El Partido del Pueblo Migrante (PPM) will be working in Mexico City from January 2012 to July 2012
Migrant People’s Party
A project by Tania Bruguera
Description:
The Migrant People’s Party (MPP) will intervene in the 2012 elections in Mexico with a platform focused on the political presence of citizens that have been expelled from their places of origin and from their rights. Starting from the migration phenomenon, the party’s political axis is making steps toward eliminating borders, as dignity has no nationality.
The platform on which we work demands the creation of structures in civil society that:
· Include migrants in equal conditions and access as complete citizens.
· Eliminate differentiation amongst people based on their migratory status.
· Recognize that, through migration, the global system generates traits of a trans-border modern slavery.
· Create and promote living conditions that make migration a choice and not an imposition.
· Identify the inadequate treatment of institutions towards the Central American migrants in Mexican territory like and similar to the one suffered by Mexican immigrants in the United States.
· Demand receiving places to have a political space for both citizens and migrants.
· Claim dignity in migrant treatment.
· Require public space to be common property of all those who inhabit it.
The party highlights a contemporary Mexican phenomenon in the public sphere: Migration; a political axis that has been displaced from the history of electoral campaigns of the main political parties of the country, especially those in 2012. The borderline geographic condition between Mexico and the United States leads to a massive migration of Mexicans to the North, which adds to the reception and transit of groups coming mainly from Central America. This, therefore, generates a time-space in the Mexican territory related to displacement and associated to the violation of human rights of the Central American people, which further tears the country’s social tissue. Mexican authorities, then in many cases, reproduce the same unjust conditions with migrants and passers that arrive to Mexico as those that migrant Mexicans are subjected to when arriving to the United States. On the other hand, the migrant community that lives in Mexico constitutes a ghost population that lacks a space of political breakup in the country.
The party is assumed as a space from where all migrants can exercise a political presence through educational projects, of the active and conscious use of media communications, and through creative actions that are focused on issues that affect the different types of migrants. The MPP, presented by the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS), will hold a series of conversational forums, open to the general public, centered on Mexico’s complex migratory issues. During the months leading up to elections, the MPP will link to other groups that work on migration topics, with artists and citizens in general. Media will be used by the MPP to communicate with the public sphere and the political sphere of the country. In April, the party will move to a physical space in the center of the city, which will be neutral, safe and accessible for those who decide to join the party.
Finally, the MPP will conduct a series of creative interventions in the public space during the months of May and June, keeping in mind that this is the time when parties have a marked public presence, to highlight both the absence of compromise and of a project with migration issues in the country’s electoral campaigns. In August and September, a publication will be done to commemorate the project, which will be launched at the end of 2012.
The MPP in Mexico City (in collaboration with SAPS) is a project that originates from Immigrant Movement International in Queens, New York, initiated by artist Tania Bruguera and sponsored by The Queens Museum of Art and Creative Time. Its mission is to redefine the citizen-migrant situation and to put the concept of “useful art” to test, a notion that promotes the integration of art in the search of sustainable long term solutions, to urgent social and political issues.
Un proyecto de Tania Bruguera
Descripción:
· Eliminen la diferenciación de las personas a partir de un estatus migratorio.
· Reconozcan que el sistema global genera, a partir de la migración, rasgos de una esclavitud moderna trans-fronteriza.
· Creen y fomenten las condiciones de vida que hagan de la migración una elección y no una imposición.
· Identifiquen el inadecuado trato institucional al migrante centroamericano en territorio mexicano como, similar al sufrido por los mexicanos emigrados especialmente a Estados Unidos.
· Reclamen a los lugares receptores un espacio político para los migrantes como ciudadanos.
· Reivindiquen la dignidad en el tratamiento al migrante.
· Exijan el espacio público como propiedad común de todos los que lo cohabitan.