2018 Aurora Humanitarian, the Franciscan friar Tomás González Castillo is the founder of La 72, a home and shelter for migrants. To date, he has provided shelter, food, water, counseling and legal assistance to more than 50,000 Central American immigrants along their often-harrowing journeys through Mexico, providing aid to all, including those who suffer traumatic attacks, attempted kidnappings and expulsions from their own countries. Here he talks about protecting the most vulnerable and never giving up. 

A Home for Migrants

In southern Mexico, 60 kilometers from the border with Guatemala, we have a house for migrants and refugees. These people come to Mexico from the south, and in La 72 we offer them food, medical care and legal services. We try to dignify their journey. We are doing this work because where I live, the most vulnerable human group are the migrants – children, adolescents, women and members of the LGBT community. In many cases, entire families.

For migrants, Mexico is a minefield. When crossing the southern border, they can be facing rape by common criminals, extortion by the authorities and kidnapping by the organized crime. Sometimes people board the cargo train called “The Beast” to reach the north. Many of them may fall asleep due to tiredness and get injured by the train. Others are cruelly persecuted by the immigration authorities and treated with much humiliation at the migratory stations. Mexico is a country of migrants, but it cannot understand this identity, so there is a large percentage of the society, 70%, that discriminates migrants.

Father Tomás González Castillo in Armenia

The Uncertain Future

When you start this kind of project, you start working and realize that there is always a need for all kind of resources. The future is always uncertain because the migration will not end any time soon. It means that the project will continue until it ends. When will that be? We don’t know, but we do know that it will take a long time. It is a very painful issue because there is a lot of corruption in the Mexican immigration authorities. The organized crime is always there, waiting to extort the migrants, to kidnap them. The migration phenomenon in America has become very complicated, especially because of these two factors, the corruption of the authorities and the organized crime.

Dealing with Mexican authorities is the most difficult thing. Currently, Mexico is suffering a huge crisis of violence and violation of human rights, but the Mexican state does not recognize it. The Mexican migration policy is based on closing the southern border so people cannot pass. When they cross the border, we help them, we guide them legally, and this creates a strong tension with the Mexican authorities. Another big challenge is the organized crime that has invaded the country. The drug cartels have found in kidnapping and extortion of immigrants a source of money comparable to the drug trafficking. Human trafficking is a huge gain for organized crime.

2018 Aurora Humanitarians Kyaw Hla Aung, Sunitha Krishnan and Tomás González Castillo

A Mandate to Help

We do this work from because of our faith. I am a missionary; I have a mandate to help every person who is vulnerable. Also, I cannot conceive seeing a migrant being persecuted by the authorities, being beaten and bleeding and do nothing. We cannot remain indifferent when women are raped by criminals, or do nothing when so many teenagers leave Central America, or not help unaccompanied children who do not have a mother or a father. They are victims of violence in Central America and we can’t allow them to continue being victims along their journey.

I have seen that the LGBT community, homosexuals, transsexuals, lesbians are the most vulnerable within the migrants. Many of them fall victims to human trafficking. For example, a 25 year-old male migrant can easily get a job as a bricklayer, builder or in the fields. A transsexual woman is not given other job than prostitution, even if she doesn’t want to do it. A homosexual man is discriminated against in his own country and also in other countries. We are part of homophobic societies. In our home, we have opened a special bedroom to shelter all this diversity.

Father Tomás González Castillo at 2018 Aurora Trilogy

Walking in Danger

We have received many threats from organized crime and from the authorities. The penal system has been used to intimidate us, to stop our work. There is a permanent tension with the Mexican authorities. The migrant in Mexico is an object; they are goods that mean a lot of money for criminals and the drug traffickers. When you help a migrant, when you shelter and protect him, you are going against the interests of the corrupt authorities and organized crime, you confront them. We can’t deny that there is a tension, but we can’t stop.

We are a team of approximately 15 people, most of them volunteers. These people give all their time, their entire life for one, two or three months. Based on the situation, we have created a security protocol and we have to renounce many privileges. We can’t go out at 10 pm and have a coffee, we can’t answer calls from unknown numbers, and we must be very careful and not walk alone in the streets. Security depends on us, we can’t expose ourselves. We know that outside the house there are people who want to harm us. We have to know how to take care of ourselves.

We achieved a social shield in the community, but the criminals, the organized crime and corrupt authorities have weapons far more powerful than the solidarity of the people. They threaten them and generate fear. That’s why people make the donation in a secret way. They don’t want it to be known that someone did a donation to the migrants’ house. The young volunteers are mostly from other places. There are foreigners, there are also Mexicans, but young people from our town prefer to help in another way. Certainly, we have achieved social protection because they are the ones that keep us in the area of humanitarian assistance and they are the ones who report through social media if something happens.

Team Effort

Being nominated for the Aurora Prize is, first of all, a great satisfaction because this work is not mine, but our great team’s, and it is recognized in a completely different part of the world. Also, speaking with the members of our team, I told them that this is a very deep commitment that should lead us to work much more for the people we are working for.

This is my first time in Armenia and as I never had been here, I started to investigate about it before coming. But it is one thing is to read about it in the books or the Internet, and a completely different thing what you really feel here. I think Armenian people suffered a lot but you realize that here life has emerged from death. People with whom I have been here gave me a sample of it: the struggle for life.