A journey in support of immigrant rights

Thirty-nine-year-old José Mario Castellón Leiva left El Salvador on his bicycle this past May 31. Since then, he has ridden through Guatemala, Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, and is now on his way to California on a mission; a mission to defend immigrant rights.

Mario Castellón in New York. WW photo: Heather Cottin

Castellón moved to the U.S. in 1997 and worked as a cabinet installer in Dallas, Texas. He sent his remittances to his family in El Salvador. One night, while watching television, Castellón saw a child whose parents had been arrested and deported. “Who will speak for the children? Who will defend us?” cried the little boy.

The Texas police, working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were raiding everywhere. To date ICE has deported an estimated 286,000 immigrants this year and has vowed to ramp up the raids.

Castellón was galvanized into action. Being a national cyclist, who originally migrated to the U.S. on his bicycle, he decided he had to do something to protest the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children, a policy which deprives those children of love and security.

He boarded a bus back to El Salvador and then asked his spouse Roxanna if he could ride through the U.S. with a message: Stop the raids and deportations! Stop the destruction of families! She said yes.

Hailed by immigrants living in fear of raids in every town he passed through, Castellón has become a symbol of the struggle against what many are now calling the gestapo tactics of the Department of Homeland Security.

Demonized nightly in attacks by media demagogues Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck, immigrants live in a nightmare of insecurity.

“I ride under the sun and the rain for my people,” said Castellón. “I will ride 10,000 more miles to raise people’s consciences about this terrible crime. I feel I have to do this for humanity,” Castellón told Workers World.

Corporate greed breeds poverty, displacement

Mario Castellón was forced to leave his homeland because unemployment in El Salvador was approaching 65 percent. Because U.S. companies have undermined the country’s declining economy, millions of farmers were thrown off the land and ended up in the cities, where the “maquilas,” the foreign-owned factories, pay $25.00 per week. What is happening in El Salvador is happening in Mexico, Senegal, the Philippines, and everywhere that imperialism is imposing its “free trade” policies. But while capital can move freely across borders, people cannot.

Mario Castellón’s heroic journey has been chronicled in the Latin@ press in every state through which he has ridden. When he came to New York, the May 1 Coalition for Immigrant and Worker Rights welcomed him with open arms, and the Salvadoran community on Long Island organized a network to help fund his journey, and to support his five-year-old son back in El Salvador.

So Mario Castellón’s fightback is significant. “I met a little boy in North Carolina who said that now he feels a little less afraid, ‘because someone is fighting for me.’”

On Aug. 22, in Detroit, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Houston and New York, immigrant rights activists protested in front of ICE offices against the raids and deportations. Mario Castellón joined the May 1 Coalition’s New York City action with his bicycle, preparing for the next lap of his journey, which will take him to Chicago. “I do not feel so alone,” he said to WW. “I know now there is a whole movement behind me.”

People wishing to help Mario Castellón in his journey or to have him come to their town should contact Carlos at 516-582-2720.