Between Places - La72
- Ine ØSTMO
- for 1 døgn siden
- 6 min lesing
Carolina Peirson
We called this blog Between Places because that's where we tend to find ourselves. Somewhere between where we've been and where we're going, not quite sure yet what home looks like. This post is about one of those in-between moments. In late 2024 I spent two months volunteering at La72, a migrant refuge in Mexico. I went wanting to make a difference, almost in a selfish manner, if I'm honest. To do some good in people's lives. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped it might help me figure out my own.
So I went to one of the most dangerous areas in Mexico, arriving half-scared and half-convinced I'd be kidnapped or harassed the moment I stepped out the taxi. But my arrival was smooth. And the first thing I noticed as I entered La72 was the vibrant, colourful murals - and the sound of children's laughter.
Not what you'd expect stepping into a migrant refuge on one of the most precarious migration corridors in the world. But the kids were running and playing everywhere, filling the enclosed courtyard with a sound so cheerful and contagious it felt almost surreal against everything else I knew about where we were.
I arrived in Tenosique, a small border town in the Tabasco region of Mexico, in October 2024. Fifty-eight kilometres from the Guatemalan border. A place most people have never heard of, and most migrants would rather forget.
I was volunteering at La72, a Franciscan-led refuge that has sheltered more than 100,000 migrants and refugees since it opened in 2011, named after the 72 undocumented migrants massacred by a drug cartel in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in 2010. People pass through Tenosique heading north. Some are seeking asylum in Mexico. Most are hoping to reach the United States. Almost all of them have already survived things that nobody should have to experience.
I was lucky enough to live and work alongside Zaloa and Daniela. The three of us lived inside the refuge itself, which meant we were responsible for everyone and everything in the evenings - setting up movies, running karaoke and bingo nights, Saturday night salsa dancing and playing with the kids on the patio. Handling whatever came up after dark. And things had a habit of going sideways at night.
A larger team of nuns and long-term volunteers would come during the days to help with logistical matters, asylum processing, donations. Daniela, Zaloa and I interviewed new arrivals, documented their stories, and informed people of the real dangers of moving through Mexico: the collusion between criminal organisations, migration officials, and police that makes vulnerable migrants a target at every stage. We explained their rights and the Mexican asylum process: slow, but for many people the difference between a stable future and being sent back to whatever reality they were fighting to escape. We distributed clothes and basic supplies. We sat with people. We listened.
Some stories will stay with me forever. But they're simply stories to me, not memories the way they are for the rest.
There was a sixteen-year-old I'll call Diego. His mother had reached breaking point after weeks of waiting, three younger children growing increasingly restless, the uncertainty wearing her down to nothing. One morning, she made a decision. She took the three younger children and kept moving north with a coyote. Diego refused. He'd listened to our safety talks and was aware of the risks, knowing the slow legal route was safer. In one morning, he lost his entire family. He was left with nothing but the clothes on his back, no phone, no way to stay in contact. There was no way for him to reach his mum after she walked out. Diego was an exceptionally good kid. Serious, trustworthy. He smiled whenever you spoke to him and was always first to help with anything. But when he sat alone, something else showed. A heaviness he carried very quietly, like he didn't want anyone to have to share it.
There was a couple from Trinidad and Tobago travelling with their one-year-old daughter. They had entered expecting to be processed legally - passports, stamps, the proper channels. Being Black and non-Spanish-speaking, they were instead funnelled onto the same informal route as migrants from Latin American countries, their passports never stamped. After several attempts to get documentation from officials, they kept moving, making it as far as Mexico City before being caught and sent back to Guatemala. At the border on re-entry, a female migration officer strangled the mother while she was holding her baby. In front of people who laughed. They were eventually released and made their way to Tenosique, to us.
I want to be careful about how I tell these stories. These are people who trusted an institution and the volunteers within it with their most vulnerable moments.
But not everything I carry from La72 is heavy.
Lucas was one of the LGBTQ residents at the refuge — a group particularly at risk, where violence and discrimination compound at every stage of their journey. He told me later that I was the first person he'd met when he arrived. That I’d hugged and welcomed him, that we'd laughed together. That he'd finally felt safe. I hadn't known the weight of that first interaction while it was happening. He told me when I was leaving.
This is something La72 taught us as volunteers: safety isn't only physical. It's also the feeling of being seen without judgment, of having someone look at you and find nothing to correct. For people who have spent months, years, or even their whole lives being treated as a problem to be managed, that recognition is not nothing.
In telling me what that first moment meant to him, Lucas gave me something I hadn't expected. A reminder that care doesn't require a medical degree or a job title. Sometimes it's just showing up, connecting and being present. One smile. One moment of recognition. That's not nothing.
I left in December 2024 without the clarity I'd been hoping for.
I'd gone partly to figure out whether this was my path. Whether I'd come back to study nursing or medicine, or become a humanitarian worker, something with a clear title and trajectory. I didn't leave with any of that. What I left with was harder to describe. A kind of peace, maybe.
There was a beautiful mural and quote on the wall of our volunteers’ room, it read:
"Jamás olvides que tu vida es más grande que tus miedos,
que tus fuerzas son mayores que tus dudas.
Que aunque tu mente esté confundida,
tu corazón siempre sabrá la respuesta.
Con el tiempo lo que hoy es difícil mañana será un tesoro.
Vive por lo que realmente te llene el alma y ten la virtud de saber esperar,
porque todo lo que tiene que ser será."
I read it every day while I was there and still look back at it from time to time. It's a reminder that we don't need all the answers. To keep doing what fills our souls. The answers will reveal themselves when it's time.
A few weeks after I left, in January 2025, the Trump administration cancelled tens of thousands of scheduled asylum appointments and effectively closed the legal pathway for hundreds of thousands of people already in Mexico who had been waiting months, possibly years, for their chance to be heard. UNHCR Mexico drastically reduced its operations. The route that people were already risking their lives to travel became, simultaneously, more dangerous and less likely to lead anywhere.
I've heard that La72 has changed significantly since we were there, partly a reflection of the shifting migration landscape, partly internal changes in the organisation itself. I don't know the details. The people I met there were making their decisions on the eve of all of this. In a window that was about to close.
Diego was trying to do things the right way. The right way no longer exists in the same form.
I'm not sure what the right ending is for a piece like this.
I'm aware of my own position in this story, someone who was passing through, who had a passport that meant my being there was a choice rather than a necessity, who got to choose when to go home. That asymmetry is uncomfortable, and it should be. For me, being between places is a state of possibility. For the people at La72, it was a state of suspension, a longing for a world that would receive them.
What I know is that I'm in an incredibly fortunate position, with more freedom than most to pursue what fills my soul. Taking care of others feels close to my heart, as hippie-dippie as that sounds. Not as a saviour - that framing helps no one - but as someone with opportunities and an education that were gifts I didn't earn, and therefore a responsibility I feel I cannot refuse.
I'm still figuring out what that looks like. That's okay.
Names have been changed to protect the privacy and safety of the individuals involved.
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