by Santiago Navarro F. and Aldo Santiago for Avispa Midia and CONNECTAS
Oil palm cultivation is expanding aggressively across protected areas such as La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve. In this region of Mexico’s Pacific coast, at least 17,300 illegally-cultivated acres (7,000 hectares) of the exotic plant have been identified, which the government and businesses are trying to legalize through reductions to the size of the reserve and a sustainability certification.
Cover photo: Parents of the 43 missing students from the Normal School of Ayotzinapa, protested in front of the Attorney General's Office (FGR)
Following a new report, families of the 43 students criticized the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for failing to follow through on promises to finally solve the case.
As the 43 families, we’re angry, really angry, because unfortunately [this government] looked us in the face for three years,” said Mario González, father of César Manuel González Hernández, one of the 43 students disappeared from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher’s College in Iguala, Guerrero in 2014.
The response from the families of the disappeared students came after the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) charged with investigating the case released its third report on March 28. The report confirms that the Mexican military participated in the students’ disappearance and that authorities worked to distort the facts in presenting the “historical truth.”
That’s what the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto called its official version of events, in which it argued that the students were detained by police in Iguala, handed over to members of an organized crime group, and then killed and incinerated in a trash dump in Cocula.
The GIEI’s investigations have cast doubt on the narrative since 2015. The independent experts got involved in the case after complaints of irregularities in the official version of events.
The group’s most recent report also includes a video that shows marines entered, interfered with, and manipulated the Cocula trash dump to construct the “historical truth.”
The GIEI also reported that the military designed a counterinsurgency strategy with which it infiltrated the Ayotzinapa teacher’s college to spy on students’ activities. The military was surveilling the students in real time as they were attacked by police and criminals in Iguala in the night between September 26 and 27, 2014.
After the latest revelations, the parents of the disappeared students called for investigations into both the Mexican military and former president Peña Nieto to clarify their participation in the case.
Broken Promises
In a press conference on March 29, the mothers and fathers of the disappeared students also demanded a meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom they say they have not been in contact since September 2021.
María Elena Guerrero, mother of one of the 43, Giovanni Galíndez, said the families didn’t think that after three years with a government that describes itself as the “Fourth Transformation,” there would still be no information about the students’ whereabouts.
For her part, Cristina Bautista, mother of the disappeared student Benjamín Ascencio, stressed that the GIEI report should prompt an investigation into the military “because that is where there are obstacles and we cannot find the truth.”
Emiliano Navarrete, father of the student José Ángel Navarrete González, said that in Mexico, the poor don’t get justice, and that the investigation into the disappearance of the 43 students is proof of that fact. He noted that, since the previous government was in power, there has been sufficient reason to suspect the military’s involvement in the crime.
Navarrete also criticized the current administration’s actions, arguing that because state institutions don’t listen to the president, barriers to accessing information and furthering investigations remain.
“[The president] should focus a little less on the mañaneras and a little more on the commitments he has with the people,” Navarrete said, referring to López Obrador’s daily press briefings, which sometimes last as long as three hours. “It is upsetting to see that federal government institutions keep withholding information. If they hid this from us, what else have they hidden? He who lies once lies twice and three times. And the government only uses power for itself, and it does not give justice to the people.”
For Mario González, actions like the creation of the Truth and Justice Commission for the Ayotizinapa case, created when López Obrador came to power, show that state institutions have been toying with the families for the past three years. Just two days after López Obrador took office at the end of 2018, federal authorities committed to releasing all information related to the case “knowing we wouldn’t find anything,” said González.
“How are we not going to be angry if, after three years, information comes out that should have been released at the time?” González continued. “How are we not going to be angry if we don’t know anything about [what happened to] our children?”
Toward Justice?
In the press conference, Vidulfo Rosales, legal representative of the families of the disappeared students, stated that one thing is clear from the latest GIEI report: the manipulation of the Cocula trash dump reveals that there was an effort to befoul the investigation and cover up the truth.
According to Rosales, this effort complicated the exploration of other lines of investigation over the course of at least five years. At the same time, he argued that there is no difference between the previous and current federal government with respect to the Ayotzinapa case because, in the more than three years since the creation of the Truth and Justice Commission, the heads of the Navy and National Defense have refused to collaborate with the investigations.
“It’s one thing to deliver [information] to the GIEI and another to take concrete steps toward establishing responsibility,” Rosales said. Despite the publication of the expert report, the evidence it reveals has not concretely entered into the investigation, so the prosecutor’s office will have challenges leveraging the GIEI’s report into legal channels.
According to the GIEI, the military also conducted investigations that have not been shared to help shed light on the facts. The experts warned that relevant information remains in the hands of the military and security forces that “has been omitted in the documents delivered to both the GIEI and the special prosecutor, as well as in the declarations of military officials, including: information about a military patrol at the Palace of Justice in Iguala; omission of reports from toll booth three on the highway, where soldiers were deployed; and that the students [were detained in the Palace of Justice] that night.”
The government of the United States, the Mexican Agency of International Development Cooperation, the conservation organization The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and USAid or the United States Agency for International Development signed a letter of intent to “promote conservation and economic development in the south/southeastern region of Mexico.
The objective is “to support the efforts” of the southeastern Mexican states, and to this end, an initial investment of 30 million dollars is anticipated. The letter has the intention of adopting lines of coordination to implement policies, plans and strategies together and “to achieve a sustainable southeast.”
The announcement was made Thursday, the 24th during the Third Encounter of Governors of the Mexican South Southeast in Quintana Roo, where the governors, secretaries of the economy, and of the environment from Yucatán, Tabasco, Campeche, Veracruz, Chiapas and Oaxaca participated.
In a press conference, the ambassador of the United States, Kenneth Lee Salazar said that there is an “tremendous” interest in the region for the unique opportunity in the Maya jungle and the southeast of Mexico.
Mixed in with conservation discourse , the invited States addressed updates on the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as well as strategies for the attraction of new investments in the Mexican southeast and public -private partnerships for conservation and development.
The Ambassador of the United States added the importance of environmental conservation in the economic development of the region, in which infrastructure projects like the one in the Isthmus “will trigger more commerce in our countries and improve the movement of merchandise coming from Latin America and Europe,” in his words.
In addition to “conservation” and “development” in the Mexican south-southeast, security was also a theme of the conversations between the United States and Mexico. This agreement took place a few days after the Mexican Secretary of the Navy announced, on February 3rd, that for the first time it will allow the United States to carry out military exercises on Mexican territory as part of the “Tradewinds 20221.” The event will be held from the 7th to the 21st of March.
The Ambassador from the United States said that in October of 2021, a new era in the relationship between the United States and Mexico on the issue of security had begun. He recalled a reunion of the Cabinet members of his country with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Since that time we began a new period against violence in the two countries. The difference from what had happened with previous governments, is that now we do it together, we are working very well as partners,” Kenneth Lee Salazar said in a press conference.
The governors agreed to hold a follow up meeting to present the comprehensive projects. They announced that the proposals set forth in the letter of intent would receive follow-up in subsequent meetings.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas
Translated by Néstor David Pastor / NACLA
Migrants caught in limbo in southern Mexico must contend with dismal living conditions, precarious status, and a void of official information surrounding their fate.
“Don’t abandon us here,” a man says angrily as his voice breaks. He is surrounded by about 3,000 Haitian adults and children who have traveled from South America to southern Mexico and now seek refuge from the harsh sun in the city of Tapachula’s Olympic Stadium.
The scene is disheartening. Migrants have no basic services and live in cramped conditions. There is no access to clean water, food, or health care. The campsite has only a few portable toilets. A foul stench emanates from neglect. The trash has piled up—enough to cover the ground. Only by organizing themselves are migrants able to meet some of their needs.
Everyone waits in line, enduring high temperatures, hunger, and sickness with the hope of boarding a bus that will allow them to leave Tapachula. The border city has become a prison for migrants who, despite requesting asylum, have not yet received a response from immigration agencies. To make matters worse, the lack of information from authorities has created a chaotic situation. Thousands desperately look for a way to continue their journey.
“We are sleeping on shit,” a woman angrily tells us. She mentions the worms in the garbage and the places where migrants rest. “A lot of people have the flu, fever, there is no light. We are sleeping in garbage,” says another migrant, emphasizing the unsanitary conditions in which thousands find themselves.
“I haven’t seen much organizational or individual presence,” says Laura Benítez, project coordinator for the organization Global Response Management (GRM), in reference to immigration authorities. Benítez, who has joined various caravans in recent years, says the current migrant crisis is reaching new levels amid unresponsiveness from authorities.
“The main thing is children with fever, flu, cough, some problems with skin allergies...People are here waiting for hours, days under the sun. They don’t eat well or drink enough water. They are dehydrated and with the heat, and we’ve seen children with temperatures over 102 degrees,” she says.
Chaos
According to Karen Martínez, coordinator for the Office of Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), due to the Immigration Regulation Office’s inability to expedite refugee requests at the southern border, news unofficially spread at the end of November that the Tapachula division was transferring migrants to other Mexican states.
In roughly 10 minutes, 10,000 people flooded the office. Immigration authorities “upon being overrun, sent them to the stadium to form a line, and there they were going to tell them where they were going,” explains Martínez, who believes that this response led to the chaotic situation that ensued.
“Truthfully, it’s been very sad to see the conditions in which people find themselves. The stadium is full, which has likely caused discomfort for many, but it’s the only way to put pressure on the National Immigration Institute (INM),” she says.
Only then, on November 28, did the INM publish a statement specifying that in order to reduce the massive concentration of foreigners in Chiapas, the institution would expedite “the transfer of asylum requests to other entities, with the goal of issuing and delivering humanitarian visas in a fast and orderly fashion.”
“[Immigration authorities] never said anything, and it was all unverified information from people who had been moved during those transfers; we know nothing else about [them],” explains Martínez. This is in contrast to the official version that speaks of a safe and orderly transfer to other Mexican states.
“Immigration comes one minute, says one thing, then later, they say another,” people at the stadium reported. This coincides with the stance of JRS, which maintains the situation has been worsened by misinformation and the enforcement of immigration policies that are geared toward containment, rather than providing clarity.
COMAR, Overrun
According to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), between January and November 2021, the state of Chiapas alone received almost 50,000 asylum requests for a total of 90,038 foreigners.
Of all the applications registered at Mexico’s northern and southern borders, 38 percent are Haitian nationals, which makes the Caribbean nation first in terms of the number of asylum requests in progress.
The majority of them, however, are not coming from their homeland. Instead, they have been traveling for months or even years from South American countries like Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. According to Martínez of JRS, the fact that Haitians continue to migrate stems from the xenophobia and anti-immigrant backlash they face throughout the continent—just as they do in Mexico.
For Martínez, the Haitian population has been the most vulnerable in Tapachula because they have no other options to legalize their immigration status besides requesting asylum. She points out that COMAR’s handling of this process has been slow, which has stranded people in Tapachula without documentation proving their status that would allow them to travel to other parts of Mexico.
“The law says that everyone who is subject to the application process is eligible for residency. These individuals apply for a residency card for humanitarian reasons. The INM issues this card, which proves that you are able to transit through Mexico for a year. It also means that you won’t have any problem regularly moving within the country,” she explains.
Immigration offices, however, do not have appointments available until March and April of 2022. Migrants who find themselves in Tapachula against their will are still without work, food, or homes, essentially living on the street, waiting long periods for a response from immigration authorities.
“Faced with this situation, new caravans leaving from Tapachula have started to pop up...These so-called caravans enter into direct confrontation with the National Guard and the INM. Serious human rights violations against migrants have been proven,” says Martínez.
Resettlement?
“We’re miserable, we’re not animals,” another migrant tells us when we ask about their situation. “Immigration has to get us out of here because if we stay, we’ll die of hunger, sick and dehydrated,” she adds. Meanwhile, the majority of those we interviewed agree that there is a lack of information from immigration officials, who are sometimes seen in the vicinity but avoid questions.
According to migrants’ testimonies, the INM is inefficient. Even though it promised to send between 50 and 70 buses to transport thousands of migrants, only three were seen over the course of a week. Benítez has heard testimonies from migrants that the buses that did depart went to San Luis Potosí, Guadalajara, and Puebla.
Despite the lack of official information from immigration authorities concerning their destinations, Martínez more or less confirmed the transfers. “Yes, they have told us that they arrived in Querétaro and there were people who shared with us that they had been left in Veracruz and that afterwards…the response [to their residency requests] was ‘better to keep moving, here there is no way to gain residency, better to look along the way,’” she says with concern. It remains unclear where the resettlements are taking place.
“It’s a situation that got out of control and they are looking for a way to close these routes because in reality, up until now, I’ve had reliable information on who these people are, where they go, where they are dropped off, what their legal status is. But everything is very much up in the air. So the truth is that it’s very worrisome because safety and individual rights are not guaranteed,” Martínez says.
Martínez underscores how this could lead to another problem. As with the 2018 caravans, many migrants could “get lost” in the refugee process “and later they are sent to the southern border again to verify their migration status at the special request of COMAR.”
Militarized Migratory Policies
Amid increased migrant numbers in Tapachula, the need for basic sustenance is growing, as are issues like xenophobia, according to Martínez. For her, the government’s militarized immigration policies contribute to the repression against migrants.
An example of this is INM’s discourse, which seeks to blame migrants for violent actions that make it difficult to carry out procedures. In a statement at the end of November, the immigration authority stated: "Groups of people were detected who, on the one hand, armed with stones and sticks, block avenues and streets and prevent the arrival of buses, and others who, at the same time, resort to violent actions to demand that they leave the same day.”
In contrast, after accompanying various caravans, Martínez points out that INM officials have used force against migrants. Migrants, in turn, are just looking to defend themselves. “This is a consequence of what is happening in the region, people have heard ‘no’ since leaving their country…There hasn’t been communication, dialogue, or listening,” she says.
There are also multiple reports from migrants who have denounced extortion attempts by immigration authorities. However, due to the already precarious situation and the fear of reprisals, no one has filed a formal complaint.
For Martínez, another case that shows how the policies of the Mexican state do not guarantee migrants’ fundamental rights is the truck accident on the Tuxtla Gutiérrez-Chiapa de Corzo highway that, as of December 10, had a death toll of 55—all migrants from the Quiché region in Guatemala.
“We are truly in solidarity with the families and their losses, and the anguish in knowing the fate of their loved ones. This is reflected in a militarized, repressive, and violent immigrant policy, which has forced the people who move through southern Mexico to choose these increasingly dangerous options and routes that put their lives and dignity at risk,” says Martínez.
For her part, Benítez emphasizes the importance of raising awareness of the migrant crisis happening in Tapachula. “It was incredible to arrive here on Monday and see so many people and not see anyone helping them, to see so many with basic needs: from medical attention to water, food… There is a lot of need and we have to be human and show solidarity.”
On December 10, elements of the National Guard, together with state and local police, carried out an operation to remove the migrants who remained in the esplanade of the sports stadium. After this, the authorities reported that thousands of migrants had been relocated, but there is still no clear information as to where the migrants actually went and how many still remain in the border city.
The Isthmus railroad will run 31,111 45-car trains annually, one every 17 minutes. Demand will far exceed 60 trains daily.
Photo by Santiago Navarro F
By Avispa Midia
According to the Ajmaq Network of Resistance and Rebellion, the Ocosingo Regional Coffee Growers Association (ORCAO, Organización Regional de Cafeticultores de Ocosingo) initiated armed hostilities against civilian supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the autonomous community of Moisés y Gandhi, Chiapas at 8:30 pm October 13.
Ajmaq, which is made up of organizations, collectives, and individuals adhering to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle and located in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, learned of the attack from the “New Dawn in Resistance and Rebellion for Life and Humanity” Good Government Council from Caracol 10, Floreciendo la Semilla Rebelde. The attack comes just over a month after the same paramilitary group kidnapped Zapatista autonomous leaders José Antonio Sánchez Juárez and Sebastián Núñez Pérez.
At 1:25 am October 14, the gunfire intensified, reaching the autonomous high school. At 2:20 am the heavily armed group stood only 30 meters from the houses of the EZLN-supporting families, who were forced to flee to find safe refuge.
The attack ended around 3:30 am according to the Good Government Council. “We demand respect for Zapatista land and territory, autonomy, and free determination,” Ajmaq said in its communique.
After the September kidnapping, the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee – General Command (CCRI-CG) of the EZLN published a communique warning that Chiapas is on the brink of civil war and calling for national and international solidarity. Despite insistent calls on all three levels of government to put a stop to paramilitary activity against these self-organized communities, ORCAO continues to enjoy complete impunity for its actions.
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