Promote Justice for Mexico and the Borderlands

“PLEASE SAVE US. We as in my fellow inmates find ourselves in the Torrance County Detention Facility and we are scared for our lives.”

Fearful of being kidnapped or murdered if they were deported to Mexican states that border Texas and New Mexico, individuals held on immigration charges in New Mexico sent this plea to No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid organization that works to protect migrants in the Arizona/Sonora border area. 

In 2008, as military operations in Ciudad Juárez surged, Josefina Reyes Salazar, an outspoken critic of pervasive violence against women, summoned her courage and determinedly denounced the militarization in her home state of Chihuahua. Not long after, her son Miguel Ángel was kidnapped by the military and her other son, Julio César, was brutally murdered. Josefina openly blamed the army for the slaying of her son and, despite persistent death threats, tirelessly voiced her demands for justice. In early 2010, Josefina herself was coldly executed by armed gunman on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez.

Migrants’ rights defender Alberto Xicotencatl Carrasco painted this picture of Mexican society’s mixture of terror and denial in the face of grisly crimes and widespread human rights abuses committed against Central American migrants in transit through Mexico.  In late March, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund hosted a delegation of five courageous Mexican migrant rights defenders here in Washington to shed light on how policies and conditions on both sides of the border have contributed to a surge in violence against migrants, as well as an uptick in targeted threats and violence against those who promote and protect the rights of migrants. The group’s busy week in D.C. included meetings with the State Department, Congress, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. The delegates also spoke at public events held at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) to educate D.C. advocates about the human rights situation of these transiting migrants— and steps that we all must take to bring about an end to this pervasive violence.

Over the past few weeks, mass mobilizations and pointed criticism by groups and communities across Mexico have marked some of the most heated condemnation yet of the Mexican government’s increasingly unpopular military campaign to defeat organized crime. On Wednesday, April 6 thousands of people took to the streets in at least 20 Mexican cities to demand an end to the violence and impunity associated with President Calderón’s U.S.-supported “drug war” that has claimed over 35,000 lives. The day of protest has been described as a historic “sea change” in Mexican public opinion as well as an unprecedented rejection of the Mexican Army’s role in public security efforts.