By Claudia Rodriguez
Witness for Peace's Mexico-based International Team
The biggest news coming out of Mexico is the violence as a consequence of the warring drug trafficking organizations and the Mexican government attempting to dismantle them. The number of people dying and the brutal ways in which they are killed are making headlines. The death toll is nearing 50,000 lives lost since Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched his campaign to take down the drug trafficking organizations in 2006, as soon as he took office. Shortly after, the United States government began showing its support to President Calderon’s campaign through the Merida Initiative, a U.S. policy that provides equipment and training aid to Mexico to fight the drug trafficking organizations.
But what does the violence of the drug war have to do with migration? There are at least three answers to this question. First, it forces people to migrate, either from being displaced because of the violence or fleeing insecurity in their communities. Second, drug trafficking organizations are also largely responsible for many of the dangers migrants encounter on their journey. As migrants cross through Mexican territory, especially areas considered “territory” of drug trafficking organizations, there are dangerous and at times deadly confrontations with these organizations, which attempt to rob, rape, extort, and kidnap the migrants. And lastly, many of the root causes of migration – particularly lack of jobs and economic opportunities – are also causes of the rise of violence due to the lack of alternatives.
According to a briefing paper from December 2010 of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 230,000 people fled their homes last year because of the insecurity. About half of those people went to the U.S., and the other half remain in Mexico. That means around 120,000 people have been internally displaced in Mexico. While that may not seem like many people, it is important to note that the previous year, the amount of internally displaced people was only 5,000.
As Calderon’s U.S.-backed war rages on, not only is the death toll climbing, but also the number of internally displaced people is skyrocketing. A new term is emerging for those who flee to the US: “narco refugees."
This highlights a new phenomenon of Mexican citizens fleeing to the US and applying for asylum to escape the rising violence. One important group of those fleeing are journalists – Mexico has been named one of the most dangerous places for journalists in Latin America, and was recently named by the United Nations the fifth most dangerous place for journalists in the world.
Another extremely vulnerable group is migrants crossing through Mexico. Central American migrants are continuously targeted by traffickers. Some are robbed, raped, and also held for ransom and extorted. Some have called this “business as usual” or a way for the organizations to “diversify their profits.” In August of 2010, a survivor of a massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas told the story about how they were kidnapped and held on a ranch by a drug trafficking organization.
Over the last year, there have been discoveries of what are being coined “narco fosas” or mass graves where drug traffickers are dumping dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies. The bodies dumped are commonly times migrants or people kidnapped by drug trafficking organizations. From April to June of this past summer, 429 bodies were found in mass graves in Durango and Tamaulipas, two states in northern Mexico.
Apart from robbing migrants, holding them for ransom, or killing them, drug trafficking organizations are also kidnapping and trafficking them. These organizations use the migrants for forced labor or sexual enslavement. Unlike a drug that is sold once and earns a profit, the forced enslavement and labor of a human being provides a repeat profit. Because many of the drug trafficking organizations already mastered routes to traffic drugs, many of those same routes are used to traffic human beings across the border. Female migrants are especially at risk.
Lastly, and what is often overlooked, are the root causes behind the proliferation of organized crime and the subsequent rise of violence. Apart from US demand for drugs, there are important, deep-seated root causes of drug violence, similar to those driving Mexican migration. Poverty and lack of economic opportunities leave people with no other option but to migrate. Some look to drug trafficking as a means of survival. Young people have been especially hit hard by this reality. More than 25,000 children have left school to join drug trafficking organizations since President Calderon came into office and started his campaign.
These children are also part of the 8 million youth in Mexico known as “ninis.” Ninis is a term in Mexico that refers to youth who don’t study or work (“ni estudia ni trabaja”), largely because of the lack of opportunities that exist in Mexico. It is estimated that at least half a million of the ninis have joined drug trafficking organizations. Working for these organizations is seen by these young people as a lucrative way to make money, even though many are aware of the risks involved. The common attitude is that it’s better to live well for a short time, than face a life of misery in poverty. Unfortunately these are some of the few “choices” that exist.
There is no end in sight for the escalating drug violence. It will continue to clash with migration by further endangering migrants and causing migration. And as long as the deep rooted structural inequalities, poverty, and lack of economic opportunities exist and are exacerbated by US polices like NAFTA, there will continue to be many people, especially youth, left with few “choices:” join with drug trafficking organizations, or migrate to save your life and provide for your family.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Exiled: Honduran Human Rights Defenders and Effects of U.S. Policies
By Brooke Denmark
Witness for Peace International Team - Nicaragua
After a meeting with a rural community in Northern Honduras, we were approached by a young man.
¨You all are working against militarization?" he asked.
He explained that he also works against militarization in the region and as a human rights promoter. He recently exposed a member of the military entangled in drug-trafficking. Since then he has survived two attempts against his life. He does not want to wait for a third. In a few days he will be fleeing the country.
A few weeks ago Adrienne Pine, an anthropology professor at American University, reflected on the asylum system in the United States. She wrote that the system upholds a narrative in which the U.S. plays savior to states that have failed at upholding human rights, but that this ignores the fact that many times the U.S. is responsible for creating those circumstances or keeping the repressive regimes in place.
The situation in Honduras today in some ways is reminiscent of the U.S.-backed bloodshed in Central America during the 80s. At that time the U.S. supported brutal military regimes in the name of fighting the spread of Communism. Today the language has changed from fighting Communism to waging wars against terrorism and drug-trafficking. When those working to defend human rights or in resistance movements are threatened and seek refuge in the U.S., they must overcome the political interests of Washington.
Juan Gonzalez reports on this bias against granting asylum to regimes that the U.S. supports in his book Harvest of Empire. He notes that between 1983 and 1990, the U.S. ¨granted only 2.6% of political asylum requests from Salvadorans, 1.8% from Guatemalans, and 2.0% from Hondurans, yet it granted 25.2% of those from Nicaraguans, whose Sandinista government Washington was seeking to overthrow.¨
Today the few asylum seekers that are able to make it out of the country where they are being persecuted and into the U.S. have only just begun their next hardship - beating the U.S. immigration system. First, asylum seekers who scramble together a way to get to the U.S. are frequently detained upon entering the country. Although Obama announced almost two years ago that the U.S. was going to move away from mandatory detention of arriving asylum seekers, in practice the change has been slow. When I worked with detained immigrants in the D.C. area before coming to work with Witness for Peace, an asylum seeker who had already been detained for nine months while still fighting her case said to me, "If I had known that I would have been put in jail for so long, I would have never come here. This is what I was trying to escape."
As part of comprehensive immigration reform the U.S. needs to fix serious flaws in the asylum system that treat asylum seekers as criminals and terrorists. The U.S. has this obligation especially because of the role our government has played in fostering environments abroad where human rights violations flourish. The U.S. simultaneously needs to change its foreign policy to stop propping up these regimes. One place to start would be to stop funding military and police in Honduras that persecute people like the young man we met the other day on his way into exile. I hope that he makes it safely out of the country and that I will not read about him in the papers as a victim of another incident of ¨random violence."
Witness for Peace International Team - Nicaragua
After a meeting with a rural community in Northern Honduras, we were approached by a young man.
¨You all are working against militarization?" he asked.
He explained that he also works against militarization in the region and as a human rights promoter. He recently exposed a member of the military entangled in drug-trafficking. Since then he has survived two attempts against his life. He does not want to wait for a third. In a few days he will be fleeing the country.
A few weeks ago Adrienne Pine, an anthropology professor at American University, reflected on the asylum system in the United States. She wrote that the system upholds a narrative in which the U.S. plays savior to states that have failed at upholding human rights, but that this ignores the fact that many times the U.S. is responsible for creating those circumstances or keeping the repressive regimes in place.
The situation in Honduras today in some ways is reminiscent of the U.S.-backed bloodshed in Central America during the 80s. At that time the U.S. supported brutal military regimes in the name of fighting the spread of Communism. Today the language has changed from fighting Communism to waging wars against terrorism and drug-trafficking. When those working to defend human rights or in resistance movements are threatened and seek refuge in the U.S., they must overcome the political interests of Washington.
Juan Gonzalez reports on this bias against granting asylum to regimes that the U.S. supports in his book Harvest of Empire. He notes that between 1983 and 1990, the U.S. ¨granted only 2.6% of political asylum requests from Salvadorans, 1.8% from Guatemalans, and 2.0% from Hondurans, yet it granted 25.2% of those from Nicaraguans, whose Sandinista government Washington was seeking to overthrow.¨
Today the few asylum seekers that are able to make it out of the country where they are being persecuted and into the U.S. have only just begun their next hardship - beating the U.S. immigration system. First, asylum seekers who scramble together a way to get to the U.S. are frequently detained upon entering the country. Although Obama announced almost two years ago that the U.S. was going to move away from mandatory detention of arriving asylum seekers, in practice the change has been slow. When I worked with detained immigrants in the D.C. area before coming to work with Witness for Peace, an asylum seeker who had already been detained for nine months while still fighting her case said to me, "If I had known that I would have been put in jail for so long, I would have never come here. This is what I was trying to escape."
As part of comprehensive immigration reform the U.S. needs to fix serious flaws in the asylum system that treat asylum seekers as criminals and terrorists. The U.S. has this obligation especially because of the role our government has played in fostering environments abroad where human rights violations flourish. The U.S. simultaneously needs to change its foreign policy to stop propping up these regimes. One place to start would be to stop funding military and police in Honduras that persecute people like the young man we met the other day on his way into exile. I hope that he makes it safely out of the country and that I will not read about him in the papers as a victim of another incident of ¨random violence."
Monday, October 24, 2011
Think Globally – Act Locally on Immigration!
By John Clark Pegg
Witness for Peace – Upper Midwest Board
As we enter into the final phase of our Upper Midwest speaker tour, Nancy Garcia from Oaxaca and Moravia de la O from our WFP International Team, spent the past few days in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. They were based in Duluth, Minnesota, a small city and regional center to a population of about 200,000 souls. Duluth, which considers itself a progressive and “friendly” city, boasts several excellent institutions of higher education, an advanced care medical center which services the surrounding region, the nation’s farthest inland international harbor, and a tourism industry which plays host to the entire Midwest. It is a beautiful little city, nestled on the side of steep hills overlooking the majestic Lake Superior (which holds 10% of the world’s fresh water). Since we are only about 100 miles from the Canadian border, Duluth also is home to a large, regional U.S. Border Patrol facility capable of housing up to 50 agents. Its agent in charge issued a statement saying, “We must ensure that we are cognizant of the fact that we have good partners that will help us protect our nation both within our communities and to the north in Canada.”
In addition to speaking events at three universities, WFP-UMW also sponsored another public forum on immigration. Nancy was joined by two Latino/as from the community to join in dialogue on issues facing migrants, including both the challenges they face when heading north in Mexico as well as the barriers and opportunities they encounter here in the States. As we put together this conference, we learned something significant about Duluth. For people of brown skin (and black), Duluth is not perceived as a “friendly” or “welcoming” city. Several Latino/as who were invited to attend our forum declined to come, as they were concerned about attracting the attention of authorities here. Our U.S. panelists reaffirmed from their own experiences the difficulties and challenges of life in Minnesota for immigrants. Clearly the extravagant funds we are spending to fund a massive buildup of agents in places with minimal security needs, construct massive walls, and contract with private companies to build and manage “detention” centers, is neither an effective, nor humane, nor just means of dealing with migration. We need to address the root causes of dislocation and migration, including a renegotiation of unfair free trade agreements to level the playing field and protect the rights of workers and the environment. We also need to reform our U.S. immigration policies to reflect the realities of our need for migrant workers and provide pathways for both legal work status and citizenship for those who choose. With this in mind, an excellent, brief and to-the-point video on the need for immigration reform can be viewed here:
Witness for Peace – Upper Midwest Board
As we enter into the final phase of our Upper Midwest speaker tour, Nancy Garcia from Oaxaca and Moravia de la O from our WFP International Team, spent the past few days in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. They were based in Duluth, Minnesota, a small city and regional center to a population of about 200,000 souls. Duluth, which considers itself a progressive and “friendly” city, boasts several excellent institutions of higher education, an advanced care medical center which services the surrounding region, the nation’s farthest inland international harbor, and a tourism industry which plays host to the entire Midwest. It is a beautiful little city, nestled on the side of steep hills overlooking the majestic Lake Superior (which holds 10% of the world’s fresh water). Since we are only about 100 miles from the Canadian border, Duluth also is home to a large, regional U.S. Border Patrol facility capable of housing up to 50 agents. Its agent in charge issued a statement saying, “We must ensure that we are cognizant of the fact that we have good partners that will help us protect our nation both within our communities and to the north in Canada.”
In addition to speaking events at three universities, WFP-UMW also sponsored another public forum on immigration. Nancy was joined by two Latino/as from the community to join in dialogue on issues facing migrants, including both the challenges they face when heading north in Mexico as well as the barriers and opportunities they encounter here in the States. As we put together this conference, we learned something significant about Duluth. For people of brown skin (and black), Duluth is not perceived as a “friendly” or “welcoming” city. Several Latino/as who were invited to attend our forum declined to come, as they were concerned about attracting the attention of authorities here. Our U.S. panelists reaffirmed from their own experiences the difficulties and challenges of life in Minnesota for immigrants. Clearly the extravagant funds we are spending to fund a massive buildup of agents in places with minimal security needs, construct massive walls, and contract with private companies to build and manage “detention” centers, is neither an effective, nor humane, nor just means of dealing with migration. We need to address the root causes of dislocation and migration, including a renegotiation of unfair free trade agreements to level the playing field and protect the rights of workers and the environment. We also need to reform our U.S. immigration policies to reflect the realities of our need for migrant workers and provide pathways for both legal work status and citizenship for those who choose. With this in mind, an excellent, brief and to-the-point video on the need for immigration reform can be viewed here:
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