Reflections on architecture and Migration in Mexico
It is a global challenge whose message is clear: migration is an issue that architects must understand and respond to. How can architecture address the space needs of migrants who travel through Mexico and thus ensure their human rights?
Migration is a complex and multi-directional issue, involving economic, geographical, political, social and architectural factors. Architects cannot remain oblivious to a reality that has characterized the 21st century as migration: the great change of human populations, rural life and agriculture, to cities.
In the opposite sense, historically, it should be mentioned that the process of urbanization and modernization of many peoples of Mexico is due to the investments of migrants. In the past decades they were the main promoters to put telephone lines they needed to communicate with their relatives. They invested in the town square, donated benches, arranged the church, managed the paving and drainage.
As a transit place for migrants, constructive challenges are different because there is a great need for space and improvement of the conditions of the present shelters. Currently in the country there are 52 points, distributed in various states, which serve migrants along their journey to North America. The average that a migrant can stay in the hostel is three nights. But the truth is that "they do not have adequate spaces or sufficient resources," said Rodolfo Franco of the International Organization of Migration (IOM).
On this subject the role of society and the State is fundamental. Franco believes that both should ensure that migrants are able to access health, food, and other services, and shelters would have to gather a set of "physical and material capacities to help reduce the vulnerabilities of Migrant people ". On the other hand, the Chilean architect Joan Mac Donald, expert in the work in human settlements, and President of the Latin American, African and Asian service of Popular Housing (SELAVIP), proposes that to leave the solutions in the hands of the state is not very convenient, since That usually their attitude is to make radical decisions, without taking into account the peculiarities of the situations of the people.
He added that "care should also be taken with the way in which aid is given, so that it does not cast the potentials that people have, but the Potencialicen", ie not to return to a person who has made the decision to move and commented that it is Important to retake the concept of "regional space", to "begin to understand Latin America as a single space", where countries are more integrated in terms of territorial policies.
IOM estimates that there are 214 million migrants in Mexico, and the busiest hostel is the Tapachula, Chiapas, where 3.000 migrants from Central and South America are estimated to be decreasing as they approach the north of the country. These figures summarize and justify the need to explore solutions to create shelters that fulfill the role of receiving and sheltering migrants arriving in the country. But not only that, besides providing a roof, toilet, food and legal assistance, spaces should be the architectural response of concepts such as empathy, dignity, hope and respect.
The House of the migrant of Saltillo, the center of Analysis and Investigation founded, the center of support to the migrant worker, the center of Human Rights Fray Matías of Cordova, the center of Family reintegration of migrant minors, the coalition Pro-Defense of the migrant of Baja California, the Pastoral dimension for human mobility, Social Impact, Jesuit Migrant service, without Borders and the migrant's house, in dairy-Tultitlan are some organizations that currently serve the demand for spaces but whose Capabilities have been overlaid.
It is therefore necessary for more professionals to get involved in this issue which opens up the possibility of transforming the territory under a contemporary approach to architecture and urbanism.