In Security and Safety

Perspectives from a Mexican Migrant Shelter

A tired migrant rests at a shelter in Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo courtesy Wendy Vogt

In Mexico, the war on drugs has become a war on migrants. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras leave home in search of a better, more secure future for themselves and their families. Propelled by deep structural violence and the highest homicide rates in the world, Central American migrants must cross Mexico in their attempts to reach the US. The journey can take weeks, months or even years as migrants navigate the complex physical and human terrain of organized criminals, smugglers, gangs and security forces who increasingly control various segments of major migration routes, often in coordination with one another. Since 2006, the interpenetration of markets for humans and drugs within Mexico’s security state has resulted in more systematic violence against migrants. In 2010, Mexico’s Human Right’s Commission documented 11,000 kidnappings of undocumented migrants in a period of six months. That same year, the bodies of 72 mostly Central American migrants—58 men and 14 women—were found executed in a ranch in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Migrants are funneled into more dangerous routes where they risk abuse, extortion, kidnapping, rape, dismemberment and death.

Since violence against migrants is not random, it is important to examine the larger political economy of mobility and securitization that profits of the movement of peoples, drugs, arms and intelligence across multiple borders. Fifteen months of fieldwork in shelters and transit points along the migrant journey in southern Mexico illuminated the complexities of violence and security for undocumented migrants and the local communities they pass through. The politics of who deserves security and how it should be implemented come into conflict, particularly as they reflect diverse interests of national security and individual safety. This essay focuses on some of the contradictions that emerge as state and transnational securitization projects play out in local contexts. Along the journey, the supposed protectors of the vulnerable were often the most feared, spaces of sanctuary were considered unsafe and in some cases, victims of violence became perpetrators of violence.

(Trans) National Security

In the US, immigration discourse tends to focus on securing borders; imaginings of drug traffickers, terrorists and “illegals” waiting to enter—nay invade—the homeland. Yet, with the expansion of a multi-billion dollar security industry, including the Mérida Initiative and the Central American Regional Security Initiative, the promise of security no longer ends at the border. Securitization has become transnational. According to the US State Department, “[I]t is in the national security interest of the United States to support our partners’ fight against this scourge, prevent further violence from spilling over our border, and make our streets safe once again from drug and gang-related crime.” Indeed, the battle for US national security largely takes place in Mexico and Central America. Do we need new ways of theorizing the geographies of the “homeland?”

Central American migrants wait for the freight train in Veracruz, Mexico. Photo courtesy Wendy Vogt

Transnational security initiatives are touted as the new paradigm of bilateral security cooperation, evidenced by the oft-cited phrase of “shared responsibility” between the US, Mexico and Central America. And while such initiatives claim to increase citizen security throughout the region, since 2006 Mexico’s drug war has claimed between 60,000-100,000 lives and over 26,000 disappearances. The so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras continue to lead the world in homicide rates. Furthermore such initiatives only claim to protect citizens who stay in place. The training, funding and equipment used to fight trafficking and organized crime may cross borders but the logics of human security do not, even though unauthorized migrants are among the most victimized and exploited at the hands of organized criminals.

On the contrary, those who cross borders are either invisible or seen as threats to security strategies “from above.” The newly appointed director of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Ardelio Vargas Fosado, recently stated that Central American migration must be addressed from a national security perspective. Vargas Fosado is the former Chief of Mexico’s Federal Preventive Police and a key figure in the 2006 Atenco massacre and repression of Oaxaca’s 2006 social movement. His appointment confirms adherence to a paradigm of repression and security rather than to human rights. It has been called a slap in the face by migrant rights activists.

On the ground, the consequences of securitization have been nothing short of devastating for unauthorized migrants. Mexican police and military control major highways, checkpoints and detention centers, and are often complicit in systematic extortion, sexual violence and mass kidnappings, a dynamic Christine Kovic (2010) has called “the violence of security.” Human Rights Watch recently published a report on disappearances in Mexico in which they document nearly 60% of cases involving state security actors.

Unable to travel on major highways, the security apparatus channels migrants deeper into the grips of human smuggling and organized crime, which they simultaneously fear and need. Migrants ride atop of Mexican freight trains with smugglers or guides who buy “safe passage” from organized criminals who control stretches of the journey. Those who do not contract a smuggler (approximately $6,000-$7,000 from Central America to the US) risk being kidnapped and held for ransom. Thus, smuggling has become the safest option for navigating threats of Mexican security and organized crime. At best such arrangements implicate migrants and their families in unpaid debts and ransoms and at worst, migrants are forcibly disappeared or killed.

As the train route has become more dangerous, shelter workers increasingly funnel migrants through more secure routes on less traveled roads, but these also become subject to new forms of violence and insecurity. I routinely observed the systematic extortion of undocumented migrants riding a local bus between two migrant shelters in the state of Oaxaca. Bus conductors worked in collusion with local police to stop the bus, target unauthorized migrants and extort money from them before allowing them to continue on their journeys. Through legitimized security measures, local authorities and residents profit off the flow of undocumented migrants.

Politics of Sanctuary

Despite reports that fewer people are attempting to cross the US-Mexico border, activists in Mexico report record numbers of undocumented migrants passing through established migrant shelters. In response to violence and the absence of state support, a network of over 50 Catholic-based shelters provide food, rest and medical attention to migrants in need. While some migrants go to shelters to make official human rights claims of abuses they have suffered, others simply continue on their way, disillusioned by endemic corruption and impunity.

In part motivated by my own concerns for safety in the field, most of my research was conducted within established migrant shelters working closely with local priests, shelter workers and migrants. As a volunteer, I became privy to some of the complex dynamics of safety and security within and beyond shelter walls. Migrant shelters are both spaces of sanctuary and zones of profit and exploitation within the larger topography of fear and violence along the journey. This creates new forms of insecurity and tension in local spaces.

Within the political economy of the journey, migrant shelters have become places where multiple actors target migrants to smuggle, kidnap or recruit into criminal operations. On a daily basis shelter workers identify likely smugglers and criminals to leave the shelter premises. Shelter workers have received death threats. I documented several cases where former migrants had been found recruiting female migrants from the shelter to work in the local sex industry. Some female migrants expressed anxiety and fear of rape, even within shelters. In response to such insecurities, most shelters now implement strict security protocols, which sometimes means hiring armed bodyguards.

As shelters emerge as important nodes in the migration economy, they fuel new fears and insecurities in local communities. Concerns for safety and rights for undocumented migrants and migrant rights defenders are often at odds with concerns for safety and security of local residents. Migrant shelters are blamed for increases in local violence. I have observed at least three separate cases where migrants have been accused of raping local women, sparking protest and controversy in local communities. Several shelters have been forced to close their doors as residents, migrant rights advocates and local officials clash on how local security should be defined and implemented. On the door of one closed migrant shelter in the state of Veracruz, a handwritten sign simply read, “Migrant, continue on your way.”

Reframing Transnational Security

A remarkable transnational coalition of shelters and organizations in Mexico and Central America have joined to demand the safety and security of Central American migrants crossing Mexico. This group’s core includes the mothers and families of disappeared migrants who retrace their missing children’s journeys. In doing so, they demand human rights protections from the state, advocate for a DNA database to systematically track dead bodies, and plead for ending the culture of impunity. During a public march I attended, the caravan of mothers walked through the town where the local migrant shelter was highly contested, carrying posters and distributing flyers with photographs of their missing children. Drawing on the historical legacy of mothers of the missing and disappeared in Latin America, these women were not only making their personal stories visible, but also collectively reframing how and who deserves the right to security.

The work of local shelters and feminist activists forces us to reconceptualize notions of transnational violence and security. People and communities feel the everyday consequences of security projects across borders and in ways that contribute to new forms of violence and social tension. Yet, as the movement for migrant rights in Mexico teaches us, they also open new spaces for transnational forms of solidarity and resistance.

Wendy Vogt is assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. She is preparing a manuscript based on her dissertation research on Central American migration, transnational violence and solidarity in southern Mexico.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/04/02/in-security-and-safety/