostly men came forward in this study? Did young boys overwhelmingly face unique threats girls did not (i.e. conscription)? What was the experience of girls caught in the midst of these wars? Setting out on a search to include these missing puzzle pieces and answer these questions can further contribute to the gap in history scholarship lacking child-centered migration studies and a better contemporary understanding of the needs of young migrants and refugees. 62

Interviews by Author

Agustín Sánchez, April 15, 2014, Reno, Nevada, interview via Skype.

Estella Gutierréz, March 23, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Antonio Calderón, March 17, 2015, Reno Nevada.

José Hernández, February 9, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Juana Martínez, February 25, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Marcos Díaz, March 17, 2015, Los Angeles, California.

Michael Castillo, April 17, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Raúl Salas, April 15, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Rodrigo Mora, April 18, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

Sebastian Ochoa, April 6, 2015, Reno, Nevada.

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