Promotores de la Liberación Migrante is a language justice and community organizing initiative that began in 2016 with a small group of volunteers based in Guatemala, México, and the United States. We are a collective of volunteer promotores committed to the process of base organization among Maya migrants in all three countries, and offering direct support to migrants detained in detention centers in the United States. Our vision is based in the struggle to defend indigenous territory in Guatemala, and the struggle to guarantee the right to migrate with dignity to and within the United States. We use the framework of language justice both to provide direct support to Maya migrants detained in US prisons, and also as an opportunity to involve Maya promotores and communities to lead the struggle against the mass incarceration of migrant families.
Since the beginning of 2017, PLM volunteer interpreters have self-organized to provide free interpretation in Guatemalan Mayan languages for over 360 parents and children detained in family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, and Berks, Pennsylvania. See the charts below for a sense of the distributions of departmental origin, language, and detention center for 284 of the interpretation requests we have fielded.
