What’s happening where the Central American migrants cross?

We learned something of what’s happening on Mexico’s southern border by travelling the four migratory corridors of its own “Lampedusa.” This is a brief diagnosis, an analytic tomography, of those corridors. What’s happening there also exposes what’s happening in the countries of origin of the hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America who pass through Mexico heading north. Those who survive would face less suffering and danger if they just had some kind of document.

José Luis González sj.

Mexico’s southern border is an area Central Americans cross en route to the United States. It’s also used by Cubans, South Americans—especially Ecuadorans—and even people from other continents: Asia and the Horn of Africa.

A tentative diagnosis

Organizations working with migrants estimate that about 400,000 migrants cross through Mexico every year. At the 14th International Migration Symposium held last month in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico, researcher Ernesto Rodríguez Chávez, former director of the Mexican Interior Ministry’s Center for Migration Studies, used a lower figure of around 192,000. “Perspectives of International Migration,” a report presented five months earlier by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development gives organized crimes’ violence against migrants in Mexico as one of the main reasons for the drop in numbers.

Let’s follow this human river flowing across Mexico’s 714-mile border with Guatemala, with its 12 official crossing points. The authorities themselves recognize 120 blind spots, 44 of which are wide enough for vehicles to pass through. The actual border is easy to cross; the difficult part comes later.

The border takes advantage of natural geographical boundaries: the river Suchiate, the Cuchumatanes mountain range, the Usumacinta and San Pedro Rivers in Petén and the Azul and Hondo Rivers and Chetumal Bay on the Caribbean coast. Looking at the map of this border you can see that the boundaries are mostly straight lines, drawn in an office, but the border’s reality doesn’t always match those lines. Manuel Ángel Castillo, the College of Mexico’s demographer, has a good grasp of the dynamics of those who cross this border. He identifies the different streams of people as local visitors (with border residence), Guatemalan temporary agricultural workers, integrated Guatemalan refugees, border residents and both documented and undocumented transnational migrants (transmigrants). It’s the steps of the latter en route to the US that we’ll follow in this tentative diagnosis.

In Palenque: Analysis and tomography

To get a good picture of this border it’s best to use tomography, passing the scanner over Southern Mexico’s four different migrant corridors: the Pacific, Central, Jungle and Caribbean. But first we’ll look at an analysis that offers us an early general diagnosis of the four corridors. It’s a migration blood test, taken at one of the key points in this circulatory system: Palenque.

The blood sample is from 24-year-old Iris Zuleyda Raunales and 18-year-old Cinthia Carolina Cruz Bonilla, two Honduran migrants hacked to death on the train tracks on May 30. They had stayed at the Migrant House, a hostel established a few yards from the train tracks by Father Alberto Gómez with help from his parishioners and the Daughters of Charity. Sister Gloria Murúa, from the Jesuit Migrant Service, still has a photo of these two girls taken there. Some say they had reported extortion by criminal gangs to be able to board the train. When the train—which migrants call “The Beast”—finally arrived, they got on board. A little further on, the Mara Salvatrucha, a now transnational criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, stopped the train with total impunity, sought out the two young women, forced them off and hacked them to death with machetes in front of everyone.

Months later, in October, I spent three weeks in this Migrant House and saw Honduran migrants arriving as fugitives from what is the most violent country the world not at war, with its record homicide rate of almost 90 for every 100,000 inhabitants. Not at war? Talking with them I found that many had lost their mother or father to a violent death.

Globalization’s double standards

This blood test in Palenque doesn’t tell us about cholesterol or glucose rates but about the high hypocrisy rate of globalization’s two kinds of human mobility. Very close to the Migrant House—where several dozen impoverished people are received daily—are the Palenque ruins, which receive hundreds of tourists, some of them Central Americans. There’s even an airport for them, which is being extended. Some migrants have gotten work fencing in the runway.

The two areas show the human mobility double standards typical of globalization. Some have to travel undocumented and others have their documents in order. Migrants sleep in the Pakal Ná Park, near the train station, and tourists sleep in one of the city’s many hotels. Migrants fear the criminal gangs that charge them US$100 to board the train to Coatzacoalcos—and sometimes even charge them to sleep in the park—and the tourists are protected by security guards. Those who travel by hanging on to any piece of iron on the back of “the Beast” endure the rain, sun, cold and fatigue of a journey going at under 20 mph and the tourists travel in comfortable airplanes. Organized crime collects for each of the four legs of the train trip to Mexico City. That’s US$400, almost the same as a one-way ticket for a visa-carrying tourist to fly from Honduras to Mexico City.

Frequent derailments occur because the railroad tracks are inadequately maintained—which is why the trains go so slow—yet more than a hundred workers are currently renovating the airport’s runway. The trip takes days by train but only a couple of hours by plane. On November 4, Aero Mexico inaugurated a new Guatemala-Tapachula-Mexico City air route and the governor of Chiapas, Velasco Coello, mentioned the tourists and businesspeople they expect to use the route: “Our State has received more than 3 million visitors just this year, which represents more than 9.8 billion pesos [some US$760 million] in revenue.” Evidently, he doesn’t include those who pass through the Migrant Houses in Palenque or Tapachula in this figure, as their “contribution” isn’t economic. It wasn’t money that poured out of Zuleyda and Cinthia Carolina onto the tracks.

Fleeing like the Mayans?

The analysis doesn’t show the pathologies only of globalization or of the transit country but also of the countries of origin. Seeing boats with 50-70 people crossing the wide Usumacinta River makes you think of an exodus from a disaster or a war. The speed with which they move and their anxious glances lead one to imagine that they’re fleeing a threatening disaster at home. And that brings us back to thinking about the Palenque ruins. These Mayan monuments speak of a people who abandoned their cities for reasons that archeologists and historians still debate. Was it because of violence, hunger, natural disasters or perhaps a ruling and priestly class discredited for failing to avert disaster? What’s certain is that the Mayans fled from the cities they had built. This looks a lot like what’s happening today in Central America. Are we experiencing the same causes as that crisis of civilization?

Twenty years of containment policies

After the examination, we realize we haven’t even asked any questions about this patient’s clinical history. When did the border start hurting? Perhaps we believe in modern medicine, which prefers to use machines first and ask questions later.

The problem started with Mexico’s transmigration containment policy, which obeys the policies of its northern neighbor. The key events marking this policy began in 1994 with NAFTA, the free trade agreement signed by the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the creation in Mexico of the National Migration Institute (INM) just three months before NAFTA went into effect. In 1998 Mexico militarized its southern border with Operation Sealing, After 2001 all governments used the 9-11 attacks on the US to justify prejudice against undocumented people, even though the terrorists involved entered the US on visas and even learned to fly planes in Florida with all their documents in order. Ever since then, migration has been seen as a security threat, as is reflected in the Southern Border Plan and later, in 2005, the year of the greatest flow of transmigrants through Mexico’s southern border in history, with the inclusion of the INM in Mexico’s national security Cabinet.

Peña Nieto’s government has continued that same security approach, judging by the migration officials appointed in 2013, who had previously worked in state security and have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Guatemalan government to strengthen border security through the High Level Security Group (GANSEG). The wording that defines the tasks of GANSEG’s subgroups clearly shows where the government places migration: international security and terrorism, organized crime, public and border security, crime prevention… Governments see migration as a military matter. The huge migration installations being built in Huixtla, Trinitaria, Orizaba and Palenque are fortresses from which Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong will conduct his plan “to regulate the migration flow on the southern border,” as he announced in June 2013. The US will pay the cost of biometric records (iris recognition, fingerprints and photos). What’s surprising is that Osorio Chong said this plan “will be under the command of the Secretariat of the Navy.”

We should be grateful he didn’t put the Air Army in charge, although anything is possible, as it already controls the passage of everything from helicopters and unmanned aircraft on Mexico’s northern border. The most significant phrase from the interior minister’s statement is that the plan will be “under the command...” It means migration flow is a military matter.

After reviewing the clinical history, let’s now pass the scanner over the border to get an image of the geographical and historical features, the transit hubs and the threats to migrants in each corridor.

Pacific Corridor: accustomed to transit

This is the oldest corridor, perhaps because, unlike the mountains or jungles of the other three corridors, the coastal plain’s geography facilitates displacement. The main official crossing points are Tecún Umán/Ciudad Hidalgo and El Carmen/Talismán, although officially there are also crossing points in Unión Juárez and in Mazapa de Madero that weren’t operating in November 2013. Perhaps INM checkpoints were put there temporarily? This corridor’s boundary reaches as far as the municipality of Amatenango de la Frontera, which a small number of migrants walk to and then head on to the coast. Those who cross further northeast would use the Central Corridor’s routes: no longer going towards Tapachula and Huixtla on the Pacific, but towards Frontera Comalapa and Comitán in the highlands.

This corridor’s most frequented route is the one that crosses the Suchiate River, alongside the official crossing points, in a setting that was magnificently depicted in Luis Mandoki’s latest film, “La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas” (The short and precocious life of Sabina Rivas).

Some historical events mark this region of Soconusco, where Miguel de Cervantes wanted to be governor in 1590, before writing Don Quixote. Guatemala claimed this great plain until the Boundary Treaty of 1882, which defined the border. Seasonal migration to the coast’s coffee, sugarcane and cocoa plantations began with Guatemala’s Liberal reform, which involved expropriating indigenous lands. This means that the population on both sides of the border has been accustomed to transit, especially after 1980, when temporary workers were needed for the new crops: watermelon, papaya, cantaloupe and soya.

This cross-border life of people who aren’t trying to go to the US was affected by Hurricane Stan (2005), which also further disrupted transmigration to the US as it destroyed railroad bridges used by the migrants in transit. Since then the train leaves from Arriaga, about 125 miles further north.

On the back of a train

In each of the four corridors are cities that form a hub or plateau where migrants gather, get supplies, communicate with their families and funders and prepare for the next leg. On the Pacific Corridor, these are mainly the cities of Tapachula and Arriaga, both with Migrant Houses. From Tapachula they can proceed by rail, road or even by sea or air.

In October 2013, Motozintla’s mayor was discovered selling birth certificates and declarations of domicile to Guatemalans for US$15,275 so they could travel from Tapachula to Monterrey. That same month, the INM detected 57 companies issuing false documents in Mexico to regularize foreigners’ migration status, turning their business and tax records into a front for sexual and/or employment exploitation.

The most visible form of transport here continues to be the train. This corridor has the Ferrosur railroad, which since 2005 leaves from Arriaga rather than Tapachula. The migrants walk this distance on the old tracks, dodging checkpoints, to board the train in Arriaga and go on to Ixtepec and Medias Aguas, where the railroad joins with the one coming from Yucatán and Tabasco.

Several films have portrayed the dangers of this train. The latest, Diego Quemada-Diez’s “The Golden Cage,” filmed in Arriaga, is different in that it tells the story of three Guatemalan minors. The young actors are receiving awards and prizes in the Cannes (France), Viña del Mar (Chile) and Mar del Plata (Argentina) international film festivals.

On November 20, 2013, Enrique Zamora Morlet, the minister for development of the southern border, announced that the railroad from Tapachula would be reactivated in December. As a matter of fact, Father Heyman Vásquez, founder of the Arriaga Migrant House and Huixtla parish priest for the last two months, told us a few days earlier that he has seen the railroad go as far as Huixtla, his new parish, almost 25 miles from Tapachula, where they are now building another Migrant House. Some consuls as well as researchers Hugo Ángeles Cruz and Martha Luz Rojas of the Colegio de la Frontera Sur have told us that reactivation of the train also brings the risk that the Zetas will move into the area.

The migrants also travel by road: on foot or in a bus. Microbus lines proliferate in Tapachula and Huixtla. Chance dictates whether the bus will be stopped at a checkpoint and if so whether a migrant will be detected; and if one is whether the authorities will be distracted by a “donation.”

Detentions, sexual exploitation...

In a study based on the 2011 Report of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and published by “Plaza Pública,” the Rafael Landívar University of Guatemala’s online media, 3 of the 71 most dangerous Mexican municipalities for migrants are in this Pacific Corridor: Tapachula, Pijijiapan and Arriaga. Of the 105 mass graves of migrants identified by the State Council on Human Rights in Chiapas, those from the municipalities of Huixtla, Tapachula, and Pijijiapan on this Pacific Corridor will be exhumed first, in collaboration with the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team, followed by those in Arriaga and Tonalá.

Threats to migrants come from several sources. The first is detention by the Mexican authorities, which include not only the INM and the Federal Police—the only ones the 2011 Migration Law allows to ask for documents—but also many municipal, state and federal security forces as well as the Army and Navy. All these institutions have been widely denounced for threatening, extorting and violating migrants’ rights. If their situation is found to be irregular the migrants are “secured” in a deportation center. New regulations are changing the euphemisms, so that instead of saying “detained” they now use “lodged.” The 21st-century Tapachula migration center is the biggest on the continent, with capacity to “lodge” 800 to 1,000 migrants. Human rights violations there have been well documented by the Friar Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center.

A second threat comes from those in the migration business. Leaving aside the train workers, engineers and guards; money changers; waiters, money transfer services such as Elektra stores and Western Union; hostel owners; coyotes; issuers of false documents, mayors included, and straw men to pick up remittances, the most efficient wheeler-dealers in Tapachula are those in the business of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Many Central American women work as waitresses (botaneras) in Mexico’s tapas bars or escorts (ficheras) in the more high-ticket bars, but the subject is taboo and hardly any organizations want to risk denouncing it, as it involves wide sectors of society, authorities, businesspeople and the mafia. El famous ECPAT-2007 Report titled “End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes” stated that 21,000 women were employed in 1,552 bars and brothels in Tapachula at that time. The worst part is that 97% of them are between 15 and 17 years old and some between 8 and 14 years old. Their exploiters, the “Demons of Eden,” bring us to the third hostile source: organized crime.

...and organized crime

Migrants are stalked by Salvatrucha and MS18 gang members, members of the Zetas cartel, drug traffickers and kidnappers of all kinds, even in the hostels. As many analysts have noted, among them Roberto Orozco in the August 2012 issue of envío, the Sinaloa Cartel rules the Pacific Corridor. Perhaps the most dangerous place on this route for assaults, rapes and death is La Arrocera, which refers not just to a specific spot but to a wide stretch of land beyond Huixtla.

When we left Father Heyman on November 18, he was receiving news about some migrants found chained up in La Arrocera. With the firmness that characterizes him, he began to push the authorities to help them. Organized crime’s businesses seem to have also expanded into the trafficking of organs, judging by what Father Alejandro Solalinde reported in November when he found migrants’ bodies minus their organs in Oaxaca. All this helps increase what Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga calls our countries’ “Gross Criminal Product.”

Central Corridor: Positive permeability

The official border crossings on the Central Corridor are at La Mesilla/Ciudad Cuauhtemoc and Gracias a Dios/Carmen Xhán. Migrants arrive by countless crossing points to the Mexican municipalities of Frontera Comalapa, La Trinitaria, La Independencia, Las Margaritas and Maravilla Tenejapa. On the Guatemalan side, starting with the southwest, the municipalities are Cuilco, La Libertad, La Democracia, Santa Ana Huista, Jacaltenango, Nentón, San Mateo Ixtatán and Barillas. It’s the most extensive corridor and its western boundary reaches as far as the Orizaba crossing point. But those who cross this way now mostly choose the route to Benemérito and Palenque, from the other corridor, the Jungle Corridor. As most of the Central Corridor routes cross over the Cuchumatanes mountains, migrants go with organized guides who know the area.

1982 is a notable historic date in this corridor’s chronology of hospitality, as the area received thousands of Guatemalan refugees fleeing from that year’s massacres. It’s an example of what Rodolfo Casillas calls “positive permeability” in his excellent book La permeabilidad social y los flujos migratorios en la frontera sur de México (Social permeability and migration flows on Mexico’s southern border.) Bishop Samuel Ruiz organized their reception in those first moments and Palenque’s Migrant House, which bears his name, continues to receive brothers and sisters from Central America today. Most of those refugees (42,000) returned to Guatemala after 1993, thus forcing the Peace Accords that ended the armed conflict in 1996. Another date affecting the dynamic of this whole border was 2000 when the southern Chiapas (Palenque-Comitán) border highway was inaugurated in an attempt to fence in the Zapatista area; it’s now used by countless groups of migrants. “Migrants are our core business,” said one of the drivers for the microbus company that runs this route. Because buses and trucks are an easier means of transport than travel on top of a train in all weathers, this corridor is the one most used by women and children.

Coyotes, soccer and drugs

The Central Corridor is closely tied to the networks of Huehuetenango guides. The National Council for Migrant Services of Guatemala says that at least 136 of these bands of migrant smugglers, known as “polleros” or “coyotes,” operate in the country, most of them in Huehuetenango and San Marcos. Researchers at the Center for Studies and Documentation of the Western Border of Huehuetenango told us that six years ago there were between 150 and 180 coyotes just in Soloma. These networks are very familiar with the other side of the border and the tricks they use to circumvent the checkpoints are astonishing. We’ll recount just one, hoping that the migration officials don’t read envío: a coyote dressed his migrants up like soccer players, loaded them in the back of a pick-up and passed through the checkpoint as if they were a team going to play in another community. The trick worked.

The border post at La Mesilla is an important center. When the 2011 Southern Border Migration Survey asked those sent back by Mexico where they had entered the country, it learned that most entered through Tecún Uman (39%), La Mesilla (30%) and El Ceibo (16%). The coyotes are associated with a network of cheap inns, and when they fill up the coyotes put up to ten migrants in one room in La Mesilla hotels. There they teach the migrants how to reply to INM questions, talk like Mexicans, learn the Mexican national anthem…

The guide networks are increasingly involved with drug trafficking and organized crime. Sometimes they give the migrants new shoes to wear and the grateful migrants later discover they are carrying drugs in the soles.

It’s likely that the Gracias a Dios border will increase its flow when the highway across northern Guatemala is finished.

Child migration is growing

Once past the border, the roads converge in Comitán as into a funnel. But first, the San Gregorio Chamic migration control point has to be evaded, for which there are alternative routes. On September 17, 2013, the authorities found a safe house just a few yards from the migration station, where they discovered 30 Honduran migrants—16 women, 9 men and 5 minors—who appeared to have been abandoned by their guides. This gives some idea of how this corridor, more than the others, is used by women and children to cross over.

In the first eight months of 2013, the INM returned 5,960 minors to their countries, almost the same number as in the whole of 2012 (5,966). This indicates that there’s also an increased exodus of Central American children. The risk for them is very high, as organized crime views them as good prey their families would be willing to pay a lot for.

The corridor of the invisible

Comitán is the hub city of the Central Corridor, but migrants aren’t seen in the streets as in Tapachula or Tenosique. This corridor doesn’t have a railroad to make them visible. Some call it “the corridor of the invisible” because they travel in truck trailers, Torton trucks and buses called “tijuaneros” because of their ultimate destination.

Migrants we could call “quick invisibles”—those with the most resources—go directly to the northern border. Any INM check they meet on the way asks the driver for a certain sum for each migrant being transported and there usually are no problems. In the excellent study titled “Sur: inicio de un camino,” (South: beginning of a journey), by the Enlace organization, a former INM agent specifies that “each control checkpoint charges about US$19,093 for a truckload of undocumented people and they have money-counting machines, just like in the banks.” He also says that the proceeds are distributed among the checking agents and their bosses according to a chart. They come to an agreement with the other security forces, “working it out fairly for each ‘pollo’ (migrant) who’s traveling so there’s no misunderstanding.”

There are also “slow invisibles,” those with fewer resources who travel alone or in small groups by alternative routes that change depending on where INM puts its checking agents. In the Enlace study, Miguel Ángel Paz and Ana Elena Barrios mention a couple of these routes along rough dirt tracks: Comitán-Pujiltic-Carranza-Tuxtla and Frontera Comalapa-Chicomuselo-Rizo de Oro-El Embalse-La Concordia-Villa Flores-Suchiapa-Tuxtla-Ocozocoautla.

The way the Central Corridor operates is only exposed when a truckload of migrants is discovered, which is happening increasingly often. Although they use contacts with migration authorities so that the Chiapas INM main office ensures the passage to Tuxtla with coded calls, sometimes things go wrong.

A news item on July 23, 2013, said that the INM control post detained a Torton truck in La Pochota, exiting Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The truck had come from Huehuetenango via Comitán. An X-ray machine at the post detected that it was carrying 94 migrants. The 78 men were nationals of Nepal (9), Bangladesh (9), Guatemala (37), El Salvador (20) and Honduras (3) and 2 minors were with them. The 16 women were nationals of Nepal (1), Guatemala (8), El Salvador (3) and Honduras (4), and they had 5 minors with them. Three of the seven minors weren’t accompanied. We can imagine the overcrowding. Some showed signs of suffocation. The Central Americans had paid US$4-5,000 and the Asians US$6-8,000.

Kidnapping and brothels

According to the Enlace study, none of the most dangerous municipalities for migrants are in the Central Corridor. Nonetheless, news of extortion and kidnappings is constant. On November 4, 2013, a gang holding Guatemalan migrants in the “Los Arbolitos” rancho, very close to Comitán, was dismantled. A month earlier, on October 3, Eduardo Francisco Villatoro Cano, the Guatemalan drug trafficker who controlled the border at La Mesilla, was captured in Tuxtla. Another simply took his place. When Hercules cut off one of the Hydra’s heads, two more came out.

Human trafficking is very extensive in Tuxtla and Comitán. According to Elvira Gordillo, an outspoken advocate for migrants, in Frontera Comalapa alone there are 600 sex workers in 365 bars and brothels, 200 of whom are minors. In March 2013, Herbert Guzmán, the Salvadoran consul in Comitán at the time, told about a girl who managed to escape from a boat where she was being forcibly taken to Africa. On the other hand, Miguel Ángel Paz, from Voces Mesoamericanas, told us about a Nicaraguan girl who was kicked to death for wanting to leave a brothel.

The Jungle Corridor has the most violence

This corridor is the most dangerous. It starts in northern Ixcán (Guatemala), goes from the Orizaba crossing point to La Palma (Tabasco) and ends up in Palenque, where the Chiapas-Mayab railroad—also called the South East railroad (Coatzacoalcos-Mérida)—converges with the roads. These infrastructures mark the most important dates in this corridor’s migration history. The railroad, built in 1985, passes less than 10 miles from Guatemala at some point, but became more important in 2005, after Hurricane Stan disrupted the Pacific railroad. Migrants chose this alternative, also taking advantage of the border opening between Honduras and Guatemala at Corinto, road improvements in Petén and the construction of a road in Southern Chiapas that ends in Palenque. The Zetas quickly saw this new flow as a business opportunity. When the new border crossing at El Ceibo was opened (2009) the flow increased by more than 300% in the first two years (2011), only counting cases reported by El Ceibo. It’s strange that EMIF-SUR, the Migration Surveys on Mexico’s Southern Border, hasn’t done any surveys at all along this corridor.

Migrants usually arrive from San Pedro Sula via Corinto, cross Izabal and catch microbuses in Flores (Petén) that leave them in “Técnica” or in Bethel to cross over the Usumacinta River by the border at Corozal and arrive in Palenque. Other routes from Flores go to El Naranjo and El Ceibo. Those from El Naranjo cross the San Pedro River on rafts and get to La Palma after walking all day. Some make this journey by boat on the San Pedro River. Others cross at El Ceibo, close to the checkpoint, without being troubled by the migration officials, from what we witnessed. In either case they go to Tenosique (Tabasco), and then Palenque (Chiapas).

Once inside Mexico, the most-used means of transport is the Chiapas-Mayab railroad, which has had management problems in recent years and has changed owners several times. Because tey don’t maintain the track, derailments are common, forcing that train to go slow as well. From Tenosique it goes through Palenque and Chontalpa (Huimanguillo, Tabasco) to reach the port of Coatzacoalcos (Veracruz) and from there continues on north. You can get from Palenque to Villahermosa by road, close to Salto de Agua or directly by the Playas de Catazajá if you’re lucky enough with the checkpoints and INM controls.

The Zetas’ route

The study published by “Plaza Pública” names nine municipalities that are dangerous to migrants on this corridor: Balancán, Tenosique, Catazajá, Palenque, Salto de Agua, Macuspana, Pichucalco, Juárez and Huimanguillo. Their greatest source of danger is organized crime. But migration itself is facilitating the development of “disorganized” crime spontaneously arising among local inhabitants living where the migrants cross. There are many news items, reports and arrests documenting this statement. In Chancalá everyone knows who lives off of assaulting migrants, to which the police turn a blind eye then show up at the houses for their cut.

The centers for human trafficking on this corridor are Palenque, Tenosique and Villahermosa. A consul told us about cases of trafficking in underage workers in Villahermosa and Ciudad del Carmen. The exploiters pay the parents who are in Sololá while the children sell at the traffic lights and on street corners.

A tomography would be false if it failed to show the strength of organized crime on this corridor. We’re on the Zetas’ route, where violence against migrants is systematic and organized. No need to go to Veracruz to witness kidnapping and massacres. In some cases it’s been possible to free the migrants, as with the 52 kidnapped in Rancho La Victoria, a town between Tenosique and Palenque in the municipality of Emiliano Zapata. And in Benemérito, one Salvadoran managed to escape from a mass kidnapping and testified how others were tortured and murdered.

From counterinsurgency to counter-migrants

The Zetas have their origins in counterinsurgency. Their founder, Arturo Guzmán Decena (Z-1), was a member of the Mexican Army’s Special Forces Airmobile Group (GAFE), created in 1994 to counter the Zapatista insurrection. But he and more than 20 of his comrades in arms realized they could earn more working for the Gulf Cartel than for the State, something also discovered by some former Guatemalan Kaibiles, similarly expert in counterinsurgency and trained by US instructors. Life’s little coincidences...

The Zetas’ next step was to go up against the Gulf Cartel bosses and take over control of organized crime along the whole eastern coast of Mexico. Their military methods are seen in recruitment, training practices, terror strategy, the techniques used in massacres and the systematic dismemberment and burning of their victims’ remains in barrels so as not to leave any trace.

Migrants aren’t just a commodity to the Zetas. They select the strongest to swell their ranks. Some of their massacres were the result of migrants refusing to join the world of crime. Recruitment has even led them to seek out former combatants in Nicaragua. In 2012, the Nicaraguan Pro Human Rights Association (ANPDH) reported that the Zetas forcibly recruited, kidnapped and even directly hired in Estelí and Matagalpa.

The Zetas buy government bonds and are a multinational with branches in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. Edgardo Buscaglia, United Nations expert on organized crime, says they are now expanding into Europe, Asia and Africa. Ricardo Ravelo, another specialist in such issues, states that although the Zetas currently operate in 43 countries, the most powerful cartel in the world is the Sinaloa Cartel, present in more than 50 countries. For many, the Mexican government’s drug war is really a war against the enemies of the Sinaloa Cartel, such as the Gulf Cartel, whose leader, Mario Armando Ramírez Treviño, was captured this August 17 on the Bravo River (Tamaulipas), or the Zetas, who last boss, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (Z-40), was captured in Tamaulipas on July 15. Treviño Morales is linked to the kidnapping and murder of 265 migrants in Tamaulipas.

“The ones of the letter,”
the ones from Sinaloa and the maras

Few dare talk about the Zetas. In the communities they control, the most you’ll hear people talk about is “the ones of the letter” (the letter Z is zeta in Spanish). Even less do they talk about the Sinaloa Cartel and its infiltration of the Mexican government. Journalist Anabel Hernández, whose father was murdered by organized crime, is one of those who has more openly charged that the Mexican government protects the Sinaloa Cartel, and even that former Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna was on that cartel’s payroll. Her most surprising charge is that the DEA has links with the Sinaloa Cartel.

And what is Zetas’ relationship with the maras? It seems to have such gangs working for it, or else lets them control certain areas. One of the best-known leaders of the gang controlling the train route was José Trinidad González Vargas, a.k.a. “El Pájaro”(The Bird). He lived in Coatzacoalcos, the place Hernán Cortés noticed in 1520 and wrote recommending it to King Charles V as the best port on the Gulf of Mexico. Coatzacoalcos means “place where the snake hides.” According to legend, Quetzalcoatl (the “snake bird”) disappeared there. That’s where police found the bullet-riddled body of “El Pájaro” the night of August 25, this year. The Army had captured him three times before and three times he was set free, despite being caught with drugs, guns and cell phones used in kidnappings.

In the film “Elysium,” an excellent futuristic metaphor for migration today, Kruger, a mercenary psychopath, symbolizes the criminal gangs engaging in extortion along the migrants’ routes. In October, we saw migrants arriving at the Palenque Migrant House who were shaking with fear because, alongside the train tracks “the tattooed ones” had warned them that “if you don’t have US$100 you’d better not board the train because we’ll throw you onto the tracks while the train is moving.”

Few migrants dare report these facts, even though the Franciscans in the area run the Usumacinta Human Rights Center and La 72 Shelter-Home for migrants, and Friar Tomás González has even denounced the local INM delegate in Tenosique for offering to “regularize” girls in exchange for sex.

Caribbean Corridor: The least studied

Some call it the “liquid border,” not because of Polish-born Zygmunt Bauman and his writings on “liquid modernity,” but because of the Hondo River and Chetumal Bay. This corridor, which picks up the flow coming from Belize, is the least studied and even the EMIF-SUR survey did no research on it. The official crossing points are Santa Elena/Subteniente López and Blue Creek/La Unión. Chetumal is the most important urban center, having the added attraction of being close to the Belize Free Trade Zone (Santa Elena) and casinos.

In 1986, thousands of Guatemalan refugees coming back from Chiapas were relocated close to both Chetumal and Campeche. Some got temporary work in Cancun’s hotel area which made it easy, even returning to Guatemala, for many of them to come back and find work in the Maya Riviera. Hurricanes Gilbert (1988) and Wilma (2005) didn’t reduce the need for laborers in construction and the service sector; in fact more were needed for reconstruction work. A study in 2007, growing out of a project of the Ixcán Social Pastoral, the diocese of San Cristóbal and the Prelature of Quintana Roo to help migrants, showed that the tourist industry in this area needs 200,000 workers for the next 10 years.

The Zetas control this area

Land routes from the hub city of Chetumal go through Escárcega to Villahermosa, and very clandestine sea routes along the coast continue to Campeche and Tamaulipas. According to a diplomat’s confidential testimony, the Salvadorans, experts in passing through Mexico, also know these sea routes leaving from Chetumal.

Many blind spots allow for trafficking in drugs and weapons, judging by the shipments of AK-47s and other rifles seized in the area, news of which occasionally comes out in the local press. The region is considered to be controlled by the Zetas.

Journalist Lydia Cacho reported considerable development of human trafficking networks in the Maya Riviera. Her report led to her being kidnapped by the Puebla police by order of the governor, a case that exposed the links between organized crime, human trafficking and the authorities.

There’s a dual sex industry in this tourist area: a high level one for the tourists and another “line” for migrant workers. Indigenous girls from Ixcán and Chiapas begin their dreams in a hotel room and end them in a dirty dosshouse in the backstreets of Cancun.

In Playa del Carmen we were told about a construction company employing hundreds of workers to build a luxurious mega-hotel that hired a busload of women in Cancun to spend the weekend with these employees, many of whom were commuter migrants who will return to their communities after working for several months.

Some therapy suggestions: Transit visa?

We finish this tomography of Mexico’s Lampedusa, which reveals that all’s not well not only on the border but also in the migrants’ countries of origin. Knowing that the causes are structural, resulting from a system that excludes and discards, as Pope Francis charges in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, we’ll try to suggest some therapies to avoid falling into what the pope sees as an excess of assessment not accompanied by proposals for betterment and not always applicable.

Many pro-migrant organizations are urging the Mexican government to issue temporary visas to allow Central Americans to cross Mexico without having to hide. This would prevent organized crime from taking advantage of the current clandestine migratory dynamic.

One of the Mexican pro-migrant organizations is called FM4 Paso Libre. Its name derives from the residence permit for foreigners called the Migratory Form (FM), of which there are so far three variants. FM4 is asking either for a document that will allow Central Americans to pass through easily or the elimination of all visas for Central American citizens. The latter idea isn’t unheard of; it’s what Mexico does with Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Belize. The Organization of American States itself is even asking the Mexican government to consider eliminating the visa requirement for Central Americans.

In the film “Elysium,” where Matt Damon and Diego Luna try to cross the border between two worlds, they manage to make impoverished Earth inhabitants into citizens of elitist Elysium. It’s just a matter of documents.

Other experts don’t believe the transit visa will prevent the migrants’ current grief, as it will only turn the northern border into a massive bottleneck, as Juan Artola, former director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned during the International Symposium on Migrations in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. The northern border is already the largest migratory corridor in the world, but at least the sufferings of crossing Mexico would be reduced if Central Americans could cross with a document.

Migration corridors or
economic migro-ducts?

If. as Canadian political activist Naomi Klein argues, immigrant labor is, after oil, the fuel that drives the southwestern US economy, it follows that these four corridors are “migro-ducts” carrying migrants to the North to salvage the faltering US economy. Migrants leave their own countries to save their lives, as they have more probabilities of being extorted and murdered at home. In one of the Masses held in the Palenque hostel, a migrant commented on the text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that says Jesus destroyed the walls of hate separating peoples: “In Mexico they treat us badly because we aren’t in our own country.” But another interrupted him: “I remember them treating us exactly like this in our country.” That’s how it is. Migration exposes a system that discards, excludes and kills.

Jorge Andrés Gordillo, a Jesuit volunteer and collaborator with the Saltillo Migrant House, has encouraged migrants to write down their feelings in a poetry workshop. The verse of Luis Ángel Orellana Esquivel, a Salvadoran migrant, clearly expresses the life-saving motivation: Homeland, homeland that has given me love / I am comforted by the yearning / to see you again. / Nevertheless / I have to flee from death.
“I’m running away,” Olvin, the first migrant I spoke with in Palenque, told me, “because If I stay in San Pedro Sula they’ll kill me or I’ll have to join the crime gang, and I don’t want to sully myself because I’ve accepted Christ.” His flight seems to mean freedom from oppression. Another metaphor for Palenque? One of several meanings of palenque in Spanish-speaking Latin America is the hinterland settlements built by escaped slaves in an attempt to exercise active resistance against the plantation owners in colonial times and even during the first years of Independence. The comparable concept in Brazil is quilombo, from the Kimbundu word kilombo.

The natural medicine of hospitality

Migrant Houses help free these men and women. The large number of people involved in grassroots solidarity on this border surprised us. People like Mr. Temo from Chichimá’s Christian base communities, who built a hostel with 12 beds for migrants in his own home. Or like Miss Berta, whom the neighbors call the migrants’ cook because she has already fed hundreds of them in her own community of Los Riegos. Or like Amanda, a catechist in La Palma, on the banks of the San Pedro River, who opened the community’s chapel to the migrants so they could sleep at the feet of Our Lady of Guadalupe. These hospitable communities have become a tremendous palenque, a quilombo of fraternity.

We’re pleased to be able to end this “clinical consultation” of analysis and tomographies on a positive note. On December 10, 2013, the women of La Patrona—a community in Veracruz named in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe—received Mexico’s National Human Rights Prize. Since 1995, these 14 women have been cooking to provide food to migrants when they pass through on the train. Norma Romero, one of the founders, told Mexico’s newspaper La Jornada that “it’s a work of God. He has motivated us to do all this, to make us aware of the importance of helping human beings irrespective of religion, country or skin color.”

José Luis González Miranda, sj, is a member of the Jesuit Service for Migrants.

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