Tapachula, 12 December 2022 – Ariela Baquiax is a traditional midwife originally from El Tumbador, San Marcos, in western Guatemala. For the past 22 years, she has lived in the coffee-growing region of Soconusco, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas where she works mainly as a coffee bean picker. 

As a midwife, Ariela does far more than deliver babies. She also ensures the children of migrant and cross-border workers are properly registered in Mexico.

Ariela travels long distances to deliver babies between several coffee farms in the region which are hundreds of kilometres away. Women working on these farms do not have the resources to travel to Tapachula city to access hospital care.

She explains that when she delivers a baby, she also ensures that the mothers know that their children have rights in Mexico. "I give a 'delivery paper' to the women I attend and advice about their right to have their children properly recognized here in Mexico,” she said. “I tell them their children have the right to study here and receive health care."

Ariela hopes that sharing important information on the registration of babies born to migrant workers in Mexico will combat both fear and a lack of knowledge about procedures. In the communities she serves, there are children who are older than 12 who do not have birth certificates issued by the Mexican Civil Registry.

In some cases, Guatemalan cross-border families return to their country of origin to register their children for fear of being detained by Mexican authorities for having passed through without documentation and thereby, potentially being separated from their children.

"People are afraid to ask about registering their children because they do not have a work permit here. So, they prefer to go to Guatemala to register them, even though they were born in this country and they have the right to citizenship," Ariela explained.