Abstract

SCHAFFHAUSER, Philippe  and  INOCENTE ESCAMILLA, Yuri Arón. The route of those without work: understanding the caravans of Central American “migrants”, 2018-2019. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2021, n.21, pp.235-270.  Epub Aug 30, 2021. ISSN 2007-4964.

The two pens and two voices of this article explore the dramatic viacrucis of the so-called “caravans” that set out from Central America between October 2018 and January 2019. Beyond the myriad appearances and sensitivities that those events aroused, the essay seeks to lay the foundations for a distinct socio-anthropological interpretation of such migration crises, one that consists in constructing a critical distance based on a reappropriation of Marx' works and the authors’ respective experiences of observing migratory phenomena. In other words, we propose a heuristic articulation of observations of, on the one hand, the ritual migrant viacrucis which is celebrated year after year through the pastoral care of Father Alejandro Solalinde in Ixtepec (Oaxaca) and, on the other, a reflection influenced by the critique of value (wertkritik) that has its origin in Marx' writings, whose theses are transferred to the field of a political economy of contemporary migrations. The objective of this reflection is to recover analytical elements that will permit a critical interpretation of the event of the caravans of Central American migrants.

Keywords : caravans; viacrucis; value criticism; capital; contemporary migrations.