The following blog posts are based on a recent trip to the Mexico/Guatemala border.  There were four of us on the trip: Maureen Meyer and Adam Isacson from WOLA who organized the trip, and Eric Olson from the Seattle International Foundation.

Loitering with Intent at the Mexico/Guatemala border – Post #1

Advocacy requires a lot of what I call “loitering with intent.” On the front end, you hang around places where few other people go, ask questions and use what you learn to inform others. On the back end, you hang around waiting for people with influence and then use the access you have to get them to address the problems you’ve seen.

Loitering with intent is not all that comfortable. You feel like you don’t know what you are doing, because you don’t.  Loitering isn’t all that pleasant, but it can be impactful.

The following is about “loitering with intent” from the Mexico/Guatemala border trip.

Prior to the trip we reached out to the Mexican government to request meetings with officials.  We were told that this was not a good time for them, so no official meetings. The beauty of being non-governmental is that you don’t need approval J.

We wanted to visit the famous Siglo XXI immigration detention facility in Tapachula, but didn’t have approval.  We went anyway to see what we could see and talk with migrants waiting outside. This makes sense because while those seeking asylum in Mexico are awaiting the decision on their applications, they have to remain in the area and check-in with officials every week.  The detention center is one of the check-in points.

When we arrived three buses full of people were sitting out front.  We thought they were waiting to be processed into the detention facility.  Instead, the buses left a few minutes later.  Two representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were out front as well.  They weren’t sure what was going on either, so they followed the buses. 

We hung around and had conversations with the migrants.  There were two recurring themes:  violence as a reason for leaving their homelands; and poor conditions inside of the detention facility – more about that in a future blog post.

After that, we made our way to Ciudad Hidalgo, a crossing point to Guatemala.  Near the official border crossing we came across the buses we had seen outside of the detention facility. Now they were empty. We asked a few locals on the street where the people from the buses had gone.  They said that some crossed the border and some headed back into town. 

Let me be clear, this situation was very confusing. Piecing together a variety of conversations, here is what we learned.  Stick with me for a couple of confusing paragraphs.

Over the past few days a handful of other buses had arrived from Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros (cities on the US border).  The people aboard seemed to be from the “Remain in Mexico” program.  A program which requires asylum seekers, crossing into the U.S. at official points of entry, to wait in Mexico until their asylum cases are decided. This has created a humanitarian crisis on the Mexican side of the U.S. border where tens of thousands of people are now awaiting consideration of their US asylum claims. And they’ll likely be waiting there for months, if not years.

What we had witnessed was the Mexican government driving U.S. asylum seekers some 1,500 miles south to the Mexico/Guatemala border.  This was not an official Mexican program that anyone seemed to know anything about.

It was unclear what people were told when they got on the buses – about 36 hours before we saw them. People seemed to think that they could wait in their homeland for their asylum cases to be called then return to the United States when their cases were heard.  But if they now returned to Central America, how would the get back to the U.S. border legally without a Mexican visa? The Mexican government officials at the Guatemalan border didn’t seem to know what re-entry papers to give these people. They did not have any official forms that would let the asylum seekers cross again into Mexico.

Even more troubling, their asylum claims would be in jeopardy if they went home to await determination.  For example, if you are asking for asylum in the U.S. because you fear persecution in your homeland (say Guatemala) and then you “voluntarily” return to Guatemala to await the outcome, your asylum case can be dismissed.

We were told that those on the bus were very frustrated and confused, and we witnessed a couple of dozen returned to Guatemala after getting off the bus. Others just wandered back into Mexico. 

Let me be clear.  What we were witnessing was the Mexican government driving asylum seekers across Mexico and dumping that at the opposite border. This was a shift in how asylum seekers were being handled, and most likely a shift that violates international law.

Here’s what we could do, and did, using what we learned by loitering with intent.

We saw what was happening, talked with UN officials, interviewed locals, coordinated with a Mexican migrant organization called IMUMI, in Mexico City, who was talking with Mexican government officials about what was happening, and we called the press.  A few stories were immediately published and a number of national and international journalists started asking government officials questions.

We’ve now heard that over the past week there have been no more random buses of asylum seekers from the Northern Mexico border showing up at the Southern Mexican border. 

Is this the direct result of our visit and calls?  You can never be sure, but the combination of UN presence, our observation, coordination with Mexican non-governmental colleagues, and getting word to the press could not have hurt. 

A day well spent “loitering with intent.” 

The Trump administration is fixated on how you stop Central American migrants from coming to the United States. The number of families crossing the US/Mexico border is unprecedented.

Experts point to poverty and violence in Central America as the root causes of migration. Family reunification and job opportunity pull people toward the United States. I’m certain that those factors are all at play. But, there seems to be something else underlying this migration.

Historians say that you can’t write a good history until at least ten years after the event. You need that distance for clarity and honesty. I would venture to say that the current flow of Central American families to the United States will not truly be understood for years to come.

I’ve been reading the beautiful history, The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, about the historic migration out of the southern United States post-Reconstruction. She chronicles the many reasons for that migration – poverty, violence, job opportunities in the north, and how people follow others who have migrated before them. All of this parallels the Central American migration. But, what struck me most in reading her work was the migrants the loss of faith in a future – the idea that African Americans went North because they didn’t see a future for themselves in the South.

Hope is often at the root of migration. Hope for a better life in another place.

But the flip side of the hope in someplace new, is a dashed hope at home. It represents a fundamental belief that things won’t change for your generation or the next. I fear that has happened in Central America.

This insight changes how you think about responding to the current crisis of family migration. Maybe you think less about how to “stop” hopeless people and more about why they became so hopeless in the future of their own countries.

That question leads you to reflect upon the oligarchs of Central America who have held onto and concentrated wealth for generations and refuse to pay their fair share of taxes, leaving weak governments that they can control. Wealthy individuals buy their family’s security while poor neighborhoods suffer crime and violence. Innovative anti-corruption mechanisms in Guatemala and Honduras (the current focal points of migration) are being dismantled by elites fearful of accountability.

I think that Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador suffer from a cumulative lack of hope that we will not fully comprehend for another decade. But right now, we should think about how a lack of hope plays into migration. What would it look like to construct a policy agenda that confronts entrenched interests that have stolen hope and create an environment where people can see a future?

It is that time of year – graduation. I was encouraged to reprint the commencement address I gave last year to the graduate students in Latin American Studies at Stanford University.  Here you go.

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I would like to express my heartfelt congratulations to the graduates and their families. This day marks an achievement. Y’all made it.

Being invited to give a commencement address is a wonderful opportunity because it prompts you to reflect upon what you’ve learned and what’s worth passing on. Thank you Alberto for this opportunity.

As a nation we are in need of much reflection. Let’s face it; Donald Trump is president of the United States. He ran on a platform that included building a wall between the U.S. and Latin America. All of us, as Latin Americanists have to ask ourselves how our nation got to this point and what it means for the choices we will personally make moving forward.

Lately, I’ve had time to reflect. After more than 20 years of running non-profits working on human rights, social justice and foreign policy I decided to take a years’ sabbatical. I wanted to step back, think about the current coyuntura (a word I can use with this audience) – how we got here – and how the coyuntura should inform what I do next. I wanted to read history and explore outside of my own field. My fundamental question is, “What do I need to understand to be a better advocate for human rights and social change in the Americas?”

WOLA, where I worked, had around 250 interns during my time as director. When I would meet with them, their most common question was, “What was your path to becoming the director of WOLA?”

So let’s start there. There was no plan. One of WOLA’s board members and admittedly one of its best fundraisers often talked of moving from success-to-success. But that wasn’t my experience. I was more on a path of learning-to-learning. And, as I think about it, the career I ended up in wasn’t even a career when I started.

When I look back at the choices I made that led me here, they likely would not have made sense to other people. After college, I got a good entry-level job in Washington working on immigration and refugee policy. It was the early 1980s and I was involved in the last round of major immigration reform in the U.S. as well as the establishment of Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans. However, I knew that people I admired in Washington had lived and worked outside of the country. I thought I needed that experience (and I was right).

So, I left a good, hard to acquire, job in DC and went to do community development work in a pretty ill defined job, in Honduras. (I think my parents were both horrified and somewhat scared).

I didn’t speak Spanish. I had to learn. The adjustment was really hard. Living and working with people in poverty was really hard. The whole experience was really hard. You see the theme. But this experience became a reference point for the rest of my life.

I went back to DC for less than two years, working on efforts to stop funding for the war in El Salvador. Then I moved to Mexico. I moved because my husband was offered a job there. Leaving was a hard decision for me. But I’m glad I went. (in the future you will have to make hard decisions that are not only about you) I arranged some part-time work with Americas Watch – later Human Rights watch – because I knew that I needed work to feel good about myself. Being in Mexico would also be an opportunity for me to go to graduate school.

Once again, this stage was not success-to-success. I applied to the Latin American Studies program in the School of Political and Social Sciences at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). I failed the Spanish language entrance exam the first time (because I had never written in Spanish and didn’t know how to use accents). I had proposed writing my thesis on the NAFTA negotiation, but because of my work with Americas Watch I changed my topic to the then developing non-governmental human rights organizations in Mexico. Graduate school was hard. Reading took me a long time. Writing was very hard. Again, you see the theme.

A few weeks ago I visited the UNAM. I looked out at that massive central campus and was STUNNED. It is so big. I grew up in a series of small towns in Wisconsin. Why did I think that could do that – go to the UNAM? Looking back, it was not reasonable.

I don’t think that I ever asked myself if I could do things. I always found something interesting, that I cared about, and just tried.

You would not have looked a me and said, “There is a woman with the skills she needs to be successful.” But, I did set my sights on something, and made it work.

As I was finishing graduate school, I looked at jobs in Mexico. I was interested in human rights and political issues, but I had a nagging sense that I shouldn’t be hired for the jobs I was interested in. A Mexican should have those jobs. It felt like my role was to address issues in my own country.

I came back to run a coalition of 60 organizations to develop and coordinate their work on US policy with Latin America. (This time my husband left the security of his job in Mexico and came with me.)

In terms of personal goals, I remember wanting to be the person that the congressional committee staff turned to when they had questions about Latin America. I knew that staff really shaped the policy and I wanted to shape them. In time, I achieved that goal.

When I moved to WOLA, 14 years ago, I knew that the former WOLA directors where all people that I greatly admired. I wanted to be like them and I tried to do that.

So, what from that story, from my experience, might be useful to you?

Find people who inspire you. They will help you set a path. You stand on the shoulders of others. Remember it. Embrace it. It can be a wonderful thing. While working for WOLA, on my first trip to Paraguay (where WOLA had done very little in 20 years and no one knew me), I was greeted by people who said things like, “everyone who was once a political prisoner here owes a debt of gratitude to WOLA.” Or, “When I heard that WOLA had requested a meeting I had to take it because of what WOLA did here.” I was benefiting from work that people did 30 years before me. Amazing. Recognizing that you stand on the shoulders of others will inspire you and can give you a real boost.

Don’t think too much about what you can or can’t do. Figure out what interests you and try.

Work to understand the coyuntura. This is a central point that I have learned while working in public policy. You must constantly assess your environment. Because, no matter how important what you are doing may seem to you – it is a small piece of a larger picture. The more you understand the context and your relationship to it, the better your chances for impact.

You can make a contribution wherever life takes you. Sometimes life requires you to veer off the path you have seen for yourself. One of my favorite sayings – attributable to a few people including John Lennon – is “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” You may make a choice greatly influenced by a relationship that is important to you – a child, a spouse, a parent. When you end up somewhere unplanned don’t mourn, look around. You can learn, grow and make a contribution anywhere. Figure out how to take advantage of where you are.

Spend time with people who have less than you do. Your point of reference has a lot to do with your sense of happiness. If your point of reference is the rich, and you are not rich, you will feel lacking. You are already privileged people. You may not have started that way, but let’s face it; you now have a graduate degree from Stanford. It is easier to remember what is important and to be happy – if you have walked with people who struggle to survive. Find a way to do that.

Here are a few other random pieces of advice from my work experience and my current sabbatical.

Study history. I’ve been reading history lately. It gives you perspective and reminds you that much of what you are experiencing is not fundamentally new. Even the current political crisis in the US which most days feels like a new national low, is not new. As David McCullough, one of my favorite American historians said, “History is an antidote to the hubris of the present.” It puts you in your place.

Reading a little history, something like Lars Schultz’s book “Beneath the United States” will remind you that the relationship between Latin America and the United States has been fraught for centuries and that if we want something better we must constantly strive to build understanding and the relationships that create a different environment.

We all live in bubbles – get out of yours and listen. Try to learn what other people think and let it inform how you solve problems.

You are Latin Americanists. You have learned to analyze and respect other cultures. Think about the United States in the same way. Part of the current political crisis here is fed by educated Americans who look at those who disagree with them as stupid or ill informed. Take the cross-cultural skills that you have learned and apply them to your own country, whatever country that is.

Wealthy, educated people in Sao Paulo, Bogota, San Francisco or New York have much more in common than they do with poor people in rural areas in their own countries. The crossing of economic and cultural divides only happens when we decide to make it happen.

Look for the holes. What’s missing? What’s not being covered? WOLA has high impact programs on drug policy, organized crime, border security and migration that were established years ago when hardly anyone worked on these as transnational public policy issues. We identified a need and committed ourselves for the long haul. We built relationships. It isn’t that hard to establish yourself as an expert in an unoccupied space. And, if you are studying the coyuntura you can be the first one into an area that others will flood.

Have experiences and put them to use. Notice I didn’t just say share them. I don’t mean go skydiving and tweet about it. Although if that’s what you want, have at it.

WOLA makes a huge contribution to the policy-making community in Washington because the staff spends time in places that other people don’t visit.

Remember that if you have an experience that others don’t, you will have something to contribute.

While we live in the age of technological, relationships are still key. When I think about the moments where I’ve seen people become involved in social change in important ways, it has always been based upon relationships.

In the 1980’s Congressman Joe Moakley represented South Boston. Foreign policy was not his thing. This changed when a group of constituents brought a Salvadoran refugee to meet with him. He heard his story directly from the refugee and the constituent group maintained close contact with the Congressman. Rep. Moakley circulated the first dear colleague letter in Congress asking the Administration to grant a stay of deportation to Salvadorans. Rep. Moakley went on to sponsor legislation that resulted in Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans and he led the US Congress’s investigation of the murder of a group of Jesuit priests in El Salvador. His staff person during this period was Jim McGovern who is now a member of Congress and the Chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. This all came from that one congressional visit and the follow through of a local constituent group.

My own most important contributions to the process of change may have been providing space for others doing difficult and dangerous work.

I recall Mexican human rights colleagues spending hours in my living room – which became a safe space for sharing stories and frustrations. We all spent hours just talking things through.

Once the Honduran Human Rights Ombudsman called and asked me to pick his kids up at the airport. They would have a letter explaining the situation. They were under threat because of his work and to continue, he needed to know that they were safe.

When the former Attorney General of Guatemala, the one who prosecuted former General Rios Montt for genocide, learned that she could not return home for a while, we made a place for her at WOLA.

Right now, the son of a transparency and accountability activist from Honduras is spending the summer with us.

Show up. One of my favorite sayings is this, “The world is run by those who show up.” This is true. And fewer people do it than you think.

I just went to Tampico, Mexico, because as part of my sabbatical I wanted to spend time listening to people who have been impacted by organized crime. I reached out to an academic who lives in Ciudad Victoria a few hours away. She didn’t know me, but drove for hours to come talk with me. She said, “I came because you came.” People experiencing difficult things can be very isolated. Showing up is meaningful and it will inform what you should be doing.

In conclusion, thank you for what you studied.

There is not one path. Finding your way may lead you through hard experiences. That isn’t a bad thing.

Have experiences that others don’t and use them to make change.

If you show up and do it consistently, I think you will find that you have built a life and made a contribution. Isn’t that really what we all aspire to do?

So get out there. You are well trained. The world needs you.

And just remember the words of Cesar Chavez – “Si se puede.”

One of the most jarring things I’ve learned during the Trump presidency is that facts don’t have the power that I thought they did.

I once started a project called, “Just the Facts”. Not very original, I know. I started it the late 1990s with the brilliant, Adam Isacson. We gathered all of the publicly available (but hard to acquire) information on US security programs with Latin America. These programs are funded out of various parts of the US budget – State, Defense, and Justice. Our goal was to have an informed critique of the whole picture and along the way to make the information we gathered available to others. We wrote three books and then produced an online research tool.

I knew that we had struck a chord when a Pentagon official ordered a couple dozen copies of the first book. He told me that he did so because they didn’t have this information compiled anywhere. Then, a congressional staffer called and asked me to help them draft legislative language that would make the Departments of State and Defense produce a single comprehensive annual report on the US training of foreign militaries.

Showing people the facts seemed to make a difference. By having a baseline of facts, we could have a real discussion about what our policies should and shouldn’t look like.

During my last year at WOLA, Trump was running for president. He said things about the border and migration that I knew to be untrue. WOLA had a project on border security and migration. We responded by pumping out facts. We had great access to media, print journalists in particular – the best in the country. But presenting the facts in a compelling fashion wasn’t getting traction.

I discussed this problem with WOLA’s board chair, Steve Bennett, who at that time was the COO of the Brookings Institution (one of the most important think tanks in DC). He was mulling over the same problem. As he put it, “The death of facts is an existential crisis for the think tank community.”

Over the past year, I’ve spent a good deal of time reading about political divisions in the US, how people make political decisions and process information. A lot of people are writing about this subject, recognizing and analyzing it.

The problem is that almost no one is telling us what we can do about it.

Here are few points I’ve drawn from my studies, reading, and experience.

We all suffer from confirmation bias. We look for information that confirms what we already believe. That makes it easy to connect with your existing base.

We all operate in information bubbles. We get a positive response when putting out facts to the people in our networks because they likely already agree with us.

Just to see and hear things that challenge our beliefs, we have to work for it. Opposing opinions don’t naturally flow to us (with the exception of what Trump says every day on Twitter).

People connect with information at a gut or moral level before they do at an intellectual level. You have to figure out how to make the emotional connection before someone outside of your bubble has much chance of hearing you.

Breaking across bubbles in this age of communications seems to me one of our greatest challenges. It is at the heart of overcoming the political divisions that exist.

When I think about my belief in the power of facts, I’m beginning to understand that the success of the “Just the Facts” project was the relationship between facts and people.

We weren’t successful because we spit out good facts, although that did provide us with a level of credibility. We were successful because we spent so much time talking with people while gathering the information. It made them more receptive to our analysis.

We were influential because we built unprecedented relationships with key players in the Pentagon, Congress, State and the press. Each sector talked to us because we were informed by the other.

I still believe in facts, but facts alone have their limits. They are most powerful when they are part of an ongoing conversation.

Non-profits are encouraged to measure things. That makes sense. People don’t want to throw their money away. Funders want to invest in things that work. But, the urge to find things to measure may be producing negative results.

Here is what I know. As a non-profit director you need to develop indicators for success. Program indicators are tough for people doing advocacy.

The low hanging fruit, when it comes to indicators, are communications and fundraising. They are easily countable. You can demonstrate how many people liked your tweet, read your article, or the number of times your staff was quoted by the media. And, you know for sure how much money you brought in, where it came from, the number of new donors, your retention rate, etc.

If you are even a little sophisticated you can A/B test your messaging. Give your message a few small trial runs and see what prompts the greatest response. Increased response is an indicator of success.

As a good non-profit you will work these measurable indicators into your long-term planning. You produce dashboards for your board of directors making progress toward your goals visible and easily understood.

This is a form of accountability. It is a good thing. We want successful and transparent non-profits.

But does the non-profit measurement yin have a yang?

The most dramatic messages, the ones that convey a sense of urgency, are often the most effective. They get the most likes and bring in the most money.

The language of urgency usually paints a simplest picture, the kind that contributes to polarization. It certainly doesn’t reduce it. I also think that these messages give people unrealistic expectations about change and how it happens.

How many times have you seen a non-profit appeal that ends with, “Now is the moment.” “This is the time.” “Your gift is more important than ever.” We are constantly on the verge of reaching our goal.

I’m sure that I’ve written too many of these. My apologies. Furthermore, this constant sense of urgency is exhausting.

What I believe that advocacy work is critically important. However, the way we talk about it may be a disservice to the overall effort. We need to help people understand social problems and believe that they can be changed. But we are not always on the verge of success and our best work often is not reflected in things you can count.

I had a board member who liked to talk about moving from success to success. It was a good fundraising message, but it always made me squirm. We did not move from one well-positioned building block to the next.

Advocacy for social change is a slog. It requires creativity, commitment and perseverance. You can sense trends, but you don’t really know when the moment of change will come.

The kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School may be the catalyst this country needs to make things happen, but they stand on the shoulders of so many who came before them in the effort to reduce gun violence. Were those working to reduce gun violence in the past merely unsuccessful, or did they lay the groundwork for change? I think the latter.

Sen. George Mitchell who helped negotiate the peace agreement in Northern Ireland once said, “…we had 700 days of failure and one day of success.”

What would happen if we expected more of our readers and donors? What if we reminded our donors that social change is hard and that we need them to have a long attention span? Along the way, we will demonstrate how creative, committed and opportunist we are. Stick with us.

“This is a slog,” is a terrible fundraising message, but it is true.

Might not A/B test well so our indicators might go down, but wouldn’t it be refreshing? And maybe we would be training our constituents and donors to be better advocates for change because they would understand how it happens.