By: Anna Franca Didonna
Forty ethnic communities of different national origins as well as international immigrants from more than sixty countries, without forgetting indigenous people: this is Mexico City.
The particularity of Mexico City is that since the 1980s, the economic model reorganization with the ongoing crisis, made Mexico both a country receiving immigrants and a country of emigration. With a result that now Mexico City has almost 50% of people trying to migrate towards USA and Canada, and almost 50% people having as destination Mexico.
The number of refugees is also high, in fact in the capital there is also a “house of refugees”.
In this context Mexico City is driving a law of hospitality, intercultural and migrants and their families’ assistance with a special attention to: social and civil rights protection; pluricultural and pluriethics coexistence and gender equity for social equity.
In Mexico there is also a great attention to the role that media can have in keeping alive languages and cultures also obviously guaranteeing freedom of expression.
Finally the engagement of Mexico City doesn’t stop at the borders: in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Dallas the “Centers of Mexico City in the United States have been opened with the aim to create, strengthen and consolidate links with the citizens of the City living abroad, as well as sharing and promoting cultural, commercial, artistic and tourist richness”, says Maria Rosa Marquez Cabrera, Secretary at the development and equality between communities in Mexico City.
Problems? Of course, also caused by North America immigration policy, which is trying to stop migration flows on the Tapalucha border, before crossing Mexico borders. But why renouncing integration in a city which arises just from the pluriethics
