By IPS Correspondents
BOGOTA, Jan 17 2003 (IPS)

The 58 Latin Americans who leave their countries of origin every hour to seek a better life are a symptom of the failed social and economic policies in the region and are creating a new cultural melting pot, say migration experts.

These emigrating Latin Americans – 1,388 each day, 500,000 every year – leave their countries "with the intention of not returning," concludes the study "Migrations and Childhood: Unmaking the Future", by the Colombia-based Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement.

It is a continuous loss of population in a region of more than 500 million people. Emigrants leave behind their countries, their communities and, in some cases, their children.

Another facet of the phenomenon is the billions dollars in remittances that hundreds of thousands of emigrant Latin Americans and Caribbeans send home to their families each year, alleviating the poverty suffered by many, says a study conducted at the behest of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

In 2001, the total remittances for the region topped 23 billion dollars, according to UNICEF.

"No country in Latin America and the Caribbean is excluded from the emigration phenomenon, whether for economic, political or social reasons," said Colombian activist Jorge Rojas, CODHES director.

"The exodus in this new phase began in 1990, and today has reached alarming figures," he said.

The origins of the current wave of Latin American emigration lie in injustice and inequality, "because as our economies stand, they are non-viable," says Camilo Castellanos, director of the Latin American Institute of Alternative Legal Services (ILSA).

Population shifts are occurring, undermining the survival resources of a region in ruin, and this is altering local cultures, Castellanos told IPS.

Another aspect of the migration wave, according to the expert, are the efforts of immigrant groups in the destination country to maintain their communities intact in the countries of the industrialised North. Castellanos cited the case of Mexican immigrant communities in particular.

These groups, often ignored by the media in the countries where they reside – such as the United States and Canada -, are increasingly turning to the Internet as a channel of communications, and many have set up their own websites.

"A relationship has emerged between attempts to preserve ancestral traditions and adopting the latest technology," Castellanos said.

In many indigenous communities of Mexico, such as the Huastecas and Mixtecas, only women, children and the elderly remain, because all the adult men have gone to the United States.

"Many of them never passed through the phase of learning Spanish, and learned the minimum English necessary to get a job," the ILSA director said.

The children of immigrants, meanwhile, begin to establish new cultural expressions and interests, giving rise to such things as the music genre "Mixteca rock".

Immigrants who are living in self-imposed economic exile are essential for their communities of origin because of the money they send home and the influence they exert over local institutions and authorities, said Castellanos.

In some cases, the remittances are earmarked for specific purposes – to improve a school or a health centre – and on the condition that the local government provide the sender with the project plans beforehand, converting some emigrants into supervisors, albeit from a distance.

This phenomenon has significant political impact, says Castellanos, because if the local authorities do not comply, the donations will dry up.

According to the CODHES study, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina lead South America in the number of emigrants per year.

In the last three years, more than 1.5 million people left Ecuador, nearly 14 percent of its population of 12 million.

In Argentina, emigration rates shot up with the economic collapse of the past few years. Since 1950, the annual emigration total from this Southern Cone country remained steady at around 12,000 people, but in the 2000-2002 period, 160,000 Argentines left their country.

In Colombia, persistent violence, especially that associated with the decades-long civil war, and the economic crisis have been the driving force behind emigration. From 1996 to 2001, 1.36 million Colombians left the country to reside elsewhere. Most headed to the United States, Spain and Canada.

Also in the last three years, two million Brazilians and 600,000 Peruvians have emigrated, according to the CODHES report.

These figures make Latin America the region with greatest migration growth. In the last decade, 25 million people – equivalent to the population of Peru – have emigrated to North America or Europe, and, to a lesser degree, to neighbouring countries.

In the United States reside 15 million Latin American immigrants, nearly five percent of the northern giant’s population of 289 million.

More than 3,000 Mexicans have died in their attempts to enter the United States illegally since the launch nine years ago of "Operación Guardián" (Operation Gatekeeper), a beefed-up border surveillance plan, said Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights in a statement last month.

The tighter controls at the official crossings along the 3,200-km U.S.-Mexican border have led Mexicans to risk their lives by trying to enter U.S. territory by crossing dangerous rivers, vast desert areas or treacherous mountain ranges.

Other victims of the emigration phenomenon are children. In many cases, parents simply leave their children behind. An estimated 75 percent of emigrants from Latin America are aged 18 to 40, and just 20 percent are under 17.

More than six million children of emigrants remain at home in the care of relatives or other people. This situation not only undermines children’s rights, it threatens their very survival, according to the CODHES document.

The report cites the dramatic example of a high school in Quito in which 80 percent of the female students are heads of household. Their own parents have left Ecuador to find work and send money back to their families.

"Market liberalisation and globalisation, accompanied by the privatisation of essential public services has no other option for the 200 million impoverished people in this part of the world than emigration," concludes the CODHES study.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported in December that the Latin American economy shrank 0.5 percent in 2002 as a result of the slow dynamic in the Southern Cone nations of South America.

Meanwhile, in the Central American zone defined as "the drought corridor", which extends through Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, eight million people are living in conditions of extreme poverty and many are suffering from malnutrition.

The public health situation makes the subregion’s social crisis all the more desperate.

Cash remittances are an important variable in the migration phenomenon, representing more than 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in a half-dozen Latin American countries, often surpassing the income from the country’s leading export commodity.

But the non-governmental CODHES does not consider this a positive aspect, but rather shameful proof of the failure of the public policies that have predominated in the region during the last few decades.

"The emigrants leave because their countries push them out, and then those countries – without much concern about the situation of their nationals abroad – seek to sustain their economies based on a new form of exploitation, this time remote and of a productive nature," says the report, referring to remittances.

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