Freedom for Yakiri, Imprisoned in Mexico for Defending Herself Against Rapists

"Freedom for Yakiri" 

From Yakiri Libre Tijuana:

"Colectivo Yakiri Libre Tijuana invites you to support action for Yakiri Rubio’s freedom. Yakiri is a 20 year-old activist from Mexico City, who after being raped by two men, in December 2013, is now incarcerated facing homicide charges. As one of the attackers stabbed her, Yakiri fought back to save her life and stabbed him instead. The man died after fleeing the scene along with his accomplice. In January 10, 2014, Colectivo Yakiri Libre Tijuana took action for the first time by making the video “Yo Hubiera Hecho Lo Mismo,” (I would have done the same) in which about 100 people demonstrated against gender violence and the sexist penal law process that threatens human rights, women rights. With this, we attempt to network with others in order to disclose Yakiri’s case and make it an instrument of pressure to condemn the injustice. It is clear that in this case as in others, the present Mexican authorities will not favor the citizens; therefore, if Yakiri becomes free, it would only be because of national and international civil pressure. If you are interested in collaborating, we will be connected and ready to network this Friday January 24 at 7:30 p.m. You can participate from your Twitter and Facebook accounts. These are the hashtags we will use: #24Emx, #YoHubieraHechoLoMismo,#YakiriLibre, #YakiriLibreTijuana, #NoMásViolenciaDeGénero. This event will take place simultaneously with Yakiri Libre (Mexico City). Facebook.com/yakirilibretijuana and Twitter.com/YakiriLibreTJ, Subscribe to our youtube channel.YakirilibreTijuana"

Sign on to the Amicus Curiae filed by the Mexico City Human Rights Commission arguing for Yakiri Rubí Rubio Aupart's release.

"Sexist violence is a crime, so is imprisoning you for defending yourself."

 

Mexican Civil Society Wants President and Drug Traffickers To Face War Crimes Charges In The International Criminal Court

by Kristin Bricker, SSR Centre

The accused (from left): Public Security Secretary

Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo 

Galván Galván, President Felipe Calderón, and Navy 

Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza. 

A coalition of lawyers, academics, activists, and journalists has announced that it will seek the prosecution of President Felipe Calderón in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his deployment of the military to battle drug trafficking organizations.  “Our petition is supported by over 20,000 signatures, both handwritten and electronic,” they said in a written statement, “making it the largest citizens’ complaint that the ICC has ever received.”

Netzai Sandoval, the lawyer who is preparing the complaint, argues that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case because Mexico is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and because the country’s drug war constitutes an “armed conflict not of an international nature.” The Rome Statute, which created the court in 2002, defines an “armed conflict not of an international nature” as “armed conflicts that take place in the territory of a State when there is protracted armed conflict between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups.”


Details of the Complaint

In addition to President Calderón, Sandoval has requested that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor investigate Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Secretary Francisco Saynez Mendoza, drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and “other authorities, military officials, and drug traffickers who are responsible for war crimes in Mexico.”

The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for determining admissibility, defendants, and charges.  However, Sandoval has requested that the Prosecutor investigate both government officials and drug trafficking organizations for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  He argues that both sides of the conflict have committed murders, rape and sexual slavery, forced disappearances, physical mutilations, inhuman treatment and torture, extensive destruction of property, and attacks against the civilian population, all of which are classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

Sandoval notes that the Army has murdered and tortured innocent civilians at military checkpoints and during military operations.  “It has attempted to cover up these incidents in order to guarantee impunity,” argues Sandoval.  In 2010, for example, the military killed two students at the elite private university Tec de Monterrey. Soldiers planted weapons on the students’ corpses and removed their backpacks and student IDs to make them appear to be cartel gunmen.

The complaint that Sandoval will present to the ICC also details war crimes committed by criminal organizations.  It specifically mentions the massacres perpetuated by unidentified gunmen at drug rehabilitation clinics that are occurring with alarming frequency in various northern states.  Moreover, he accuses drug trafficking organizations of forcibly recruiting children under fifteen years of age, which has been demonstrated by arrests of children such as 13-year-old Edgar Jiménez Lugo, a cartel hitman who says that a drug trafficking organization kidnapped him when he was eleven and ordered him to kill or be killed.

Sandoval argues that both the government and drug trafficking organizations have committed physical mutilations.  Early in the war, drug trafficking organizations began to terrorize the civilian population by dumping tortured and mutilated bodies in public places such as in dance clubs, alongside highways, hanging from overpasses, or in front of government buildings or schools. In late 2009, the government responded in kind: the Marines killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in his home, and then employees from the medical examiner’s office stripped him down to his underwear and covered his bullet-ridden corpse with bloody peso notes and U.S. dollar bills.  They took pictures of his semi-nude body and leaked the pictures to the press, presumably to intimidate Beltran Leyva’s criminal organization.

The complaint also accuses officials from the Mexican government’s National Immigration Institute (INM) of collaborating with drug trafficking organizations to kidnap and traffic Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States.  The government has admitted widespread corruption in the INM, where alarming numbers of immigration agents detain migrants and then hand them over to cartels in exchange for a fee.  The cartels themselves frequently kidnap dozens of migrants in a single raid.  The criminals detain the migrants in “safe houses” while theydemand ransoms from the migrants’ families in the United States, or they enslave the kidnapped migrants to work in fields or—in the case of women—the sex industry as prostitutes or in pornographic movies.

The Gravity Threshold


Due to its limited capacity, the ICC declines to investigate some cases in which it has compelling evidence that war crimes have occurred, but do not reach the ICC’s standard for gravity.  “Even where there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed, this is not sufficient for the initiation of an investigation by the International Criminal Court,” wrote ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo when he declined to file charges against coalition forces for war crimes committed in Iraq. “While, in a general sense, any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court is ‘grave,’ the [Rome] Statute requires an additional threshold of gravity even where the subject-matter jurisdiction is satisfied. This assessment is necessary as the Court is faced with multiple situations involving hundreds or thousands of crimes and must select situations” in which the commission of said war crimes are “committed as a part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

Migrants’ plight in Mexico might be one of the complaint’s more compelling aspects for the ICC because the crimes committed against them are so widespread.  Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza, who runs the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” Migrante Shelter in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, estimates that 80% of the Centeral American women who pass through his shelter have been raped during their journey.  “They consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate,” explains Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center in Chiapas.

The Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) documented 214 cases of mass kidnappings of migrants in 2010 alone, with a total of 11,333 victims.  This number does not include unreported mass kidnappings, nor does it include kidnappings of small numbers of migrants, meaning that the total number of Central American migrants kidnapped in Mexico is likely much higher.

Sandoval hopes that the staggering statistics of over 50,000 dead, thousands of forced disappearances, at least 230,000 displaced persons, and the appearance of severely mutilated bodies left on public display in various parts of the country on a daily basis will convince the court that high-ranking government officials and drug trafficking organizations are committing war crimes in Mexico “on a massive scale.”


Goals of an ICC Investigation


Unlike the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), which allows victims to sue State parties over a range of human rights violations, the ICC prosecutes individuals—not States—who are allegedly responsible for a very limited range of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.  Whereas the IACtHR has the power to order States to reform laws or policies that prevent victims from obtaining justice, the ICC only seeks punitive damages, such as imprisonment or indemnity for victims.

Nonetheless, Sandoval believes that an ICC investigation could have important political implications in Mexico.  He hopes that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor will be able to obtain confidential information regarding the military’s role in the drug war because the Mexican military has denied many Transparency Act requests on the basis of national security.  “On May 9, 2007, [Calderón] published an executive order to create an elite force called the Cuerpo de Fuerzas de Apoyo Federal [Federal Support Forces],” explained Sandoval.  “This elite unit is directly controlled by Felipe Calderón and was involved in the drug war… There is no General or other official between Calderón and those soldiers.”  Sandoval hopes that the Office of the Prosecutor will investigate the secretive Federal Support Forces for any possible human rights abuses, because domestic attempts to obtain information about their actions have been futile.  If the ICC finds that the elite unit is responsible for human rights abuses, Sandoval argues that it can hold Calderón directly responsible for their actions.

Due to the corruption and complicity with organized crime that prevails in Mexico’s security institutions, many victims never report crimes for fear of retaliation.  Mexico’s Census Bureau (INEGI) reports that in 2010, 24 percent of the Mexican population reported being the victim of a crime.  However, only 12.3 percent of them reported the crimes to the police. Of those crimes that were reported to the police, the police only investigated eight percent.

“Mexico is a country of impunity,” argues John Ackerman, a legal scholar with the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Legal Investigations Institute.  Ackerman says that bringing a case before the ICC is a way for citizens “to use legal, peaceful means to demand justice and accountability.”

Sandoval hopes that the ICC will open offices in Mexico to carry out a direct and impartial investigation into possible war crimes. “The ICC should open field offices in different parts of the country so that victims can go there and give direct testimony.”

Even though ICC investigations can drag on for years, Sandoval hopes that the complaint will pressure Mexican politicians to reform the country’s security strategy soon.  “The candidates who will compete in the 2012 presidential election should know that if they continue with a militaristic policy that covers up soldiers’ crimes, they will share Calderón’s fate,” said Sandoval.  “One would hope that they would begin to discuss a plan for the military to return to its barracks, and embark on a new strategy for confronting organized crime.”

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist who specializes in militarization, human rights, social movements and the drug war in Latin America.

Inside Mexico’s Peace Movement

by Kristin Bricker, The Indypendent

Photo by Santiago Navarro F.

On Sept. 10, thousands of people marched through the besieged resort town of Acapulco to greet the Caravan for Peace with Dignity and Justice led by Javier Sicilia, a poet who ignited a nationwide movement against drug war violence this spring after his son was murdered.

In recent years, Acapulco has endured a plague of violence — beheadings, massacres of tourists, kidnapping of schoolchildren and demands from criminal gangs that teachers pay 50 percent of their salaries as protection money. In the vast majority of the cases, no one has been charged with these crimes.

Armed with signs and T-shirts that said “No more violence,” “Stop kidnappings and crime,” and “No more militarization, we want education,” locals faced down their fear of being identified by halcones or cartel spies, and marched for peace.

“They asked me if I was afraid to participate,” said Yuridia Betancourt, whose son Christian Obeth was kidnapped on March 19. “I’m panicked. But I’m more afraid to stay at home with my arms crossed.”

However, moments after the peace march swept by Zaragoza Street, several blocks from the central plaza where the marchers rallied, unidentified gunmen shot and killed Antelmo Petatan Vasquez in his taxi in broad daylight, a fate shared by a growing number of cabbies who are often suspected of working as informants for the cartels or are forced to pay them “quotas” in exchange for the right to work. Petatan Vasquez was one of eight people murdered that day in Acapulco; three were killed during the march.

Petatan Vasquez’s killing marked another in the more than 40,000 deaths that have occurred in Mexico since conservative President Felipe Calderón escalated the government’s war on drug cartels in January 2007. It also underscored the challenges faced by Sicilia and the antiwar movement as it ventured into southern Mexico for the first time, hoping to build on earlier momentum.

Breaking the Fear

Rural and mountainous, southern Mexico is more impoverished and has a much greater percentage of indigenous peoples than the northern part of the country. And while southern Mexico generally has less violent crime than northern states, organized crime and government security forces are victimizing certain sectors of the population at alarming rates.

Located several hundred miles southwest of Mexico City, the state of Guerrero bore the brunt of a government counter-insurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas from the 1960s to 1980s. The Guerra Sucia (or, “Dirty War”) carried out by the army and its paramilitary allies officially ended almost three decades ago. Nowadays, Guerrero residents are suffering some of the worst abuses of the drug war, as, the military remained in Guerrero and a climate of government corruption has assured that crimes committed against locals are almost never punished.

“The Dirty War never ended in Guerrero,” argues Rosario Cabañas, the niece of Guerrero school teacher and guerrilla leader Lucio Cabañas who was killed in 1974. “Unfortunately, thanks to [the Dirty War], peace and justice were lost. For 40 years, there has been impunity and injustice.”

Calderón’s militarized response disrupted drug trafficking routes and the cartels began to battle for control of Guerrero, which includes the coastal enclave of Acapulco. Residents found themselves caught in the middle. Unsurprisingly, the conflation of political and criminal violence gave birth in Guerrero to Mexico’s first narco-paramilitary organization, the “Liberator of the People Army” led by local political boss Rogaciano Alba.

Sharing Stories

Composed of 15 buses carrying more than 700 activists, journalists and family members of victims, the caravan rolled through 19 towns and cities in seven states over 10 days in mid-September. At every stop, caravaneros and locals marched for peace. The marches always ended in rallies where drug war victims from the north shared the stage with local victims to tell the world about how they have suffered in the so-called “war on organized crime.” At each stop, Sicilia’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity collected complaints about violence and human rights abuses, just as they had done in the north.

Mexico’s drug cartels were significantly strengthened in the early 1990s as junior partners to their counterparts in Colombia who were finding it increasingly difficult to ship cocaine to the United States through the Caribbean. In recent years, thanks in large part to the Colombian cartels’ decreased control over shipping routes, the Mexican cartels have become fully diversified organized crime syndicates and have expanded into new areas such as kidnapping, extortion, prostitution and human trafficking.

Approximately 40 Central American migrants traveled with the Peace Caravan, calling attention to how the cartels frequently prey on immigrants.

Mexico’s harsh U.S.-backed immigration laws force the hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants who enter Mexico each year to travel clandestinely, which puts them at great risk of being kidnapped by organized crime, caravan participants explained. When migrants are detained by authorities, they are sometimes handed over to criminal groups for a bribe.

During the caravan, the Central American migrants described how the gangs take people like themselves to safe houses where they are forced to call their families or friends in the United States and hold the telephone in their hands while the criminals torture them into begging their families for ransom money: “I saw them cut off a 14-year-old boy’s finger while his father was listening on the phone,” said one Salvadoran immigrant who says that he, too, was tortured.

Female immigrants are sometimes forced into prostitution or made to perform in pornographic movies. German Guillermo Ramirez Garduaza of the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” migrant shelter in Veracruz estimates that 80 percent of female Central American migrants are raped in Mexico.

Danira Meléndez, a Honduran migrant, recalled how her coyote (paid guide) demanded that she have sex with him. “He told me, ‘Here, I’m just one man. But I work with the Zetas, and if I turn you over to them, it’ll be 15 or 20 men raping you,’” Meléndez recounted. “We know that female migrants are easy sexual merchandise for organized crime.”

A Militant Tradition

Before the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity emerged, drug war victims were terrified, isolated and silent. On the two caravans, victims learned public speaking skills and how to organize protests and press conferences and hold more effective meetings with public officials. Now that the caravans are over, the victims will return to their communities, most of which now have local antiwar committees. Whereas before drug war victims were shunned, now they are in a position to become community leaders.

Citing lower turnouts at Peace Caravan events in the south, the Mexican media have portrayed the antiwar movement as losing support. However, this does not take into account the fact that the south has experienced less drug war violence than the north and in places that have been hard hit — like Guerrero and Veracruz — thousands of people turned out to protest the war. Moreover, the south has a long tradition of militant grassroots organizing (see sidebar) and resistance to military occupation that most of the north lacks. Whereas most northern drug war victims are just beginning to organize and define their politics, southern drug war victims are joining experienced organizations and hitting the ground running.

If southern organizations continue to collaborate with Sicilia’s national movement, they will likely provide a counterweight to Sicilia’s strong focus on engagement with authorities, which has included meeting with leaders of all three branches of a government that is widely seen as being complicit in the drug trade it claims to be fighting.

“We still don’t understand why they dedicate so much energy and effort to dialogue with a political class that long ago lost all will to govern and is nothing more than a gang of criminals,” the Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos recently wrote, reflecting the sentiment of many groups in the south.

Mexico holds presidential and congressional elections next year. It remains to be seen how the budding anti-war movement will affect the electoral process. Ultimately, the country’s future depends on whether Mexico’s civil society can be mobilized to cleanse the state of a culture of corruption and impunity that exists at all levels of government.

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist covering militarization, social movements and the drug war in Latin America. She blogs at mywordismyweapon.blogspot.com.

Military Justice and Impunity in Mexico's Drug War

by Kristin Bricker, Security Sector Reform Resource Center
SSR Issue Paper No. 3
Monday, September 26, 2011

During Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s administration, over 5,000 human rights complaints have been filed against the military, but only one soldier has been punished by the military justice system. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has issued several rulings ordering Mexico to reform military jurisdiction so all crimes against civilians are handled by the civilian court system. Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on July 12, 2011 that the military should not have jurisdiction over cases of human rights abuse by soldiers. This issue paper argues that the Arce Initiative, put forward by Senator René Arce from Mexico’s opposition party, is the only proposed reform to military jurisdiction that complies with both the IACtHR rulings and international human rights law, unlike the proposal put forth by President Calderón. The paper concludes that the UN and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights should maintain their pressure on the Mexican government to reform the Code of Military Justice to ensure all human rights violations are tried in civilian courts.

Download the full report here (2.4 MB PDF file)

Mexico’s human rights violence on the rise, as neither military nor justice system provide security

NEWS RELEASE,
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
KEVIN DIAS

WATERLOO, CANADA — September 27 — Foreign governments supporting Mexico’s war on drugs should focus on strengthening civilian rule of law and encourage judicial reform to ensure that military personnel accused of human rights abuse are held accountable, according to a new report from The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Military Justice and Impunity in Mexico’s Drug War, released under CIGI’s Security Sector Reform Issue Papers series, comes at an important time as last week saw the deadliest attacks in Mexico’s drug war when 35 dead bodies were found in Veracruz and earlier this year the Global Commission on Drug Policy published a report stating that the “global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

In the report, it is argued that the military, despite the Mexican government’s obligation to reform the country’s judicial system as per recent rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and obligations set out by the American Convention, has been overstepping constitutional duties as per Article 129, and has been acting with relative impunity. “[During] Calderón’s administration, over 47,337 people – the overwhelming majority of them civilians – have been killed in the war on drugs,” says Kristen Bricker, a Mexico-based freelance journalist who authored the report. “The Mexican military’s jurisdiction over crimes committed by soldiers against civilians is completely out of line with international standards.”

While President Felipe Calderón has proposed reforms to the Code of Military Justice, monthly averages of 48,750 soldiers continue to fight the war on drugs with support from the US’s Medina Initiative. Particularly concerning is that Calderón’s proposal, which has since been annulled by a Supreme Court decision, would only prosecute three human rights crimes – torture, forced disappearance and rape committed by soldiers against civilians – in federal court. And as per Article 57.11 of the Code, the military would continue to assume jurisdiction over all other crimes committed by active-duty soldiers. The Arce Initiative, put forward by Senator René Arce from Mexico’s opposition party, is the only proposed reform to military jurisdiction that complies with both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights rulings and international human rights law.

Mexico, finding itself forced to reform an unbalanced judicial system, is in need of civilian rule of law in order to address human rights violations, according to the report. This is a priority that can be promoted by donor governments who are committed to increasing transparency, combating corruption and halting rampant human rights abuses.

For more information on this publication, visit http://www.cigionline.org/publications/2011/9/military-justice-and-impunity-mexicos-drug-war.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Kevin Dias, Communications Specialist, CIGI
Tel: 519.885.2444, ext. 238, Email: kdias@cigionline.org

The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is an independent, nonpartisan think tank on international governance. Led by experienced practitioners and distinguished academics, CIGI supports research, forms networks, advances policy debate and generates ideas for multilateral governance improvements. Conducting an active agenda of research, events and publications, CIGI’s interdisciplinary work includes collaboration with policy, business and academic communities around the world. CIGI was founded in 2001 by Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM (Research In Motion), and collaborates with and gratefully acknowledges support from a number of strategic partners, in particular the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario. For more information, please visit www.cigionline.org.

On the Mexico-Guatemala Border, Migrants Demand End to the Violence

By Kristin Bricker, Americas Program

The caravan of drug war victims led by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia arrived at the Mexico-Guatemala border in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on Sept. 14, where they asked for forgiveness from the migrants who risk their lives to cross Mexico to reach the United States.

Simultaneous marches from the Mexican and Guatemalan sides of the border met on the international bridge that connects the two countries.  The Guatemalan marchers greeted Sicilia and the marchers from Mexico with cries of “Long Live Mexico! Long Live Guatemala!”

Standing on the imaginary line that divides the two countries, Sicilia said, “We came to ask our Central American brothers and sisters to forgive us for having not spoken up before, for not having the consciousness and the strength necessary to prevent the kidnapping and murder that has affected thousands of migrants and Mexican citizens and has torn apart their families.”

When the Caravan for Peace set out from Mexico City on Sept. 9, some thirty Central American migrants accompanied it south towards the border.  Just before dawn on Sept. 14, about ten more migrants from a migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, joined the trek south. In Ciudad Hidalgo, the migrants told of how both organized crime and Mexican authorities abuse them as they cross the country precariously perched on the top of cargo trains.

One young Salvadoran migrant said organized crime members kidnapped him last December in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The kidnappers called his family in El Salvador to demand ransom money.  His family couldn’t come up with the money, so, on Christmas Eve, the kidnappers called his family so that they could hear him being tortured.

The kidnappers beat him has he held the phone in his hands; they told him that they would kill him if he didn’t cry and beg his family for the money.  He refused to cry, so they beat him harder.  The young man was also forced to witness the torture of other migrants who were being held in the same house.  He saw them cut off a 14-year-old’s finger as the boy’s father listened on the telephone, and he was present when the kidnappers raped a woman in front of the rest of the kidnapped migrants.

“I saw with my own eyes that the police came to the place where we were [being held hostage],” he said. “The police are the most corrupt ones here.”  Four migrants managed to escape and went for help, which is how the young Salvadoran lived to tell his story even though his family couldn’t pay his ransom.

“[Mexican] authorities have robbed me; they’ve beaten me in my travels,” recalled a middle-aged Salvadoran migrant.  “Four months ago, I was violently robbed by [Chiapas] State Police as I crossed the border right here.”  His misfortune didn’t end there.  “My wife was kidnapped in Mexico State. She’s still kidnapped, and because we’re migrants in this country, the authorities don’t want to listen to us.  It’s really difficult to get the authorities to listen to us when we want to report a crime.”

Honduran migrant Daniela Melendez, mother of five, recounted how her coyote, the man she paid to help her cross Mexico and enter the United States, tried to rape her as she traveled through Chiapas.  In an attempt to pressure her to have sex with him, he told her, “Here, I’m just one man.  But I work with the Zetas, and if I turn you over to them, it’ll be fifteen or twenty men raping you.”  Melendez managed to reach the migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, run by Father Alejandro Solalinde. “Father Solalinde’s team in the shelter rescued me,” she recounts.

Melendez was spared, but too many undocumented migrant women aren’t.  Drug trafficking organizations—particularly the Zetas—have branched out into the sex trafficking industry.  The problem is becoming so severe that Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center  said, “When you talk to women, they consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate.” Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza of the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” migrant shelter in Veracruz estimates that 80% of female Central American migrants are rapedas they transit Mexico.

As Mexicos’ drug war rages and more and more migrants fall victim to the cartels that have taken over the migrant routes, many Central Americans are still willing to risk traveling through Mexico to reach the United States because they feel as though they have no other choice.

Unemployment or underemployment are the reasons most Central American migrants give for why they decided to travel to the United States.  Two young Guatemalans staying in Father Solalinde’s shelter in Ixtepec, for example, are from sharecropper families who don’t make enough money to survive.  Even though they finished high school, the boys haven’t been able to find work.  So the boys, who are neighbors, made their first attempt to reach the United States.  They want to make enough money to help their families get ahead, and then they plan to return to Guatemala.

Twenty-one-year-old Francisco Rivera* first migrated to the United States from his native Honduras when he was twelve years old.  A gang was threatening to harm his family if he didn’t join, and his older brother’s job sewing American Eagle clothing in Honduras’ “free trade zone” wasn’t enough to pay his family’s bills.  After several attempts, he managed to reach the United States, but was deported back to Honduras.

In 2008, his father, the leader of an organization that helped landless peasants occupy government land to obtain deeds, was assassinated.  Rivera’s family believes a mayor who lost land to his father’s organization ordered the execution.  Days after the Honduran coup occurred in 2009, Rivera was nearly shot as a coup supporter opened fire on his neighborhood.  As more and more bodies were dumped in his neighborhood in the weeks following the coup, Rivera’s mother told him, “I’d rather you be far away than dead,” so Rivera migrated again.  This time, he sought political asylum in the United States.  After spending a year in jail in general population as he fought for asylum, his petition was denied and he was deported.  Rivera is now on his way back to the United States.

In crafting its immigration policy, the Mexican government is taking a cue from the United States.  Whereas migrants cross Guatemala fairly easily and inexpensively by bus, Mexico’s strict immigration enforcement means migrants must take extra precautions.  “You can cross Guatemala in a bus, and if the authorities catch you they might make you pay a bribe of 100 quetzales (about $12 dollars),” says Rivera. “In Mexico they have so many immigration checkpoints along the highways.  And if they catch you at one checkpoint, they’ll make you pay a $500 peso ($38 dollar) bribe, but then they’ll radio ahead to the next checkpoint to advise them that you’re coming so that they make you pay the bribe at that checkpoint, too.  When you get to the last checkpoint they’ll detain and deport you even though you already paid all those bribes.”

Mexico’s immigration checkpoints mean that many migrants prefer to brave the elements while perched on top of cargo trains.  Some fall off and are maimed or killed by the train, and others are pushed off by organized crime members looking to extort money from the migrants. Still, every day thousands of migrants ride Mexico’s rails.

Rivera calls Mexico’s immigration policies hypocritical: “Mexico demands respect from the United States for Mexican citizens, but they treat us so terribly, and they accept money from the United States through the Merida Initiative.”  The Merida Initiative, an aid package designed to support Mexico’s war on drugs, provides funds to expand immigration databases and monitoring, and equip and train border personnel. It includes support to implement biometric tracking of immigrants and build up security measures on both Mexican borders.

But some studies show that U.S. and Mexico’s tough immigration policies are actually driving migrants into the hands of organized crime.  According to a 2003 brief by the American Immigration Law Foundation:

“A July 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that there is no ‘statistically significant relationship between the build-up and the probability of migration. Economic opportunities in the United States and Mexico have a stronger effect on migration than does the number of agents at the border.’ The study found that ‘the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has increased’ since the strategy was first implemented, due in part to the fact that ‘migrants who successfully cross the border stay longer in the United States than they did in the past.’ The study also notes that the more dangerous border crossings have led to the ‘increased use of hired guides, or coyotes,’ which ‘may have expanded the very profitable human smuggling industry.’”

Migrants Targetted

Increasingly dangerous conditions for migrants in Mexico have led them to support the nascent Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which seeks to end violence and impunity in Mexico. While the migrants aren’t the only drug-war victims in the Movement, they are the only ones who have consistently been attacked while participating in Movement-related caravans.

When Sicilia called for a four-day march from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City this past May, Central American migrants organized a trek from southern Mexico to meet the march in Mexico City.  The plan was to walk along the railroad tracks that lead to Mexico City.  The migrants never made it to the march in Mexico City because on May 6 in the state of Veracruz, gunmen attempted to kidnap women from the group.  The presence of media that was covering the migrants’ march apparently scared away the gunmen, but they told the terrified migrants that they would return.  The migrants called Mexican authorities for help, but for hours no law enforcement agency showed up to protect them.  The migrants were left stranded by the tracks for the rest of the day, terrified that their attackers would return.

In June, migrants organized a second protest, this time a five-day caravan that would travel on top of the trains from Ixtepec, Oaxaca, to Veracruz. On June 24, gunmen armed with assault rifles stopped the train and kidnapped 40 to 60 of the 250 migrants who were onboard.  Those migrants are still missing.

Migrants organized yet another caravan, the “Step by Step Toward Peace” Caravan from July 25-August 2, to protest violence against migrants.  This time, they travelled with family members of Central American migrants who went missing in Mexico.  After the second caravan, one of the participants, 19-year-old Guatemalan migrant Julio Fernando Cardona was detained by municipal police in Tultitlán, Mexico State, according to witnesses.  Later that day, Cardona’s body was found dumped along the railroad tracks in Tultitlán.  He had been stoned to death.  Cardona’s participation in the second caravan led to an unusually high amount of media attention to his case.  Under pressure, the government investigated the police that witnesses identified, and it found blood in the bed of the officers’ pickup truck, according to a source close to the case.

The brazen violence against migrants participating in the protest caravans has underlined the need for Mexico to make immediate changes to how it treats immigrants. Migrants and human rights defenders demand that Mexican authorities investigate crimes against migrants and punish the perpetrators. Migrants are also demanding that Mexico allow them to legally pass through the country on their way to the United States by cancelling the requirement that Central Americans hold visas in Mexico. North American and European travellers, for example, are automatically given tourist cards when they arrive at any Mexican port-of-entry, making the visa application process unnecessary for them.  The migrants say that if they were permitted to legally travel through Mexico, they would stop using the dangerous trains and would start using buses to cross the country.

The migrants on the peace caravan say that despite their fear that their participation in the protests will make them targets, the caravans are working.  They note that due to pressure from the caravans, the Mexican government has awarded 300 visas to migrants so that they can safely travel through Mexico. Moreover, two Central American mothers who participated in the “Step by Step Toward Peace” Caravan found their missing sons alive and well in Mexico, thanks to the caravan. Also, the police officers who allegedly killed Julio Fernando Cardona have been arrested, although it remains to be seen if they will do time for the brutal murder.

Many Central American migrants say they are glad to march side-by-side with Mexicans against the drug war, because migrants have to endure the same violence that terrorizes Mexicans on a daily basis.

“We’re here to support Mexico,” says Angie, a 21-year-old migrant who participated in the second caravan and is on the Caravan for Peace with Sicilia now.  “There are a lot of people from other countries who migrate through Mexico every day, and we know about the kidnappings and the extortion all too well.”

* This name has been changed.

Kristin Bricker is a reporter in Mexico. She is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org and is currently covering the 10-day Caravan of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity for the Americas Updater.

In Bloody Durango, Civilian and Police Families Unite to Protest Drug War

By Kristin Bricker, Americas Program


The world was shocked when Mexican authorities uncovered seven clandestine mass graves containing at least 226 drug war victims in Durango this past April and May. However, the only truly surprising detail about the mass graves was that they weren’t discovered sooner.

The murder rate in Durango skyrocketed after President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime in late 2006. The number of executions soared 1,401 percent from 67 in 2005 to 939 in 2010. With 910 murders so far in 2011, Durango is set to surpass 2010′s murders by the end of June.

As the executions continue unabated in Durango, it is obvious that Calderón’s unsubstantiated assertion that 90% of Mexico’s murder victims are members of organized crime is simply untrue. The government couldn’t even identify 54 of the 226 bodies in Durango’s clandestine mass graves—that is, 24% of the victims—so it reburied them in a municipal mass grave.

Even when victims are identified, the government rarely investigates their deaths. In 2010, the government didn’t even bother to open investigations into 95% of the 15,273 murders that occurred in the country that year. When missing miner Fernando Rodriguez Maturina turned up dead and wrapped in a blanket a few months ago in Durango, police told his widow that she shouldn’t push for an investigation. “The police officer who gave me his remains told me that because he was wrapped in a blanket, it was a message that we shouldn’t investigate the death,” María Flores de Santos recalls. “He told me that it was best if I didn’t stir up trouble.”

In Durango, the raging violence doesn’t discriminate between narcos and civilians, or between honest police and corrupt police. Durango is a war zone, and everyone is caught in the crossfire. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the peace movement refuses to discriminate between victims.

When the Citizens Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity arrived in Durango on Monday night to protest the drug war, thousands of locals from across the social spectrum turned out to greet it. The widows of murdered police officers marched in downtown Durango alongside the families of people disappeared by corrupt police. Families of civilians murdered by organized crime marched together with families who openly admitted that their murdered loved ones had gotten “into trouble.” Regardless of which side of the war their loved ones were on before tragedy struck, their grief and outrage brought them together to demand an end to a drug policy that has only brought death and destruction to Durango.

It seems as though everyone has lost at least one family member to drug war violence in this state, and after years of neglect and disdain, they are desperate for anyone to listen to their plight. Even the janitor who works at the school where the Caravan rested on Monday night took advantage of the abundance of sympathetic ears to tearfully announce that they just found her cousin in one of the mass graves. This afternoon her family has to try to claim the 22-year-old’s body. Her neighbors who have already been through the process prepared her for the long, frustrating, and sometimes futile struggle to get an unsolved murder victim released from government custody. It’s almost always a battle for victims’ families, even if the government has no intention of actually investigating the murder.

Many protesters in Durango carried signs that decried corruption in the State Police. Ivana Hernandez says that State Police were responsible for the forced disappearance of her cousin Adán Salazar two months ago during a routine traffic stop. Witnesses saw the police put him in their patrol car, but his detention was never registered. Hernandez’s family filed complaints with the government, but the State Police claim they never had him in custody. The investigation has gone nowhere.

Several march participants—including one woman whose cousin survived a police kidnapping—claim that Durango State Police detain victims and then deliver them to organized crime.

Police Families Join the Peace Movement

Despite the peace movement’s strong criticism of the police’s role in the drug war and the widespread belief that most police officers are corrupt, many police widows feel drawn to the movement for the same reason all other drug war victims are: they are unable to find sympathy and justice anywhere else. “It hurts me so much how they criminalize the victims, thinking that they deserve what happened to them,” says Gloria Aguilar, the wife and mother of three disappeared Monterrey Transit Police officers. “I’ve heard so many times, ‘But they must’ve done something to have been disappeared.”

Widows and mothers of seven murdered Federal Police officers protested the government’s abandonment of their loved ones both in life and death. The seven were kidnapped on their way to Ciudad Hidalgo, where there were supposed to shut down a corrupt municipal police department. “They didn’t even give them a vehicle or a per diem,” recounts officer Pedro Alberto Vázquez Hernández’s sister-in-law. “So they had to pass the hat for gas money, and they convinced a friend to drive them. That friend disappeared with them. They were kidnapped November 12, 2009, from a gas station in Morelia, Michoacan.”

Even though several suspects bragged to Mexican investigators that they participated in the kidnapping and murder of the eight men, the government refuses to declare the police officers dead so that their widows can collect death benefits and remarry. The government also hasn’t recovered the men’s bodies. Every time a new mass grave is discovered, the widows and mothers must travel to that state and review photographs of the cadavers in the local morgue.

Flor Susana Gómez, the widow of a Durango State Police officer, argues that the government’s treatment of police widows is callous and illogical. “We receive a monthly pension of six thousand pesos ($521 dollars) with which we have to feed, dress, house, and educate 3-5 children. Durango state law prohibits us from re-marrying and working,” says Gómez.

“This is yet another tragedy of this absurd war on organized crime, knowing that soldiers and municipal, state, and federal police are nothing more than cannon fodder for politicians.”

Former municipal police officer Oscar Hernandez resigned from his department in Mexico State and joined the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity. “I quit because my son asked me if I was corrupt, and it made me think,” he says.

“My last nine months on the force, they sent me to work in the federal Confidence Control program [the program that screens police departments and purges corrupt cops], and it’s even worse there. The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more corrupt it is!”

Hernandez has a message for police officers: “They’re turning the police into nothing more than killing machines. Quit and join the movement!”

Overcoming Fear

Durango’s residents know that they risk their lives by speaking out against the violence. But so many of them have lost so much already that they don’t see any other option. “If I turn up dead one of these days, thank you,” declared Vivien Echavari, whose three sons were gunned down in Durango. “Because then I will be with my sons.”

Mar Grecia Oliva Guerrero from the University of Durango urged her fellow Duranguenses to overcome their fear and speak out against the war. “How long will it take you to wake up and do something so that this stops? Tomorrow it could be your child or your parent! Will you do something today, while you still have your family, or will you wait until tomorrow, when you’re in a clandestine mass grave?”

Kristin Bricker is freelance reporter and contributor to the CIP Americas Program.  F. Santiago Navarro contributed to this report.

For on-going coverage of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, check in frequently here and on our AmericasMexico Blog http://americasmexico.blogspot.com, and www.cipamericas.org/es for Spanish-language reports and audios.