http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0041-6300
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ABSTRACT
In the context of the war on drugs, undocumented international migration in Mexico is facing a serious human rights crisis. Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants, above all from Central America, cross Mexico to reach the United States. Through their journey they risk extortion, kidnap, ill treatment, torture, forced disappearance, forced labour, sexual abuses, and death. Ironically, in the last few years, migrants’ rights has become a profession for many people. Never before have there been so many rights-based organisations and human rights practitioners in Mexico working in the promotion and defence of migrants’ rights. This article is a sociologically driven analysis that seeks to critically examine the role of human rights organisations and practitioners working in the field of transmigrants’ rights in Mexico. The article analyses how human rights practitioners and rights-based organisations talk about the suffering and violence routinely experienced by transmigrants in Mexico; and identifies the most visible implications of that discourse. It argues that legalism over-dominates practitioners’ work and agendas: practitioners address the problem of undocumented migration through a narrow legalistic lens that ignores or fails to challenge the wider political and social conditions that make the abuses possible in the first place.
Acknowledgements
I conducted part of this research while I was serving as consultant for El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico. Kim Krasevac, Dolores Paris, Rene Zenteno and Sonja Wolf shared insightful remarks and constructive comments on earlier versions of some of the arguments presented here. I wrote this article while I was a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. Professor Chetan Bhatt, Dr Margot Salomon, and Dr Claire Moon made this possible. I am indebted to them. Sara Ulfsparre and Heidi El-Megrisi helped me to overcome unimaginable bureaucratic complications. I would also like to thank Daniela Melisa Gómez, Alfonso Moreno and Mitzi Muñoz for their help with research assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Dr Javier Trevino-Rangel is Assistant Professor in the Cátedra CONACYT – Drug Policy Program at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Notes
1 Kevin Middlebrook, ‘Introduction’, in Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico, ed. Kevin Middlebrook (London: University of London. Institute of Latin American Studies; University of California, San Diego. Center for US-Mexican Studies, 2004).
2 Human Rights Watch, Lost in Transition. Bold Ambitions, Limited Results for Human Rights under Fox (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2006).
3 Ibid.
4 Human Rights Watch, Neither Rights, Nor Security (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2011).
5 Amnesty International, Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico (London: Amnesty International, 2010).
6 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Informe especial sobre los casos de secuestro en contra de migrantes (Mexico City: Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, 2009).
7 Ibid.
8 Carmen Aristegui, ‘Holocausto’, Reforma, 27 August 2010.
9 María Dolores Paris and Peter Müller, ‘La incidencia política de las organizaciones pro-migrantes en México’, in Asociaciones de inmigrantes y fronteras internacionales, ed. Luis Escala Rabadán (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, in press).
10 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants and Other Persons in the Context of Human Mobility in Mexico (Washington, DC: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 2013), 3.
11 Hannah Miller, ‘From “Rights-based” to “Rights-framed” Approaches: A Social Constructionist View of Human Rights Practice’, The International Journal of Human Rights 14, no. 6 (2010): 915–931; Robin Redhead and Nick Turnbull, ‘Towards a Study of Human Rights Practitioners’, Human Rights Review, 12 (2011): 173–189.
12 Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 108.
13 I conducted these interviews while I was working as a human rights consultant at the Ford Foundation in Mexico City.
14 This second set of interviews was carried out as part of the research project entitled ‘An analysis on the role of social and political actors in the design and implementation of immigration policy and immigration control in Mexico’, which was coordinated by Dolores Paris Pombo, Rene Zenteno, Sonja Wolf and myself. The research project was hosted by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte and supported by the Ford Foundation.
15 Article 19, State of Censorship. Annual Report (Article 19, 2015) [Online], https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/37906/en/Mexico:%20ARTICLE%2019%20launches%20annual%20report%20'State%20of%20Censorship (14 April 2016); Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, Defender los derechos humanos: entre el compromiso y el riesgo. Informe sobre la situación de las y los defensores de derechos humanos en México (Mexico City: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, 2009); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants, 105.
16 For example, Situación de los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes y solicitantes de asilo detenidas en las Estaciones Migratorias de México, 2007–2009 (Mexico City: Sin Fronteras I.A.P., 2009); Fabienne Venet Rebiffé and Irene Palma Calderón, eds, Seguridad para el migrante: una agenda por construir, Documento de trabajo No. 2 (Mexico City: Instituto de Estudios y Divulgación sobre Migración-Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Sociales y Desarrollo, 2011); Natalia Armijo, ed., Migración y seguridad: nuevo desafío en México (Mexico City: Colectivo de Análisis de la Seguridad con Democracia, 2011); Manuel Ángel Castillo and Mónica Toussaint, ‘Seguridad y migración en la frontera sur’, in Seguridad nacional y seguridad interior, Los grandes problemas de México, ed. Arturo Alvarado and Mónica Serrano (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2010); Maureen Meyer, A Dangerous Journey Through Mexico: Human Rights Violations Against Migrants in Transit (Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2010); Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer, Beyond the Border Build-up. Security and Migrants Along the U.S.-Mexico Border (Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2012); Idheas, En tierra de nadie. El laberinto de la impunidad. Violaciones de los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes en la región del Soconusco (Mexico City, 2011).
17 ‘Beyond Legalism: Towards a Thicker Understanding of Transitional Justice’, Journal of Law and Society 34, no. 4 (2007); Claire Moon, ‘What One Sees and How One Files Seeing: Human Rights Reporting, Representation and Action’, Sociology 46, no. 5 (2012).
18 Ana Lorena Delgadillo and Christian Rojas (coord.), Informe sobre la situación general de los derechos de los migrantes y sus familias. Elaborado en ocasión de la visita a México del señor comisionado Felipe González, Relator Especial de Trabajadores Migratorios y Miembros de sus Familias de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Mexico City, July 2011), http://www.sinfronteras.org.mx/attachments/1160_Informe_Final.pdf.
19 Jorge Bustamante, ‘¿Son nuestros muertos?’, Reforma, 28 March 2012.
20 Paris and Müller, ‘La incidencia política de las organizaciones pro-migrantes en México’.
21 Ibid.
22 Olga Aikin and Alejandro Anaya Muñoz, ‘Crisis de derechos humanos de las personas migrantes en tránsito por México: redes y presión transnacional’, Foro Internacional 53, no. 1 (2013): 145.
23 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants, 41.
24 Andreas Schedler, ‘The Criminal Subversion of Mexican Democracy’, Journal of Democracy 25, no. 1 (2014): 9.
25 Federico Mastrogiovanni, ‘El negocio de la migración. Migrantes centroamericanos en tránsito por México hacia Estados Unidos’ (MSc Thesis, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2013), 87.
26 Belén, Posada del Migrante, Humanidad Sin Fronteras, and Fronteras con Justicia, Quinto Informe sobre la situación de los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes en tránsito por México (Saltillo, 2009).
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Informe especial sobre los casos de secuestro en contra de migrantes, 20.
31 Ibid., 9.
32 Ibid., 13.
33 Ibid., 6.
34 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants, 67.
35 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Informe especial sobre los casos de secuestro en contra de migrantes, 17.
36 Ibid.
37 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants, 64.
38 Ibid., 67.
39 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Informe especial sobre los casos de secuestro en contra de migrantes, 5.
40 Ibid., 18.
41 Aikin and Anaya Muñoz, ‘Crisis de derechos humanos’, 154.
42 Rosa E. Brooks, ‘The New Imperialism: Violence, Norms, and the “Rule of Law”’, Michigan Law Review 101 (2002–2003), 2278.
43 For instance, Natalia Armijo, ed., Migración y seguridad: nuevo desafío en México (Mexico City: Colectivo de Análisis de la Seguridad con Democracia, 2011); Jorge A. Schiavon and Gabriela Díaz Prieto, eds, Los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes en México. Estudio de caso para promover su respeto y defensa (Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 2011); Ernesto Rodríguez (coord.), Migración Centroamericana en tránsito por México hacia Estados Unidos: diagnóstico y recomendaciones. Hacia una visión integral, regional y de responsabilidad compartida (Mexico City: Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, 2014).
44 Paris and Müller, ‘La incidencia política de las organizaciones pro-migrantes en México’.
45 Michael Evans, ed., ‘Los Zetas Drug Cartel Linked San Fernando Police to Migrant Massacres’, The National Security Archive, 22 December 2014, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu.
46 Jesus Aranda, ‘Zetas ejecutaron por la espalda a los 72 migrantes; no pudieron pagar rescate’, La Jornada, 26 August 2010.
47 Joy Olson, ‘Organized Crime as Human Rights Issue’, ReVista. Harvard Review of Latin America XI, no. 2 (2012): 10.
48 Interview human rights lawyer, Amnesty International, Mexico City, 11 July 2014.
49 Interview with human rights activist, Migrants Programme, Institute of Human Rights, Centramericana University, El Salvador, 20 August 2013.
50 Moon, ‘What One Sees and How One Files Seeing’, 879.
51 Ibid., 880
52 Brooks, ‘The New Imperialism’, 2275.
53 David Kennedy, ‘The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?’ Harvard Human Rights Journal 115 (2002): 118.
54 Brooks, ‘The New Imperialism’, 2286.
55 Interview with human rights activist, Sin Fronteras, Mexico City, 22 January 2014.
56 Cohen, States of Denial, 108.
57 Javier Trevino-Rangel, ‘Policing the Past: Transitional Justice and The Special Prosecutor’s Office in Mexico, 2000–2006’ (PhD Thesis, London School of Economics, 2012), 28–70; Lorenzo Meyer, ‘Historical Roots of the Authoritarian State in Mexico’, in Authoritarianism in Mexico, ed. Jose Luis Reyna and Richard Weinert (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1977).
58 McEvoy, ‘Beyond Legalism’, 417.
59 Trevino-Rangel, ‘Policing the Past’, 302–28.
60 Jacqueline Behrend and Laurence Whitehead, ‘The Struggle for Subnational Democracy’, Journal of Democracy 27, no. 2 (2016): 155.
61 Interview with officer of the United Nations, Mexico City, 26 February 2014.
62 Interview with member of the House of Representatives, Mexico City, 8 January 2014.
63 Interview with Program Officer, Commission of Human Rights of Mexico City, 13 February 2014.
64 Interview with former officer of Mexico’s Ministry of Interior, Mexico City, 9 July 2014.
65 Javier Trevino-Rangel, ‘Racismo y nación: comunidades imaginadas en México’, Estudios Sociológicos 26, no. 78 (2008): 669–94.
66 Article 60 of the Ley de Migración of 1930.
67 Article 37 of the Ley General de Población of 1974.
68 Article 34 of the Ley General de Población of 1974.
69 Rodríguez, Migración Centroamericana, 16.
70 Interview with former officer of Mexico’s Ministry of Interior, Mexico City, 9 July 2014.
71 Interview with officer of the MacArthur Foundation, Mexico City, 24 April 2014.
72 Interview with Consul from Guatemala in a south-east state in Mexico, 13 March 2014.
73 Nina Lakhani, ‘Mexico Tortures Migrants – and Citizens – in Effort to Slow Central American Surge’, The Guardian, 4 April 2016.
74 Article 11 of the Mexican Constitution.
75 Complete information about this case can be found at the Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migracion (http://www.imumi.org).
76 Interview with undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Guatemala City, 19 August 2013.
77 Interview with undocumented migrant from El Salvador, San Salvador City, 23 August 2013.
78 Interview with undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Guatemala City, 19 August 2013.
79 Ibid.
80 Interview with Consul from Guatemala in a south-east state in Mexico, 19 March 2014.
81 Mastrogiovanni, ‘El negocio de la migración’, 154.
82 Ibid., 158.
83 Interview with human rights activist, Shelter Frontera con Justicia, Mexico City, 26 March 2014.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Amnesty International, Invisible Victims, 15.
87 Article 68 of the Ley de Migración of 2011.
88 Articles 99 and 111 of the Ley de Migración of 2011.
89 Interview with Program Officer, Commission of Human Rights of Mexico City, 13 February 2014.
90 Felipe Calderón, El Presidente Calderón en la inauguración de la semana nacional de migración. Derechos humanos de migrantes (Mexico City: Presidencia de la República, 17 October 2011), http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/oficina-de-la-presidencia/presidente/.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid.
93 Nick Miroff, ‘Mass Graves in Mexico Reveal New Levels of Savagery’, The Washington Post, 24 April 2011.
94 McEvoy, ‘Beyond Legalism’, 419.
95 Hannah Miller and Robin Redhead, ‘Beyond Rights-based Approaches’, International Journal of Human Rights (2017), this issue.
96 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights of Migrants, 105.