“Hello, let's go for the next one!” Ralph Sunday, a vigorous 18-year-old Haitian young man, encourages his companions. It is seven in the morning and the morning cold of Mexico City is not mitigated by the timid sunrise of the winter sun. Since five o'clock, this Caribbean migrant and his three Mexican colleagues have been working loading and unloading trailers that transport fruits and vegetables from all corners of the country to the largest food market in the world, the Central de Abasto in Mexico City. .
Opened in 1982 and located in the extreme east of the North American city, La Central, as it is commonly known, stores an approximate amount of 122,000 tons of fresh products, corn, tomatoes, sesame, beans, turkey, pork, shrimp, pineapple, tejocote, chili, jicama, tamarind, mango or sapodilla that serve to feed the nearly 22 million inhabitants of the Anáhuac Valley daily and employ more than 70,000 people. Among them, an increasingly notable number of Haitians.
“We have never seen this before, and I have been working here
all
my life,” says Eduardo Gómez, an 84-year-old merchant, who has spent more than 60 years dedicated to the buying and selling, wholesale and retail of food. He refers to the evident presence of dozens of migrants and asylum seekers of Haitian origin, men and women, who work as forklift drivers and loaders, but also as dispatchers and clerks in the numerous warehouses and in the endless corridors of the Central de Abasto. . But not only there, but also in other markets on wheels, flea markets and food distribution centers in the city.
France Nore and Don Mario Zamora in the butcher shop of the Juárez market.Diego Gómez Pickering
“I mud and mop, I help keep the premises clean, I assist in refrigerating, storing and packaging the meat and sometimes I also help serve the customers,” explains France Nore about her responsibilities at the meat stand. and sausages that Mario Zamora has run for 50 years in the Juárez market. The 34-year-old immigrant, from the Haitian town of Les Cayes, south of the Caribbean island nation, arrived in Tapachula, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, three months ago, and moved to the capital two months ago. Before, he lived a journey of several weeks that involved paying 3,800 dollars (more than 3,500 euros) to
polleros
, coyotes, organized crime groups, police and immigration officials; a plane from Port-au-Prince to Managua, Nicaragua; and a tour by bus and on foot, through Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, to the border with Mexico.
Between January and December 2023, Mexico received 140,982 asylum requests from nationals of twenty countries, according to statistics from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), the entity in charge of processing asylum and refuge requests. Haiti was the number with the highest concentration of applications: 44,239. Experts in human mobility, migration and refuge agree in pointing out that the economic, social, political and climatic conditions that affect the Caribbean nation, a chronic institutional weakness as a result of continued political crises, increase in violence and insecurity, high unemployment, A poor economy and high vulnerability to natural disasters make Haitian emigration a phenomenon that is difficult to eradicate.
“There is no job, we do not have a president nor do we have peace, what else can we do other than get out of there,” summarizes Edith Ossias, 35, about the reasons why she left her native Cap-Haitien to settle in the City of Mexico. Here he works part-time in Doña Chole's cheap kitchen, inside the cavernous La Merced market, a concrete hulk embedded in the city, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1987. The same market where, at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, thousands of Spanish, Jewish and Lebanese migrants arrived to work and make a living, as Haitians and, to a lesser extent, Cubans and Venezuelans do today.
Located in the neighborhood of the same name, at the crossroads of iconic avenues such as Paseo de la Reforma, Chapultepec and Insurgentes, the Juárez market serves both middle-class Mexicans who live nearby and digital nomads from the United States or Canada. settled since the pandemic in the nearby, expensive and famous neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa. In its hallways and stalls, among piñatas, Oaxaca cheese, handmade corn tortillas, moles, pulque and mezcal, a dozen Haitians tell, in Mexican Spanish and Creole French, stories that are sadly similar.
“My dream is to save enough to be able to practice my profession as an electrician, set up a small business, spend more time here in Mexico, and bring my family,” confesses Mackinson Joseph, 28, as he finishes his work day, cleaning and wrapping potatoes, for which he receives 25 dollars a day (about 23 euros) in one of the many wineries that populate La Central.
“Haitians are very resilient,” says Andrés Ramírez, coordinator of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance. “They can adapt to Mexican society, despite coming from a quite different culture.”
Mackinson Joseph is proof of this. Between laughter and gestures of complicity, he makes jokes in Chilanga slang with his three Mexican colleagues, with whom he shares 12 hours a day between Monday and Sunday surrounded by sacks of potatoes. Like them, he also calls the former Federal District home.
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