About a 100 people waiting to welcome family elders at Queens Public Library Langston Hughes on Monday, Dec. 9. (Credit: Aurora Martínez)
When Josefa de Jesús Juárez, 68, reunited with her family in the United States after two decades apart, she did not want to focus on the tears.
“I don’t want to see you cry, just hug me,” Juárez told her children and grandchildren as they embraced her, including her daughter, Eufemia Neri, now 48.
Juárez was one of the 22 elders of Indigenous descent from the Mexican states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Hidalgo who arrived in New York City Dec. 9 on tourist visas to reunite with their children. The trip was the culmination of more than a year of work by Pueblos y Comunidades Indígenas Transfronterizos, a Mexican nonprofit dedicated to reuniting Indigenous families divided by the U.S.-Mexico border.
Many families have been separated for decades, often due to economic migration and restrictive immigration policies that make reunions difficult. Amid the challenges, the organization’s mission is to dignify Indigenous communities, said Fabiola Mancilla, the organization’s founder.
“In the elders’ mind, I don’t think they ever thought they would get on a plane and have the authority to stand in front of an immigration officer and be allowed to go through,” Mancilla said.
Over the past two years, Mancilla’s organization has facilitated reunions for more than 100 elders with their New York-based families, including children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren, including Juarez.
Juarez’s daughter, Neri, left the Mexican state of Guerrero 23 years ago, escaping a violent environment, and hoping for a better future. She never thought she’d see her mother again, and was overcome upon seeing her.
“I couldn’t even speak; I felt my throat clogged, my eyes watering,” Neri said. “It was that great emotion of more than 23 years that I hadn’t seen my mom.”
People in both Mexico and New York City learn about the program through word of mouth and the outreach efforts of local organizations like Raza Zapoteca and Saint Peter’s Church, both based in New York City.
The Mexican nonprofit supports the elders throughout the entire process, from obtaining birth certificates and passports to preparing for visa interviews and traveling with trusted companions. Saint Peter’s Church’s priest, Fabian Arias, accompanied the latest group from Mexico City to New York.
Mancilla said the most challenging part of the process is navigating Mexican bureaucracy. The digitization of identity documents often excludes Indigenous people whose birth certificates aren’t digitized, and some don’t even have paper versions.
Part of this program is “to make them able to access these benefits — privileges that they have been denied,” Mancilla said.
For Juárez, access to documentation was a challenge. She doesn’t know how to read or write, which led to mismatches in the information on her and her children’s documents. Neri said it took her family three years to help her mother obtain a passport and visa.
Collaboration with entities such as Saint Peter’s Church and support from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and New York State Sen. Jessica Ramos have been crucial in securing tourist visas.
Ocasio-Cortez communicates with the Department of State to explain the importance of granting visas so that people can attend the “Encuentro de las Culturas.” Ramos helps by providing endorsement letters that the elders present at their visa interview appointment. This improves the likelihood of visa approval, Mancilla said.
Many of those arriving in New York speak languages other than English or Spanish, which Mancilla said should be celebrated.
About 21% of Mexicans in the New York Metro area identify as Indigenous language speakers, according to a 2013 study by the Mexican Consulate in New York, cited in a 2022 doctorate dissertation by Leslie A. Martino-Velez, associate director of City University of New York’s Institute of Mexican Studies.
“Mixtec is the Indigenous language most widely spoken, with Mixtecs from the state of Guerrero being the largest Indigenous group migrating in the most significant numbers to the New York Metropolitan region,” she wrote.
While Guerrero has the highest rate of emigration to the U.S., according to Mexican census data, the elders’ intention — many from Guerrero — isn’t to stay in the country, Mancilla said. For instance, Juárez has a return ticket to Mexico on Jan. 9.
“What grandparents want is to come here, to see their grandchildren, their children — people they haven’t hugged for more than 10, 20 years,” Mancilla said.
