Boxes of life – Southern frontier of Mexico

After a first experience with the “Boxes of life” project in an asylum seeker center in Belgium in the summer of 2013, we decided to repeat the project in Mexico. As part of the “Children of Peace” Project, implemented by the ACNUR, we carried out the project in the Temporary Shelter for Migrant and Refugee Children, of the DIF in Tapachula, Chiapas, asylum-seeking underage center and single parent families (Mom with children).
The participants in the project can be divided into three categories.
Children who accompany their two parents or only the mother in exile. Moms who sneak away with their children from their country of origin. And teenagers who runaway alone because they have problems with gangs and their lives are in danger in their original countries.
“Boxes of life” proposes everyone to express themselves in freedom and equality and to do a job of realization of oneself. Mead says that in order to perform, recognition from someone else is needed and then it is an experience lived between two or more people. The final act of recognition gives a status and an identity. These Boxes of life tell us that people have many things to communicate but that the living conditions in which they are and their status as Migrants makes it impossible for them to «get it out». We can never lose sight of the fact that at least in this specific case they are people running away from a situation of extreme violence.