Precarious Protections by Chiara Galli;

Author:Chiara Galli;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520391925
Publisher: University of California Press

FRANCISCO IS DENIED ASYLUM: HOW EMANCIPATORY LEGAL ARGUMENTS CAN BACKFIRE

Francisco was an indigenous youth from a remote rural village whose family survived on subsistence agriculture. Francisco fled after a Ladino man—a member of the majority racial group—threatened to kill him if he did not give up the family plot of land that he cultivated. Francisco’s case was denied at the asylum office. Like other young asylum seekers, when Francisco fled his country at age seventeen, he knew little about the broader political context in his village and the particular role that his family had played in the struggles over the use of communal land. Francisco had since learned more from his mother, but it had been difficult to communicate with her from Los Angeles. There was no phone service in their village, and the nearest town was hours away.

Given these challenges, it had been impossible for Francisco’s attorney to obtain a written declaration from his mother to support the case. Based on the limited additional information Francisco could obtain, his attorney strategized that his asylum appeal in immigration court would focus on the grounds of race and political opinion. Francisco’s case centers emancipatory legal arguments and a rights-based discourse that starkly contrast with the victimizing and infantilizing frames used in the asylum claims of most unaccompanied minors. Yet using sophisticated legal arguments to explain why persecution took place can backfire when youths are unable to understand and internalize these discourses enough to articulate them during their interviews.

The challenging aspect of preparing asylum cases based on race was that indigenous Central American unaccompanied minors did not generally arrive in the United States having mastered the terminology of indigenous rights or a historical critique of colonialism, which the legal arguments for these types of cases centered on. Many indigenous youths I met during my fieldwork did not speak the native language of their indigenous group. Their parents had decided not to teach them the language in hopes that speaking Spanish would protect them from discrimination. This sheltering by parents contributed to why youths did not strongly identify as indigenous. Since youths had not reflected on how being indigenous had shaped their experiences in their home countries, they commonly rationalized that they had been harmed, bullied, harassed, and denied services in school or hospitals because they were “poor” and not due to their indigenous backgrounds. This field note excerpt of a meeting between Francisco and two legal brokers shows some of these challenges:

The attorney asked, “Who are the Ladinos?”

Francisco explained: “People who are different from us; they have more experience; they know more. Since we come from the mountains, we know less; we are ignorant.”

The attorney corrected him: “When you say who they are, think about this. Are they the descendants of the Spanish? They are not part of an indigenous group like you are.”

Reflecting out loud, Francisco said, “They have a different culture.”

The legal assistant intervened to ask, “Are they Catholic?”

Francisco: “I don’t know, I don’t think so.”

The attorney noted, “Most people there are Ladinos right? Not indigenous.

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