25 expat voices: Rachel Micah-Jones

Expat: Rachel Micah-Jones

Rachel Micah-Jones

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Ana Prado

We asked our 25 featured expats if they have a specific Mexico “moment” or memory—something that always makes them think, “Yep, this is home,” or “That’s what I love about this place.” View Slideshow >>

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Organization: Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc.

Website: cdmigrante.org

Originally from: I am from Brick, the safest city in the United States, in the great garden state of New Jersey.

Lives in: The magnificent city of Zacatecas.

Living in Mexico: Just over three and a half years.

Why did you move to Mexico?

I founded a pioneering transnational migrant workers' rights law center, called Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, in Zacatecas.

Tell us about your work with the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. How did you get this organization off the ground, and what are its guiding principles?

I spent a month in Zacatecas during the summer of 2004. At the time I was a farmworker attorney, and I met with a group of workers in their home village. I had interviewed the same workers in the United States only a few months earlier: in the US, the workers had been intimidated and silent, but in Mexico they poured out stories of extremely oppressive working conditions. At that moment, I realized that for the efforts of the worker-advocate community to be successful, we needed to have a presence here.

I was lucky enough to be chosen as an Echoing Green fellow in 2005, which together with public-interest law grants from Yale and Stanford law schools provided the seed money for CDM.

Essentially the idea is that a law center based in Mexico can empower and defend Mexico-based migrant workers by: (1) addressing the intimidation factor that deters workers from claiming their rights, and (2) filling the missing link between US-based workers' rights groups and Mexico-based migrant workers.

For each migrant we educate about their workplace rights, for each family with whom we have fought for justice after the husband and father died in a US workplace, for each guestworker we have deposed who was told that if he complained about awful working conditions he would go home in a coffin, for each of those thousands of workers with whom CDM has worked over the past three and a half years, we have removed the US-Mexico border as a barrier to justice. These workers have shown enormous courage, and I hope some of that has rubbed off on me.

Are you involved in other organizations, activities, or hobbies here?

I am pretty obsessed with my job. But after working hours, I love spending time with my two-year-old son, Leo, my husband, Jonathan, and my boxer dog, Tequila, la mas linda de todo Zacatecas! I also am involved with a group of young mothers in Zacatecas called Zacamamas.

Do you have a specific Mexico "moment" that makes you think, "That's what I love about this place"?

Every morning at 6 am when I wake up to either the Gas Imperial jingle, or the garbage whistle indicating that it's time to run down my street with the trash.

What are both the best and the hardest things about being an expat in Mexico?

The best thing is the quality of life and focus on the family. I love walking through downtown Zacatecas and seeing multiple generations all out together in the town square.

One hard thing for me to get used to (aside from being away from some friends and family) is having to get documents translated by perito traductores and then notarized, apostillized, certified, and re-notarized—I am still getting a handle on tramites.