Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 11:25:32 -0600
Subject: AUT: English Chiapas al Dia 157   I


ENGLISH VERSION OF "CHIAPAS AL DIA" BULLETIN No. 157
CIEPAC
CHIAPAS, MEXICO
(May 28, 1999)


IMMIGRATION IN CHIAPAS AND IN MEXICO

Thousands of Central Americans decided to immigrate to the United States
because of Hurricane Mitch, "the worst natural disaster of the century in
Central America," according to the UN.  The hurricane led to 9000 deaths, 3
million victims, more than 13,000 disappeared, and losses of more than $10
million USD in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.  The
stagnation, or minimal growth, of Central American economies in the
nineties, added to Mitch's destructive fury, has led to a growing flight of
labor to the north.  The Central American migrants are joined with the
migrant stream of more than 320,000 Mexicans who relocate to the United
States each year.

In addition to factors of expulsion, there are others of attraction.  In
first place is the wage gap.  Salaries in the United States are, on the
average, eight times greater than a Mexican could find in his own country,
if, that is, work could be found.  The salary differential between the US
and Central America is calculated at a magnitude of more than 10 to 1.
Another factor of attraction are the job openings in that country.  Some
researchers estimate that 95% of the migrants, who manage to enter the
United States, find work.  There would appear to be an abundant number of
job openings, badly paid, difficult, unpleasant, and even degrading, but
jobs, regardless.  These openings are owing in part to the increasing
demographic aging in the United States.  The Department of Labor in the
United States calculates that next year there will be a decline of 6% in
the number of young people between the ages of 16 - 24, and a decline of
15% in the age range from 24 -34 years.

Regardless of their nationalities, the migrants send dollar transfers that
have become one of the most important sources of currency in their
countries of origin.  It is estimated that Mexico receives between $6 and
$7.5 million USD through these transfers per year, the sixth most important
source of currency.  In the Central American countries, it has become the
second or third most important source.

Knowing that their country is a magnet for the unemployed masses of Mexico
and Central America, United States officials have decided to seal off their
long and permeable border.  The United States pincers close in over it in
two ways:  by using more repressive measures along the southern border, and
by employing the states that are the sources of the migrants - and the
countries of transit - as the "first line" in the war against the immigrants.

The explicit goal of the Border Patrol of that country is to completely
close down the most traveled crossing points, through the building of
walls, the hiring of hundreds of patrols, the employment of sophisticated
technology and of tactics such as no longer deporting Central Americans to
Mexico, but rather giving them a plane ticket to their countries of origin,
in order to discourage new attempts to cross the line.  The attempt to seal
off the most used crossing places has provoked a logical response on the
part of the immigrants and the polleros ['coyotes': a person who gets
illegal immigrants across the border] who take them:  to move to less
guarded areas along the 3000 kilometer border between the two countries.
These areas, however, are inhospitable deserts and mountains, whose climate
has claimed a tragic toll.  Since the Border Patrol's "Operation Guardian,"
and other operations, began in 1994, 400 migrants have died.

There are already studies that have documented the movement of migrants to
areas that are less guarded, but more dangerous, and what this has meant in
terms of the increase in deaths.  According to information provided by the
Consulate General in Mexico, 23 migrants died in 1994, two for
climatological reasons, and nine from asphyxiation.  In comparison, in
1998, 145 migrants died, 68 for climatological reasons, and 51 from
asphyxiation. 

A new variant of harassment is the plan to make the processing of the
hundreds of thousands of deported migrants more "efficient."  It has to do
with creating "knots," or key points, in order to keep the captured
migrants detained and to process their deportation.  And so, an
undocumented Mexican who is captured in Chicago by United States
immigration authorities, will be sent to Harlingen, Texas for his
"processing," that is, a receiving center for migrants detained in a
particular geographic area.  But what is efficient for the Immigration
authorities becomes a violation of the migrants' human rights, by
separating them from their support networks, especially from their families.

The other part of the pincers that apply pressure to the migrant are the
same national States that help the United States "defend itself" from the
wave of migrants.  Mexico takes part in the United States' "dirty work,"
making the passage of Central Americans through its territory difficult in
thousands of ways, whether or not they have valid documents.  In the
capitals of Central and South American countries, for example, obtaining a
visa in a Mexican consulate to visit Mexico has become equal to, if not
more difficult than, a Mexican going to visit the United States.  Mexico
has adopted the same requirements for granting a visa to a Central or South
American that the United States uses to judge the convenience of providing
a visa to a Mexican, that is, bank accounts with lofty balances, ownership
documents, work letters, proof of income, etcetera.  These documents,
necessary for entering Mexico, can be gotten around, however, if the
Central American already has a…United States visa!

The Central American countries have adopted the same tactics, especially
because of Hurricane Mitch.  Previously, Central Americans of any
nationality could move about Central America (except for Costa Rica), by
only presenting their residence card or other document that validated their
nationality.  Now this "common market," in terms of the movement of people,
has been restricted.  Now all Central American countries are beginning to
demand visas from citizens of neighboring countries, if they want to go
more than a few kilometers into the country.  All for the purpose of making
the passage north more difficult.  We have our suspicions that it has been
the United States itself that has exerted pressure on their neighbors to
the south, to act as their "Border Patrol" beyond their borders.  For those
Central Americans whose destination is, in effect, the United States, the
usual passage, in the majority of cases, is first Chiapas, and then a long
crossing awaits them through other Mexican states prior to reaching the
North American border.

Chiapas has not, in itself, traditionally been a state that expels labor to
other parts of Mexico and to the United States.  The stagnant Chiapas
economy, however, plus last year's natural disasters (massive land burnings
and a tropical storm that caused millions worth of damage in the coastal
area of the state) have caused a growing stream of people to seek their
well-being in other places.  Chiapas has been, rather, the receiver of
Guatemalan labor, primarily indigenous, that participates with permission
of officials, or without it, in the harvesting of different agricultural
products (coffee, sugarcane and plantains, primarily).  In 1997, more than
67,600 Guatemalan workers crossed the border with Chiapas with documents
issued by the National Immigration Institute of Mexico.  However, Hugo
Angeles Cruz, a researcher for the College of the Southern Border,
estimates that the majority of Guatemalan workers are undocumented, owing
to an old tradition of movement between Chiapas and the border departments
of Guatemala, where the least important thing is an imaginary line that
divides the countries.  "Their movement [the Guatemalans'] across the
border," the researcher says, "responds to the historical propinquity that,
in cultural, socioeconomic and family terms, has constituted a milieu of
identities and complements."

These workers, mainly Guatemalans, because they are not documented, suffer
many of the same vexations as our compatriots in the United States.  They
receive wages that are almost always below the minimum wage in Chiapas
(already the lowest in the Republic), for exhausting work, from morning
'til night, under inadequate conditions, in the large agricultural fincas. 

Many young women from the department of San Marcos in Guatemala,
neighboring Chiapas, seek employment as domestic workers in middle class
homes in Tapachula, the city with the second largest population in Chiapas,
30 kilometers from the Guatemala border.  They confront the problems common
to their gender and their humble condition:  economic and sexual
exploitation by their employers, physical or verbal abuse, threats or
blackmail that they will call immigration officials to deport them if the
young woman "doesn't behave well."  None of them enjoy the benefits of the
law.  Other young women, when they do not find work, turn to prostitution.
Behind the train station in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo are the
brothels where they entertain truck drivers, hoping to cross to Guatemala
in their vehicles.  The Central Americans who are there, the majority
apparently from El Salvador and Honduras, kill time, like the truck
drivers, and earn a little money before continuing their trip, also wanting
to reach the United States.

There are currently 148 foreign male prisoners in the CERESO (Social
Rehabilitation Center, that is, prison) in Tapachula, 147 of them Central
Americans and one US citizen.  Among the Central Americans, there are 90
from Guatemala, 26 from Honduras and 31 from El Salvador.  There are also
17 female foreign prisoners, 14 of them from Guatemala, 2 from El Salvador
and one from Colombia.  The majority of these foreign prisoners are
accused, or have been sentenced for, "crimes against health," that is, tied
in one way or another to drugs (61.5%).  Twenty-three percent are
imprisoned for crimes related to the coyote trade, and the other 15.5% are
accused of carrying false documents.  The majority of these prisoners are
defenseless, both legally and personally.  The court appointed lawyers,
many of them corrupt, taking advantage of the prisoners' meager
understanding of procedures in Mexico, charge huge sums to move the
paperwork in their cases along.  The relatives of the Central American
prisoners are often far away and without the funds necessary to travel to
another country in order to visit their relatives and to keep informed as
to their wellbeing.  In order to visit a relative imprisoned in the
Tapachula CERESO, the families themselves would undoubtedly have to travel
"illegally," given the few possibilities for people of such meager
resources to obtain a visa at a Mexican consulate.

The slow freight train that crosses the Chiapas coast leaves from Ciudad
Hidalgo, crosses the Tehuantepec Isthmus towards the Gulf of Mexico, then
heads towards Cordoba, Veracruz and, from there, to the Federal District.
In addition to merchandise, the train carries Central American migrants,
hidden in their boxcars.  But danger lies in waiting.  Gangs of assailants
- "maras," in the argot of the migrants - swarm about in the boxcars,
robbing them of their few belongings and the dollars they are carrying.  In
addition, the migrants in Chiapas confront at least four migration posts
(Huixtla, Pijijiapan, Arriaga and Tonala), then two more in Oaxaca (La
Ventosa and Matias Romero), before beginning the winding ascent towards
Mexico City.  The trend in all the posts has been for migration agents to
pursue the migrants, and, if they are captured, the migrants are subjected
to blows from nightsticks, extortion, incarceration, and, after a few hours
or days locked up, many times without food, they will once again be
expelled to Guatemala.

The mayor of the Guatemalan border city of Tecun Uman estimates that there
is a floating population of 12,000 persons who are waiting to enter Mexico,
or to make the attempt to cross again.  There are not enough jobs for that
many people, a fact which fosters the development of the "maras," who
harass the migrants.

If the migrants are not detained first, and they reach Mexico City by
train, other trains leave from there to the nearest border, Reynosa, or to
the most distant, Tijuana..  The migrants make their crossing through
Mexico, from up to a month or more if their destination is Tijuana,
completely exposed, without protection of any kind, vulnerable and open to
anything that might occur.  Despite the risks, if the migrants manage to
reach the northern border, the final and most dangerous leg of their trip
will begin:  crossing the border and traveling to their destination inside
the territory of the United States.  So far this year alone, almost 50
migrants have died in the final stretch of their trip.

The absolute vulnerability of the migrants, and the sadly common idea that,
by being in Mexico "illegally," the Central Americans are without any
rights, have given rise to the creation by civil society of various
protective human rights organizations for migrants.  Many times the human
rights centers already in existence in Mexico have seen themselves
obligated to take on cases of human rights violations suffered by the
migrants, given their alarming frequency.

One example is the Fray Matias de Cordoba Human Rights Center in Tapachula,
Chiapas, tied to the diocese of that city.  Among their activities, they
deal with working migrants and domestic employees, almost all Central
Americans, the majority Guatemalans, through activities that range from
training in various trades for the domestics, to accompanying the workers
whose wages have been taken away in the fincas or homes where they work.
In cases where the pay that has been agreed to is not met, the Fray Matias
Center advises the migrants as to how to make a complaint at the
Conciliation and Arbitration Board.  Given the customary arbitrariness of
Mexican justice, it is surprising to hear from the Center that many of the
cases are resolved in the migrants' favor, despite their possible lack of
work documents.

In terms of public policy, various NGO's have grouped together in order to
pressure the legislatures of various countries to provide legal and
judicial protection for migrants.  Last year in Mexico, the organizations
Without Borders and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights and other NGO's
pressured, through lobbying activities in Congress, for the Mexican
Senate's ratification of the "International Convention for the Protection
of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families" in December 1998.
The NGO's, not satisfied with this achievement, will keep watch over the
provision of protection for all migrants, Mexicans abroad as well as
Central Americans in this country.

For its part, the federal government, through the Department of Government
and the National Immigration Institute, has created a body called the "Beta
Group," that supposedly watches out for the "protection" of the migrant.
There are six Beta Groups in northern Mexico, and three more in the
southern part of the Republic.  One of them, the Beta-South Group, created
in may 1996, works mainly in the Pacific coast of Chiapas, where it has
eight posts along the length of the railroad line, as well as another post
in Comitan.  In the neighboring state of Tabasco, the Beta-South Group has
a post in Tenosique that watches the part of the railway line that goes
from Tabasco, crosses the northern zone of Chiapas and on to Veracruz.

The Beta-South Group self-proclaims that it was conceived in order "to
fundamentally serve a vulnerable sector" (the migrants), its role being "up
to this time, unique in the world."  One of the reasons for its creation
was, according to a Beta-South Group report (January 1999), a suggestion by
the National Human Rights Commission, in order to promote public security
in regions most heavily traveled by migrants, but with "a social focus of
comprehensive service..[and] humanitarian service for the migrants."

Below we will cite a passage from the report, in order to give a fuller
idea of how, and in what terms, the Beta-South Group's image is portrayed:

"To those to whom it is our job to extend our modest efforts of attending
to their complaints or denunciations, lending social and legal assistance,
directing them to doctors, safeguarding the work rights of agricultural
workers, of domestic workers or of casual migratory workers, taking
administrative actions against individuals, authorities or abusive service
providers, or with great efficiency promoting the finding of missing
relatives, or simply offering them food, offering them a glass of water,
and directing victims of crimes to a shelter, moving about the areas of
greatest concentration or of criminal activity, in order to protect them
from criminal behavior, alerting them to natural or social dangers, or
informing them of their rights in Mexico, we have many reasons for feeling
the satisfaction of a duty carried out, but knowing also our limitations
and the dimensions of the problems that affect the dignity, safety and
assets of the migrants, our achievements are sullied by innumerable
assaults and violations and abuses from bad officials, that we cannot
predict, or even less prevent, because the anti-social, illegal or
anti-administrative behaviors are repeated and multiplied to a greater
degree than our capacity for response or opportunity."  

Aside from its overwrought bureaucratic language, the previous paragraph
demonstrates the kind-hearted image that the Beta-South Group wants to
project.  Despite the indirect recognition that their own members are
behind some of the abuses against the population that they are supposedly
protecting, one of the explicit objectives of the Beta-South Group is
achieving a positive image of its activities, as well as not being
perceived by either the migrants, or by the Mexican public in general, as
"one more repressive force," but rather as a group genuinely concerned with
vulnerable migrants.

This image is cultivated in order to drive their "migration intelligence"
work.  In point of fact, they certainly do indeed do some of the good works
that the Beta-South Group says they do, in pursuit of the sought after
perception.

But their real work is otherwise.  Their mission is to locate, infiltrate
and break up the network of polleros that make the passage to the United
States viable for tens of thousands of Mexican and Central American
migrants.  In a southern state like Chiapas, the Beta-South Group's efforts
are concentrated on the networks of polleros who transport Central
Americans.  On the other hand, the Beta Groups in the north of Mexico set
their sights on polleros who facilitate the crossing to the United States
of people of any nationality.

At the end of the day, the polleros offer a service that the migrants
demand, obviously not without risk for them.  The routes the polleros
utilize, the mechanisms that are used in order to guarantee the delivery of
the "passengers" to their destinations, the multiple contacts, complicates
and corruption's that are the "oil and the paste" of the network of
transportation of migrants to the north, in large part, function.  The role
of the pollero in "facilitating" the passage through Mexico, and then to
the United States, in exchange for payment, is being in great part carried
out.  If it were otherwise, the migrants would not seek it.  And this in
spite of, again, the real and undeniable dangers that go with dealing with
polleros.  But, if the migrants felt that the risks of dealing with
polleros were greater than crossing from one side of Mexico to the other
without help, then the network of polleros and their trade would disappear.

Covering all the distances, what exists in Mexico and the southeastern
United States is an "underground railroad," similar to the one used by
abolitionists in the middle of the last century in the United States, to
take blacks out of slavery in the southern states of that country, and to
facilitate their flight to the north.

Unlike a real railroad, what exists in Mexico and the United States
southeast enjoys great flexibility in its routes and in its forms of
operation.  If one is discovered or blocked, another is created, which is
exactly what the responses have been by the migrants and polleros to the
operations by the Border Patrol on the United States side.

Detecting, then, the continuous redefinition of the underground railroad,
and breaking it up, is one of the main tasks of the various Beta Groups in
Mexico.  But, in order to detect something clandestine and particularly
elusive, the tactic of the good and the bad comes into play:  the one who
strikes and the one who is charitable.  In Mexico, the repressive force is
the immigration officials, that is, agents of the National Immigration
Institute, the Mexican migrant police.  On the other hand, the "lite"
force, the friendly face, that picks up the one struck down, gives him "a
glass of water" and sends him on to a shelter, is the Beta Group.  But the
quality of intelligence gathered in each case is different.  The Beta Group
has the opportunity to approach the migrant, to talk, to ask questions,
and, yes, to give directions.  In principal, the Beta Group does not make
arrests, except when confronted with a crime in flagrante delicto,
especially regarding the polleros' trafficking in human beings.  But they
do not detain the migrants, even if they are in Mexico without documents.
The undocumented migrant knows, on the other hand, that the only response
from Mexican migrant police is repression and deportation.  And thus, one
group penetrates where the other cannot, both, at the end, being arms of
the Mexican government.

Here we also see the Mexican government doing, in its own territory, a part
of the work of United States immigration officials.  The objective is to
decrease the traffic of human beings to the United States, and to break up,
or to at least check, the underground railroad.  It has been said with
reason that the United States' southern border is no longer formed by the
Rio Bravo, but rather by the Suchiate and the Usumacinta.  Now, with even
the participation of the Central American governments in this work of
containing migration, the border has shifted even further to the south.


Miguel Pickard

Center   of   Economic   and    Political    Investigations   of  Community
 Action,   A.C.
CIEPAC
CIEPAC, member of the "Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy"
National Network (CONVERGENCIA)

 ******************************************
Translated by irlandesa for CIEPAC, A.C.
******************************************

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CIEPAC, A.C.
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Eje Vial Uno Numero 11
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Eje Vial Uno Número 11
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