Migrant children and memory

In the last decade, irregular migration of children from Central America to the United States has been immersed in heated migration policies. From the so-called "humanitarian crisis" with Barack Obama, before the arrival of more than 51,000 migrant children in 2014, to the criminalization of Central American migration with Donald Trump and the case of "caged children" in 2018; the central debate was that the US government considers child immigrants as immigrants before considering them as children. Furthermore, US migration policies selectively protect certain sub-categories of migrant children (^{Galli, 2018, p.2}).

Beyond the infringement of Central American migrant children's rights, both in the United States and Mexico, approximately 60 percent of this population are unaccompanied minors between 12 and 17 years of age. This results in a high range of challenges for both countries regarding detention conditions, treatment in detention centers, and respect for basic rights (^{Cruz & Payán, 2018}). On the other hand, accompanied children, that is, those who travel with their relatives, make up 40 percent of this population. Unfortunately, their migration experiences and how they enunciate, denounce, or resist displacement have been scarcely explored.

At least in the Mexican context, according to ^{Mancillas Bazán (2009)}, until two decades ago, the lack of interest shown by social analysts in Central American migrant children traveling with their families was because the participation of minors in the Mexico-United States migration was not very significant, or rather, that its importance in this process was not as transcendental as that of adult migrants (^{Mancillas Bazán, 2009, p. 211}). On the other hand, as recently stated by ^{Thompson, Torres, Swanson, Blue, and Hernández (2017)}, the problem derives from a dichotomous notion of migrant children in North America and Europe: with perceptions that consider them either as victims or criminals.

However, these debates about the relevance of the narratives and experiences of accompanied Central American children traveling through Mexico and their status as victims or criminals have rarely been addressed by the social sciences. The existing reports are limited to journalistic works that attempt to provide an overview of their conditions. For example, a report from 2018 showed that just over 2 000 accompanied minors were traveling in the caravan and that they were exposed to physical and emotional health risks; this was reflected by their desire to return to their home and their lack of geographical notions about the place where they were (^{Notimex, 2018}).

Another report, by Diario del Sur, stressed that Central American migrant children, accompanied or unaccompanied, were the most vulnerable in caravans, and that Mexican organizations and authorities disregarded child migration (^{Zúñiga, 2019}). The victimization angle of the migrant children as they transit through Mexico can be noticed in both reports. The vulnerability of these populations is undeniable and especially true for unaccompanied children; however, in any case, migrant children build a memory that registers and transmits the conditions of vulnerability.

The individual and collective memory of migrant children from Central America—as well as that of young people in that region—has been explored by different social analysts using qualitative techniques and in-depth interviews. Even though not all studies have as an epistemic framework the memory or social construction of remembrance among this population—whether girls, boys, or young people traveling alone or with others—the stories, tales, or fragments of testimonies reveal individual and collective memories of their migratory journeys and routes, highlighting their vulnerability and the violence they experience, both in Central America and in transit through Mexico (^{Porras Gómez, 2017}).

Given this, the challenge presented in this article is how to conceive and comprehend the memory policies constructed by girls and boys who were traveling in a caravan of Central American migrants. For that purpose, three steps are presented to face that challenge. The first step is to envisage memory not only as the act of remembering the past but also as “a social process in which historicity, time, space, social relationships, power, subjectivity, social practices, conflict, transformation, and permanence are condensed ” (^{Kuri Pineda, 2017, p.11}).

The second step is to distinguish between individual memory and collective memory. In their exegesis of collective memory and social processes, ^{Manero Brito and Soto Martínez (2005, p. 179)} state that collective memory refers to shared “experiences and knowledge recovered from individuals who lived similar circumstances in the past ” and not to “a mere summation of individual memories ”. This distinction is conceptually and methodologically relevant to this study, which focuses on collective memory (re)constructed by migrant children in the caravan regarding shared experiences and knowledge.

Finally, the third step consists in defining and appropriating a notion of collective memory. Based on Halbwachs' approach (2011), we define collective memory as the memory of the members of a group who reconstruct the past based on their interests and current frames of reference. For this author, there is no unchangeable past of present experience, but a past that is always restarted and reconstructed. The idea is that memory, when exploring the past, is part of a retrospective journey in which the present forms a frame of reference or starting point from which to reconstruct and relate.

From this perspective, collective memory becomes a process of remembrance, interpersonal identifications, and group value. Additionally, memory operates within social frameworks; that is, it refers to past experiences as well as spatial, temporal, and linguistic coordinates. Therefore, a memory lacking these frameworks runs the risk of crossing the fantasy border, where one could not know whether it is a memory or something imagined (^{Halbwachs, 2011}). The most compelling reason to fuse memory with social, temporal, and spatial frameworks is to show that these frameworks provide memory with stability and persistence. From this perspective, the narrative is the basic and necessary intermediary of memory. The narrative gives rise to the description, which is intended to convey the whole situation. In other words, the memory becomes narration supported by an assumed bygone past.

For this study, the memory of children from the Central American migrant caravan will be represented as a process of remembrance of collective events articulated with their past and the migratory journey; also as a collective memory, as they share experiences and knowledge located in temporal, spatial, and linguistic frameworks; and, finally, as political memory, given that such experiences and knowledge are articulated, denounced, and even resisted within social constraints and possibilities that encompass their lives at the structural level.

"It is better that you leave": The enunciation of social violence in Central America

In Reynosa, José and Fabiola, the Honduran siblings, ages 12 and 10, respectively, sat on the patio floor of the shelter, took the crayons and the sheets of paper I gave them, and began to draw. Both were serious, somewhat fearful at first. They asked me what they should draw, and I told them to draw what they remembered from the trip. José told Fabiola to draw when they crossed the river (the Suchiate). She did not want to at first, but she agreed because she saw that José had started. "We crossed here," said José, taking a blue crayon and tracing the river. "It was not nice to go through here," he added. Fabiola was making her own sketch and, without raising her eyes, complemented: "No, it was not nice, it was bad because there were cops and a helicopter, but it was better than staying in Honduras." José added: "Yes, better to come."

I asked Fabiola why it was better than staying in Honduras, and she pointed out, somewhat uncomfortable with the question, "Because of the gangs, why else?" and she continued to draw in silence. A day before, I had spoken with their parents, and they had told me how the gangs had stripped them of their house and threatened them with death; they even showed me a copy of a police report they made, but they also emphasized a policeman's response to the complaint: "It is better that you leave." José, Fabiola, and their parents shared this episode of violence and remembered it as something traumatic that had led them to the decision to join the migrant caravan (O. Hernández, field journal, February 17, 2019).

^{Jiménez (2016)} recognizes violence in Central America as the cause of a tragic human mobilization, both internal and external (p.169), and of human exoduses, such as those of Central American migrants' caravans nowadays (^{El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2018}; ^{El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2019}; ^{Hernández Hernández, 2019a}). ^{Groppo (2002)} states that, due to violence, the issue of memory becomes increasingly important, especially when addressing traumatic events like the ones expressed by José and Fabiola. In this regard, the author states that memory is perceived as an anchor point and as a guarantee for threatened identities (^{Groppo, 2002, p. 18}). From this perspective, memory is an important conceptual element to record, enunciate, and denounce different events, but above all, it is useful to recall the past and avoid reproducing it, especially in the case of traumatic events experienced by migrants in transit in their countries of origin.

Although it may seem a cliché, the first anchoring of memory policies among the interviewed girls and boys from the caravan of Central American migrants refers to enunciating social violence in their countries of origin. These are not mere narrated memories, but rather the denunciation of that violence as the historicity of conflicts in Central America that persist up to the present and, above all, that continues infringing migrant children. They are memories that, as expressed by ^{Halbwachs (2011)}, are reproduced in time and space in order to reinforce or avoid threats to the sense of identity. In other words, children's enunciation of violence refers to a recent period of time and a specific space, such as their countries of origin, communities, and families.

Fabiola, along with her older brother, narrated her family's migration as a way to escape certain death in her country. As she drew, she explained the context a bit more: "My dad reported to the police that gang members kill people, so then they were going to kill us." And why did he report them? —I asked—, "First, my father had come to the United States to make a house there in Honduras, but since the gang members took it from him, we had to flee afterward, we went to Catacamas, then we built a house there" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 17, 2019).

Another child who recalled and enunciated social violence in their country of origin was Edin, from Guatemala. After drawing his house—which he drew symmetrically in black, with two windows and a door, against the background of a yellow sun and a green tree in the front—, I asked him why he had marked a window and part of the door with red. Edin, his face expressionless, his tone serious, and his crayon in his hand, replied: "Because they are closed, I don't want the police to come in." I asked him if the police had ever come to his house, and he told me: "Yes, they came for my brother, they said he had killed, but he wasn't there, and they shouted at my dad, and they wanted to take him to jail" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019; ^{Hernández-Hernández, 2019b}).

In the first place, both narratives agree with ^{Jiménez (2016)} in that violence in Central America continues to be the common denominator, but it has taken place differently since the second half of the twentieth century; now, it is characterized by delinquency and crime without ideological purposes (^{Jiménez, 2016, p.170}), since they represent accounts of social violence in Honduras and Guatemala, respectively. Both narratives are also collective memories insofar as they allude to Fabiola and Edin's shared experiences and knowledge, even though they were from different countries (^{Manero Brito & Soto Martínez, 2005}). Both cases express the history of violence in Central America since the 1970s and is still occurring, with different undertones, where the police and gangsters are the main actors (^{Indigo Staff, 2019}). Moreover, drug trafficking, homicides, youth violence, and gangs appear as fundamental concerns in Central America (^{World Bank, 2011}).

Secondly, Fabiola and Edin's narratives contribute to the knowledge and recognition of memory; when recalling, their adopted stance is in itself a memory policy: "If we stayed, they were going to kill us" and "so that the police don't come in" are the two sides of an allegation: the threat of death and the latent police threat in their communities and families.

Thirdly, narratives such as those by Fabiola and Edin reveal the somewhat invisible categories of time and space that define memory policies. Although from different countries, they both lived in municipalities affected by the violence resulting from civil wars and forced displacements in the 1980s: the first in Catacamas, northeast of Tegucigalpa, and the second in Santa Cruz del Quiché, northwest of Guatemala City. Although the parallels of this argument seems trivial, the truth is that it is about a migrant girl and boy linked by a historical past of migratory processes, refuge, and reorganization of Mexico's southern border (^{Bovin, 2005}).

Perhaps one more narrative will make it possible to understand and in part situate this memory policy of migrant children in a temporal and spatial framework that oscillates between the 1980s and the present. While drawing with Kelvin and Edin at the Matamoros shelter, Jason from Honduras told me that his parents accompanied him in the caravan. I asked him where he lived, and he replied: "In Olancho" [a department in Honduras]. So, is your whole family there? I asked, and he said: "No, my grandfather lives in Guatemala." And why is he there? I insisted. "I don't know, he left long ago, my mom says that because of the war, and he stayed." What do you think about that? I remarked. "Well, he left because of that! but I want to meet him, to come back" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 20, 2019).

It is possible that Jason's grandfather participated in some clandestine political-military movement, such as those in the 1980s in Honduras, made up of Communist Party dissidents, or simply was part of the citizenry that was forced to move to other countries in Central America due to the armed conflict. It is evident that Jason built the memory on two articulated levels: on the one hand, the reference of his grandfather as a family absence, and on the other, the reference of war as the reason for that absence. In addition, it is also a memory that shares similarities with other narratives, denouncing historical displacement.

"I saw them too": the abuse in transit through Mexico

In Matamoros, Edin explained to Kelvin, with whom he traveled in the caravan: "I came with my parents from afar... and we passed where there were many police and people ran." Kelvin commented that he also came with his parents, and he remained pensive for a while; after asking Edin for a red crayon, he said: "I also saw them [the police], and many people, then they loaded some on pickup trucks, others ran" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 21, 2019).

The memory policies of girls and boys in the caravan reflect the nuance of enunciation and denunciation of the violence experienced by migrants in their countries of origin and the violence they experienced during their transit through Mexico. It is a collective memory that mediates between their transit through international borders and the arrival in cities on Mexico's northern border, making such violence visible. The politics of this memory, as traumatic memories, do not only attempt to report violence but also how migrant children avoid abuse.

The idea of abuse is proposed as an analytic category to transcend the cliché about the abuse of migrant children as if it were a “trait of the person and not of the structures in which people live” (^{Madrid, 2015, unnumbered}). From this perspective, children in the caravan were infringed by structures other than migration. Therefore, their memory policies are about abuse in different places and at different moments: both when leaving their places of origin and when crossing the Honduras-Guatemala and Guatemala-Mexico borders, being victims of different forms of violence that tinged their memories and tempered their capacity to withstand or reject the memory. Kelvin, for example, pointed out that his family stayed behind because he cried and asked his dad not to go on, while the rest of the migrants "broke the gates"; when José saw the police assaulting the migrants, he also returned with his family, although he had previously cautioned his father so that he could protect them.

The transit towards Mexico begins with the first type of abuse recalled by migrant children when they narrate their crossing through the border between Honduras and Guatemala. Kelvin, for instance, narrated: "Ah, we crossed; I remember we were there for a week, there in Guatemala, in that week when the migrants broke the gates of Guatemala." You as well? I asked him. "No, not us, we stayed behind, the others who were in the caravan. And then they broke the gates of Guatemala, there were lots of dead people" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 20, 2019). José even narrated the following: "The Guatemalan police threw tear gas at us for breaking the gates, and the Mexican police too, but we returned and told our father so that he could protect us" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019).

Kelvin and José's narratives must be placed in the context of the Central American migrants' caravan in which they traveled. Their families—including all the children whom we spoke to in Reynosa and Matamoros—joined the caravan that left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on January 15, 2019, as part of a summon made on social media, according to what other migrants said (O. Hernández, field journal, February 20, 2019). However, when they arrived in the Agua Caliente border zone between Honduras and Guatemala, they were confronted with a National Police checkpoint, where around 23 minors were secured, and there were different incidents of violence in the attempt to cross toward Guatemala (^{El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2019}).

The second type of abuse remembered by migrant children is when crossing the Guatemala-Mexico border. Based on the drawing activity, different visual representations of the abuse were identified: a helicopter flying over the Suchiate river, drowned people floating in the river, police firing tear gas, and the surveillance and detention in "kennels." José's drawing is an example of the evoked event; he drew a helicopter and a blue river, and along the river, two erect human figures [a woman and a man]; followed by his description: "and here was when we crossed the river (sic)." Later, he drew another human figure: a man lying down and on top of that the legend: "here was when he drowned because they put him on the heliconter (sic)." Finally, in front of the river, he drew a small human figure, with something in his hand, to whom he referred to as a soldier (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019).

When I asked José about his drawing, he said: "I just remember they threw tear gas at us. With that stuff you can't see, you can't breathe either. We crossed the river, that's when they turned the helicopter on us, they lit the helicopter, and they put it low so that people would drown. We were among the first to pass, and from those behind, one drowned." Is that what you remember most? I asked him, and he replied: "What I remember was that we entered Mexico, we walked for a week without bathing [...] that was the worst. We were walking, we were falling behind, and they were picking us up, the police, the federal police, the kennels as they call them [...] they'd put us in and take us back again. We never ended up in a kennel. They took those that stayed behind" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019).

Both José's visual representation and his oral narrative envisage a memory of the abuse experienced by other children, as he did when crossing the Guatemala-Mexico border. However, it was his sister Fabiola who, after making a drawing similar to his, clarified how they bypassed the abuse: "I was telling my dad that we were already coming, going across holding hands because we had already traveled and we couldn't go back to Honduras, better here" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019). As can be appreciated, the agency shown by girls such as Fabiola was in stage to restate the effort of the migratory trip, the strategy of crossing the river together as a family, and the disadvantages of returning to their country of origin as arguments to resist the abuse they experienced.

As some recent studies have stated, young migrants from Central America experience different forms of violence not only in their countries of origin but also when they travel through Mexico (^{Porras Gómez, 2017}). However, as has been shown, such expressions of violence are not only experienced by young people but also by migrant children from that region. Thus, these expressions of violence are part of a collective memory constructed by migrant children, such as those in the caravan, but above all, they are forms of abuse that were resisted by an agency that resulted in the capacity to endure, to refuse, and to seek alternatives (^{Abebe, 2019}).

"Disastrous because of Donald Trump": The denouncement of US immigration policy

During the fieldwork in Reynosa, I asked José, from Honduras, if he could imagine what the United States was like. Before responding, his sister Fabiola intervened: "Disastrous!". José turned around and said: "I think it's more beautiful than here." As if it were a children's debate on transnational migration policies, Fabiola intervened again: "I imagine it's disastrous because of Donald Trump." José and Fabiola began a dialogue as if they were two small adults. The first emphasized the pros and cons of the United States, compared with Mexico, and the second emphasized the cons. At that moment, both stopped drawing for a few seconds. Fabiola was the one who, after showing herself somewhat serious and crestfallen, raised her head and her voice to refute what her brother José was saying. At some point, José looked at me as if trying to get my support, but Fabiola continued to refute him and to reaffirm her thoughts (O. Hernández, field journal, February 18, 2019; ^{Hernández-Hernández, 2019b}).

A priori, narratives such as those by José and Fabiola lack social frameworks and cross the frontier of fantasy—she imagines the landscape of the United States. However, narratives themselves represent a linguistic coordinate that adopts a political referent (Donald Trump) to imagine the (disastrous) situation of a country idealized by caravan migrants. Later on, the political referent and the situation in the country are given meaning and taken to temporal and spatial coordinates that refer to deportation stories.

If while exploring the past, memory, as proposed by ^{Halbwachs (2011)}, embarks on a retrospective journey in which the present is known to be a reference point, then the memory policies among the migrant girls and boys in the caravan can also take a reference in the present to recall the recent past, as is the American migration policy.

This migration policy is a transnational phenomenon told to them, even one they have lived up close, but also one they appropriated as a story to be denounced. Another aspect of memory policies among migrant girls and boys is the United States' migration policy's denouncement in three areas: deportations, detentions, and family separation. The last two are intimately related, both in the narratives and the migration policy.

In the first case, deportations, Fabiola's narrative is illustrative. After she said that the United States was a disastrous country for her because of Donald Trump, I asked her why she thought that about the president, and she responded:

"Because he is very bad." But many people want to go there, I replied. After reflecting for a few seconds, she answered: "Ah, but those who have gone across are back in Honduras. As a friend of ours who went across and is already in Honduras. He came with the caravan again and stayed in Guatemala; he couldn't come across to here" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 18, 2019).

Fabiola's narrative is part of a memory that takes up an immediate past characterized by the recent deportations of migrants from the caravan; however, it is also part of a memory that is part of a not so recent past, but rather a long-standing one characterized by American migration policies from the second half of the twentieth century.

It is a past that, as stated by ^{Massey and Durand (2009)}, is anchored in the 1960s and spans to the 1980s, during the so-called era of undocumented migration, during which migrants covered labor demand, employers demanded cheap labor without rights, and the government implemented forced repatriations along the border to silence the anti-immigrant population. However, it is also an immediate past in which mass deportations gained visibility once again in the United States' governments of the last decade of the twenty-first century.

Fabiola's narrative constitutes a remembrance, a memory of the denouncement of the deportations of migrants from the Central American caravan. However, at the same time, her remembrance is part of a history of mass deportations from the United States that precedes in decades the temporality from the one she remembers, narrates, and denounces. In addition, her narrative also has a historical reference of deportation in the family: her father was deported years before: "First, my father had come to the United States, I was five, to make a house there in Honduras, but since the gang members took it from him, we were fleeing afterward" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 19, 2019).

As can be observed, the linguistic framework or coordinate enunciated by Fabiola is part of a memory that articulates different temporalities: the recent deportation of migrants from the caravan in which she arrived in Mexico and the not so recent deportation of her father. These are temporalities that are part of different American migration policies (Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's), but with the same result: deportations. Also, the memory itself articulates different spatialities that, in the end, are intertwined by a migratory process: the exodus from Honduras, the transit through Mexico, and the deportation from the United States.

Edin's narrative adds to this collective memory of denunciation against the United States; he mentioned: "My dad went there a long time ago, I was a kid, but he says that the government returned him and he couldn't go back [to the United States], that's why we are now going in the caravan." I asked Edin how long ago had his dad gone to the United States, and he answered again when I was a kid. "But you are a kid, Edin," I replied, considering he is eight years old. "Yes, when I was younger," he said, at the same time lifting his right hand to signal a height shorter than he was.

Edin's narrative, as well as Fabiola's, positions them as social actors capable of remembering and reflecting on the experiences they and their families have during the migration (^{Abebe, 2019}). Such capacity also states and denounces the deportations experienced by their relatives or friends; this allows them to form a critical collective memory with an anti-immigration policy.

In the case of detentions and family separation, these two elements, as mentioned previously, are closely related because they refer to what the children have heard about the detention of Central American migrant children in the United States, and simultaneously, the separation of their families. María's narrative is a concrete example of memory policies focused on denouncing these aspects:

While she was at the shelter looking at a map of the United States and part of the northern border of Mexico, I approached her and asked her if she knew where we were on the map; she answered yes, at the same time pointing with the index finger of her left hand at the city of Matamoros. Beyond her ability to position herself geographically, I asked her if she wanted to go to the United States. Although somewhat self-conscious, María expressed: "I don't know, because they say that they lock up children there." María remained silent for a few seconds and continued to look at the map on the wall. I asked her again, who said that children were locked up in the United States, and she said: "My sister told me, but I saw on TV that they did lock them up, and that's why I don't know [if I want to go], but we are going with my mother" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 20, 2019).

María's narrative is part of a collective memory that, at least among families from Central America, points to the recent detentions and separations of undocumented migrant families in the United States. Such detentions and separations are part of a policy called "zero tolerance," which has separated hundreds of children from their parents and has locked them up in cages in detention centers in the south of Texas (^{Clarín Mundo, 2018}).

During the fieldwork, minors such as María's sister, including adult migrants from the caravan, constantly recalled the family separation and the lock-up of migrant children in the United States. This was a precedent that made them falter in their decision to seek asylum in that country, as well as a record of a recent memory they used as evidence of the historical and transnational vulnerability of Central American migrants. It was also a frequent reminder of an immigration policy that disrupted migrant children's and families' lives during a government administration that was still in power.

For María, however, the record of the memory not only derived from what her sister said or from the news media, but also from her own experience in her community of origin. Shortly after observing the map on the wall, she told me: "Where I am from, in Verapaz, some children left with their parents some time ago, and then they [the children] came back without them [their parents], one of them went to school with me" (O. Hernández, field journal, February 20, 2019). Her narrative is a temporal and spatial-communitarian memory policy, which denounces the detention and separation of migrant children from their parents (^{Malkin, 2019}).