Forced Migration across Mexico: Organized Violence, Migrant Struggles, and Life Trajectories [1 ed.] 1032614013, 9781032614014

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“Forced Migration across Mexico is a timely volume that conceptualizes the root causes of violence in migrant trajectories. With a focus on theoretical frameworks, violence on the southern and northern borders, migrant caravans, and gendered patterns, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics between migration and violence in Mexico.” Xóchitl Bada, Associate Professor in Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois Chicago

Forced Migration across Mexico

This book analyzes the different ways in which forced migration comes together with organized violence in the Americas, focusing specifically on the migration corridor from Central America, through Mexico and on to the United States. No matter their starting point, most South and Central American migrants to the United States must eventually traverse Mexico, and often many other borders beforehand, to reach their destination. As border controls tighten, for many migrants turning back is not a possibility, or something they desire. And so, when faced with hardening policies, migrants are often forced into situations of increased violence and precarity, without a shift in their ultimate objective. This book analyzes the complex social situations of everyday violence, and increasingly aggressive border controls, which face migrants in Mexico, as well as their exposure to a different kind of violence during their migration trajectory through the criminal actors such as gangs, cartels, and corrupt law enforcements that seek to make a profit from them. The book takes a critical approach on migration policies and on the externalization of borders by analyzing their effects on the trajectories and experiences of migrants themselves. It shows that the more migrants’ opportunities and rights during transit are hindered, the more they are at risk of exposure to these actors. Foregrounding the voices of migrants, this book offers fresh insights into debates surrounding migration, politics, international relations, and anthropology in the Americas. Ximena Alba Villalever is an anthropologist, researcher, and professor in the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin, where she is a coordinator of the Gender Studies profile of the Master’s program. Her research has focused on migration processes with a particular interest on gender, labor, inequality, globalization, and violence. Stephanie Schütze is Professor for Cultural and Social Anthropology with a specialization in gender and migration studies at the Lateinamerika-​Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. She has conducted research on political culture, social movements, migration, and gender relations in diverse contexts and regions in Mexico, the United States, and Brazil.

Ludger Pries held Chair of Sociology and is now Senior Professor at the Department of Social Science of Ruhr-​University Bochum. He had longer teaching and research stays in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Fields of research are (international comparative) sociology of migration, work and organizations, life-​course research, and transnationalism. Oscar Calderón Morillón is Research Professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. His lines of research are labor studies and migration processes in the contexts of exclusion and vulnerability.

Routledge Studies in Development, Mobilities and Migration

This series is dedicated to the growing and important area of mobilities and migration, particularly through the lens of international development. It promotes innovative and interdisciplinary research targeted at a global readership. The series welcomes submissions from established and junior authors on cutting-​edge and high-​level research on key topics that feature in global news and public debate. These include the so called European migration crisis; famine in the Horn of Africa; riots; environmental migration; development-​induced displacement and resettlement; livelihood transformations; people-​trafficking; health and infectious diseases; employment; South-​South migration; population growth; children’s wellbeing; marriage and family; food security; the global financial crisis; drugs wars; and other contemporary crisis. Refugee Resilience and Adaptation in the Middle East Reclaiming Agency in the Informal Economies of Lebanon and Jordan Edited by Haya Al-​Dajani, Maysa Baroud, and Nasser Yassin The Italian Diaspora in South Africa Nostalgia, Identity, and Belonging in the Second and Third Generations Maria Chiara Marchetti-​Mercer and Anita Virga Remittances and Financial Inclusion Contested Geographies of Marketisation in Senegal and Ghana Vincent Guermond Forced Migration across Mexico Organized Violence, Migrant Struggles, and Life Trajectories Edited by Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle​dge.com/​Routle​dge-​Stud​ies-​inDeve​lopm​ent-​Mob​ilit​ies-​and-​Migrat​ion/​book-​ser​ies/​RSDM

Forced Migration across Mexico

Organized Violence, Migrant Struggles, and Life Trajectories Edited by Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​61401-​4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​61404-​5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​61405-​2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781032614052 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Approaches to organized violence and forced migration in transit through Mexico

xi xv

1

X I M E N A A L B A VI L L AL E VE R, S T E P HANI E S CHÜ TZE, LU D G ER PRIES, A N D O S C A R C AL DE RÓN MORI L L ÓN

PART I

The effects of violence and border regimes on migration processes

15

2 Violence and Central American migrants on Mexico’s southern border

17

M A RT H A L U Z ROJAS -​W I E S NE R

3 Entanglement of violences: Doubly forced migrants transiting across the Americas

36

S O L E D A D Á LVARE Z VE L AS CO AND BRUNO MI R A N D A

4 Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait at Mexico’s northern border M . D O L O R E S PARÍ S -​P OMBO

57

x  Contents PART II

Forced migrants’ experiences with organized violence

73

5 Investigating in-​transit migration through Mexico within the context of violence and the pandemic

75

O S C A R C A L D ERÓN MORI L L ÓN, AMI R E S T RADA, MA RLEN E RO D R ÍG U EZ, A X E L O RT I Z , KARL A GUT I É RRE Z , E S T E FANÍ A GU TIÉRR EZ, A R A N Z A C L I MACO, ANTONI O AMAT, AL AN RODRÍG U EZ, J AV I E R S O L Í S , AND E US E BI O MOTO

6 Forced migration and organized violence between the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico: Evidence from a 2020 survey

89

L U D G E R P R I E S , BE RNA Ş AFAK Z ÜL F I KAR S AVCI, X I M E N A A L B A VI L L AL E VE R, AND OS CAR CAL DERÓ N MO RILLÓ N

7 Caravanas migrantes as counter-​strategies against violence and (im)mobility

112

X I M E N A A L B A VI L L AL E VE R AND S T E P HANI E S CH Ü TZE

8 Ties along the arterial border in Mexico: Groups, institutions, and information

128

A L E J A N D R A DÍ AZ DE L E ÓN AND JOHN DOE RI N G - ​W H ITE

PART III

Gender and violence in migration trajectories

143

9 Gendered patterns of mobility and access to refugee protection of Central American migrants and refugees in Mexico

145

S U S A N N E WI L L E RS

10 Organized violence in life histories of Central American migrant women

166

M E L A N I E N AYE L I WI E S CHAL L A

11 Waiting as violence: The interactions of gender and waiting mechanisms in the asylum systems of the United States and Mexico

183

P I A B E R G H O F F AND LYA CUÉ L L AR

Index

200

Contributors

Ximena Alba Villalever is an anthropologist, researcher and professor in the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin, where she is coordinator of the Gender Studies profile of the Master’s program. Her research has focused on migration processes with a particular interest on gender, labor, inequality, globalization, and violence. Soledad Álvarez Velasco is a social anthropologist and human geographer whose research analyzes the interrelationship between mobility, control, and spatial transformations across the Americas. She works as Assistant Professor of the Departments of Anthropology and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and she is a member of the Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador. Antonio Amat is a student of the Master’s degree in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (double degree Master’s program between Master in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (MESTROLO/ BUAP AND MaRAWO/RUB) and Master in Social Sciences “Management and Regulation of Labor, Economics and Organization” (MaRAWO RUB)) of the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Pia Berghoff has a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Cultural Studies. She is currently a research assistant and PhD student in Cultural and Social Anthropology in the International Research Training Group “Temporalities of Future” at Freie Universität Berlin. Oscar Calderón Morillón is Research Professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. His lines of research are labor studies and migration processes in the contexts of exclusion and vulnerability. Lya Cuéllar is a journalist and political scientist. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She currently coordinates the Central American Roundtable,

xii  List of contributors a network of German organizations based in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Aranza Climaco is a student of the degree in Sociology at the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Alejandra Díaz de León is Assistant Professor of Sociology at El Colegio de Mexico (Colmex) in Mexico City. She studies social ties, solidarity, and trust between migrants in transit in Mexico. John Doering-​White is Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work and the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. His work focuses on how the dynamics of care and violence intersect within organizations that provide aid to migrant populations between Central America, Mexico, and the United States. M. Dolores París-​Pombo is a full-​time professor at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), in Tijuana, Mexico. She specializes in international migrations and violence. Her book Violencias y migraciones centroamericanas en México (2017) was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Amir Estrada is a student of the Master’s degree in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (double degree Master’s program between Master in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (MESTROLO/ BUAP AND MaRAWO/RUB) and Master in Social Sciences “Management and Regulation of Labor, Economics and Organization” (MaRAWO RUB)) of the, FCPyS Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Estefanía Gutiérrez is a student of the degree in Sociology at the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Karla Gutiérrez is a student of the Master’s degree in International Relations at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Bruno Miranda is Associate Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IISUNAM). His areas of research include migration and mobilities, border processes, and migration governance. During the last few years, he has conducted researched on waiting times and spaces of transcontinental migrants in Mexican border cities. Eusebio Moto is a student of the degree in Sociology at the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Axel Ortiz is a student of the degree in Sociology at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.

List of contributors  xiii Ludger Pries held Chair of Sociology and is now Senior Professor at the Department of Social Science of Ruhr-​University Bochum. He had longer teaching and research stays in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Fields of research are (international comparative) sociology of migration, work and organizations, life-​course research, and transnationalism. Alan Rodríguez is a student of the Master’s degree in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (double degree Master’s program between Master in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (MESTROLO/ BUAP AND MaRAWO/RUB) and Master in Social Sciences “Management and Regulation of Labor, Economics and Organization” (MaRAWO RUB)) at the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Marlene Rodríguez is a student of the Master’s degree in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (double degree Master’s program between Master in Social Studies: Work, Labor Regulation and Organization (MESTROLO/BUAP AND MaRAWO/RUB) and Master in Social Sciences “Management and Regulation of Labor, Economics and Organization” (MaRAWO RUB)) at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Martha Luz Rojas-​Wiesner is a sociologist and researcher at the Group of Migration Studies and Transborder Processes, Department of Society and Culture, of El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) (Chiapas, Mexico). She conducts studies on female migration and Central American migration on the southern border of Mexico on issues related to social vulnerability, precariousness and migration, as well as the inclusion–​exclusion of migrants. Stephanie Schütze is Professor for Cultural and Social Anthropology with a specialization in gender and migration studies at the Lateinamerika-​Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. She has conducted research on political culture, social movements, migration, and gender relations in diverse contexts and regions in Mexico, the United States, and Brazil. Javier Solís is a student of the degree in Sociology at the FCPyS, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Melanie Nayeli Wieschalla is a Ph.D. candidate and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation scholar at the Chair of Sociology/​ Organisation, Migration, Participation at Ruhr-​University, Bochum. She holds a M.Sc. in Geography at the same university. She is working on her doctoral thesis on organized violence in narratives of forced migrants in Mexico. Susanne Willers is a sociologist, with a doctorate in social and political sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her research focuses on migration and gender studies, care, and transnational families. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies (LAI) of the Free University of Berlin (FU-​Berlin).

xiv  List of contributors Berna Şafak Zülfikar Savcı is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sociology Department of the Ruhr-​ University Bochum. In her current research, she analyzes the biographical projects of forced migrants in different countries. Her research interests include forced migration and poverty. In general, she is engaged with understanding the interconnections between development and population studies.

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Acknowledgments

This book is the result of a team effort of several years. The first drafts of the chapters were reviewed and discussed in a workshop among all authors in order to achieve a well-​rounded theoretical argument. However, there was also external support from other researchers and institutions that made the book possible. We particularly thank Xóchitl Bada for her deep insights during the process of production of the first and final drafts of the manuscript, as well as the two peer-​reviewers for their insights in the resulting manuscript. We would also like to thank Pia Berghoff and Nick Linsel for their support in all stages of the production of this book, during the research phase of ForMOVe, as well as through the writing and correcting phases of many of the chapters. Barbara Belejack oversaw the proofreading of the entire manuscript, with a very detailed revision of our words and arguments. Last but not least, it would not have been possible to carry out this book project without the support of the DFG, which financed the ForMOVe project from 2019 to 2022.

1 Introduction Approaches to organized violence and forced migration in transit through Mexico Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón The second decade of the twenty-​first century has been marked by a significant rise in mass forced migration worldwide. This has been a result of various intersecting factors that have made life in certain regions even more threatening for individuals and specific social groups. They range from environmental disasters that have accrued because of climate change and reckless extractivism, to wars and armed conflicts fueled by religious, economic, and political struggles within and between countries; from the escalation of violence carried out by state or non-​state actors, to the lack of food security or the freedom to express oneself (in terms of religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, or political inclination, among other factors). Violence, especially organized violence, is a fundamental element that is at the core of the mass migration phenomena that characterize this century. The increasing tendency of countries from the Global North and other regions to restrict the arrival of forced migrants to their territories has eroded the principles of humanitarian protection of displaced persons.1 Strategies of border externalization have disastrous effects for people trying to reach safety and build a dignified life. In bottleneck countries such as Mexico, the ambivalent positioning between the Global North and the Global South is determinant. The country oscillates between following its own national interests, acknowledging and defending the fundamental rights of migrants, and controlling its borders on behalf of the interests of its neighbor to the north, thereby undermining these rights and putting migrants in an even more vulnerable position. In this context, the corridor of forced migration to and through Mexico is particularly characterized by increasing precarity, violence, and death for forced migrants (REDODEM, 2020). Thus, understanding the migration patterns that shape this corridor –​ especially the nexus between forced migration and organized violence –​is of increasing importance. This book presents an overview of how violence, and particularly organized violence, triggers and influences forced migration movements across the Central America–​Mexico–​US corridor. Many of those entering Mexico are forced to leave their countries in order to escape unbearable and interconnected conditions of poverty and violence. Once they are in transit, they continue to face these challenges. Moreover, precarious living conditions and (organized) violence not only remain DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-1

2  Ximena Alba Villalever et al. relevant, they may also become even more tangible. They inform and transform the trajectories that migrants take; they restrict their possibilities or force them to start once and again their journey north, seeking to reach safety. Before and during their migration paths, forced migrants are exposed to dangers that range from human trafficking networks, drug cartels, and other violent groups; difficult natural environments; and violent or abusive encounters with authorities. The contributions in this book analyze from various perspectives the ways that forced migration and violence entwine in the Americas, with a strong focus on the Central America–​ Mexico–​US corridor. Whether from Haiti, Venezuela, Togo, or Central America, regardless of their starting point and their different stages of migration, all the migration trajectories analyzed here are part of a south–​north mobility that must eventually cross Mexico (and many other borders) to reach the United States. In the last two decades, Mexico has become an important country of transit for forced migrants, mainly from the so-​called Northern Triangle of Central America, i.e., Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Furthermore, the North American migration system has undergone changes in recent years due to the implementation of more restrictive immigration policies and the externalization of borders from the United States to Mexico. This has propelled shifts in Mexico’s role in the migration corridor, changing from a country of transit to a country of forced immobility for many migrants and asylum seekers who fail to cross the US border. Therefore, the chapters in this book show how migrants have had to change strategies to carry out their mobility and occasionally have found new forms of resistance and political protest. With this background, and considering specifically the Central America–​ Mexico–​US corridor, a crucial question arises: How could we conceptualize the different forms of mobility and of violence that are relevant in this corridor? We argue that organized violence and forced migration are two adequate conceptual terms to analyze the migratory phenomena in the Central America–​Mexico–​US corridor. Thus, three chapters of this volume highlight findings of the research project “Forced Migration and Organized Violence” (ForMOVe)2 that compares and contrasts forms of forced migration in its interrelation with organized violence in different localities. The project follows a transnational focus and comparison between the two transit countries Mexico and Turkey. In the other eight chapters, migration scholars who have been in close discussion with the ForMOVe team and have collaborated in workshops and conferences provide their latest empirical studies focusing on various contexts, regions, and timeframes to analyze the experiences of migrants in their transit through Mexico. To explore the diverse intersections of these discussions, in the following pages, we present an overview of the contexts and flows of forced migration in the Americas. Then, we examine the role of Mexico within the migratory system. To do so, we discuss the concepts of transit and forced migration, as well as their complexities and limitations. Finally, we propose a theoretical lens for analyzing organized violence in the context of forced migration in the Central America–​Mexico–​US migration corridor.

Introduction  3 Forced migration in the Americas The concept of forced migration arose in the 1980s to emphasize that people forced to leave their countries did not fit into the rigid definition of “refugee” established in the Geneva Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol (Estévez, 2021). Forced migration, however, has proved to be a complex concept, especially when considering that its distinction from economic migration has become increasingly blurred (Castles, 2003; Menjívar, 1993), and that different contexts of discrimination and criminalization of migrants have developed. In this respect, the turn of the century marked a watershed in border externalization and securitization strategies directed toward containing migration flows, especially in the aftermath of 9/​ 11 and the global response to control migration. The global rise in asylum claims and refugees, which doubled between 2000 and 2020, reaching 34 million forcibly displaced persons across international borders in 2020 (UN DESA, 2020), and the vastly uneven share that countries of the Global North and the Global South receive and care for is only the tip of the iceberg of these contexts of forced mobility (Castles, 2014). We understand forced migration as a process of human mobility that is the result of a considerable degree of life-​threatening circumstances often caused by force, compulsion, or coercion in the form of persecution because of racial, religious, ethnic, political, national, or gender reasons or based on life-​threatening disasters, catastrophes, and/​or economic insustainability. In the Americas, in fact, forced migratory movements were and are caused by intersecting factors (Abrego and Menjívar, 2022). Economic and political instability have likewise forced people to leave in search of better opportunities, either to neighboring countries or to countries of the Global North (Andrade Alfonso, 2011; Bradley, 2014; the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2022a). Increasing violence, often a consequence of deepening social inequality, has likewise fueled forced migration in vast regions of Latin America (Abrego and Menjívar, 2022; Pastor, 2011). Additionally, disasters caused by climate change and excessive extractivism, which have been particularly devastating in Latin American countries and other localities of the Global South, have left entire communities without crops, housing, or other means of survival (Andrade Alfonso, 2011; North and Grinspun, 2016; Villarreal and Muñoz, 2022). The countries of origin of forced migrants as well as migration movements in the Americas are diverse and are often subject to change. Since the 1980s and increasingly in the last decade, migration from the Northern Triangle of Central America in transit through Mexico to the United States has skyrocketed. A confluence of factors, often resulting from unequal structural conditions, has fueled these migration flows. Even when they are characterized as mixed flows, they contain a substantial degree of force, compulsion, or coercion: inadequate and insufficient work opportunities to earn a dignified living; a lack of public security often caused by post-​conflict, militarized societies (Abrego and Menjívar, 2022); as well as recurring corruption, impunity, and organized violence. Since the beginning of the new century, organized violence has been a key factor for forced migration in this

4  Ximena Alba Villalever et al. migration corridor. In addition to state persecution, non-​state actors –​ mara gangs and drug cartels –​ have also played a role in the massive exodus processes (Alba Villalever, Pries and Schütze, 2022). Other migratory movements have taken place in the Americas in recent decades, both in south-​south as well as in south-​north directions. In recent years, forced migration from Venezuela to neighboring and wealthier countries has increased, from 15,000 asylum seekers in 2015 to more than 971,000 in 2021 (IOM, 2022b). After a devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, migration to countries like Chile, Brazil, and Mexico grew; the devastation of the country also “exacerbated deep-​rooted problems” that were compounded by the 2016 earthquake (Feldmann et al., 2019: 3). These migration patterns, especially to Brazil and Chile, were boosted by a short-​lived commodity boom and the need for labor. Nevertheless, they were quickly followed by a steep recession and the rise of center-​right governments with increasingly restrictive migratory policies. Unemployment hit the migrant population particularly hard and forced them to start their migration trajectory anew (Feldmann et al., 2019: 4–​7). In recent years, these south-​south movements shifted toward the north, mixing movements directly from Haiti with those of subsequent migration from Brazil and Chile, with the United States as the main destination (Feldmann et al., 2019: 3). In addition, recent wars in the Middle East and Africa have forced a considerable number of migrants to leave their places of origin and search for safety in neighboring countries and toward the Global North. These migration flows have also taken a transatlantic shift, first as a result of Brazil’s need for manual labor (Bressan, 2021) and Ecuador’s progressive migration law of 2008 (Feldmann et al., 2019), and now, because of the continuing journey north, especially toward the United States (Joseph, 2021; Miranda, 2021). The migration backgrounds and corridors identified and discussed so far, which are by no means exhaustive of the diversity of the region, have made the Americas one of the most significant migration hubs of the twenty-​first century, not only in terms of numbers but also in terms of repercussions on the migrant experience. They also reflect the complexity of these flows, in which economic factors, brought on by structural inequality, natural disasters, as well as violence of different natures, occur both in countries of origin as well as in transit. These contexts of violence often accrue in specific regions and intersect with other dimensions, such as gender or racial discrimination (Willers; Wieschalla; Alvarez and Miranda, in this volume). Furthermore, many of the above-​mentioned south-​south migration movements are sooner or later directed toward the north through the Central American–​Mexican corridor, with the aim of reaching the United States. The concept of transit migration and Mexico as a transit country Ever since the 1980s, Mexico has become one of the preeminent countries of transit migration in Latin America, especially due to its geographical location as the only country bordering the United States to the south. As has already been asserted by experts in the field of migration (Basok, 2019; Düvell, 2012), neither the concept

Introduction  5 of transit migration nor the term mixed migration captures the complexity of these migration trends. Therefore, scholars have sought to revisit the concepts and locate them within the specific contexts that are analyzed. The concept of transit country or transit migration has not been clearly defined; it is difficult to determine if it refers to a geographical or a temporal concept. In general terms, it might be understood as a period of the migration journey in which a desired destination country has not been reached, but this definition is controversial, as “it is not made clear how one can be sure what a final destination country is” (Düvell, 2012: 417). Since the 1990s, in political –​and often also academic –​discourse, transit countries have mostly referred to countries of the Global South, generally those bordering desired destinations such as the United States and countries of the European Union, and with fewer means to respond to growing fluxes of migration.3 These countries often serve as “buffer zones” (Basok, 2019; İçduygu and Yükseker, 2012), expected by countries of the Global North to not only receive migrants but also to deter their pace toward desired destinations (Düvell, 2012). While some authors consider that transit migration undermines the complexity of migration in terms of the shifts regarding desired destinations (Basok, 2019), others grant the concept the ability to represent more thoroughly the conditions of “in-​between” within migration, which affect “personalities and aspirations” (Schapendonk, 2012: 581). In addition, there has been a general inclination to allot a condition of irregularity to transit migration, a tendency that should likewise be revised. Especially in the context of migration through Mexico, growing numbers of migrants go through the required asylum procedures in the country or are given temporary protection that allow them to cross Mexico, regardless of their intention to permanently settle in its territory or not. Asylum procedures in Mexico and the United States often leave migrants, especially those with fewer resources (or with none), stranded in a prolonged and precarious status waiting for documentation as transit migrants in forced immobility. To understand the relationship between this precariousness and the complexities of transit migration in Mexico, we have to consider the effects that bordering strategies and migration control have on the experiences and periods of (im)mobility of migrants, as several chapters in this book reveal. The tendency to claim refuge in Mexico has been a result of strategies of border externalization, which mainly manifested in more restrictive border controls both at the US–​Mexico border and the southern Mexican border and in movement restrictions across the country (Torre Cantalapiedra and Yee-​Quintero, 2018). Strategies of border externalization are often blatantly violent and rely on the use of direct force by Mexican authorities, which greatly impacts migrants’ trajectories. Other less visible but equally pervasive strategies rely on the effects of time and immobility –​ leading to increased impoverishment –​in order to deter migrants from continuing their paths. These strategies range from militarization throughout Mexico and especially its southern border (Rojas Wiesner, this volume; Slack et al., 2016) to “metering” systems and restrictions of asylum claims, such as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) and, under the pretext of the pandemic, “Title 42” (Berghoff and Cuéllar, this volume; Heyman, 2021; París Pombo, this volume).

6  Ximena Alba Villalever et al. Furthermore, the growing vulnerability of migrant groups is another reason for the increase in asylum procedures in Mexico. Transit migration through Mexico consistently involves minors, either accompanied by parents or other relatives, or unaccompanied (Silva-​Hernández, 2015); women (often with children or pregnant); people with different physical or mental abilities; or LGBTQI+​ migrants, who continue to be one of the most vulnerable groups and prone to become victims of (sexual) violence (Infante et al., 2020). These populations are less likely to travel on their own, unnoticed by authorities; therefore, they are more vulnerable to violence. Going through asylum procedures in Mexico is for them a strategy to be able to travel more safely, yet it does not always work as planned. On occasions, those who have the means to resort to smugglers across the borders –​ a strategy deemed quicker –​are often led “to various coercive situations, such as exploitation through the leverage of debt, carrying drugs into the United States to earn money, and being trafficked for work, commercial sex, etc.” (Heyman, 2021: 58). Other strategies that have gained visibility since 2018 are, for instance, the organization of mobility in large groups as caravans; this has also been a result of the violence executed or at least tolerated by state agencies (Contreras Delgado et al., 2021; Torre Cantalapiedra and Yee-​Quintero, 2018) and of the intensification of border controls that inflict periods of immobility without the means to carry out a dignified life (Alba Villalever and Schütze, this volume). Hence, while periods of mobility might be interrupted because of infringed immobility, so too can settlement be interrupted because of unexpected events, especially those concerning forced migration in its nexus with organized violence. Although migrants who desire to reach the United States are still constantly forced to transit through increasingly dangerous paths, live in precarious conditions, and/​ or remain in a state of involuntary immobility, there have also been migrant strategies and forms of organizing to fight against or overcome these contexts in which organized violence is prone. Organized violence in the Central America–​Mexico–​US migration corridor A vast majority of migrants in the Central America–​Mexico–​US corridor experience various forms of violence: from domestic, racial, or gender violence, to robbery, retention, imprisonment or kidnapping, and up to extortion and human trafficking (CEPAL, 2018: 17). A crucial aspect that defines this corridor is the prevalence of states with high levels of corruption and low respect for national and international rights. In Mexico, as well as in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, complex payment networks exist between cartels, other groups of organized crime, and violent gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha; many of these groups operate along the main migration routes, particularly those that follow the train tracks (Ambrosius, 2018; Arteaga-​Botello et al., 2019; Trejo and Ley, 2020). For the year 2019, the IOM (2022c) declared this corridor to be as deadly as the Mediterranean for migration between Africa and Europe.4 Violence perpetrated by gangs in Central America, as well as the violence that results from the strengthening of cartels and the effects

Introduction  7 of the so-​called “war against drugs” in Mexico, is characterized as generalized violence, which neither the Refugee Convention nor its Protocols consider to be grounds for asylum (Estévez, 2021: 25). Therefore, despite the intense violence that they suffer, forced migrants are constantly deprived of this right. However, the contributions of this book show that we are not dealing with general or diffuse violence in the Central America–​Mexico–​US corridor but with organized forms of violence –​both by state and non-​state actors. Johann Galtung defined violence as “present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations” (Galtung, 1969: 168) or “as avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life, lowering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible” (Galtung, 1990: 292). This is such a broad definition that it includes almost all social relations and forms of social inequality5; it diffuses the concept of violence into all social relations. At the opposite extreme, in critical and modernization approaches, organized violence is reduced to armed conflicts between sovereign entities or as the legitimate and legal means of guaranteeing state sovereignty over a certain territory (Heitmeyer and Hagan, 2002; Imbusch, 2002; Shaw, 2009). Kaldor additionally states that “(the) nation-​state had bottled violence –​ removed violence from domestic relations and bottled it up to be released in intense blasts known as war. Fear and superstition were channeled into external threats and enemy stereotypes” (2004: 153). Such marginalization of violence in social theory and its reduction to primarily organized state violence is likewise far from addressing the actual reality of violence, especially in the context of forced migration in the Americas and in the Middle East. Overcoming this classic focus on formally organized violence of states and their military has become increasingly relevant.6 In her seminal book New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Kaldor (2012) emphasizes that the traditional understanding of war as applying (legitimate and legal) violence between sovereign states must be revised and extended. The classic definition of states as having the legitimate monopoly of organized violence is no longer sufficient and has been eroded “from below” (Kaldor, 2012: 6) as non-​state military groups claim legitimate use of organized violence. Some of these descriptions help to understand the dynamics of violence in Central America and Mexico as well as the Middle East. Both regions experienced civil wars with complex intervening corporate internal actors (different police, border agencies, militias, gangs, and cartels) and external actors like states (as the EU states in the case of the Middle East and the United States for Central America and Mexico). Nevertheless, the reality of violence seems more complex, especially in the context of forced migration, where border control agencies, human traffickers, or professional smugglers might be active without high levels of brutality and terror. Based on these considerations, and reflecting on our specific research context, in the ForMOVe project, we define our understanding of organized violence as the use or convincing threat of purposefully physically and/​or mentally harming persons or groups of persons in a collective, organized way in order to achieve collective and/​or corporate goals (Pries, 2022). In the context of migration, organized

8  Ximena Alba Villalever et al. violence encompasses violence perpetrated by constituencies like nation-​states as well as collective or corporate actors, legal and illegal, with varying levels of legitimacy. While the concept of organized crime focuses on aspects of illegality of business-​like organizational structures, organized violence focuses on the use of force of state and non-​state actors with a broad variety of goals (that might be political, ideological, economical, or based on so-​called “national-​security”). Within the concept of organized violence, organizations are more or less durable, vertically and horizontally differentiated entanglements of cooperating members. Although we concentrate on organized violence, in our empirical work and the chapters of this book, we opened our analysis to all forms of violence. Structure of the book The chapters of this book offer insights into the complex social situations of everyday violence, increasingly aggressive border and migration control, as well as exposure to organized violence throughout the migration process at the hands of criminal actors such as gangs, cartels, and corrupt law enforcement agencies that profit from the situation of migrants. The more that migrant opportunities and rights are restrained during transit, the greater the risk of exposure to these actors. In this sense, the book takes a critical approach to migration politics and the externalization of borders by analyzing the impact on the life courses of migrants themselves. It examines in detail how these have, in many ways, increased the exposure of migrants in transit to forms of organized violence. The chapters focus on experiences along migratory routes and how they affect migrant trajectories. Both experiences of violence and reactions to violence are determined by the intersection of variables of social and cultural inequalities. Gender, class, race, and ethnicity, as well as political affinity and sexual orientation, play an important role. The first part of the book examines the impact of the externalization of border regimes and migration policies on migrant experiences. The three chapters show how changing migration policies affect migration trajectories and in particular cause waiting times, deprive migrants of protection and rights, and expose them to violence. By contrasting the trajectories of migrants from Honduras, Haiti, Venezuela, and sub-​Saharan Africa, Soledad Alvarez and Bruno Miranda point to the globality of the Central American–​Mexican migration corridor and to its spatial connection with other routes and mobility logistics in the Americas. These migrants previously had to undertake arduous south-​south journeys. The chapter analyzes the intersecting structural forms of violence that provoke the double forced transit and deprivation that migrants face both in countries of origin and in transit. Finally, the authors address the waiting times and spaces that characterize these doubly enforced mobilities, which they describe as both spaces of deprivation of rights and moments for the development of new forms of resistance. María Dolores París Pombo’s chapter also draws attention to waiting times and spaces as effects of the externalization of border controls and asylum policies in northern Mexico. She

Introduction  9 shows how increasingly restrictive US immigration policies have led to a blockade of thousands of migrants in northern Mexican cities, compounded by the closure of land borders in response to the COVID-​19 pandemic. The chapter analyzes the precarious conditions of asylum seekers from Central America and Mexico who are forced to settle temporarily in cities on Mexico’s northern border, which are among the most dangerous in the world. Waiting there for an opportunity to hire a smuggler or seek asylum at a port of entry, migrants are particularly vulnerable to a variety of forms of violence, especially predatory forms of organized crime. Based on research on the southern Mexican border, Martha Luz Rojas Wiesner’s chapter documents the experiences of migrants with various forms of violence. Her analysis not only focuses on migrants “in transit” but also includes Central Americans living in southern border localities who are victims of common crime, organized crime, and state agents. As early as the 1990s, the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico reported various types of violence in Mexico against migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The author shows that the situation has not changed significantly; on the contrary, the intensity or frequency and severity or cruelty of these incidents have increased. The second part of the book focuses on forced migrants’ experiences of organized violence on their transit routes. The four chapters document the strategies used by migrants on their way from the southern to the northern Mexican border, as they confront deterrent migration policies, organized violence, and exhaustion produced by the sheer length of the transit route. The chapter by Oscar Calderón and his team presents an analysis of the fieldwork carried out as part of the ForMOVe project in 2020. The team conducted a survey of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala that focused on the link between forced migration and organized violence, in addition to participatory observation along various parts of the transit route through Mexico. The chapter describes elements, phases, and individual experiences of fieldwork in the context of the COVID-​19 pandemic, insecurity and violence, and risk situations, which were resolved through support networks and through the ability to respond as a team to emergency situations. Based on the results of this survey of 359 forced and transit migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the chapter of Ximena Alba, Oscar Calderón, Ludger Pries, and Berna Zulfikar analyzes their reasons for migrating. The chapter reveals the endemic situation of organized violence that moves in waves and leads to different migration dynamics from these countries. The chapter also identifies the most important corridors for arriving in and transiting through Mexico, focusing on the special challenges and threats that various groups of migrants face. It identifies the role of state agencies, civil society organizations, and other organizations in the migration trajectory. Finally, the study investigates the desired destinations of these migrants. Also part of the ForMOVe project, Ximena Alba and Stephanie Schütze present empirical findings based on ethnographic visits and biographical interviews conducted in Tapachula at the southern Mexican border in 2021. During the research stay, a migrant caravan formed and set off for Mexico City. The chapter focuses on the formation of caravans and their importance in migrant trajectories. Most participants had waited months for their status to be legalized

10  Ximena Alba Villalever et al. and were not allowed to leave Tapachula, making them increasingly vulnerable and subject to precarious conditions. The chapter analyzes caravans as a form of migrant self-​organization to resist a backdrop of organized violence by various non-​state and state actors, including inhuman, arbitrary state policies on migration. Based on multi-​situated ethnography in the southern and northern border of Mexico, Alejandra Díaz de León and John Doering-​White also analyze the impact of government policies aimed at deterring migration and the rampant criminal violence that undocumented migrants crossing Mexico face. Their chapter focuses on migrants’ need of updated and varied information about the migratory path to overcome these state-​made obstacles. They suggest three main ways for migrants to find updated information: from family and friends back home or in the United States, humanitarian institutions, and social ties they form on the road. They argue that information from institutions and new social ties is essential for updating plans while migrating. The third part of the book examines changing gender patterns of transit migrants. In the past decade, the migration of youth and women in the Central American–​Mexican migration corridor has increased in number and visibility. These migrations are particularly affected by organized violence. Susanne Willers analyzes how changes in immigration and border management, violence, and the COVID-​19 pandemic have affected migrant expectations and strategies. In particular, she looks at the impact on gender mobility patterns in Mexico in recent years. She argues that migrants have changed their transit strategies and different groups have opted for new forms of resistance and political protest. This shows the complex intersections of variables of social difference such as race, class, gender, as well as national origin. Her chapter examines how women’s mobility in particular is not only influenced by the political, structural, and gender-​based violence of border enforcement along the routes but also by travel times, waiting times, and insecurity. Melanie Wieschalla analyses experiences with organized violence in life histories of Central American migrant women conducted in migrant shelters and migration-​ and refugee-​related NGOs in Mexico City. Her analysis shows that women who migrate from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala experience different types of violence in their life histories, influencing their migration trajectories. She concludes that the violence –​ specifically organized violence –​ experienced by women from the Northern Triangle of Central America is often tied to gender-​specific issues that can be encountered throughout their life histories and that often lead to emigration from their places of origin. Last but not least, in their chapter, Pia Berghoff and Lya Cuéllar emphasize the gendered differences of migrant experiences with chronic waiting in the asylum process in Tijuana. The implementation of the waiting mechanisms coincides with the increasing proportion of migrating women and families in the migration corridor from Central America to the United States in recent years. They conceptualize the observed consequences of the waiting mechanisms as a form of slow violence that is exacerbated by gendered forms of violence and migrants’ state of legal liminal legality. Arguing that these intervals are more than a side effect of inadequate political responses to the growing numbers of asylum seekers, the authors claim that they are part of a wider

Introduction  11 strategy of the US-​Mexican migration regime to deter, demoralize, and hinder unwanted migrants, mainly from the northern countries of Central America. Notes 1 As the Russian invasion to Ukraine and the response from European and other countries to the mass flight of refugees from that country has shown us again, this will to restrict the movement of forced migrants is particularly strong when those in question are “othered”; for a deeper discussion on the effects of “othering” –​in regard to race, religion, gender, and citizenship –​in the response to migration, see Boatcă and Roth (2020). 2 ForMOVe is based on the research project “Organized violence, new migration patterns, and development: A comparative study in Europe and the Americas” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG/​PR 637/​14). This joint research project “Forced Migration and Organized Violence (ForMOVe)” between Ruhr-​Universität Bochum and Freie Universität Berlin employed quantitative and qualitative research, such as ethnographic visits to immigrant shelters and organizations, narrative biographical interviews with migrants, and a standardized longitudinal survey in Mexico and in Turkey. 3 As Düvell points out, countries such as Poland, Austria, Italy, or France, have not been categorized as transit countries, despite the high flow of migrants in their territory (2012: 418). 4 Available on: www.migr​atio​ndat​apor​tal.org/​es/​regio​nal-​data-​overv​iew/​datos-​migr​ator​ ios-​en-​centro​amer​ica. Accessed April 15, 2023; see also: https://​news.un.org/​es/​story/​ 2019/​11/​1465​471 5 Attempts to work with the concept of structural violence often remain more general reflections than related to empirical evidence, e.g., when opposing structural violence to direct violence (Torre Cantalapiedra, 2019). 6 See for instance Münkler (2005), Finlay (2018), and Kane (1995).

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Part I

The effects of violence and border regimes on migration processes

2 Violence and Central American migrants on Mexico’s southern border Martha Luz Rojas-​Wiesner

In the 1990s, scant attention was paid to population mobility on Mexico’s southern border, although it was clear that migrants crossed this territory on their way to northern Mexico. Moreover, Central Americans—​and to a lesser extent people from other countries—​already lived in various parts of the region. Likewise, in specific areas, Guatemalan labor was hired, daily cross-​border interactions were recorded, and people who had initially arrived seeking refuge in the 1980s had settled (Castillo, 1986; Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH, 1996). This dynamic, which is now more complex, was barely known outside of that region, along with issues such as violence against migrants, the focus of this chapter. In the 1980s, several analyses of violence against Guatemalans who sought refuge in Mexican border towns were published in Mexico (see, for example, Aguayo, 1985); however, it was not until the mid-​1990s that a report from the National Human Rights Commission – Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH, 1996) revealed some of the different forms of violence against international migrants on the southern border of Mexico, particularly in Chiapas and Quintana Roo1 and predominantly against people from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua (CNDH, 1996). As we will see later, although the types of violence have not changed substantially, the same cannot be said of their intensity or frequency and degree of severity or cruelty. Moreover, a range of actors operating at different scales and in different territories have been involved in acts of violence against migrants, from the border region between Mexico and Guatemala and Belize to the border with the United States. This situation has significantly increased the probability that migrants will be victims of attacks or threats, despite the fact that they seek apparently safer alternatives to escape violence, such as using new routes or paying intermediaries. The types of violence on which institutions such as the CNDH have focused are usually expressions of direct, physical violence that have been made visible through reports, statistics, stories, and images published in the media on assaults, physical mistreatment, rape and sexual abuse, kidnapping, torture, and murder. However, they cannot be dissociated from indirect violence that has been rendered invisible because it has been naturalized and normalized, such as structural, institutional, and symbolic violence, among other possible classifications. DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-3

18  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner Since the early 1990s, these forms of violence perpetrated largely against Central American migrants “in transit”2 through Mexico have been documented (CNDH, 1996). This migratory modality was already registered before 1990 but became more noticeable throughout the 1990s, particularly after 1998, due to displacements caused by Hurricane Mitch (Castillo, 2005; Rojas Wiesner and Ángeles, 2008; Armijo, 2010). The causes of these displacements were already intertwined with others that were becoming more visible, such as those related to violence in the migrants’ places of origin. The Mexican government has responded to these migrations with control and containment measures in which not only the National Migration Institute (INM) but also other government agencies participate.3 Since the 1990s, this collaboration has spawned several types of abuse, as documented by the CNDH publication mentioned above, the annual reports of the Beta Sur Group for the Protection of Migrants (Grupo Beta Sur de Protección a Migrantes, hereinafter Grupo Beta Sur),4 and the numerous reports published to date by civil society organizations and other actors (see, for example, Knippen et al., 2015; Moncada and Rojas, 2022). The control actions implemented by the Mexican government on the border with Guatemala and Belize, which include the fight against drug and arms trafficking, migrant smuggling, and human trafficking, as well as migration control and containment, have reinforced the discourse that associates borders with danger and migration with security (Armijo, 2010). The result has been the stigmatization, criminalization, rejection, and expulsion of illegalized migrants, ignoring the causes of their displacement and their need for access to justice and international protection (see, for example, Global Rights and Sin Fronteras, 2005; Márquez Covarrubias, 2015; Moncada and Rojas, 2022). In Mexico, it has become common when referring to violations of the human rights of migrants and violence against migrants in general, to establish an association with people in transit to the United States, which limits the understanding of this social phenomenon. The implementation of measures that target migrants in transit also affect other migrants (both residents and workers) on the southern Mexican border. This has triggered an escalation of violence in the region, particularly—​but not exclusively—​against those lacking the immigration documentation required by the Mexican government to enter and remain in the country. This chapter seeks to explore, from the 1990s onwards, various expressions of violence against migrants on the southern border of Mexico. In nearly twenty years of interviewing migrants who live and work in towns on the border with Guatemala and Belize, as well as migrants who wish to continue their journey north, we have seen references to violence, both direct and indirect, running through every biography. This chapter is based on the testimony of migrants interviewed within the framework of projects in which I have participated since 1997, as well as reports and analyses by various authors.5 I have also drawn on hemerographic information and official statistics. Official sources only identify the criminal incidence, that is, the record of violent events or acts which generally are reported through denunciations. This information only partially contributes to our understanding of

Violence and Central American migrants  19 the characteristics of violence and does not convey the complexity or magnitude of this social phenomenon. This chapter is divided into three sections, in addition to the introduction and final reflections. The first refers to specific statements about what is meant by violence. The second explores expressions of direct violence, through official sources and hemerographic data, and examines the context and situations of extreme vulnerability that migrants have encountered on the southern border of Mexico. The third analyzes the forms of violence experienced by migrants on the southern border, based on their testimony. Violence and migration In a restrictive sense, violence is associated with intentional physical or bodily harm caused by using physical force against someone. Other meanings, however, question or expand each of the elements of this definition to emphasize the multidimensionality and complexity of violence, making it difficult to reach a consensus on a definition (see, for example, González, 2006; Arteaga and Arzuaga, 2017). Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois have pointed out that “Violence is a slippery concept—​nonlinear, productive, destructive, and6 reproductive […]. So, we can rightly speak of chains, spirals, and mirrors of violence—​or, as we prefer—​ a continuum of violence” (2004, p. 1). Violence can also be understood as “a textuality subject to interpretation” (Arteaga and Arzuaga, 2017, p. 120), so it may have different meanings. According to Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois, “the social and cultural dimensions of violence are what gives violence its power and meaning” (2004, p. 1). Violence can therefore be expressed in various ways; produce different types of damage (not only physical); be caused by different forces (not only physical); involve more than two social actors (not only victims and perpetrators/​aggressors, but also witnesses/​spectators); be located in specific social, cultural, and historical contexts; and be (re)interpreted from different perspectives (Galtung, 1998; Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois, 2004; Walby, 2012; Arteaga and Arzuaga, 2017). Violence, then, is not only a direct, visible, or manifest behavior; it can also be an indirect, invisible, or even latent action (Galtung, 1998; Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois, 2004). This approach can be found in authors such as Johan Galtung, for whom violence operates in three dimensions: direct, cultural, and structural. For this author, the enormous variations in violence are explained in terms of culture and structure. According to their classification, cultural and structural violence cause direct violence, but the latter reinforces structural and cultural violence (Galtung, 1998, p. 15). In other words, there is an association or link between different forms of violence, whether they are interpreted from Galtung’s perspective or that of other authors. These interconnections challenge the divisions that have traditionally been made between types or forms of violence (Menjívar, 2008; Walby, 2012; Arteaga and Arzuaga, 2017). Cecilia Menjívar, for example, points out that cases of interpersonal violence are not dissociated from other forms of violence. They are not the result of the behaviors of individuals or even of their choices but rather

20  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner of inequalities that have been institutionalized in the legal system and justified through religion, ideology, and history (Menjívar, 2008, p. 14). In the case of migration, the discourse and actions that emphasize national sovereignty and use national security to justify containing people from other countries have exacerbated the expressions of violence against them. Restrictive immigration policies have illegalized and criminalized migrants for not having immigration documents. In addition to these disparaging narratives, migrants have been blamed for crises, destabilization, disease, insecurity, and even changes in daily life, which, in those same imaginaries, seemed to have been “problem-​free” until their arrival. This discourse has contributed to the stigmatization of migrants through stereotypes that influence the social construction of a negative otherness. Through these imaginaries, these others, who are called “different,” “foreigners,” and “invaders,” become threatening non-​subjects who can be assaulted, attacked, and violated. From these imaginaries, violence against migrants is considered justified; therefore, they “do not deserve” access to justice or, in general, to a life free of violence. This disparaging, criminalizing narrative has had various repercussions on the failure to acknowledge migrants as subjects or social actors (Arteaga and Arzuaga, 2017). It has encouraged expressions of social and institutional violence, which, in turn, have produced a complex spiral or continuum of violence (Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois, 2004) against migrants in Mexico. In this chapter, I have opted to explore direct, visible forms of violence against migrants in Mexico, particularly on the southern border of Mexico, since they are intertwined with indirect violence. Although the distinction has its limitations, it is useful as an approach. I recognize, as Galtung points out, that when we explore the various sources that attempt to quantify direct forms of violence, what we usually find is an approach to its “material, visible effects” rather than its “non-​material, invisible effects” (Galtung, 1998, p. 28), which would require us to specifically investigate those latter effects. Direct violence against migrants The issue of human rights violations against migrants “in transit” through Mexico, as well as forms of violence perpetrated by non-​state actors, began to receive attention in the mid-​1990s. As already mentioned, the 1996 CNDH report was the first to address the issue for the southern border, although it did not only focus on migrants in transit. One of the contributions of this report was its attempt to look at diversity through a general diagnosis of the region, with an emphasis on Chiapas and Quintana Roo, to describe links with Central America and document the specificities of international migration, including the issue of human rights violations against people in these migratory categories. Since then, it has been pointed out that the region constituted a “territorial space of convergence of various international migratory flows” (CNDH, 1996, p. 26): migration of agricultural workers, refugee population, cross-​border mobility, in-​transit migration, and settlement processes. Most migrants were from Central America, although the presence

Violence and Central American migrants  21 of people from other countries (such as Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador) has already been mentioned (CNDH, 1996, p. 22). What types of violence did people in these migratory conditions face in the mid-​ 1990s? The CNDH report pointed out that the “undocumented nature” of “immigration” in and through the southern Mexican border exposed migrants to a range of dangers. The registration and border control based on the General Population Act (LGP) demanded compliance with requirements to enter and remain in Mexico that could not feasibly be met, forcing migrants to seek, with or without intermediaries (known as coyotes or polleros), alternative routes to enter Mexico in an attempt to avoid arrest and imminent deportation. Until 2008, the LGP criminalized the unauthorized entry of foreigners, which contributed to the criminalization of migrants and the institutionalization of a culture of rejection, persecution, and expulsion. In 2008, entry into and permanence in Mexico was decriminalized, but arrests and deportations (expulsions) did not cease, although euphemisms were used to refer to these practices.7 On the pretext of migratory control, state and non-​state actors perpetrated forms of violence that prevail today; so far, they have only been explored through fragmentary, partial data from complaints received by government institutions, such as the CNDH and the Grupo Beta Sur, as well as the records of civil society organizations. Some of this data is mentioned here as an example. Based on a pilot survey and interviews with people without migratory documentation conducted in 1994 in Tapachula, Chiapas, as well as a review of other documentary sources (which included data on Tabasco and Quintana Roo), the CNDH study identified the following forms of violence: 1) mistreatment, beatings, and threats from Mexican authorities; 2) robbery, extortion, and confiscation/​destruction/​cancellation of documents by migratory authorities, police forces, and other state agencies; 3) irregular deportations and expulsions (of people with migratory documentation); 4) lack of decent detention conditions; 5) breach of the obligation to inform immigrants about their rights in detention conditions; and 6) corruption, omission, and collusion on the part of authorities responsible for compliance with migratory regulations, labor rights, and social aspects of migrant workers (CNDH, 1996). According to this diagnosis, between June 1990 and September 1994, the CNDH received 147 complaints from migrants born in Central America, mostly of Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran origin: 80, 34, and 20 complaints, respectively. Most of these complaints referred to abuses committed in Chiapas (68 complaints), México City (then known as the Federal District) (21), and Tabasco (11). In 109 of these complaints, the migrants identified 30 “authorities allegedly responsible” for the human rights violation of which they were victims. Among these authorities were: the General Directorate for Prevention and Social Rehabilitation (23 complaints), the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (19), the General Directorate of Immigration Services (14), and the Judicial Police (12). The main complaints for the southern Mexican border states—​most of which were registered in Chiapas—​were associated with 1) detention in places other than migratory stations, 2) arbitrary detention, 3) false accusation, 4) abuse of authority,

22  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner 5) torture, 6) intimidation, 7) delay in seeking justice, 8) sexual abuse, 9) extortion, and 10) injury (CNDH, 1996, pp. 113–​118). The Grupo Beta Sur, which answers to the INM and began operating in Tapachula in 1996, also mentioned crimes against migrants, which were concentrated in the Soconusco region: in “the railway stations and on freight train routes from Ciudad Hidalgo to Huixtla”8 (Instituto Nacional de Migración, Coordinación del Programa Beta Sur (INM), 1997, p. 1). This corridor extends through the Pacific coast of Chiapas to Tonalá and Arriaga and became the scene of deaths, accidents, and attacks against migrants, as Olivia Ruiz documented in a project she undertook in early 2000. According to her analysis, the southern border: has become one of the most difficult, hazardous crossings for undocumented migrants, most of whom are from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The crossing along the Soconusco coastal route, the section that runs from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tonalá, stands out precisely because of the concentration of potential dangers it contains. There, the multiplicity of threats faced by migrants, including assault, rape, robbery, and loss of limbs due to falling off the train, to name just a few, makes this a region with a high degree of risk for those attempting to cross it. (Ruiz, 2003, p. 1-​2) In its 1996‒1998 activity report, Grupo Beta Sur warned about the dimensions of insecurity and violence against migrants in Chiapas: The criminal incidence in some places of forced crossing or transit of national and international flows of migrants registers alarming figures and could reach uncontrollable dimensions if the Mexican State does not make a serious and permanent effort to assure the safeguarding of the guarantees of security and legality and provides protection and humanitarian care for its main victims, migrants. (Grupo Beta Sur, 1999, item II.2, paragraph 3) [emphasis added] In those first three years of operation, this group had already identified (with detailed sketches)9 at least 104 points that it called “main criminal scenarios” in ten municipalities of the Soconusco and Coastal regions in Chiapas where migrants were victims of crimes10: Suchiate (10 points), Tuxtla Chico (7), Tapachula (17), Mazatán (6), Huehuetán (6), Huixtla (40), Mapastepec (5), Pijijiapan (7), Villa Comaltitlán (4), and Escuintla (Grupo Beta Sur, 1999). In addition, Grupo Beta Sur described the “modus operandi and criminal profile of crime agents” and named two large groups as the main perpetrators of violence against migrants: one comprising members of the various security forces, giving rise to an official or institutional crime that extorts or mistreats them, strips them of values, or sexually harasses them; the other represented by clandestine networks that

Violence and Central American migrants  23 engage in migrant smuggling which are often linked to common criminals that assault, rape, mistreat or even kill them. (Grupo Beta Sur, 1999, item II.2, paragraph 7) In this second group, Grupo Beta Sur found that gangs from Central America (better known as “Maras”: Mara 13 and Barrio 18), as well as gangs of assailants of Mexican origin, were operating in the “criminal scenarios” mentioned earlier. After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, violence against migrants intensified; since then, every day migrants in the region are affected by some type of violence. Most cases go unnoticed. Many migrants fail to denounce these crimes because they fear deportation or because they do not want to wait to file a complaint. Others decide not to continue with the complaint process, after witnessing or suffering serious attacks or after having been threatened. In this regard, the report on human trafficking compiled by ten organizations to submit to the Inter-​American Court of Human Rights (session 123) described the cases of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who decided to turn themselves in to the INM and were then deported without having access to justice (Global Rights and Sin Fronteras, 2005). According to the CNDH, migrants “avoid contact with the police or any state agent; they do not know their rights or prefer not to exercise them if that means being visible” (CNDH, 2009, p. 5). Underreporting, then, has been characteristic of the incidence of direct violence against migrants in Mexico. Much data was publicized through the local press, which gradually increased its reports on robberies, assaults, accidents, people injured or killed when falling off a train, disappearances, kidnappings, migrant smuggling, and homicides.11 By the early 2000s, civil society organizations had already identified this situation of extreme violence, which became acute during the second half of the decade when organized crime took control of migrant smuggling routes and operations, with the collusion or acquiescence of state agents. Their complicity was not new but previously was not as widespread. In 2009 and 2011, the CNDH issued special reports on migrant kidnapping that revealed the extent of the violence. In 2009, to cite one of these reports, the CNDH used indirect estimates to calculate that between September 2008 and February 2009, 9,758 migrants had been kidnapped. These kidnappings were characterized by abuse, blatant violence, repeated rape, torture, and a series of humiliations and cruel, inhumane treatment (CNDH, 2009). The massacre at San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in August 2010, was an expression of that cruelty and the way organized crime had capitalized on the perverse consequences of migration containment policies and the war on drugs. Migrants had become a commodity or “spoils of war,” fought over by organized crime gangs. In 2009, the CNDH was able to identify migrant kidnapping cases throughout the country; nevertheless, the largest percentage was recorded in southern Mexico: By state, Veracruz and Tabasco have the highest numbers of kidnapped migrants: 2,944 and 2,378 respectively, which together account for 55% of the kidnappings recorded during this research. (CNDH, 2009, p. 11)

24  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner Thus, the CNDH report revealed that in a short time, Tabasco had become an extremely dangerous territory for migrants (in transit), as documented by Luis Arriola in an analysis of the victimization of migrants along the Gulf route from the period 2005–​2011 (Arriola, 2019). In 2021, the CNDH submitted a new report, based on i) a compilation of migrant smuggling and kidnapping cases handled by various government agencies in Mexico between 2011 and 2020; ii) a review of media reports; and iii) the results of the “National Survey at the Migratory Station on Travel Conditions in Mexico 2021,” designed by the CNDH. According to this report, in ten years, over 70,000 migrants had been the victims of smuggling and kidnapping in Mexico. The states with the highest number of cases of migrant kidnapping were Chiapas, Nuevo León, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Tamaulipas (CNDH, 2021, p. 8). After Hurricane Stan (October 2005), more migrants began entering Mexico through the state of Tabasco. This route crossed a region where drug cartels were already fighting over territorial control (Armijo, 2010, p. 254) and they now turned their attention to migrants. In the decade analyzed by the CNDH in its latest report, expectations had been raised about a change in the approach to migration policy through the passage of the Migration Law (2011) and the approval of the Special Migration Program (2014–​2018). Instead, the policy became more restrictive. With funds from the Mérida Initiative (2007), an agreement between the United States and Mexico, the Mexican government reinforced controls and surveillance along the southern border of Mexico. New migration verification centers were installed, and existing ones were modernized with electronic security devices. In 2014, with the implementation of the Integral Southern Border Program (PIFS), in response to the “humanitarian crisis” caused by the presence of Central American children on the southern border of the United States, the Mexican government began operating these migration control devices. Using the protection of migrant rights and the need to organize migratory flows on the southern border as a pretext, the PIFS undertook operations for the detention and the express deportation of migrants, in violation of international protection agreements. According to official data, Mexican authorities deported more people than US migratory authorities. At the same time, organized crime, common crime, and state actors, in collusion with the former, took advantage of what some activists called “migrant hunting” (Knippen, Boggs, and Meyer, 2015), which increased institutional violence, migrant smuggling, and, in general, the vulnerability of migrants. Institutions such as the CNDH have documented kidnappings and migrant smuggling, but there are other government agencies, such as the offices of the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Migrants in various states, which receive denunciations of other types of violence. In Tapachula, Chiapas, for example, in 2019, 2020, and 2021, this office handled 1,412 crime complaints (582, 360, and 470, respectively) corresponding to 1,811 migrant victims (820, 393, and 598, respectively). The majority involved robbery, family violence, extortion, homicides (negligent and intentional), injuries (negligent and intentional), assaults and sexual crimes (rape, sexual abuse, and pederasty) (Table 2.1). These crimes

Violence and Central American migrants  25 were primarily reported by migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and, to a lesser extent, from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti (Table 2.1). These sources, together with surveys undertaken by academic institutions, as well as by civil society organizations and international organizations, provide only an approximation of the various forms of direct violence suffered by migrants. An indeterminate number of victims of violence are not recorded by these sources, either because: i) the sample design and selection criteria are limited; ii) there are people who do not file complaints (due to fear, ignorance, or because they are denied the right to justice, among other reasons); iii) there are people who prefer not to comment about what happened to them; iv) there are people who arrived at their destination, either on their own or by paying migrant smugglers, without having denounced or commented on their cases; v) some individuals go missing or die with no record of what happened to them; and vi) there are people deprived of their liberty due to kidnapping, human trafficking, or even imprisonment whose situation is unknown. Other expressions of violence If in each case of migratory detention administratively registered by the INM—​ with or without the participation of other government institutions—​the various forms of violence faced by migrants in Mexico were investigated and recorded, we would have a much more dramatic view of this problem. Every year, thousands of migrant detentions are carried out in this country, a sizable proportion of which are registered in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, on the southern border. Between 2001 and 2020, migratory authorities made approximately one and a half million arrests in these two states (55% of the total). If we include those undertaken in Veracruz and Oaxaca, which form the routes to the center and north from the first two states, the figure is close to two million (70% of the total) (Table 2.2). These four states in the south-​southeast have also recorded the highest incidence of violence against migrants, according to several sources. Official reports have insisted that these INM data refer to events rather than people, but this methodological caveat also applies to estimates related to migration patterns and trends. For our purposes, it is important not to overlook the fact that each detention represents a person who faces various risks and consequences. With few exceptions, detention results first in the deprivation of liberty and then in deportation (or expulsion). These events abruptly interrupt or frustrate a migration process, whatever its cause. In detention, migrants are deprived of liberty and often subjected to attacks by migration agents and the private guards who surveil detention centers (see, for example, CCINM, 2017; CNDH, 2019). With deportation, migrants are exposed to death, injury, and uncertainty in their places of origin. Deprivation of liberty is an extremely aggressive act that causes frustration, depression, and other forms of harm that affect emotional and physical health, yet which the migration authorities in Mexico continue to justify. According to Javier

26  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner Table 2.1 Tapachula, Chiapas. Incidence of crime against migrants, by nationalities attended, 2019–​2021a Crimes

2019

2020

Guate- Hondu- El Nicara- Cuba Haiti Other Total Guate- Honduras mala ras Salvador gua mala Robbery of 34 pedestrians Family 64 violence Extortion 16 Negligent 41 homicide Assault 13 Intentional 30 homicide Intentional 18 injuries Rape 13 Negligent 23 injuries Pederasty 7 Vehicle theft 10 Sexual abuse 2 Other crimes 17 Total 288

47

42

12

11

2

14

162

9

5

63

21

4

1

0

3

156

29

37

41 17

20 7

4 1

39 0

0 3

1 3

121 72

14 30

27 11

30 7

12 7

2 0

11 1

0 0

0 2

68 47

0 17

1 6

11

5

1

2

1

2

40

21

11

15 1

4 3

0 0

1 0

0 0

1 4

34 31

9 4

8 2

7 1 3 10 253

2 2 5 10 140

0 0 0 3 27

0 0 0 1 67

0 0 0 1 7

1 1 0 6 38

17 14 10 48 820

3 6 1 15 158

5 3 3 7 126

Source: Special Prosecutor Office in Crimes Against Migrants, Tapachula, Chiapas. Data requested by the author in March 2022. Note: a  Arranged in order of total number of crime victims in 2019.

De Lucas, apropos of the report on the monitoring of migratory stations conducted in 2016 by an INM Citizen Council mission (CCINM): The key issue is the deprivation of liberty because this is the ultimate sanction of the penal arm of the law. It is only justified when a judicial pronouncement is issued, in an individualized process and with guarantees, which establishes with legal certainty that a criminal offense to which that sanction corresponds has been committed. However, in a high percentage of cases, irregular immigrants held in detention centers where they are deprived of their freedom are not guilty of this type of offense, but rather they have committed an infringement of administrative provisions, which cannot and should not justify this type of sanction. (De Lucas, 2017, p. 5) In theory, since 2008, with the reform of the General Population Act in Mexico —​ which decriminalized entering or staying in the country without authorization—​ migratory detention centers should have been closed. But this did not happen.

Violence and Central American migrants  27

2021 El Nicara- Cuba Haiti Other Total Guate- Hondu- El Nicara- Cuba Haiti Other Total Salvador gua mala ras Salvador gua 3

0

3

0

0

20

4

8

1

4

6

3

1

27

17

4

1

4

1

93

44

59

9

2

4

14

1

133

3 3

1 0

3 1

0 0

1 1

49 46

30 44

14 11

5 5

5 1

9 1

24 4

6 3

93 69

0 9

1 1

0 1

0 0

0 3

2 37

0 14

1 12

2 4

4 2

0 0

0 1

0 1

7 34

9

2

4

2

0

49

17

24

12

1

1

2

1

58

5 1

2 0

3 0

0 0

2 0

29 7

7 7

18 6

2 2

1 0

0 0

3 5

0 2

31 22

3 1 3 4 61

1 0 0 0 12

0 0 0 0 16

0 0 1 1 8

0 4 0 0 12

12 14 8 27 393

4 13 0 19 203

2 0 2 20 177

1 3 0 15 61

0 1 0 9 30

0 0 0 1 22

1 0 0 26 83

1 1 1 4 22

9 18 3 94 598

In practice, punitive language was replaced with “humanitarian” language, but the deprivation of liberty, abusive practices, and the systematic violation of human rights against migrants continued. According to Javier De Lucas, in the same text: in the interim, in other words, in the time between their arrest in itinere and their detention in these centers, in a high percentage of cases, they are deprived of elementary legal guarantees or subjected to treatment that borders on or constitutes criminal offenses, aggravated by the fact that they are committed by officials or public authorities. (De Lucas, 2017, p. 6) Interviews with migrants who have undergone an experience of immigrant detention in which various state actors intervene show that they have been the victims of various forms of violence, classified in the Federal Penal Code of Mexico as “crimes due to acts of corruption” (Title Ten) and “crimes committed against the administration of justice” by public servants (Title Eleven). If some of these crimes

28  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner are committed by police, customs, or immigration authorities, those authorities will incur administrative and criminal sanctions, as well as prison sentences, which “will be increased by up to half” of the penalties provided for in the aforementioned penal code (article 213-​Bis). According to the testimonies of migrants who have been detained, we can identify the following crimes, as specified by Title Ten, that have been committed by public servants: illicit exercise of public service (article 214), abuse of authority (article 215), coalition between public servants (article 216), intimidation (article 219), and bribery (article 222). Regarding Title Eleven, it is possible to identify acts or omissions that cause damage or grant someone12 an undue advantage (article 225, section VII). Fear of being detained has given rise to a series of tactics migrants use to avoid detention, such as seeking alternative routes, breaking up their journeys, and using intermediaries. These tactics have taken them to endless border crossing points through Chiapas, Tabasco, and Quintana Roo. These points split up into many roads, which, in turn, intersect with others that converge on the main migrant routes to northern Mexico. More recently, Campeche, the fourth border state, has served as a departure point for migrants who were either relocated from Tapachula in 2021 or arrive via Quintana Roo and Tabasco. In this network of routes, intermediaries have played a key role, especially since the 1990s (CNDH, 1996) but more noticeably since 2001 with the escalation of migratory containment. This containment fluctuates, increasing or decreasing at certain points when the governments of the United States and Mexico—​and more recently Guatemala13—​fabricate “migratory crises” and justify the deprivation of liberty and immediate deportation by using the discourse of protection and the “rescue” of migrants with the pretext of “preventing” them from becoming victims of crime. This crime has been clearly identified and, according to official reports, the authorities know where and when it takes place. As already noted, the intermediaries, who form part of the migration industry, include actors ranging from friends or countrymen to smugglers who are part of the “bastard industry” of migration, as Rubén Hernández-​León calls it, dedicated to extortion, kidnapping, murder, and migrant smuggling (2013, p. 31). This industry was created and strengthened as a response to restrictive immigration measures and labor force requirements in the United States. Migrant smuggling is not dissociated from other crimes, such as document falsification and the corruption of state actors in Mexico (Herrera-​Lasso and Artola, 2011) and human trafficking (Armijo, 2010; CNDH, 2019). The search for new routes has caused migrants to become de facto crime victims. In the late 1990s and until the mid-​2000s, the greatest fear for migrants entering through the Soconusco region of Chiapas—​in addition to being detained by the municipal police or the INM—​was being assaulted by Maras while traveling on the freight train or becoming victims of local crime while trying to avoid an immigration checkpoint. Until the mid-​2000s, migrants who entered Mexico through the Soconusco and continued along the Chiapas coast reported having been robbed, assaulted, and raped on the train track at a place called La Arrocera, in the municipality of Huixtla, near Tapachula. After Hurricane Stan in October 2005, migrants were forced to change their routes and means of transportation due to damage to the railway infrastructure on the Chiapas coast. Since 2006, two municipalities in the

Violence and Central American migrants  29 Table 2.2 Mexico. Percentage distribution of migrant detentions by state, 2001–​2020 (ten main states and selected years) State Total

Total 2001 2001–​2020

100.0 (2,717,571) Chiapas 44.0 Tabasco 10.8 Veracruz 10.4 Oaxaca 5.9 Tamaulipas 4.5 Mexico City 3.7 San Luis 2.1 Potosí Coahuila 2.0 Sonora 1.9 Nuevo León 1.6 Others 13.2

2005

2010

2015

2019

2020

100.0 (150,530) 53.2 11.3 7.7 8.4 2.6 1.3 0.5

100.0 (240,269) 43.2 8.7 10.6 5.5 3.3 5.7 1.7

100.0 (70,102) 36.1 18.2 7.1 7.6 2.9 1.7 1.7

100.0 (198,141) 45.5 10.5 15.8 4.7 3.6 1.0 3.0

100.0 (182,940) 43.6 9.2 12.4 4.6 5.7 1.6 1.6

100.0 (87,260) 35.0 7.3 5.6 3.1 18.8 1.0 2.6

0.7 1.6 0.9 11.9

2.0 2.7 1.8 14.7

1.2 2.7 1.3 19.5

2.7 1.0 1.9 10.4

4.2 2.4 3.7 11.0

6.4 5.1 4.0 11.2

Source: Compiled by the author based on Unidad de Política Migratoria, Registro e Identidad de Personas (UPMRIP). Annual Statistical Bulletin (various years). Available at: http://​porta​les.segob. gob.mx/​es/​Pol​itic​aMig​rato​ria/​Bol​etin​es_​E​stad​isti​cos (Accessed 20 November 2021).

state of Oaxaca (Tapanatepec and Chahuites) and one in Tabasco (Tenosique) have become infamous for mass assaults, extortion, and the kidnapping of migrants. Between 2005 and 2010, migrants on the southern border began to speak of “Los Zetas,” an organization that seemed far removed from the region. Nowadays, there is also talk of other criminal organizations, some of which already had a presence in Tabasco (Arriola, 2019) and in certain border areas of Chiapas, which grew as a result of the larger number of people who began to arrive in 2018 in caravans. The caravans were formed by migrants to protect themselves but have been fragmented and infiltrated by organized crime operatives to violate the apparent security of traveling in a group. In more than twenty years, we have conducted hundreds of interviews with migrants in transit in Mexico, who recount the horrors of mass assaults and the kidnappings of men and women of all ages on the southern border of Mexico and throughout the country. These people are usually the direct or indirect victims of extremely violent attacks that include various forms of torture, mutilation, and rape. In mass kidnappings, gang rapes, and assaults, the cruelty of the attacks, accompanied by permanent threats designed to intimidate, causes deep damage not only to the victims but also to the witnesses (including children). Forced to observe abuse, they are emotionally affected by traumas that are difficult to overcome. Some of the victims and witnesses have also been forced to engage in violence against other migrants. Those who have been interviewed, either for our projects or for others, fearfully recount the violence that has caused indescribable suffering and severe, irreversible damage to their lives and those of their families. Other migrants say that they do not wish to recall the cruel violence of which they were victims, witnesses, or even forced perpetrators.

30  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner Fear, therefore, encourages migrants to use smugglers, which does not necessarily guarantee escape from the violence they seek to avoid. At the same time, it should be noted that they may be forced to use smugglers for other reasons, especially if one recalls that there are smugglers linked to organized crime in Mexico who operate in conjunction with their counterparts in the migrants’ countries of origin. In 2016, as part of the monitoring mission to the CCINM migrant detention centers, I interviewed Astrid (not her real name), a Salvadoran woman requesting refugee status in Mexico, whose story demonstrates the link between forced migration and migrant smuggling. Her family consisted of her, her husband, an eleven-​ year-​old son, and a two-​year-​old daughter. They had a store and paid “rent” to the neighborhood gang, but one day, the gang asked them to hand over their son within twenty-​four hours or else they would take him out of the country. Within an hour of the ultimatum, a smuggler arrived and told them that he would take the child out of El Salvador and that it would cost them $5,000. They had no choice but to negotiate; the gang itself had sent the smuggler. On entering Mexico in Tapachula, the smuggler became aggressive and tried to abuse Astrid. Fearing attacks on the road, Astrid begged an INM officer for help at a migration checkpoint in Chiapas. This case brings to light connections that re-​define migrant smuggling. It is commonly assumed that those who pay to be transported do so voluntarily. But Astrid’s story reveals that people are obliged to use the services of smugglers for reasons other than social, political, and economic factors. It also provides clues about the role of organized crime in forcing migrants to pay for a service for which they have no alternative—​an issue that warrants further research. In the case of migrants who live or work in border towns, mostly in Guatemala, restricted mobility practices and precarious “regularization”14 are used (Basok and Rojas Wiesner, 2017; Rojas Wiesner and Basok, 2020). Some people do not use specific tactics because they have not deemed it necessary to do so, but now, they are being detained. This is happening to Guatemalan migrant workers who, generation after generation, have come to Mexico to engage in productive activities in border towns. Nevertheless, due to more restrictive immigration controls, they are now being harassed by the authorities. Migrant workers who could once go directly to a farm or ejido have been detained and taken to a detention center for deportation. This is a form of humiliation that causes shame in their communities in Guatemala. The interviews we conducted on the southern border of Mexico have revealed various forms of discrimination against migrants. Some are subtle, while others are overtly offensive and demeaning. Migrants are discriminated against for being foreign, having a specific nationality, skin color, or ethnic origin, being a woman, a man, belonging to the LBGT+​ population, being young, poor, having a job, or having a particular appearance. All these forms of discrimination are interlinked. In Rojas Wiesner and Hjorth (2021), for example, we cite the case of Robert, a young Honduran man, married with children, whom we interviewed in 2018. He had plunged into a deep depression due to his situation in Tapachula and the discriminatory, racialized treatment he had received. He and his family had been there for four months and were still waiting for their immigration documents, even though

Violence and Central American migrants  31 COMAR had approved their request for Complementary Protection status. Robert repeatedly wondered why the locals rejected him, discriminated against him, or viewed him with mistrust whenever they identified his accent—​or when he said he was Honduran, when he wanted to buy food, when he went for a walk, or when he went to look for a job: “How can I go out for a walk if people think a thief is coming? I can’t.” (Interview with Susan Hjorth) (Rojas Wiesner and Hjorth, 2021). Many of those who have managed to flee from kidnapping or have been “released”—​especially Hondurans and Salvadorans—​mention the lack of solidarity15 and the offensive treatment they receive from people when they ask for help. Some of the people they ask may also fear reprisals from criminals, but in many cases, they refuse to help migrants because, in their opinion, “they deserve it.” Likewise, Guatemalans who live and/​or work in Mexican border towns are subject to other forms of discrimination that often go unnoticed but are nonetheless offensive. Their neighbors sometimes “throw garbage into their backyards,” disconnect their electricity, and make vulgar remarks related to their origin in their presence. Other microaggressions are less subtle. In 2019, in a border town in Campeche, I interviewed a Guatemalan woman, married to a Mexican, who felt intimidated by her neighbor. He had harassed and threatened her, saying he would do to her what he did to the turkey whose throat he had slit after it wandered into his backyard. Many of these daily aggressions or microaggressions go unreported. Final reflection In discussing the issue of violence on the southern border of Mexico, one should not overlook the different forms of international mobility that occur in the region. It is not only a matter of classifying these forms but also of identifying groups by their specific characteristics, situations, and contexts, which exceeds the scope of a chapter. These situations and contexts contain the forms of violence—​whether direct, indirect, visible, invisible, symbolic, interpersonal, institutional, structural, or others—​encountered by migrants from Central America and increasingly from other regions as well. In this chapter, we explored direct forms of violence to show that expressions of criminal and institutional violence observed more than two decades ago still prevail; moreover, they have been spreading and intensifying. In addition, other types of violence with a greater degree of cruelty have been incorporated, such as kidnapping and forcing migrants to victimize others. Other expressions of violence—​ derived from racial discrimination, including xenophobia—​have become more noticeable in recent years. Various state and non-​state actors, either in collusion or separately, have used violence to detain, deport, profit, discriminate, denigrate, intimidate, and deny rights. These forms of violence have found fertile ground in the implementation of the migratory policy of Mexico and the United States, which has attempted to contain migratory flows through Mexico. Indeed, violence has become a dissuasive factor for migration, which has made people desist from continuing their journey, although some continue, and others are willing to pay to be able to achieve their

32  Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner goal. This scenario raises a number of questions. Why has it not been possible to stop the violence, if many of the places where crime operates in collusion with authorities are known? Is violence being used instrumentally to manage migration? Notes 1 The four states or federal entities that make up the region called the Southern Border of Mexico, from the Pacific to the Caribbean, are Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. 2 I use quotes because the category itself has been questioned. As many authors have already indicated, transit does not only refer to the direct crossing of territories in one direction (see, for example, Basok et al., 2015, which cites the bibliography on this topic). 3 By the late 2000s, the INM’s Regional Delegation in Chiapas provided data on the participation of other government agencies in the detention of migrants: the municipal police, federal army and navy, as well as the state Health Secretariat, firefighters, various attorneys general offices, municipal courts, and other government agencies (municipal, state, and federal) (Rojas Wiesner, 2020). This “cooperation,” as the migration authorities call it, continues (Tourliere, 2017; Moncada and Rojas, 2022). 4 This group was created in 1996 in response to the recommendations made by the CNDH study, which was conducted in 1994 and published in 1996 (Castillo, 2005, p. 91). 5 Multiple reports, complaints, and analyses have been produced on violence against migrants in Mexico. In this chapter, references should be taken as examples or illustrations of what has been published on the subject. I would like to highlight this because there are many historical reports that have been rendered invisible. 6 Scheper-​Hughes and Bourgois’s italics. 7 In the case of detentions, for example, in 2006 “securing” (aseguramiento) was replaced by “hosting” (alojamiento), and in 2012, by “presentation” (presentación). In the “humanitarian” language derived from the 2011 Migration Law, migrants are now “rescued” rather than “detained” and are to be “presented” at migratory stations. 8 Ciudad Hidalgo is the municipal seat of the Suchiate municipality, bordering the municipality of Ayutla in the Department of San Marcos, Guatemala. Huixtla, the capital of the municipality of the same name, is located about 80 kilometers by road from Ciudad Hidalgo. 9 I emphasize this point to show that various reports identify the places where migrants are victims of violence, even providing sketches with detailed locations. The question is why they continue to be victims. Some of these sites have changed or the incidence has decreased but only because migrants themselves have sought alternative routes. 10 These points included railroad tracks, the federal highway along the Chiapas coast, and ejidos and neighborhoods in the aforementioned municipalities. On the railway route from Ciudad Hidalgo to Arriaga, twenty-​five points where migrants were subjected to criminal actions were identified (Grupo Beta Sur, 1999). 11 Personal archive of news from the local press related to migration and migrants on Mexico’s southern border (1998–​2020). 12 For example, non-​state actors (common and organized crime) that engage in kidnapping, robbery, extortion, and rape. 13 By containing the latest “migrant caravans” from Honduras, the Guatemalan government has become the first front for migrant containment.

Violence and Central American migrants  33 14 Such as (i) resorting to illegal processes to obtain documents, (ii) obtaining false documents, and (iii) resorting to the processing of immigration documents that do not correspond to their conditions of stay: a Regional Visitor Card (Spanish acronym TVR) instead of a Visiting Worker Border Card (Spanish acronym TVTF) or a Resident Card (temporary or permanent), or a TVTF instead of a temporary resident card with permission to work. 15 Which undoubtedly contrasts with the expressions of solidarity that also occur in Mexico (see, for example, Parrini Roses et al., 2021).

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Violence and Central American migrants  35 Rojas Wiesner, M.L. and Ángeles, H. (2008) Gendered migrations in the Americas: Mexico as country of origin, destination and transit. In: Piper N. (ed.) New Perspectives on Gender and Migration. Livelihood, Rights, and Entitlements. New York: Routledge, pp. 189–​245. Rojas Wiesner, M.L. and Basok, T. (2020) “Legalidad ilegal” y precariedad: la perspectiva desde el sur de México. Revista Sociologias (UFRGS), 22(55): 74–​103. Rojas Wiesner, M.L. and Hjorth, S. (2021) Suspended lives of Central American youth in Mexico: between inclusion and survival. In: Vila, A. and Meza, L. (eds.) Young Migrants Crossing Multiple Borders to the North. London: Transnational Press London, pp. 39–​57. Ruiz, O. (2003). La Migración Centroamericana en la Frontera Sur: un Perfil del Riesgo en la Migración Indocumentada Internacional. La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-​Mexican Studies, UC San Diego. Available at: https://​escho​lars​hip.org/​uc/​item/​9wh8s​0bk Scheper-​Hughes, N. and Bourgois, P. (2004) Introduction: making sense of violence. In: Scheper-​Hughes, N. and Bourgois, P. (eds.) Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–​27. Tourliere, M. (2017) Ejército mexicano, artífice de la contención migratoria en la frontera sur. Revista Proceso, February 18. Available at: www.proc​eso.com.mx/​rep​orta​jes/​2017/​ 2/​18/​ejerc​ito-​mexic​ano-​artif​ice-​de-​la-​con​tenc​ion-​mig​rato​ria-​en-​la-​front​era-​sur-​179​150. html (Accessed: 8 August 2022). Walby, S. (2012) Violence and society: introduction to an emerging field of sociology. Current Sociology, 61(2): 95–​111.

3 Entanglement of violences Doubly forced migrants transiting across the Americas Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda

During the first two decades of the twenty-​first century, forced migration has reshaped the geography of the Americas. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s Global Report 2020, in that period around 8.6 million internal displacements occurred, mainly in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and various Central American and Caribbean countries. A massive movement of more than half a million Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans heading north seeking international protection also unfolded, just as an exodus of approximately six million Venezuelans was taking place, with thousands seeking refuge in the Caribbean, Andean, Southern Cone, or Northern countries of the Americas (UNHCR, 2021). In addition to the forced migrations of Caribbean and Latin Americans, forced migrations of Africans and Asians also multiplied in those years. Although their numbers are not as large, in many cases, they have also reached the continent seeking international protection. This is how transcontinental migrants have embarked on lengthy journeys from Africa or Asia to enter the Americas and apply for refuge in the first South American countries of reception, usually Brazil, Argentina, or Ecuador (IOM, 2017; Joseph and Miranda, 2021; Maffia and Zubrzycki, 2017). Some have settled in those first countries, while others have decided to transit northwards through perilous continental journeys, crossing South and Central American borders to reach Mexico, the US, or even Canada, seeking refuge (Miranda, 2023; Yates and Bolter, 2021). The increase in Latin American and Caribbean forced migrants, together with the presence of forcibly displaced Africans and Asians, all transiting across the South-​South and South-​North routes comprising the migratory corridors of the Americas, signals the current rapid expansion of conflicts and violence on global and regional scales and their spatial and temporal interconnections (Krause, 2009). While African and Asian migrants are fleeing from war zones, religious, political, gender-​based, and terrorist persecution, Caribbean and Latin Americans escape from increasingly complex contexts where what we call an entanglement of violences coexists and deepens. In addition to the structural violence expressed in poverty, social injustice, and inequality (Rylko-​Bauer and Farmer, 2016), depending on their home countries, they also confront political instability and DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-4

Entanglement of violences  37 state violence, criminal violence in primarily urban, but also rural contexts, armed conflicts, patriarchal violence and femicides, racial harassment and hate crimes, and violent territorial disputes around extractive economies (Feldmann and Luna, 2022; Pries 2019; Rettberg, 2020; United Nations, 2020). In fact, Latin America is the most violent region in the world among those not experiencing explicit war (UNDP, 2021). It would seem paradoxical that within such a violent context, by 2021, Latin America was home to 20 percent of the 82.4 million people in the world who had been forcibly displaced (UNHCR, 2021). Nonetheless, this trend is not alien to a pattern where so-​called Global South “developing countries” host 85 percent of asylum seekers worldwide (UNHCR, 2022). In such a context, Latin America’s traditional “openness” toward migrants and refugees, evidenced by its more progressive legal framework for migration, compared to countries of the Global North (Domenech, 2017; Freier and Gauci, 2020), thus acts as a magnet for those migrants seeking international protection, even in countries where diverse processes and contexts of violence proliferate. This is how some Latin American countries have currently adopted a dual role: as producers of forced migrations, including internally displaced people and asylum seekers, while simultaneously being receptacles and potential legal refuges for both intercontinental and transcontinental populations seeking international protection. De Haas, Miller, and Castles (2020) have shown that in the new millennium, migration transitions are increasing across the globe. This means that countries and entire regions have diversified their migration patterns, becoming simultaneously spaces of origin, destination, transit, forced displacement, refuge, enforced and voluntary return. As these authors insist, migration transitions challenge fixed conceptualizations that pigeonholes countries into static migratory categories (2020, pp. 12–​13), pushing researchers to decode with greater attention the reasons for the volatility of migrant mobilities that are unequal, diverse, embodied, and racialized (Sheller, 2018) and to overcome dichotomous categories that are traditionally used to categorize migrants according to their migration status. As ethnographers, we have accompanied the mobilities of Latin American, Caribbean, African, and Asian transit migrants across Mexican and Ecuadorian border towns (Álvarez Velasco, 2016, 2020; Miranda, 2021; Miranda and Silva Hernández, 2022). Decentering our attention from the Mesoamerican and the Mexico-​US corridors, which have monopolized recent research (Alba and Schütze, 2021; Bada and Feldmann, 2019; Basok et al., 2015; Paris Pombo, 2017; Varela and McLean, 2021; Vogt, 2017), we have analyzed the violent dynamics at stake in the formation and transformation of the migratory corridors connecting the Caribbean, Brazil, and Mexico (Miranda, 2021; Miranda and Silva Hernández, 2022); the Andean region with Central America, Mexico, and the US (Álvarez Velasco, 2020, 2022); and the Andean region with Southern Cone countries (Álvarez Velasco, 2022a). In light of this volume, we revisited the ethnographic material gathered over the past years, thus confirming that intercontinental and transcontinental forced migrants were also part of the diverse and heterogenous transit migrations

38  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda traversing the studied corridors (Álvarez Velasco, Pedone, and Miranda, 2021). In fact, we realized that we had worked with asylum seekers and individuals with refugee status who had been forced to leave their initial countries of reception in South America and transit to other destinations, particularly the US, via the global, northern migratory corridor connecting the Andean region, Central America, and Mexico (Álvarez Velasco, 2019, 2020). This implied that people seeking international protection were becoming twice-​displaced or repeat forced migrants: forced to flee from their countries and regions of origin only to then be forced to escape from the Latin American countries where they had initially been received. Aligned with critical migration, border, refugee, and forced migration studies, throughout this chapter, we will discuss one central question: Why have people in need of international protection, who have reached and settled in certain South American countries, been forced to migrate again, this time via irregularized transit toward the US? In other words, why and how have they turned into doubly forced migrants? Aligned with a critical call to overcome the fixed labels traditionally used by states and the international community to classify migration and refugee experiences (Capelari, 2021; Zetter, 2014), we propose a term, which at first glance, might seem redundant. Nevertheless, we aim to illuminate a contemporary social and political phenomenon: consecutive and repeated forced migrations. The redundant nature of the term is specifically intended to counter the static nature implied by the term forced migration, which does not contemplate or acknowledge the fact that this type of migration does not cease with the official recognition of the refugee. In the current age of extremes (Sheller, 2018), and in ethnographic fieldwork, we have identified the recurrence of forced displacements across national borders, or the fact that refugees, having fled their home countries, are compelled to flee again—​this time from the countries that granted them asylum. Additionally, we use the concept entanglement of violences as an analytical lens to account for the direct and indirect impacts that interdependent violence has on the lives of migrants and their families. Whether or not the effects are immediately tangible, the combination of social, state, criminal, and structural violence produces forced migrations. We intend to expand on the elements that usually characterize forced migrations in order to comprehend the complexity of the socio-​ spatial dynamics that emerge from the selected individuals’ trajectories. We will provide initial responses to this central query based on ethnographic research conducted in Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico between 2015 and 2019, a digital ethnography conducted between 2020 and 2022, and the reconstruction of the migratory trajectories of five doubly forced migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Togo, and Cameroon. These exemplary trajectories reinforce the concept of doubly forced migrants to highlight how the legal frames in refugee matters and pathways to legal status in certain South American countries have been nonetheless incapable of guaranteeing dignified and safe living conditions for people in need of international protection in the medium and long term. The chapter is organized as follows. First, we briefly define what we mean by doubly forced migration and entanglement of violences, the two concepts we use

Entanglement of violences  39 to develop our argument. Then, we describe why within South American migration transitions, forced migrants have reached the subcontinent searching for refuge. Based on the reconstruction of our five exemplary cases, in the third section, we provide an account of how and why people in need of international protection—​ both asylum seekers and those with refugee status—​choose to transit to the US from the initial South American receiving countries and how an entanglement of violences has become a major trigger for the production of doubly forced migrants. We conclude with a final reflection regarding the analytical and political challenges that this complex experience poses for contemporary scholarship on mobilities in the Americas. Conceptual Note Legal categories fail to reflect the transient nature of migrant mobilities and the volatility of that embodied experience. Nevertheless, they have significant implications: they are not merely devices for inclusion but also for exclusion, as Zetter has convincingly demonstrated in his pioneering work on the label “refugee” (Zetter 1991, 2007). Ultimately, the legal dichotomy between “forced” and “voluntary” migrants (economic migrants) creates and justifies another distinction between migrants who are “deserving” or “undeserving” of international protection (Collyer, 2010; Faist, 2018). As Chimni states, “life and epistemology do not imitate legal categories. Instead, legal categories most often seek to ‘discipline’ life and knowledge to realize dominant interests in society” (Chimni, 2009, p. 12). Therefore, there has been a call to unsettle and to acknowledge those clear-​cut, unrealistic distinctions produced by the politics of labeling (Zetter, 2007). Scheel and Squire (2014), for instance, propose that “forced” and “voluntary” migration are poles of a continuum, and that economic, political, ecological, and social factors shape migration decisions in an interdependent manner. Re-​ interpreting the migration-​asylum nexus emphasizes the blurring of forced and voluntary migration movements at every stage of the migration process (Scheel and Squire, 2014). Two decades earlier, Richmond (1994) presented a similar argument. On an imaginary line, the two extremes correspond to compulsion and freedom in migrating. As a result, the greater relative weight of one element would not define a type of migration or a migrant (forced or economic) but rather proactive migrants (due to the ease of developing and carrying out migration projects) and reactive migrants (due to the triggering causes of persecution or threats in their migratory projects). However, as the author points out, the predominant circumstances occur in between the two extremes, precisely where compulsion and freedom intersect. Ceriani (2016), on the other hand, highlights the euphemistic use of the notion of “economic migrant” in state migration policies, where the emphasis on economic causes often obscures the multidimensionality of migration and displacement. According to this author: the importance of economic factors, rather than the individual motivation of migrants, lies in the asymmetries between countries and regions, which in turn

40  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda have an impact on institutional (in)stability and the failure of sustainable and inclusive human development policies in countries of origin. These motives are intrinsically associated with other factors (armed conflict, corruption, social violence) that together lead to displacement. (Ceriani Cernadas, 2016, p. 103) The political actors of global migration governance (Estupiñán Serrano, 2013; Pécoud, 2018) tend to overlook historically unequal state formations between Global South and Global North countries when they propose horizontal cooperation and the harmonization of migration policies. They purposefully ignore the fact that not only does the population of the Global South have more pressing survival needs, but that it also has structural gaps that are maintained and reproduced by the same logic of good practices that intergovernmental organizations prescribe. In this sense, Chetail (2021) proposes that forced migration should be seen as an overarching concept in which well-​founded fear of persecution needs to be viewed as a failure of state protection. Expanding on that concept and knowing that categorizations constrict and fail to capture complex and changing social dynamics, our goal in this chapter is to draw attention to a social phenomenon that is taking place in the region, which we tentatively refer to as doubly forced migration. Forced migration is not a simple definition nor is there a legal consensus on the matter (Capelari, 2021; Zetter, 2014). For us, forced migration defines coerced displacement or involuntarily internal or international mobilities due not only to one of the five conditions contemplated in the 1951 Refugee Convention (race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion) but also due to a combination of interdependent factors: structural drivers (including poverty, political instability, protracted unemployment, or precarious labor); criminal drivers (expressed in the actions of organized criminal groups, cartels, or corrupt state agents); and racist and gender-​based determinants (especially those linked to violence against women). Individuals, families, and communities feel compelled to leave because these conditions make it difficult—​if not impossible—​to sustain their safety and livelihoods (Zetter, 2014, pp. 24–​25). The combination of factors that involve individuals, groups, and families in processes of indirect (structural) or direct (state, criminal, or racist, gender-​based) violence, leading them to initiate or resume migratory trajectories, is referred to in this text as entanglement of violences (in plural). From the cases we analyzed, we see that forced migration is not a one-​way movement that occurs only once from the sending country (where the source of persecution exists) to the receiving country and ending there. Faced with an entanglement of violences in the first South American receiving countries, forced migrations resume. As we demonstrate, our five interlocutors face novel forms of violence in the countries of reception which put their lives at risk, forcing them to transit to the northern corridor. With this concept, we thus intend to problematize the clear-​cut distinction between forced migration and transit migration, as if they were two different types of mobility, when in reality doubly forced migrants now seem to be increasingly transiting through the Americas.

Entanglement of violences  41 Forced Migrations across South America and Promising Legal Frameworks During the first two decades of the twenty-​first century, migration patterns in South America transitioned, in accordance with the dominant global pattern (De Haas, Miller, and Castles, 2020). From being a region predominantly characterized by emigration flows to Global North destinations and intra-​regional south-​south migrations, it became a receptacle of global flows, a space of voluntary or enforced return via deportations mainly from the US, and a transit space to northern and southern destinations on the continent, while maintaining its traditional status as a migrant sending region (IOM, 2017; Stefoni, 2018). Moreover, in becoming a receptacle for global mobilities, South American countries turned into potential places of refuge for forcibly displaced people (Gómez and Malo, 2019). Hosting forced migrations has been part of a longstanding South American tradition. In the final decades of the twentieth century, due to the fierce dictatorships in the Southern Cone, many countries granted refuge to political exiles (Zarankin and Salerno, 2008), while others received a large number of Colombians fleeing its historical armed conflict (Ortiz and Kaminker, 2014). What changed in the past two decades has been the places of origin of forcibly displaced people and the scale of their arrival. On the one hand, forced migrants from the Caribbean, particularly Haitians and Cubans, and from diverse African and Asian countries have reached the subcontinent. On the other hand, the massive Venezuelan exodus has produced six million forcibly displaced people (mainly from 2015 to the present), of which four million have moved to other Latin American countries, and the vast majority have remained in South America. In less than a decade, South American countries have hosted unprecedented numbers of forced Venezuelan migrants, these being the most exemplary cases: Colombia (~1.8 million), Peru (~1.3 million), Ecuador (~500 thousand), and Chile (~ 440,000) (R4V, 2022). Geographic proximity clearly explains the arrival of Caribbeans and Venezuelans, as well as the legal framework for migration in some South American countries—​a decisive factor in explaining the arrival of displaced people from Africa and Asia (IOM, 2017). As recent scholarship proves (Acosta, 2018; Freier and Gauci, 2020; Gómez and Malo, 2019; Stefoni, 2018), in an antimigrant global era, while restrictive policies intensify and multiply in Europe and North America (Garelli, Sciurba and Tazzioli, 2018; Hess and Kasparek, 2017; Picozza, 2021), South America’s unique pro-​migrant legal landscape has been a true magnet for forcibly displaced people from around the world. The unique legal scenario the 1984 Cartagena Declaration created in South America in terms of refuge was further enhanced in the first decade of the twenty-​first century, when “pink tide” leftist governments in Argentina (in 2004), Uruguay (in 2008), and Ecuador (in 2008) reformed constitutions or migration laws dating back to the dictatorial period, adopting progressive legal perspectives on migration and refugee matters (Acosta and Freier, 2015; Domenech, 2017). In this transition, Ecuador played a key role in attracting worldwide flows. In addition to its progressist constitutional framework, during the first two years of

42  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda the government of leftist Rafael Correa (2007–​2017), a 90-​day, visa-​free policy for people around the world was adopted. This policy, added to an already progressive legal framework for refugee status and Ecuador’s dollarized economy, created something exceptional: the “Ecuadorian dream” in migration matters, to the point that the country became a gateway to South America and a global transit space to various continental destinations (Álvarez Velasco, 2020; Góngora-​Mera, Herrera, and Müller, 2014). Something similar happened in Brazil. Although immigration reform did not take place until the administration of Michel Temer in 2017 (Muñoz Bravo, 2020), during the mandates of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff (2003–​2010 and 2011–​2016, respectively), open border, pro-​migrant, and humanitarian policies were established, facilitating the arrival of asylum seekers from Haiti and several African and Asian countries. During the period 2001–​2015, Brazil received far more asylum applications than any other Latin American country—​nearly 42,000: 55 percent were from people from Africa (OAS, IOM, 2016). Therefore, not surprisingly, four of the five migration trajectories described in this text include both Ecuador and Brazil. Due to the abyss between the legal framework and praxis in the region, as Acosta (2018) has shown in his historical and comparative analysis, progressivism has often been a dead letter in the region in terms of granting rights to the migrant and refugee population. Recent scholarship has also shown how the implementation of the pink tide’s legal frames for migration was severely limited, co-​existing with repressive practices and a regional turn toward securitization and antimigrant sentiment (Correa, 2019; Domenech, 2017, 2020; Domenech and Dias, 2020; Herrera and Cabezas, 2019; Ruiz and Álvarez Velasco, 2019; Trabalón, 2018). Not only has the recognition rate declined, confining asylum seekers to legal limbo and a precarious everyday existence (Menjivar, 2014) but restrictive measures have also been imposed. Justified under the hegemonic narrative of national security and the fight against migrant smuggling, selective visas have been implemented (Gil Araujo and Clavijo, 2022, Gómez and Malo, 2019). For instance, to contain the arrival of Haitians, including asylum seekers, a Tourism Registration System, which serves as a visa system, was implemented in Ecuador in 2015 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, 2015); in 2018, visas were imposed in Chile and Argentina (Trabalón, 2018). Meanwhile, Ecuador re-​imposed visa requirements for certain African and Asian countries, many of them countries in conflict and whose nationals require international protection such as Yemen, Syria, and Nigeria (Hurtado et al., 2020). The Venezuelan case is undoubtedly the most noteworthy. Against this massive exodus, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile imposed visas in 2019, and recognition rates for Venezuelan asylum seekers have remained substantially low, as the latest data from the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants of Venezuela reveal (R4V, 2022). This is the context in which our five interlocuters turned into doubly forced migrants, as we discuss in the section that follows.

Entanglement of violences  43 From South America to the US: Lived Experiences of Doubly Forced Caribbean and African Migrants Between 2011 and 2018, Betina, Louis, Irina, Andre, and Samu, our five interlocutors, were forced to depart from their home countries and regions. Living conditions in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Cameroon, Sudan, and Togo, respectively, worsened substantially, accelerating their departures. In most cases, this was a life-​ or-​death decision. Their quest for refuge led them to Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia via air and land routes, destinations that did not appear out of the blue. Amassing and sharing information is a longstanding strategy among migrants (Varela, 2016), and that was exactly what they did: knowing they had to leave or escape, they searched the Web and became informed through social networks of friends and acquaintances. The ability to enter without a visa and later apply for asylum was critical for them. Through ethnographic work, we reconstruct their migratory trajectories and lived experiences as doubly forced migrants. With the aid of social media apps, mainly WhatsApp, we were able to obtain their testimonies during their transit journey across the northern corridor or afterwards once they had entered the US. Because our interlocutors are doubly forced migrants who suffered persecution both in their countries of origin and in the initial South American countries of reception and settlement, their names have been changed and details of their migration trajectory (such as names of locations or exact dates) are also omitted. From Cuba to the US via Ecuador and the Darién Gap

Betina, a 40-​year-​old Cuban, identified herself as a dissident of the Cuban regime. As she reflected upon her life on the island, she said that poverty, lack of opportunities, and political repression made it impossible for young Cubans to imagine living there. Because she was part of a dissident movement, she felt threatened, feared imprisonment, and feared for her life in general. When the Ecuadorian government removed its visa requirement, she saw an opportunity to leave; in her words: “I took all the evidence because I wanted to request asylum.” After borrowing money, she flew to the Andean country. Despite the obstacles, she submitted her application and initiated the asylum process. Life in Ecuador was not easy for her: although de jure she was not an undocumented migrant because she was in the middle of a refugee recognition procedure, de facto the official document she was granted excluded her from finding a decent and formal job. Thus, she was only able to work in the informal market, selling clothes as a street vendor. Her life became increasingly precarious as her monthly income fell below 250 USD and she had to send money to Cuba to pay her debts and to help her elderly parents. She hoped that by changing her immigration status from asylum seeker to recognized refugee she would be able to improve her economic situation. Urban criminal groups seized control of the marginal district where she lived and worked. As deaths occurred, rumors spread that “security charges” would be

44  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda made on the streets. She would have to set aside funds from the little money that she earned to pay urban criminals for “protection” from danger. She considered moving to another Ecuadorian city, but from one day to the next, she was forced to leave the country. “I witnessed a night-​time murder that I shouldn’t have seen. I was caught in the middle of a gunfight and my life was in danger. Poor neighborhoods where migrants live are now ruled by malandros who threaten, rob, and can kill us. I never thought I would have to leave Ecuador because of this.” Leaving behind her asylum application, she left Ecuador by land for Colombia with two of her Cuban flat mates. Until they reached the Darién Gap, they bribed every border agent they encountered. She said she never heard back about her asylum application in Ecuador. “I will never know, nor am I interested in that,” she said with disdain. Although she never intended to leave Ecuador, the violence and threats she experienced there caused her to flee just in time before the US changed its exceptional policy for Cubans. She is now a legal resident of the US. From Haiti to México via Brazil

Louis is a 44-​year-​old Haitian. In September 2021, we met in the Refugee Aid Commission office in Mexico City. The day before, he had arrived from Tapachula, one of Mexico’s principal southern border towns. He was accompanied by ten other Haitian migrants, six adults and four children under the age of five. As we introduced ourselves, the name of a Brazilian city we knew came up. The town is Chapecó, in southern Brazil, one of the leading meat-​processing centers in the country. Louis went to Brazil via the Amazon in 2012. Five of the nine years he lived in Brazil were spent in this city, where he worked as a supervisor in what was then one of the largest meat-​processing factories in the country. In fact, the construction and processed food industries absorbed most of the Haitian migrants and refugees in Brazil, especially in the midwestern and southern regions of the country. Approximately a million chickens are processed per day in the cities around Chapecó. When Louis first arrived in Brazil, the economy was booming. But as the years went by, deflation of the Brazilian currency against the US dollar began to take its toll: I started to get sad because I was in another country and couldn’t send anything to my mother or my children back in Haiti. That’s why I left Brazil for Mexico, to look for a better place. Before I used to send $100 USD to Haiti; I only needed $200 RS [Brazilian reals]. The dollar went up and up, and we reached a point where we needed $600 RS to send $100 USD to Haiti. Louis and his wife had permanent residency cards in Brazil; their refugee applications had been approved. Nevertheless, after their youngest child was born, they decided to leave the country. For the entire year of 2020, Louis was unable to send remittances to Haiti. The combined effects of the economic crisis and confinement in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic were brutal but decisive.

Entanglement of violences  45 Therefore, they left the country where their last child was born and where they had approved refugee applications and permanent residency cards. From southern Brazil to southern Mexico, they transited the Andes via Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. No longer able to send remittances to Haiti, Louis was forced to rely on the reverse dynamic: his family in Haiti sent him international money transfers to cover his expenses during transit. Two weeks after Louis, his wife, and little son arrived in Tapachula, México, with no prospects in sight, they moved to the Mexico City metropolitan area. Over the course of three months, he only managed to find informal jobs in restaurants, earning $900 Mexican pesos a week (less than 50 USD). Louis and his family lived for a short period in Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. At that time, things were “going better.” They could eat and pay rent but were still “without a couch or a bed.” After many months, they were still on the move; like many other Haitians, Louis chache lavi, he is looking for a place to live with dignity. From Venezuela to the US via Colombia

“I fled to Colombia because Venezuela’s political and economic catastrophe left me jobless and without hope for employment. Without a job, there is no food, and life is in danger. I was also a victim of violence. My former partner abused me psychologically, physically, and sexually. Because Venezuela tore apart, we were insecure about our future, and I think this exacerbated his violence: sometimes he channeled his frustration and anger by beating me […] My life became hell. I probably would have died if I had stayed there,” said Irina, a 36-​year-​old Venezuelan, in one of our long WhatsApp conversations. We usually talked or exchanged audio messages when she returned home from her shift at the factory where she now works in the US. She never imagined she would make her life outside Venezuela, much less in two other countries. But, as she reflected, “It seems that violence follows us, obliging us to move from one place to another.” Structural, patriarchal, and gender-​based violence forced her to first migrate south, to Colombia. Criminal and structural violence, however, then forced her to move north to the US. Two factors played a crucial role in Irina’s itinerary: her mother’s illness and her sister’s insistence that she denounces her aggressor: On two occasions, my sister forced me to denounce him. Because Venezuela’s justice system is broken, nothing happened to him. Despite this, I set up a precedent and kept copies of my legal complaints, which allowed me to obtain asylum in Colombia. Amid this hell, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. There are no medicines in Venezuela, so I left to save her by sending medicines and money. I have been moving since then, both to protect my mom and to save myself. For one year, she felt safe in the Colombian city where she lived as a refugee. She worked, sent remittances and medicines back to Venezuela, and found a new partner

46  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda who was helping her heal the scars of patriarchal violence. “With the pandemic, everything changed. As we were running out of funds, my partner became involved in strange things to earn some money. Suddenly the threats and persecution he was fleeing came to our door. We had to ‘pay’ to survive.” Those “payments” are extortion for security, known as “vacunas” or “pagadiario,” which are very common in marginal neighborhoods in certain Colombian cities where the effects of the armed conflict have been internalized and organized criminal groups thrive (Dávila, 2016). Irina and her partner soon became part of a wave of Venezuelans departing from Colombia to the US (BBC, 2022). Harrowing stories about the Darién Gap prevented them from using land or maritime routes to reach Panama. This led them to devise a new transit strategy. As so many forced migrants do, they got into debt to try to protect themselves (Carton and Fabart, 2021). According to Irina, bribing Central American and Mexican authorities became a routine part of their daily travels northward. It took them several attempts to reach the US-​Mexico border. After they were detained, they were lucky to be released. However, they know that they will have to appear before a US immigration court to appeal their deportation cases. Irina will re-​apply for asylum, this time in the US. She continues to support her sister and mother, who remain in Venezuela. From Cameroon to the US via Ecuador

The tone of his voice could not conceal the suffering that Andre, a 36-​year-​old Cameroonian migrant, had endured. Moreover, this was not only because of what he had experienced in his country of origin but also because of what he had experienced in Ecuador. Cameroon is beset by convoluted political conflicts, in which armed groups and government forces have committed human rights abuses, including mass killings, internal displacements, and forced migrations, primarily to neighboring countries (Human Rights Watch, 2022). That was Andre’s case: at one of the peaks of the conflict, he received serious death threats. He had days to escape and wanted to go far away, not only from Cameroon but from Africa. He chose Ecuador because, at the time, the country did not require a visa for entry and guaranteed the human right to refuge. He had to wait almost a year before his case was approved. His savings allowed him to take Spanish classes while working as a freight forwarder. Though the job did not pay much, he was able to meet his basic needs and, as he put it, “breathe security, something I didn’t have at home.” Overnight, that sense of security dissolved. To improve his income, he decided to migrate internally to an Ecuadorian coastal city where freight transport is used in large agricultural plantations and pays more. During his travels along with one of the well-​known routes, he was stopped by the local police. They demanded his license and immigration papers. Ignoring the fact that he had his papers in order and was a refugee in need of international protection, the three policemen rudely asked him: “Negro Africano, what are you doing in our country? Return to Africa.” This verbal aggression was followed by physical violence and then an arrest on fictitious charges of trafficking in small amounts of drugs.

Entanglement of violences  47 It was Andre’s belief that he was really arrested because he could not pay the amount of money that the three officers were demanding while threatening him—​ and, overall, because he was Black and African. His real ordeal started when he was living in an overcrowded cell, eating rotten food, and being tortured by the police. Andre said that inside prisons, criminals and police work in collusion, and that life within was hell. Furthermore, he asserted that the police never stopped calling him a “Negro Africano,” mistreating him even more than other prisoners because he was Black and an African migrant. He was not only a victim of the prison crisis in the Andean country (France 24, 2021) but also of state violence and systemic racism. Due to his suffering in prison, he lost almost twenty kilos. Following his release, Andre was terrified that he would be arrested and abused again because of his race, ethnicity, and migrant status. His fear was such that as soon as he could regain his physical and emotional strength, he started to plan a route to leave the country. Andre feared that what he had experienced in Ecuador would happen in other Latin American countries. Hence, he was adamant that the only place he wanted to go was the US. Both the “American Dream” and the image he had created of the “Land of Freedom” had an irrefutable effect on him, which led him to begin his transit north. His complicated case, which clearly shows how and why he became a doubly forced migrant, is already pending in a US immigration court. From Togo to the US via Benin and Brazil

Samu is a 35-​year-​old Togolese residing in the US. His journey from his homeland to that destination was not direct but fragmented, with protracted stays and waiting periods in two other countries and transits through Central America and Mexico. First, he moved to Benin, a country bordering Togo, where he lived for seven years in the Agamé refugee camp as a forced displaced migrant due to political violence. His father had been the victim of threats resulting from political tensions between armed groups after the 2005 presidential elections in Togo. The same president had held power for 40 years. When Gnassingbé Eyadéma finally died of a heart condition in 2005, his son executed a coup d’état and took his place. After being selected for a scholarship, Samu moved to South America by himself and settled for nine years in São Paulo as a refugee. Then, he married a Brazilian woman and together they raised a child. Due to his binational family status, Samu holds a Brazilian passport. In 2012, he arrived in São Paulo, when the Brazilian economy was experiencing the euphoria of mega-​sporting events. He started as a bricklayer’s assistant, then worked his way up to master builder, and finally opened his own construction company. He currently holds a degree as an engineer. Nevertheless, Samu has not been able to find a job in the local labor market using his professional skills, not even an internship. He has gone through several selection processes and interviews but has never received an offer. He ended up working as an Uber driver associate for eight months to save up to leave Brazil.

48  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda Samu claims to have been a victim of racial discrimination. When competing with white engineering candidates, being a Black man proved to be a comparative handicap, typical of a racial structure that reserves the highest and most prestigious social positions for white people. With no job opportunities on the horizon in his profession, Samu said, living in Brazil was unbearable. He had $800 USD in his pocket when he left with his wife and child. At the Nicaragua-​Honduras border, they paid a group of coyotes to cross through the woods and then paid another smuggler group to cross into Guatemalan territory. They finally reached Tapachula with only $54 USD. Without funds or social networks, the three of them slept outdoors in one of the city’s central parks for the first three weeks, under rain and intense heat. During that period, they shared the camp alongside people and families from several other countries, mainly Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti. During the night, local police used to raid the streets in search of people without migration papers. On two occasions, Samu was awakened, detained, and deported to Tecún Uman, at the Guatemala-​Mexico border. By the time of the interview with him, Samu and his family were about to complete eight months without being able to leave the city; they were waiting for documentation and lacked the economic resources to move forward. Some months later, upon crossing the US-​Mexico border, they turned themselves into the US Border Patrol and then were separated: Samu was sent to one detention camp and his wife and son were sent to another. At the time of the second interview with him, five months after the first, Samu still did not know the whereabouts of his wife and child. These five trajectories illustrate the dynamics at play during the production of doubly forced migrants in South American countries. Their cases demonstrate the diversity of their social profiles, based on gender, race, socioeconomic status, and educational level. They also show that violence is a driving force behind current global migration, triggering forced displacement that connects global spaces as regions of origin, transit, and destination. We are aware that the narratives are neither exhaustive nor conclusive with respect to the rapidly changing reality of migration in the Americas. Nevertheless, we believe that they allow us to make inferences and preliminary reflections, for they signal a complex phenomenon arising from the interaction between violence and forced migration. These five cases illustrate how structural, state, criminal, race, and gender-​based violence have escalated in the region, leading to the forced departure of men and women of all ages, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. This entanglement of violences causes forced migrants to start their journey again and transit to the northern border without state protection in order to save their lives. A better understanding of the interdependent forms of violence that proliferate in Latin America, directly and indirectly impacting people in need of international protection, is crucial to making visible and problematizing a social phenomenon that is increasingly prevalent on our continent: the production of doubly forced migration. We examine these various forms of interdependent violence in the following section.

Entanglement of violences  49 Entanglement of Violences and Production of Doubly Forced Migrants Latin America and the Caribbean together configure the most unequal region in the world (ECLAC, 2020), where approximately 35 percent of the population lives in poverty and 13 percent in extreme poverty (ECLAC, 2021), and where the wealthiest decile earns 48 percent of the total income, while the poorest 10 percent of the population earn only 1.6 percent of the income (UNDP, 2021). The effects of poverty and unemployment disproportionately impact historically marginalized people, including Indigenous, Black people, women, migrants, and refugees who daily confront practices of prejudice and discrimination (Rylko-​Bauer and Farmer, 2016). The unemployment rate in Brazil, the South American country where Louis and Samu lived for almost a decade, has increased from around 7 percent between 2012 (the year they both arrived in the country) and 2014, to more than 12 percent between 2017 and 2021 (the year they decided to migrate to the US) (IBGE, 2022). The landscape of violence in South America is unique. Though only 9 percent of the world’s population lives in Latin America, it accounts for 34 percent of violent deaths (UNDP, 2021). As measured by homicides, it is the most violent region in the world among those not experiencing war (Arjona, 2021). This helps to explain the staggering numbers of internally displaced persons in the region (UNDP, 2021). Moreover, along with racism, unemployment, the refusal to grant asylum, and other forms of structural violence, it also explains why refugees and asylum seekers are being forced to leave the countries where they were first received, leading to doubly forced migration. With the return to formal democracy and the spread of human rights throughout the region, political violence significantly decreased. Most of the civil wars ended, except for Colombia, and Latin Americans gained more political and civil rights, for instance, open and direct elections. The decrease in political violence has by no means implied its disappearance. Therefore, the democratic turn in Latin America did not configure less violent societies (Mantilla and Feldman, 2021). As a result of everyday delinquency and the illicit and illegal activities of non-​state, armed groups—​including prison and street gangs, drug-​trafficking cartels, human trafficking and smuggling networks, militias, and vigilante groups—​criminal violence has multiplied in virtually every Latin American country (Albarracín and Barnes, 2020; Arjona, 2021; Feldmann and Luna, 2022; Koonings and Kruijt 2007). Indeed, as Davis (2010) states, political and criminal violence coexist in Latin America, reinforcing each other. The unofficial extortion of which Betina and Irina were victims in Ecuador and Colombia, respectively, is not confined to these two contexts at all. The colloquial names given to extortion practices may change—​ “derecho de piso” in Mexico, “impuesto de guerra” in El Salvador, “pagadiario” in Colombia—​but the fact remains that paramilitary militias and criminal groups have included in their revenue portfolio the service of territorial “protection” that Latin American states do not guarantee. The region is struggling with high levels of gender violence expressed in femicides, sexual violence, violence toward women, children, and the LGBTQI+​ population (UNPD, 2021). We consider that what is called “social and domestic”

50  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda violence (Arjona, 2021) needs to be explored/​investigated through the lens of gender and patriarchal violence, which is killing women (including migrant women) in the region. The same is true with racist violence. As a colonial legacy, systemic racism and racist states (Bonilla-​Silva, 1997; Omi and Winant, 2014) violently impact Indigenous and Black people, including Black migrants (Priya Morley et al., 2021) like Andre and Samu; they provide the basis for justifying not only hate crimes but also social and political forms of oppression, prejudice, and discrimination that are taken for granted in Latin America. Racism is not founded solely on individual racial prejudice, just as patriarchy is not only expressed in the violence of one man against one woman. Rather, both are embedded in the state-​sanctioned political, economic, social, and legal structures of society. The interdependence between these forms of violence hampered the migration trajectories and plans of our five interlocutors, as analyzed above, forcing them to leave their first countries of refuge in South America. The expanding entanglement of violences in the region will confine more and more migrants in need of international protection, raising the risk of extremely dangerous situations for global migrants arriving and transiting through the Americas today. Conclusions Forced migrant populations arriving to and transiting across South America are not immune to the varied, complex, and combined forms of violence, whether direct or indirect. On the contrary, having refugee status or being in legal limbo intensifies the effects of poverty, unemployment, insecurity, and racial and gender-​ based violence. By proposing the concept entanglement of violences, we precisely want to report on how the interplay between structural, state, criminal, racial, and gender-​based violence affects the lives of individuals and families to the point they are forced to leave the first receiving countries and transit to other destinations as doubly forced migrants, often without papers and vulnerable to other forms of violence in transit carried out by state and non-​state actors, especially (but not exclusively) in border spaces such as the Darién and the southern Mexican border. Given the economic and political instabilities permeating historically unequal and dependent societies of the Global South, the sole existence of a pro-​migrant rights frame in South America, which functions as a promising magnet, has not led to the settlement of forced migrant families in the medium to long term in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, or Brazil. This creates a situation where people in need of international protection must once again be on the move to try to save their lives and that of their relatives. We have presented five examples highlighting the perverse situation taking place in several South American countries: a promising legal framework attracts intercontinental and transnational forced migrants, but structural inequalities and political and economic instability lead to double-​forced migration. As people in need of international protection, they were left completely exposed to a complex entanglement of violences where the state, as we saw, is absent. Beyond legal recognition in the countries we analyzed, no international protection

Entanglement of violences  51 policy effectively guarantees their economic, social, and cultural rights, which leaves them even more vulnerable to forms of violence. This is exacerbated in the case of unrecognized asylum seekers. It is pertinent to consider these findings in the context of the crisis of social protection in South America as well as Latin America as a whole. In part, this crisis explains the rise in violence and the extreme deepening of poverty and inequity in the region. The responsibility of any state is to support, promote, and protect the fundamental human rights of all people within its borders. These cases illustrate a state protection system in crisis, not a refugee or immigrant crisis, as the media and hegemonic political discourse often depict. Zetter (1991) warned against generalizations about forced migration and urged critical research to identify neglected tendencies, traits, and patterns in this social phenomenon, which is highly mobile and unstable. The use of fixed (artificial) dichotomies (present in legal definitions) falls short in this quest (Chimni, 2009). According to the evidence we have presented, the distinction between “economic migration” (supposedly voluntary) and forced migration (resulting from various forms of motivated violence) is as artificial as the distinction between transit migration and forced migration. In response to both Richmond (1994) and Scheel and Squire’s (2014) call to re-​interpret the migration-​asylum continuum, based on our cases, it seems prudent to explore the continuum of forced migration-​illegalized transit migration that is increasingly occurring across the migratory corridors of the Americas, as we empirically demonstrate. The purpose is to think through a process that actively pushes forced migrants to become transit migrants who are forced to use illegal routes; this process is a nodal element of the politics of mobility and strengthens antimigrant border regimes right across the Americas. What is the best way to rethink this continuum? How should we name the lived experiences of the five interlocutors? Lastly, the intensification of geographical inequality leads to a deepening of poverty, social injustice, and inequality that effectively confine displaced people entering South American countries to oppression and suffering because they are unable to meet their basic needs. Their precarious status in the region’s informal economy rapidly becomes a triggering factor for their ongoing transit. The same applies to the difficulty of sending remittances to their families back home. Debt plays a significant role in the cases examined: forced migrants either get into debt to leave their countries of origin and reach the first receiving country, or they get into debt to transit to another, safer country. Debt and forced migration perpetuate forms of economic violence within a complex spiral of poverty. The reflections made here suggest a possible new avenue of investigation. References Acosta, D. (2018) The National Versus the Foreigner in South America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Acosta Arcarazo, D. and Freier, L. F. (2015) Turning the immigration policy paradox upside down? Populist liberalism and discursive gaps in South America. International Migration Review, 49(3): 659–​696.

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56  Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda Yates, C. and Bolter, J. (2021) African Migration through the America Drivers, Routes, and Policy Responses. Washington: Migration Policy Institute. Zarankin, A. and Salerno, M. (2008) Después de la tormenta. Arqueología de la represión en América Latina. Complutum, 19(2): 21–​32. Zetter, R. (1991) Labelling refugees: forming and transforming a bureaucratic identity. Journal of Refugee Studies, 4(1): 39–​61. —​—​—​(2007) More labels, fewer refugees: remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies, 20(2): 172–​192. _​_​_​_​_​_​(2014) Protecting Forced Migrants. A State of the Art Report of Concepts, Challenges and Ways Forward. Switzerland: Federal Commission on Migration.

4 Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait at Mexico’s northern border1 M. Dolores París-​Pombo

Since the beginning of the twenty-​first century, the security buildup on the US southwest border and massive deportations have led to migrants’ entrapment in the northern cities of Mexico. Deportees who had long lived in the United States, often without resources or support networks in Mexico, tried to insert themselves into the informal economy and the outskirts of cities with support from religious and civil society organizations (París Pombo, Buenrostro, and Pérez, 2017). Studies have examined the destitution and stigmatization of deportees, as well as the frequent victimization to which they are subjected by criminals and corrupt authorities (Albicker and Velasco, 2016; París Pombo, Buenrostro, and Pérez, 2017). Thus, the legal violence of migration policies and regulations that results from criminalizing and illegalizing migrants in the United States (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012) pursued them into Mexican cities that are strongly affected by crime and corruption (París Pombo, 2019). At the end of the Obama administration (2009–​2017), but particularly during the Trump administration (2017–​2021), thousands of asylum seekers were blocked at border ports of entry while exclusionary policies were clearly aimed at deterring people from seeking protection in the United States; they were forced to wait for months or even years in northern cities of Mexico. During the health emergency caused by COVID-​19, migrants had to wait indefinitely. In March 2020, the US government announced the partial closure of the border to non-​essential travel. Asylum requests and border crossings to attend immigration court proceedings were deemed non-​essential; meanwhile, US immigration authorities continued deporting hundreds of Mexican migrants and began expelling migrants and asylum seekers who attempted to cross the border without authorization. Since January 2021, despite policies promoted by the Biden administration to readmit asylum seekers with court cases in the United States, expulsions have escalated and most asylum seekers at border ports of entry are restricted from crossing. This chapter examines the conditions in which asylum seekers are entrapped along Mexico’s northern border and the forms of violence they experience during their long wait. It is based on the testimonies of migrants blocked in Tijuana, trying to request asylum in the United States during the 2019–​2021 period.2 Between May DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-5

58  M. Dolores París-Pombo and July 2019, 15 in-​depth interviews were conducted with Hondurans who had been sent to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain in Mexico.”3 Between September and October 2021, 26 interviews were held with forcibly displaced Mexicans (10) and Central American asylum seekers (6 Salvadorans, 5 Hondurans, and 5 Guatemalans) blocked at the border or expelled to Mexico due to another policy introduced after the COVID-​19 pandemic began.4 The first 15 interviews were conducted at a migrant camp east of Tijuana and the rest at the Carmen Serdán Integration Center for Migrants (CIM) administered by the Mexican federal government. The first section analyzes the expulsion policies and entrapment of asylum seekers in “third countries” in between source and destination. It reveals legal and extralegal violence that states employ through rejection and exclusionary policies. The second section explains the externalization of asylum policies at the US-​Mexico border. The blockade and lengthy wait of asylum seekers have resulted in the multiplication of humanitarian actors in Mexico’s northern cities, including civil society organizations, public institutions, and international agencies dedicated to assisting, housing, feeding, employing, or returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin. In this sense, the second section also presents the “birth of the humanitarian border” (Walters, 2010) embedded in the security border. The third section gathers the experiences of asylum seekers waiting in Tijuana. Their testimonies allow us to elucidate linkages between legal violence and the precariousness of migrant lives. The last section describes the conditions of criminal violence besetting migrants along the border and the predatory forms of organized crime they confront. Border exclusion policies Through coercive economic and political measures against origin or transit countries, the wealthiest destination states hinder or prevent asylum seekers from reaching their territory. European countries, Australia, and the United States have developed various forms of cooperation or direct intervention in the migration policies of third countries. They have also implemented the use of increasingly complex remote-​control devices to monitor migratory flows (FitzGerald, 2019). These strategies to prevent migrants from reaching their destination challenge the premises of the international refugee protection system (Hathaway, 1990). In migratory routes that are increasingly long, dangerous, and fragmented, asylum seekers find themselves blocked for months or years in what were previously considered transit territories. They must wait in in-​between places, often subject to various forms of life disruption, in legal ambiguity, and without the minimum resources to survive (Mountz, 2011). These exclusionary policies are implemented through the externalization of asylum to former colonies or peripheral countries and by dispatching people to territories considered “safe third countries,” islands, or border regions. Thus, confined to oblivion, asylum seekers are trapped in complex and intricate bureaucratic and legal processes, with no legal support, often detained or made invisible,

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  59 condemned to survive in hiding and precariousness (Hyndman and Mountz, 2008; Mountz, 2015). As mobility control and humanitarian protection systems are transferred to buffer zones in the postcolonial world, “borders are increasingly contracted out and relocated to places where migrants and asylum seekers are in transit, confusing domestic and foreign space in ambiguous jurisdiction and blurring past and present” (Mountz, 2015, p. 186). These border landscapes have been analyzed as zones of exception (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012), where laws and individual guarantees can be suspended, particularly for racialized people or non-​citizens. Border control and mobility containment devices and practices produce illegalities and generate racial divisions inscribed in the very composition of the citizenry (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012). Unauthorized migrants and refugees are thus placed on the outskirts of the political community with no access to justice or to goods produced by the state. When migrants and asylum seekers are sent or confined to these border areas, they are denied “the right to have rights” (Arendt, quoted in Mezzadra, 2005). Located outside the political community, in conditions of legal liminality (Menjívar, 2006), they are exposed to multiple forms of institutional and criminal violence. They generally lack immigration documents or have an ad-​hoc status that they can lose at any time. In this “gray area between legal categories” (Menjívar, 2006, p. 1000), they are always at risk of losing the few rights they manage to acquire over time. Most of them have to work in the informal economy, often for less than minimum wage. The precariousness of their migratory status (Rojas and Basok, 2020, p. 77) exacerbates their economic precariousness, making them vulnerable to extorsion, aggression, and abuse by police, local residents, or criminal networks. When asylum seekers are blocked at the border and expelled to third countries, international protection commitments are circumvented. Considering that the United States is signatory to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, deportation to the country of origin would clearly violate the principle of non-​refoulement: No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 33) In this regard, Hyndman and Mountz (2008) propose that the expulsion and blockade policies in territories outside the jurisdiction of destination states can be considered as a form of “neo-​refoulement.” In other words, it is not simply a question of expulsion to the country of origin, but rather an externalization of humanitarian protection that generates “a new terrain of geopolitical power on which paths to seeking refugee status have been etched” (p. 268). By invoking national legislation or establishing international agreements, destination states justify sending people displaced by violence to extremely dangerous

60  M. Dolores París-Pombo places while inserting them into bureaucratic dynamics that maintain the illusion of a legal process. Forced to go through endless paperwork, hire lawyers, and incur ongoing legal fees, asylum seekers walk through institutional mazes with the prospect of gaining admission to the destination country; however, they are usually headed for a dead end. The processes to which migrants are subjected when detained between entry ports involve multiple forms of institutional violence (París Pombo, 2019), from the confiscation of their belongings, including medications, clothing, and diapers, to the humiliation of not showering for several days. As will be discussed later, violence against asylum seekers includes the destruction of evidence they carefully bring to demonstrate persecution, and their expulsion to Mexican cities where many have suffered rapes, kidnappings, or other forms of criminal violence, and where they can be revictimized by their persecutors. Rejecting asylum seekers and sending them to waiting zones leads to new and multiple forms of violence stemming from the very liminality of their situation. The indefinite wait fuels the powerful migration industry and the booming criminal markets. Coyotes (migrant smugglers) hanging around shelters and camps were particularly noticeable during fieldwork. The unprecedented growth of the floating foreign population continually overwhelms humanitarian assistance capacities, leading most of this population to survive in extreme poverty, highly vulnerable to falling victim to crime. The entrapment of asylum seekers has also led to the commodification of humanitarian aid through outsourcing. Dozens of civil organizations and shelters have been set up in border cities, offering temporary housing and multiple services. Even if most are nonprofit organizations that look after the welfare of migrants, unscrupulous local entrepreneurs take advantage of migrants’ vulnerability and exploit them for their own profit. Several interviewees revealed that shelters force migrants to work without pay; others described smugglers recruiting migrants inside shelters and dining halls. Blocking, expulsion, and indefinite waiting policies Until 2016, people who arrived at the border to request asylum at a US port of entry went unnoticed by most of the local population in northern Mexico. They generally stayed one or two days in a hotel in cities such as Juárez and Tijuana before going to the border checkpoint to request that US immigration authorities grant them international protection. Upon crossing the border, they were locked up in detention centers before undergoing a credible fear interview and beginning an asylum process that could involve months or years in detention or being released on bail (París Pombo et al., 2018). In May 2016, hundreds of people from all over the world lined up for days around the port of entry in Tijuana to seek asylum or another form of humanitarian protection. US authorities implemented a metering or queue management system restricting the number of people who could cross the border to request asylum at the port of entry (Miranda and Silva, 2022). In response, local authorities in Tijuana

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  61 established a wait list in a notebook that was initially maintained by shelters and later by the Grupo Beta5 of the National Institute for Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración or INM). As the flow of asylum seekers continued to grow, this extralegal system resulted in a bottleneck. Within a few months, thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Haitians, were stranded south of the border, waiting months to cross. Shelter capacity was soon exceeded; to address the need for humanitarian assistance, churches, soup kitchens, and even rehabilitation centers were transformed into makeshift migrant shelters. Despite the efforts of religious congregations and civil society, hundreds of people were forced to sleep outdoors as the flow of asylum seekers grew (París Pombo et al., 2018). At the beginning of the Trump administration, wait lists were established at every port of entry. Thousands of asylum seekers were stranded for months in dangerous cities along the northern Mexican border. For example, in November 2019, more than 8,800 people in Tijuana and over 7,100 people in Juárez were on the list waiting their turn to cross the border. Two research centers that regularly monitored the metering system estimated that based on the average number admitted each day, an asylum seeker in Ciudad Juárez would have to wait at least six months before crossing the border; in Tijuana, the waiting period was estimated at five months (Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin and Center for US-​Mexican Studies, U.C. San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy, December 2019). Metering caused high mobility throughout Mexico’s northern border as asylum seekers searched for entry ports with shorter waiting periods. Consequently, when the two research centers looked at statistics for November 2019, they also found that less than 30 percent of asylum seekers showed up at the Tijuana-​San Ysidro port of entry when their number was called. In January 2019, the Trump administration began implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), leading to the entrapment of asylum seekers in northern Mexico. Throughout 2019 and 2020, more than 71,000 non-​Mexicans were sent to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be reviewed in a US immigration court, usually located at the port of entry.6 During proceedings that could last for more than a year, asylum seekers had to move several times between Mexico and hearing locations in the United States. To survive during their long stay in northern cities, they needed income, housing, schools for their children, health care access, and basic security conditions (Miranda and Silva, 2022). As most of them lacked such resources, they missed court dates and were removed from the program. Only 733 people (1 percent) were granted asylum or another form of protection under the MPP, indicating the program was a sham in terms of the due process required for international protection. People interviewed in Tijuana in 2019 were completely bewildered by the legal process in which they were involved; none of them had lawyers to handle their cases. For example, Manuel, a 26-​year-​old Honduran, reached Tijuana in November 2018 as part of a migrant caravan.7 Like more than two thousand other caravan members, Manuel wrote his name on the wait list and “got his turn” on

62  M. Dolores París-Pombo January 29, 2019, just a few days after the MPP began. He was detained for two days and sent back to Tijuana on January 31 with his dossier and an appointment for his first hearing on February 14.8 His appointment was scheduled at 7:00 am; however, the hearing before the judge did not take place until 11:00 pm. He spent most of the day waiting—​in the detention center, in the hallway, and in the courtroom. After his first hearing, he was handed a list of lawyers: all were based in the United States. Despite the time and money he spent, Manuel was never able to contact them. The second hearing took place at the end of March and lasted less than ten minutes. Manuel only understood that the judge was pointing out the laws applicable to his case; he was told he needed a lawyer and could get a pro bono attorney from any organization for the next hearing. Since all the paperwork was in English, he understood nothing about the legal process. Having no support and deeming his case lost, he decided to go to Monterrey, where a friend had found him a job earning more money than he could earn in Tijuana (Manuel, Honduran, personal communication, June 4, 2019). Like Manuel, more than 60 percent of asylum seekers subjected to the MPP dropped their legal proceedings after their first hearing (Trac Immigration, 2021). After their second appointment date, they also lost their legal migratory status in Mexico since the National Institute of Migration provided them with an immigration form expiring on the day of their hearing. Hence, they became undocumented immigrants in Mexico seeking poorly paid jobs in the informal economy. Some of them repeatedly tried to cross the border without documents and were expelled to Mexico or to their countries of origin. Others, distressed over the long wait and the precariousness of their situation, returned to their places of origin on their own or with support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Assisted Voluntary Return Program.9 In March 2020, after COVID-​19 was declared a health emergency, immigration courts were closed and hearings for those in the MPP program were postponed month after month. The wait lists were also closed; no new names could be added. Using a decades-​old federal health law known as Title 42, the Trump administration ordered the rapid expulsion of unauthorized border crossers and asylum seekers. The Biden administration did not terminate the policy; on the contrary, it expanded the scope of Title 42 as an unprecedented number of unauthorized migrants attempted to cross the border. According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), during fiscal year 2021, over a million migrants were expelled to Mexico without an opportunity to seek legal protection (CBP, 2021). Nevertheless, given the 26 percent recidivism rate that the Border Patrol documented in September 2019, the actual number of migrants expelled to Mexico was probably less than 700,000. The suspension of court proceedings under the MPP and the expulsions led—​ paradoxically—​to a sharp increase in unauthorized crossings, with desperate attempts to reach the United States. This is illustrated by the case of Beatriz, a 28-​year-​old Honduran who fled her country with her four-​year-​old daughter due to persecution by gang members and after the killing of several members of her family. They traveled by train through Mexico and arrived in Mexicali in June

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  63 2019 after a journey of more than three months. They attempted to cross the border through the desert but were detained by the Border Patrol; when requesting asylum, they were returned to Mexico under the MPP with an appointment for December 2019, that is, six months later. Through another Honduran woman, Beatriz found a job taking care of an elderly couple in Tijuana. For almost a year, she was employed without pay in exchange for food and shelter in a private home. She was only allowed to take time off work on the days of her hearings. Her third appointment was scheduled at the end of March 2020 and was indefinitely postponed when the health emergency was declared. In 2020, when the pandemic hits, the old man dies, and she’s [the elderly woman] left alone. We also had coronavirus. We were among the first infected. We spent the lockdown in that house. Then, I became very desperate (…). The situation was very exhausting for me because the lady was alone, the house was lonely, and the lady’s daughter was very demanding. I didn’t have a chance to take my daughter to school anymore because I was busy. Everything was complicated. That’s when I made up my mind. It was August, and I left. (Beatriz, personal communication, October 11, 2021) Beatriz traveled with her daughter to Monterrey and then to Piedras Negras (Coahuila), where they attempted twice to cross the border and were expelled to Mexico on both occasions. The first time, they were expelled at night, and there were no immigration authorities on the Mexican side. The second time, the Mexican immigration authorities did receive them and detained them for a week at a detention center. Later, they were put on a bus with a group of migrants and were taken to Tabasco, in southeastern Mexico, where they were abandoned to their fate and ordered to leave the country: I signed, and they gave me my belongings. I was then in line to pick up the paper I had signed. It was a voluntary deportation form that they had me sign, and I didn’t know, and… You have 30 days to voluntarily leave the country. Since August 2021, in addition to these secondary bus expulsions conducted by the National Institute of Migration, US authorities began expelling migrants and asylum seekers far from where the places where they had crossed, sending them either to southern Mexico or to other locations along the northern border. Hundreds of Central American families apprehended by the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande sector, in southeastern Texas, have been expelled to Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, or Tijuana. According to a report of the Witness at the Border,10 in September 2021, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chartered 39 lateral flights to send migrants from southern Texas to El Paso (Texas), Tucson (Arizona), and San Diego (California). Considering that these flights usually carry at least 100 people, the number of migrants expelled laterally that month was over 3,900; on average, nearly 130 people were expelled laterally daily, most of them Central American families sent to Nogales (Sonora), Ciudad Juárez, or Tijuana.

64  M. Dolores París-Pombo Israel, a 29-​year-​old Salvadoran, fled with his wife and their two young children after receiving death threats and later being brutally kidnapped and tortured by a gang. Using their savings, along with loans from his sister-​in-​law in the United States, they traveled to Reynosa. In August 2021, they crossed the river only to surrender to the Border Patrol. They were detained for three days, Israel with their six-​year-​old son and his wife with their ten-​month-​old daughter. Both children and Israel’s wife were sick and would later learn they had COVID-​19; however, they were not tested, nor did they receive medical care. Israel repeatedly insisted to the agents that they wished to seek asylum, presenting an ICE officer with the evidence he had brought from El Salvador, including records from the hospital where they had been admitted after the attack and the reporting of the events. The officer took these pieces of evidence, crumpled them into a ball, and mockingly threw it into the waste basket. Afterwards, Israel and his family were forced to board a plane to an unknown destination dreading they were being sent back to El Salvador, where their lives were in grave danger. However, they landed in San Diego and were taken by car to Tijuana, where they tested and learned that they were indeed infected with the SARS-​COV-​2 virus (Israel, personal communication, October 15, 2021). Precariousness and insecurity in makeshift camps and shelters The transformation of northern Mexico into a large waiting zone and immobilization area for migrants and asylum seekers was exacerbated by the official lockdown and border closure due to the COVID-​19 pandemic. Within a few months, increasingly rigid mechanisms were established to control mobility, such as systematic expulsions to various locations in Mexico and lateral flights along the US-​ Mexico border. This has meant a re-​borderization (Mezzadra, 2005), consisting of the establishment of containment areas and transition zones such as detention centers, shelters, processing centers, makeshift camps, and what the IOM calls “filter hotels,” meaning hotels or other forms of accommodation facilities with isolation areas where migrants can quarantine for two weeks to ensure they are not infected by the SARS-​COV-​2 virus. Most of this humanitarian infrastructure is concentrated in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. Traditional shelters in these cities initiated operations in the 1980s and 1990s. Managed by Catholic congregations, they were intended to provide short-​ stay accommodation to deportees and economic migrants in transit. By 2000, several shelters run by Protestant churches or private individuals had opened their doors to harbor deportees. At the same time, traditional shelters extended lodging duration and services to accommodate family reunification and reintegration processes in northern Mexico (Albicker and Velasco, 2018). Some shelters provide an array of services free of charge, including legal counseling; they usually house migrants for two to six months. Other most recently founded shelters provide fewer services and usually charge two to five dollars a night. Many migrants successively live in several shelters and camps during their wait. The arrival and blocking of thousands of asylum seekers in northern Mexico have also led to the establishment of camps in parking lots and vacant lots and

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  65 makeshift shelters in abandoned buildings, churches, and former rehabilitation centers. Throughout 2019, the Mexican government also installed large reception centers in Juárez and Tijuana called “migrant integration centers (CIM).” Housed in former maquiladoras, these facilities are large warehouses with hundreds of bunk beds. They provide a range of services such as migratory documentation, economic integration, and education for children. Food is provided by the military and vigilance is carried out by the National Guard. Migrants must ask for a permit to exit the shelter during the day. The interviews conducted at the CIM indicate that migrants were stressed not only by uncertainty and the long waiting period but also by the conditions of their confinement, including strict rules, military and police presence, and having to share accommodation space with hundreds of families. According to a recent study (Coubès, Velasco, and Contreras, 2020), Tijuana is the border city with the largest reception infrastructure for migrant and refugee families, with a capacity of 5,100 beds in 31 shelters. Some have a long tradition, legitimacy, and professional staff; they constitute a true haven in the context of the criminal violence that plagues the border. Most of the shelters lack basic services and even food; migrants often sleep on the floor under small tents. Fieldwork proved that the capacity reported by many shelters was far greater than the actual number of people they admit. When it was inaugurated in December 2019, the CIM in Tijuana announced that it could house 3,000 persons, but until 2021 usually housed fewer than 50. It was not until 2021, when the number of migrants expelled to Mexico increased, that the CIM received more than 600 people, most of them families from Mexico and Central America. The continuous arrival, expulsion, deportation, and blocking of forcibly displaced people and migrants from all over the world render accommodation capacity insufficient. Asylum seekers interviewed in 2019 lived in a makeshift camp; many interviewees in 2021 had spent days or weeks in similar places before arriving at the Migrant Integration Center. Other migrants reported having stayed in precarious facilities with dirt floors and no services or in places monitored, harassed, or infiltrated by criminal organizations. Three interviewees were forced to work without pay by a shelter owner. Eight were identified by their persecutors in border cities such as Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, or Tijuana and once again were forcibly displaced. Therefore, the expulsion and blocking of asylum seekers results in frequent revictimization, multiple lateral displacement processes, and desperate attempts to cross the border again in search of protection even when they are fully aware of the US exclusionary policy. While the number of expelled and stranded migrants exceeds reception capacity throughout the border, the most precarious situation is found in northern Tamaulipas, the area with the highest number of unauthorized border crossings. With few religious or civil society shelters, the failure of the Mexican government to provide accommodation options for migrants, and the promotion of the MPP program in southern Texas, asylum seekers have been pushed to live in massive camps in Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo. Global Response Management (GRM), the organization that provided humanitarian services in the Matamoros camp, estimated that at the end of 2019, the

66  M. Dolores París-Pombo population living in the camp was around 3,000; in addition, another 1,500–​2,000 were staying in shelters, hotels, and other accommodations in the city. According to GRM, the camp had between 50 and 60 latrines, that is, one for every 55 people. The small tents where an average family of four were living had an estimated area of just 5.8 square meters. Due to water scarcity in the showers, many camp residents bathed in the Rio Grande River, where they were at risk of contracting several diseases due to contaminated water (GRM, cited in París Pombo and Díaz, 2020). The Matamoros camp was dismantled soon after the Biden administration announced its intention to end MPP in 2021. Nevertheless, the continuing blockade and increase in expulsions under Title 42 led to the establishment of similar camps at various locations along the border. Among them was El Chaparral in Tijuana, which harbored more than 1,500 migrants in a small space that used to be a US port of entry before the pandemic. For months, migrants had no latrines or sanitary services of any kind (Del Monte and París Pombo, 2021). Isaura, forcibly displaced on gender grounds and originally from Michoacán, arrived in El Chaparral in June 2021 with her female partner and two small children. She relates her experience in the camp: We were here and there, and we ended up in El Chaparral. We were there for about two weeks; we lived there. And we were told that people were mean, there was a lot of vandalism, they raped and did things. We were scared. We walked to gas stations and there on the ground, lying down or sitting [regarding the lack of toilets]. We put our clothes on the children, and then we ran out of money. And nobody would hire us because we were filthy and didn’t have money to eat or water… The children cried because they were hungry. (Isaura, Mexican, personal communication, October 13, 2021) While these new camps are the most visible image of the destitution faced by asylum seekers stuck in northern Mexico, many of the shelters recently established by families or small businessmen are far from providing safe, decent spaces. Several interviews refer to sexual abuse and harassment, knife fights, and even intrusions by coyotes or drug traffickers, as Edgar states: At midnight, when we were sleeping, people passed over us, the narcos from around here, those who control the mafia, the mafia of the place. They had the hotel as a drug hideout. They hid drugs there, and early in the morning, they got it ready to go and distribute it. And well, one day, the mafia came and wanted to take my sister and me. (Edgar, Honduran, personal communication, July 15, 2019) Criminal violence against waiting asylum seekers The conditions under which detention and expulsion occurs in the United States indicate high levels of legal and institutional violence (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012). Nevertheless, for many Central Americans, remaining in northern Mexico

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  67 Table 4.1 Homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants at the national level, in the states of Baja California and Chihuahua, and in the cities of Tijuana and Juárez 2019–​2020 Year

Mexico

Baja California

Tijuana

Chihuahua

Juárez

2019 2020

29 29

75 79

110 116

78 93

99 108

Source: INEGI, interactive data consultation, www.inegi.org.mx

has been fundamentally marked by criminal violence related to transnational criminal organizations that venture beyond drug trafficking into other forms of violence that target migrants, such as human trafficking. Ever since former president Calderón launched the war on drugs in 2007, the spiral of violence has resulted in tens of thousands of forced disappearances, kidnappings, and homicides. The crudest expressions of violence caused by organized crime—​often embedded in Mexico’s state security institutions—​have manifested in the northern border cities, where almost three out of every four murders in Mexico occur. While the national homicide rate in 2020 was 29 per 100,000 inhabitants, in both Tijuana and Juárez, there were more than 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (Table 4.1). Migrants have become the “invisible victims” of the drug war (AI, 2010). Considered as “non-​citizens” or even “nobodies” (Green, 2011), their vulnerability to serious human rights violations stems from the forms of criminalization and precariousness to which they are subject (París Pombo, 2017). In this sense, the accounts of asylum seekers stranded in northern Mexico clearly articulate the brutal cruelty of criminal organizations and the precarious situations analyzed in the previous section. Furthermore, both the destitution and the victimization of asylum seekers appear in the interviews as consequences of exclusion, expulsion, and containment policies. Human Rights First (HRF) has regularly reported assaults against asylum seekers stranded in northern Mexico. During the two-​year implementation of the MPP, HRF reported at least 1,544 incidents of violence against asylum seekers waiting in northern Mexico (HRF, September 2021). In October 2021, it reported at least 7,647 kidnappings and other attacks against families, adults, and children seeking asylum in the United States. These violent attacks in northern Mexican cities all took place within just eight months after the inauguration of President Biden (HRF, October 2021). Kidnappings often involve forms of torture to demand ransom from the migrant’s relatives. When these forms of extortion fail, forced disappearances, recruitment into criminal organizations, human trafficking for labor or sexual exploitation occur. These predatory chains regularly lead to murder or even massacre. The best-​ known case involved the San Fernando massacres (2010 and 2011) in southern Tamaulipas; however, the media and social organizations repeatedly report new massacres. In January 2021, 19 charred bodies of Guatemalan migrants were found

68  M. Dolores París-Pombo on the Tamaulipas-​Nuevo León border. According to the Mexican authorities, the migrants were being held in a safe house belonging to the Gulf Cartel when hitmen from the Northeastern Cartel came to the house and murdered them.11 Iván’s account underscores the extortive chains of violence and exploitation (París Pombo, 2017) that trap asylum seekers. He had to flee Honduras, like 16 members of his family, following death threats and the brutal murders of his brother and nephew. They were forcibly displaced to Guatemala, where their persecutors managed to find them, forcing them to migrate to Mexico, where they also failed to escape violence. In June 2021, they tried crossing the US border to seek asylum and were expelled to Reynosa: When we arrived, we took a taxi, and he sold us to the mafia. We were kidnapped for 21 days. My arm is even swollen where I got hit with a board. I got hit with a gun on my head. My wife got hit on the knee. She fell and hit her head and convulsed. Thank God they didn’t do this in front of my son. He didn’t experience the trauma, but we were kept away from him. We didn’t know where he was or what was going to happen. We were asked the phone number of our relatives, we told them we didn’t have any, that’s why we had attempted crossing like that. And well, through an aunt, we paid almost 30,000 Mexican pesos. They put me to work for them for almost 15 days: I had to watch a warehouse at night, with no food and no water, without being allowed to see my wife and son. (Iván, personal communication, October 15, 2021) Expulsion led to kidnapping the entire family, brutal extortion through torture, and labor exploitation under conditions of human trafficking since Iván was forced to guard a weapons’ warehouse. The physical and mental health of Iván and his family were seriously damaged due to these events. Final remarks Since the beginning of the Trump administration, a set of policies have undermined the asylum system at the US Southwestern border. Some of these policies—​such as MPP—​were announced in retaliation for the mobilization of migrants to travel through Mexico in groups, in the so-​called “caravans.” Others had been in the pipeline for years, as was the case with the metering system. The health contingency caused by the COVID-​19 pandemic led to longer waiting times and increased uncertainty. In January 2021, President Biden took office announcing that he would restore the asylum system in the United States. However, two years later, most of the externalization policies were still in place. Asylum seekers interviewed in Tijuana in 2019 and 2021 had fled mostly from criminal and gender-​based violence in their places of origin. The decision to head toward Mexico’s northern border resulted from information provided by relatives and friends regarding the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States. Nevertheless, those who did manage to get to the southwestern border of the US, far from reaching a safe place, were subjected to various forms of institutional

Externalization, violence, and migrants’ lengthy wait  69 violence: overcrowding and dangerously low temperatures, destruction of “evidence of persecution,” frequent humiliation, and an overall lack of due process. Migrants interviewed in 2019 were already in an asylum process; they were unaware of almost all legal and practical aspects of that process. They only knew that they had an appointment at the port of entry to be taken to court by US authorities. Their wait was characterized by great social precariousness caused by the lack of basic services. Nevertheless, the community they had temporarily built on the margins of Mexican institutions allowed them regular access to food, as well as a certain safety net against violence. In the case of the migrants interviewed at the CIM in 2021, although they felt safe from their persecutors and had access to basic services, overcrowding and daily militarization added to the stress caused by the uncertainty of waiting without knowing if they could ever cross the border to request asylum. The two waiting spaces thus differ markedly in their levels of uncertainty and precariousness. However, in all cases, the accounts of their arrival and stay in Tijuana showed the recurrence of events that put them at risk of being victims of aggression and abuse. This chapter demonstrated that people blocked at or expelled to the northern border of Mexico relapse into situations where they are at risk of aggression and abuse, not only because of the strong presence of criminal organizations but also because of the lack of resources during the endless wait. Violence again comes into play as a continuum that begins with the identification of migrants by actors linked to criminal organizations such as police, coyotes, taxi drivers, or other migrants. Those who are kidnapped are tortured to reveal the phone numbers of their relatives in the United States. In addition to paying ransom, they must often perform forced labor. Notes 1 This chapter is based on research for Risk and Resilience among Asylum Seekers Waiting in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, funded by the Research Program on Migration and Health (PIMSA in Spanish) in its 2019 cycle, administered by the Health Initiative of the Americas (HIA), UC Berkeley School of Public Health. 2 Fieldwork was suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic and was resumed in June 2021. 3 This program was established by the Trump administration in January 2019 to forcibly send citizens and nationals of certain countries to Mexico while their US removal proceedings were pending. Most who enrolled in the program were asylum seekers; they were required to go through a credible fear interview before being sent back to Mexico with an appointment for a hearing at a US immigration court, usually near the border. In February 2021, the Biden administration ended the program, but it was reinstated following an injunction by a federal judge. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court held that the Biden administration had the authority to terminate the program; nevertheless, litigation has continued. Moreover, the Biden administration has proposed regulations that would essentially impose a near-​total ban on asylum at the US southern border (www. wola.org/​2023/​02/​biden-​asy​lum-​ban-​refug​ees-​dan​ger-​death/​).

70  M. Dolores París-Pombo 4 These expulsions began on March 20, 2020, during the Trump administration, and refer to Title 42 of the United States Public Health Act. Despite multiple studies and letters by public health experts demonstrating that the expulsions did not contribute to preventing the spread of the SARS-​COV-​2 virus, the policy of expulsions has not only continued but has been expanded since January 2021 under the Biden administration. 5 The Grupo Beta is a rescue agency whose mission is to protect migrants’ human rights in Mexico’s border regions. 6 The MPP data were obtained from Trac Immigration, University of Syracuse https://​trac. syr.edu/​phpto​ols/​immi​grat​ion/​mpp/​, accessed on November 14, 2021. 7 The 2018 fall caravans—​which departed from Honduras and El Salvador and were joined by other migrants en route towards Mexico’s northern border—​received extensive media coverage, primarily because of President Trump’s speeches. Between November 13 and November 30, 2018, hundreds of people reached Tijuana by caravan. They were among a total of six thousand migrants who arrived there by caravan that fall (París Pombo, Contreras, and Velasco, 2021). 8 Initially, asylum seekers who were enrolled in the MPP did not have to wait long for a hearing, but immigration court dockets soon became crowded as more people entered the program. Appointments were then scheduled for dates months away, further and further into the future, as we will see with the case of Beatriz. 9 For example, between July and December 2019, the IOM returned 1,358 individuals to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala who were stranded in Mexico waiting for their claims under the MPP (https://​rosanj​ose.iom.int/​site/​en/​sit​rep-​assis​ted-​volunt​ary-​ret​urn-​ prog​ram-​decem​ber-​15-​2019). 10 https://​stat​ic1.squa​resp​ace.com/​sta​tic/​5e221​cacf​f87b​a2d2​833c​f54/​t/​61632​98c6​e01f​ 37ab​7fc5​8aa/​163388​8656​544/​ICE+​Air+​Sep+​2021+​THCFL_​PDF.pdf 11 El País, January 23, 2021 https://​elp​ais.com/​mex​ico/​2021-​01-​24/​halla​dos-​19-​cuer​pos-​ cal​cina​dos-​en-​tam​auli​pas.html

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72  M. Dolores París-Pombo París Pombo, M. D., Contreras Delgado, C. and Velasco Ortiz, L (2021) Introducción: Las caravanas y otras formas de movilidad colectiva en el nuevo contexto migratorio. In: Caravanas migrantes y desplazamientos colectivos en la frontera México-​ Estados Unidos. México: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. París Pombo, M. D. and Díaz, E. (2020) La externalización del asilo a la frontera norte de México: protocolos de protección al migrante. Migraciones en México 85: 86–​119. Rojas Wiesner, M. L. and Basok, T. (2020) “Legalidad ilegal” y precariedad: la perspectiva desde el sur de México. Sociologias 22 (55): 74–​103. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin y Center for US-​Mexican Studies, U.C. San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy (2019). Metering Update Report, https://​www.straus​scen​ter.org/​campi-​publi​cati​ons/​ Trac Immigration (2021) Details on MPP (Remain in Mexico) Deportation Proceedings, TRAC, Universidad de Syracuse, https://​trac.syr.edu/​phpto​ols/​immi​grat​ion/​mpp/​. Walters, W. (2010) Foucault and Frontiers: Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border. In: U. Bröckling, S. Krasmann, and T. Lemke (eds.) Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges. New York: Routledge, pp.146–​172. Migrants’ interviews (pseudonyms) Beatriz, recorded interview, Tijuana, October 11, 2021 Edgar, recorded interview, Tijuana, July 15, 2019 Isaura, Tijuana, recorded interview, October 13, 2021 Israel, Tijuana, not recorded interview, October 15, 2021 Iván, Tijuana, recorded interview, October 15, 2021 Manuel, Tijuana, recorded interview, June 13, 2019

Part II

Forced migrants’ experiences with organized violence

5 Investigating in-​transit migration through Mexico within the context of violence and the pandemic Oscar Calderón Morillón, Amir Estrada, Marlene Rodríguez, Axel Ortiz, Karla Gutiérrez, Estefanía Gutiérrez, Aranza Climaco, Antonio Amat, Alan Rodríguez, Javier Solís, and Eusebio Moto1

“Do not lament, nor laugh, nor detest, but rather comprehend.” There would be no point in the sociologist incorporating the precept of Spinoza if he were not capable of offering the means of respecting it. [own translation] (Bourdieu, 2010)

Investigating in-​transit migration in Mexico; understanding in order to conduct fieldwork During the fall of 2020, we carried out fieldwork using structured interviews and a standardized longitudinal survey with migrants in transit, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. We likewise carried out direct observation at several points along the flow of migratory routes throughout Mexico. The work was done within the framework of ForMOVe, a transnational research project.2 As a group, we were invited to participate as part of a team of interviewers for the Mexican case study. In this chapter, we draw on our experience, which was grounded in our academic formation, in an effort to contribute to an understanding of the implications of doing fieldwork on forced migration and migration in transit through Mexico. Our objective is to provide an account of the fieldwork carried out for this project, discuss our experiences working in various locations, and reflect on the forms of violence that the interviewees shared. Among the forms of violence we found were discrimination, extortion, labor exploitation, and, of course, abuse committed by various immigration authorities. First, we must point out that to take on this work, we started from a methodological approach, which in principle seeks to comprehend (Bourdieu, 2010), by mentally placing ourselves in the social space where the people we interviewed find themselves. In other words, from a deep-​seated understanding of the social conditions that caused their situation: in this case, that of Central American migrants in extreme vulnerability during their transit through Mexico. In terms of DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-7

76  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. this experience, comprehension means recognizing within the mass phenomena of forced migration of Central Americans in transit through Mexico a context of extreme vulnerability. They are motivated by the economic precariousness and violence produced by social polarization and a lack of security, as well as by environmental crises in their place of origin (Castillo Ramirez, 2020). At the same time, it means having a well-​based theoretical and practical grasp of these social conditions, in the sense stated by Bourdieu (2010): interviewers or survey conductors will truly be at the level of their subject only if they possess an immense reserve of acquired knowledge; sometimes this is thanks to their experience in investigation but also, more directly, thanks to knowledge gained in previous interviews. At this point, we should mention that our capacity to do this work primarily stemmed from the fact that both as a team and individually, we already had experience with other social research projects, especially on migration. In addition, we must also mention that the practical management of fieldwork for this research project was as crucial as it was strategic: crucial because without knowing what to do in the field and how to set up interviews in the event of possible risks and contingencies, we would not have been able to continue with our research. It was strategic in the sense of facing difficult conditions in the field, given the extreme vulnerability of these migrants. The surveillance of Mexican armed forces along the migratory route, that is, the deployment of the National Guard at migrant crossing points and the constant inspections aimed at deporting as many migrants as possible, created additional health and safety implications for interviewers. Working in territories where the participation of criminal organizations in the control of irregular migration was more than evident added to the insecurity. And, of course, we could never neglect COVID-​19 as an adjustment variable, due to its observed effects on the flow of migration through Mexico, such as the closure of shelters to the general public and the decrease in the transit of migrants. Our strategies started with an understanding of these social conditions in order to approach the interviews in the circumstances described below. Basic preparation: Training, connections, and the initial pursuit Before starting our fieldwork, we conducted an initial pretest to calibrate the standardized survey questionnaire developed by the coordinating team. We then held a second meeting—​semi-​virtual—​where we met the whole team and the coordinators of the ForMOVe Project, followed by a two-​day training session. In training, various protocols were discussed in terms of proper hygiene to reduce the spread of COVID-​19, as well as some practical elements of the survey, such as research techniques useful for this particular case study. These included formally identifying ourselves (visible University ID or Voter ID); wearing a uniform of T-​ shirt, cap, and shoulder bag so that we could be spotted in the field; approaching the person to be interviewed after comprehending their social conditions; being transparent about the objectives of the project; ensuring confidentiality and anonymity; and generating an environment of trust as empathetic interviewers, i.e., trying to comprehend the interviewee by putting ourselves in their place, but without losing

Investigating in-transit migration  77 objectivity or neutrality (Giroux and Tremblay, 2004). In addition, there was a simulation on conducting the survey, and a discussion area was arranged to resolve doubts and suggest scenarios that might arise during fieldwork. Before starting the pilot test of the questionnaire, we sought contact with people who might provide access to the organizations and places where migrants in transit concentrate in Mexico. Such contact with informative liaisons, that is, people “who are known to be established in the heart of the broadest social media […] and in position to indicate the names and addresses of people concerned with the survey” (Giroux and Tremblay, 2004, p. 175) was from beginning to end a crucial support in determining how the questionnaire should be applied. Initially, the survey was to be carried out in three specific regions of the country, outlining the south, center, and north, which would only include visits to states like Chiapas, Mexico City, and Baja California. However, during our preliminary contacts with liaisons in those states, we began to realize the difficulties we were facing, including the scarcity of migrants in certain shelters because of the pandemic. Thus, the strategy in the field shifted to one of pursuit, which evolved as we found places where Central Americans were in transit. These random places consisted of public roads, plazas, parks, markets, thoroughfares, improvised campgrounds, huts under freeway interchanges, train tracks, private residences, and, of course, additional shelters that we had not originally considered. Often, we found it difficult to find people to interview, which also forced us to go beyond the three regions where we had planned to conduct our research, adding Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Tlaxcala, the State of Mexico, Sonora, and Tamaulipas to our sample. Wherever we went, the first thing we did was either introduce ourselves to the local authorities or go directly to the people who were responsible for the shelters we were visiting, in most cases through contacts who had generously provided their help as liaisons. Southern border: Convergence of various migratory groups The state of Chiapas is normally the entryway for the main migratory land routes coming from Venezuela and Colombia, which go through the Central American isthmus from Panama to Guatemala (Casillas, 2008). Situated at the border of Mexico with Guatemala, the Suchiate River is certainly one of the entryways favored by migrants without papers, as well as the transfer point for countless merchandise from Mexico southward. The presence of porters, rafters, and pedicab freight transporters is particularly noticeable in this part of the border. One of those workers, specifically one on his pedicab, noted how poorly we were maneuvering the car we were traveling in when we arrived in Ciudad Hidalgo. He asked us where we were going and offered to take us. Although he was unable to carry more than two of us on some of the steep hills and dirt roads, we finally arrived at the river, where people on wooden rafts and tire tubes—​and all manner of merchandise—​ cross with relative ease, eluding the “formal” border and avoiding customs costs. We then walked down garbage-​strewn paths toward the Rodolfo Robles Bridge, passing stairs and corridors, where on one of the many migrant-​themed murals on

78  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. the building walls toward the river, one could read: “By including and protecting the migrants, we all win.” At that moment of our walk, we observed twenty agents of the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) and officers of the National Guard detaining a migrant. We continued along our way, and on the walk back to the car, the worker who had insisted on taking people in his pedicab was a little more talkative on better roads. He told us that at one time there were not as many police in the area—​at least not like that. He also said that although he works in Mexico, he lives in Guatemala, where he is originally from. In Tapachula, we first visited the surroundings of the Estación Migratoria “Siglo XXI,” the largest immigrant detention center in Mexico. There, we found a group of recently released migrants, who participated in the survey. They told us that children, women, LGBTQ+​ individuals, and men were detained in separate sections inside the station. Suddenly, a couple of police officers, wearing outdated federal police uniforms from the previous six-​year administration, asked us to identify ourselves and explain what we were doing there. Our coordinator showed them a letter from the directors of the project, which they read in disbelief. They then “invited”3 us to do our survey somewhere else, because we were in an area that was “still part of the Institute.” That “invitation” led us to the Miguel Hidalgo Central Park, where, in groups, in pairs or alone, many migrants were seated or strolling through the square. Theoretically, it was closed because of the pandemic, but that proved to be a rather symbolic and useless gesture, since the only obstacles impeding access to the square were a few almost invisible wires. We discussed among ourselves the various national origins of the people in the plaza. Not only did we encounter migrants from Central America but also migrants from Africa. As we later discovered, they were in transit through the migratory corridor that leaves from Africa, enters through South America or the Caribbean, and makes a stop in Chiapas on the way to the United States (Álvarez Velasco, 2016). It was not a coincidence that we observed long lines of African migrants at an INM office in downtown Tapachula. In fact, some of these people were selling things in the streets or simply sitting quietly or strolling around. Despite our doubts about doing the interviews in such a public place, there were no issues; in fact, one migrant was completely open with one of our teammates, telling her that yes, she was from Honduras and had fled because she was a victim of discrimination due to her gender identity. She had decided against continuing the road north because an LGBTQ+​organization from the United States was providing her with 300 dollars a month. In addition, according to her testimony, just like other migrants, she deals in sex work in Tapachula and could thereby make a living that would keep her fed. Girls, boys, teenagers, students, women, and men forced to migrate In Ixtepec, Oaxaca, an informative liaison helped us to contact a person in charge of coordinating a large group of migrants as part of a federal government program to “connect them to tasks to give back to the community” (Secretaría de Bienestar, 2019). After making us wait in a park that was being cleaned by a group of migrants,

Investigating in-transit migration  79 the person in charge called out to them. In a dissuasive tone—​right in front of us—​ he said that we had come from a university to conduct “completely voluntary” interviews and that “each of you knows what to answer and what not to answer.” He later took us to the train tracks, where another team of migrants was cleaning and cutting grass and where the same scenario played out. Despite his best efforts, we were able to conduct the survey in both places. Later, we went to an emblematic shelter called “Hermanos en el Camino,” which is well-​known along the migrant route as well as to the Mexican public because of the human rights activism of the priest who founded it. Outside the shelter, about twenty men were lying down or sitting on the ground, while others were playing soccer with a torn, deflated ball. We entered the shelter, where a woman in charge received us in a friendly manner. We provided our identification and the letters from the project coordinators and explained the purpose of our visit and the confidentiality of the study. She asked to read the printed survey, asked questions about it, and then welcomed us in, telling us that the control at the entrance was designed to protect the children and teenagers who were staying there. In this shelter, we gathered a variety of testimonies. However, the greater number of occupants that day was mainly due to a pollero4 having abandoned a truck transporting children and teenagers because of all the control posts and checkpoints the National Guard and the INM had set up to detain irregular migrants in Chiapas and Oaxaca. For their part, other people in the shelter told us that they were migrating for environmental reasons, after two devastating hurricanes (Eta and Iota) ripped through Honduras in less than six months, killing around a hundred people and inflicting tremendous material losses. One of those affected had been an agricultural engineering student in Honduras. According to his testimony, almost the entire countryside had been destroyed by the hurricanes; therefore, the only option he could see was to migrate to Mexico, where he would now like to study for a master’s degree at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Another very interesting case was that of an older woman who told us a terrible story about how her partner in her native country physically abused her and threatened to kill her. She was forced to migrate to the United States, where she lived and worked for more than thirty years. As soon as she had earned enough money, she was able to send for her children. In the US, she had another child with an American partner. She lived with that partner until he physically assaulted her, leaving her with a motor impairment. As a result, she fell into a deep depression, lost custody of her children, and was deported to Tijuana, where she ended up homeless and began taking drugs. She remembers little about what happened during that time until she was found by the priest from “Hermanos en el Camino,” the shelter where she will live for the rest of her life on the fifty dollars a week that her children send from the United States. Protected by the Mexican state? Another reference point for the migratory route through Mexico in the Tehuantepec Isthmus region is Acayucan, Veracruz. The detention center there, with a capacity

80  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. to retain around 800 people, is the second largest in Mexico, after the Siglo XXI facility. Due to the great number of migrants in transit through the town, the presence of various international organizations whose mandate is to support the human rights of migrants in transit is not surprising. Among these organizations are the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Asylum Access Mexico, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children, and Doctors without Borders. In addition, the consulates of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are also present. Located nearby in Olutla is one of the best-​known shelters in southern Mexico, the “Casa del Migrante Monseñor Guillermo Ranzahuer Gonzalez,” where humanitarian assistance is given to migrants in transit and who are looking for refuge. This consists of food and lodging, as well as legal, psychological, and medical services; it was in this shelter that our interviews were carried out. The installations had been adapted with difficulty to isolate people with coronavirus, and there were separate, partitioned dormitories for women, families, men, LGBTQ+​individuals, and people with disabilities. Among those staying in the shelter were migrants in need of international protection who had fled from armed conflicts, persecution for political or religious reasons, or because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. In addition, the shelter accommodates significant numbers of migrants who are in transit to the United States for economic reasons. They only stay briefly, hoping to rest a few days and attend to their needs before continuing the trip to northern Mexico. In contrast, migrants in need of international protection may stay for months. Some even expressed their intentions to live in Acayucan indefinitely; people with this profile are trying to normalize their stay and obtain refugee status in Mexico. Therefore, they must follow the administrative process before the Mexican Commission of Aid to Refugees, which can take months, even one or two years. During this time, they must remain within the territorial limits of the state in which they submitted their application, in this case, Veracruz. Conversely, it is also relevant to point out the favorable opinion expressed by the migrants when we questioned them about how they had been received by the local community; the majority stated that they had experienced no form of discrimination. Nevertheless, various people interviewed said they had suffered multiple abuses by agents of the INM, not only at the immigration station where some had been detained but also in other states. In general, there was a feeling characterized by exasperation, sadness, and frustration because of these incidents. Invariably, they were forced to rethink whether they should stay—​in hopes of eventually receiving protected status from Mexico—​or return to their native country, given the systematic violation of their human rights, precisely by agents of the Mexican state. The Rail Squad “El Escuadrón de la Vía,” or “The Rail Squad,” is a term used by a teammate to refer to all the elements needed to conduct interviews in the area along the tracks of freight trains that transport cars, cement, and other things—​including many migrants. We required a certain amount of discipline, physical effort, and the

Investigating in-transit migration  81 ability to collectively deal with random circumstances in the field, which gave us a sense of being like a squad. It was common to see migrants ask for money and food in the communities located parallel to the tracks that cross through Puebla and Tlaxcala, especially in Ciudad Serdán and Apizaco, respectively, and we covered the area exhaustively. We spent a total of seven days during a three-​week period visiting sites around Ciudad Serdán. First, we arrived at the old railway station in Mazapiltepec de Juárez, where under normal circumstances, migrants would be found. However, on that day, we found none. We were later informed by some of the locals that the tracks had been blocked by a teacher’s union protest a few kilometers back. Therefore, the migrants had to find other ways to travel, which often made them less visible. We then moved to another area, one hour away by car, toward a community called Jesús de Nazareno in Ciudad Serdán. After conducting interviews in the central plaza of Jesús de Nazareno, we moved toward a nearby railyard, where a larger group of migrants was taking refuge from the sun under some trees located on a path between the crops. Before we could reach them, an auxiliary police officer asked us to identify ourselves and explain the motive of our visit; he took a photo of our IDs, saying he was sorry to have to do so, but his job involved taking care of the valuable merchandise transported on the trains; whenever there was a load that was a little more valuable, he had to watch out for possible thugs who might be among the people migrating. Therefore, on this railyard, police armed with long weapons force all migrants off the trains to wait for an indeterminate amount of time to board another train with “less valuable” merchandise. According to the chief of police, this is to protect the commodities being transported; in fact, it is a strategy to control the flow of migrants. The interviews were carried out in the presence of the police, who observed our work. To create a somewhat more trusting environment, we brought water and food from local stores to offer the migrants. Suddenly, an officer of the National Guard, which was also installed at the railyard, approached a group of migrants to ask questions and dissuade them from participating in the interviews. Nothing terrible happened, but it also was not the first time we had had this type of contact with the National Guard; on another occasion, they photographed our IDs and impeded us from accessing a certain area of the yard. On the days that followed, we continued visiting the railyard but found no migrants. The local police now recognized us and recommended that we come earlier, as there was more transit at dawn. Disconcerted, and based on our previous experiences, we went to Apizaco, Tlaxcala, to a shelter called “La Sagrada Familia,” located beside the train tracks. The shelter was founded by a Catholic organization and is sustained by local citizens in solidarity with Central American migrants. We spoke with a shelter manager, and after we identified ourselves and explained the reason for our visit, she received us amicably. But she advised us that there were only a few people there, presumably because of the pandemic and the frequent detention of migrants along the route. Three days later, we returned to the shelter, and this time, we found men (mostly young men), women, and teenagers. After the person in charge introduced us, we collected testimonies in which they

82  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. described repeated violations of their physical integrity and human rights along the migratory route—​assault, abuse, sexual violence, robbery, threats, extortion. Their victimizers included the municipal and state police, as well as high-​level criminal organizations more commonly referred to as gangs or cartels. Meanwhile, the Rail Squad remained active, having more missions to complete starting at 7:00 a.m., despite the low temperatures in the railyard of Jesús de Nazareno. On two occasions, we were unable to find a single migrant; one time, that was due to numerous detentions in the immediate area by the Mexican army, the INM, and the local police of Ciudad Serdán, as reported by the local media of Puebla (Valerio, 2020). When we did find migrants at the tracks, it was very early—​ between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m.—​and we witnessed how the police removed them from the train and lined them up on the side of the tracks. It was an extremely tense situation, and we were at a loss upon seeing the armed police and the total vulnerability of the migrants. However, one teammate took a box of face masks, stood in front of the line of migrants, and said, “Good morning brothers, we’re bringing you face masks.” And with that, they were at ease. Almost half an hour after the migrants were removed from the train, we could hear another train arriving. From the cornfields and from under the trees, the migrants came hurrying, running to catch their next ride. Some of the team members had to accompany them on their way to board; one even ran along the tracks with his clipboard and questionnaire sheets, asking questions and writing the answers of a man who was already on the train as it began to move away. Social capital in the place of origin and the place of destination In the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (ZMVM), we were provided with easy access and cordial treatment at a shelter called Casa Tochán in Mexico City, thanks to prior arrangements or previous contacts with some of the people in charge. The place was quite nice, very orderly, and clean, with strict sanitary protocols to enter the facilities; there was also space for relaxation and recreation for the migrants, who were very approachable when it came to contributing to our study. As soon as we started to interview them, we realized that these were migrants whose situations were more favorable than those of a “typical” Central American in a process of forced migration to Mexico—​or compared to the people we had interviewed on the train tracks or in other shelters. Without intending to minimize what they were going through, it would be fair to say that the profile of these migrants was less vulnerable, which had to do with the human and social capital they had brought with them from their place of origin, indicating that their social conditions in their native countries were reproduced in a similar way in their place of destination. It should be noted that they had already been living in the shelter for three to six months due to pandemic restrictions on mobility. During that period, the vast majority were going through an administrative process to regularize their immigration status in Mexico. About these cases, we can mention two individuals who were migrating due to political conflicts. One even referred to himself as a “leader of the opposition” to

Investigating in-transit migration  83 the Honduran government and said that because of his political activism he had been persecuted by the authorities in that nation until he had no other alternative but to leave his homeland. The other case of political persecution involved a professional who had just taken the entrance exam to the UNAM, because among his goals was to continue his academic training. Afterwards, another team member was driving through Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico, when he stopped at a traffic light at a major intersection. Suddenly, a man appeared selling popsicles, while another began cleaning his car windshield. Our colleague asked where they were from, and they said Honduras. He then parked at the side of the road and started a conversation, telling them about the project and inviting them to participate in an interview; they seemed rather dubious. The next day he brought them some sandwiches, milk, cans of tuna fish, and medicine, as they had said they were sick. With these supplies, we were able to approach a hut made of rubber and cardboard under the freeway interchange, where at least twelve people had taken refuge, all from Central America. The responses to the questionnaire were terse and still reflected a certain distrust. However, they mentioned things relevant to the survey, such as the fact that one of the men had been injured by a cement bollard installed parallel to the train tracks in Apizaco, Tlaxcala. These posts are used to discourage migrants from jumping off at certain points of the track. Furthermore, we learned that for this group, which was living on the street, the police were not a threat—​but the local gang of thugs were, to the extent that one of the migrants had already been injured in a fight. Tension in the desert Perhaps the most challenging of our stops was the state of Sonora. Situated in northwestern Mexico, historically, it has been a key location for irregular migration toward the United States; therefore, we embarked on a journey to the border. Our liaison told us to visit Caborca, located some 200 kilometers south of Tucson, Arizona. While we were driving there, we were detained by a National Guard officer. After we identified ourselves, he did his best to dissuade us from continuing onward, even implying outright danger to our lives, particularly the lives of our two female colleagues: “Better to return to Hermosillo [the state capital].” The encounter gave us pause, so when we stopped at the next gas station, we had to reconsider and contact our informative liaisons. They assured us that we could continue our trip. Nevertheless, the experience had been intimidating, and we decided to head back to Hermosillo. Given our doubts, we prioritized our own safety and wanted to step back a bit to better comprehend conditions in the field. The next day in Hermosillo, with the help of a colleague of the University of Sonora, we went to the San Luis Gonzaga Food Kitchen and Dispensary “Grupo Humanitario Mateo 23:25” but found that due to the pandemic, the kitchen had been partially closed. In response, the volunteers and the priest who coordinated meal services had opted to deliver food packages at the nearest train tracks, close to where people were living in the street. We went looking for Central Americans, who could usually be found there, but we were unsuccessful. In fact, one of the

84  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. men we encountered became angry with a team member, demanding, “And then what? Mexicans don’t count?” He even tried to attack him physically; fortunately, our teammate was able to get away without complications and we continued with our work. While still in Hermosillo, we went to the Casa de Asistencia “Hermana Migrante,” where we were able to talk with a group of migrant women from Central America. They told us of the difficulties they were having in trying to regularize their legal status at a time when the bureaucracy was somewhat paralyzed due to the pandemic. We also had an in-​depth interview with a Nicaraguan woman who had been residing in Mexico for more than thirty years; the focal point of her story was the extreme vulnerability of all migrant women in Mexico. Meanwhile, the shelter manager mentioned that the number of migrants had decreased due to COVID. She then told us the story of how this modest shelter for women, founded not long ago by a group of friends, was sustained by donations. It is part of a national network of refuges or shelters for migrants, which in our opinion shows that humanitarian help for migrants in transit through Mexico rests on the efforts of an organized civil society. After this last visit, we had to reconsider the need to move toward our primary goal: Caborca. Once again, we contacted our liaison who told us to meet him in a neighboring municipality called Altar, and so we went. We were about a half hour away from Caborca when we made our first stop at the Centro Comunitario de Atención al Migrante y Necesitado (CCAMY). There the managers explained the migration dynamics in the zone comprised of Altar and Caborca, insofar as it is controlled by criminal organizations; most of the inhabitants participate in the local migration industry, which primarily consists of the sale of all kinds of accessories for crossing the border through the desert. They also explained that migrants can find transport almost immediately, depending on their budget; however, if they fail to provide payment up front, they are often forced to work for criminal organizations until sufficient funds are accrued. We then arrived in Caborca, where we planned to visit two migrant shelters, namely the “Centro Comunitario de Ayuda al Migrante” and “Casa del Migrante, Pueblo sin Fronteras.” From these two shelters, we were able to get a glimpse of the migrant experience closer to the border (albeit one that was similar to those described earlier in this chapter). At first, we were unable to find any migrants; later, we discovered that this was because they were regularly employed at plantations in the zone, so we had to adjust to their schedule and visit at night. The same vulnerability and exhaustion we had witnessed in both the central and southern part of the country were present in the faces, bodies, and expressions of the men, women, and children we encountered up north. This became even more obvious when we found a teenage girl who recognized us by our uniforms, given that she had recently participated in the interviews back in Apizaco, Tlaxcala. Conversely, as mentioned above, informative liaisons or gatekeepers were always crucial, both to determine the feasibility of our work and to set up interviews in the field. As is common in social research, the help of a gatekeeper to enter the field becomes imperative at a certain point; in the case of Altar and Caborca, it was

Investigating in-transit migration  85 absolutely necessary to have someone who could guide us around, especially given the enormous tension created by strangers who arrive in places where everyone is bound to rules dictated by the criminal organizations that traffic people illegally into the United States. For us, help came from shelter managers and a priest who was very familiar with these issues and known for his political activism on behalf of migrants. “Jesus is a migrant”: Religion and humanitarian help Initially, we had planned to do a third of the interviews for the project in Tijuana, Baja California, given its importance as a classic entry point to the United States for thousands of migrants. In October 2020, we made an exploratory visit, but because of the COVID-​19 pandemic, all the shelters and food kitchens we contacted were closed. Therefore, we quickly decided not to do the questionnaires there; however, while we were working in Caborca, Sonora, a professor at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) Tijuana, put us in contact with Pastor Gustavo Banda, a minister who is well-​known not only for his activism on behalf of migrants but also for his valuable collaboration and sensitivity with respect to social research. His religious mission had led him to construct a shelter and temple called “Embajadores de Jesús” (Ambassadors of Jesus) with his own hands and with the help of his supporters. The facility is located in a corner of Tijuana surrounded by hills and sparse vegetation known as “the canyon of the scorpion.” There the extreme poverty and vulnerability of the residents are painfully apparent. Early on, this shelter/​temple was baptized as “Little Haiti,” because the first Haitian consulate in Tijuana was built there in response to the massive migration of around 2,000 Haitians in 2016. Later, it was converted into a “migrant sanctuary,” in accordance with the path begun by Gustavo Banda, based on the practical profession of his religious principles with respect to migration; thus, people of different ages and of different nationalities now reside there. Today, this shelter/​temple is further proof of the active participation of religious groups in offering humanitarian aid to migrants traveling in extreme vulnerability throughout Mexico. In this way, these religious organizations profess their beliefs pragmatically. As Gustavo Banda declared to local media: “Everyone is a migrant in the Bible. Jesus is a migrant” (Arturo Villa, 2022). Another business of organized crime At the opposite end of the border—​Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in northeastern Mexico—​informant-​liaisons were again vital for access to the field. In this case, it was thanks to the relatives of a team member who resided there. They helped with security, along with information that we needed to reach the people we were interested in meeting. We were able to identify three places where migrants were located; the first was the Casa del Migrante San Juan Diego y San Francisco de Asís A.C., which is directed by a religious group. Unlike other shelters, pandemic restrictions were secondary here. Instead, the most significant restriction had to

86  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. do with the prohibition on taking photos of the shelter and its occupants for their safety. A manager received us openly, talked about the objectives of the shelter, alliances with other shelters and organizations, donations, and the volunteer work done by migrants. A manager opened the doors to us and we were allowed to conduct interviews, provided they took place before 6 p.m.—​for our own safety. One of the testimonies was that of a teenager from El Salvador, who expressed interest in participating in the interview. In his words, he had left his country to improve his living conditions; however, in Mexico, he had been the victim of multiple crimes, from threats to attacks, mugging, fraud, and even kidnapping—​something that also appears in other testimonies collected there. The second place where we conducted interviews was near the pedestrian bridge that leads to the United States. We were not far from the infamous campground that had been improvised for asylum seekers sent back to Mexico in the wake of the restrictive policies first imposed by former US President Donald Trump (Kanno-​Youngs et al., 2020). Joe Biden was inaugurated as president in January 2021, having promised to roll back the restrictive policies of the Trump era (Morris, 2022); however, the campground is still there, occupied by people from Central America who migrate in conditions of vulnerability. We were unable to enter because we were denied access by municipal workers from Matamoros, who “suggested” we go through a temporary administrative process—​an essentially fruitless endeavor, given the pace of the bureaucracy and the prevailing corruption. Although we managed to conduct interviews in these two places, we faced an obstacle that later became apparent: Some people were not quite sure about participating because they suspected that we were part of a police group. Once we were able to alleviate their fears, it was mostly the men who seemed enthusiastic about telling their stories. It was more difficult for women to agree to be interviewed because of the repeated cases of sexual abuse and violence they had suffered. Persevering in fieldwork, despite the violence and the pandemic By describing our experiences doing fieldwork on forced migration in transit through Mexico, we hope to show the urgency of developing a sound theoretical, methodological, and experiential base, above all, to sort out the ensuing risks and contingencies typical to social research. This is especially so in a context like the one we faced in Mexico, where the climate of violence, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, presented an enormous obstacle to conducting an investigation. Therefore, we need to reflect on the implications of doing fieldwork in Mexico in the face of such serious health and public safety issues and develop more appropriate strategies; the ideal field, where people are open to participating in a scientific social project, no longer exists, at least not from our experience. Even obtaining basic statistical information presents a challenge within a context of extreme vulnerability and violence, particularly in populations like these that are in transit. On the other hand, we need to point out that mentally placing oneself in the place where the people we interview are located, in terms of social space, is not commiseration per se; it is a means to ensure that the interview, even in such difficult

Investigating in-transit migration  87 conditions, does not become an act of symbolic violence, given the distance that may exist between interviewee and interviewer. Therefore, our fieldwork should generate a climate of trust through empathy, while striving to remain accurate, so that neither objectivity nor neutrality are lost. In addition, science is a social project that is built up collectively but runs into difficulty when it observes the problems, contradictions, and crises of society; thus, it is necessary to establish informative liaisons or networks of contacts on the subject being investigated in order to prevent further conflict. From our experience, establishing these contacts made a difference and alleviated our problems, even with various police and armed forces monitoring or hindering our work. We had the necessary information and support when we needed it, both in advance and in real time. In our case, this was mainly thanks to religious and civil society organizations, to whom we will be eternally grateful. Persevering in field research despite the violence and the pandemic allows us to generate theoretical, methodological, and practical strategies to tackle our social problems in a way that more adequately corresponds to our realities. Even in adverse circumstances, we must persevere in generating data by working in the field. Contrary to what was commonly believed during the pandemic, we cannot confine academic activity to virtual space. Notes 1 Members of the interviewing team: Amir Estrada, Marlene Rodríguez, Karla Gutiérrez, Estefanía Gutiérrez, Aranza Climaco, Axel Ortiz, Antonio Amat, Alan Rodríguez, Javier Solís, Eusebio Moto and Andrés Ramos, all students, most having graduated with a Bachelor’s in Sociology, as well as others in work coordinated by Dr. Óscar Calderón Morillón, Professor of the Social Sciences Faculty, all from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), under the direction of Dr. Stephanie Schütze, and Dr. Ximena Alba Villalever of the Latin American Studies Institute (LAI) of the Free University of Berlin (FUB) and of Dr. Ludger Pries, and Dr. Berna Sakaf Zulfikar Savci of the Social Sciences Faculty of the Ruhr University in Bochum (RUB) in the framework of ForMOVe Project, the project under study. 2 For more information about ForMOVe and its standardized longitudinal survey, visit: www.migrat​ion-​viole​nce.org/​ 3 In the local jargon, “invite” is synonymous with “asked.” In this context, it is a passive-​ aggressive way of asking us to leave. 4 Person who charges groups of migrants without papers to cross them illegally over the border, particularly between Mexico and the United States of America (COLMEX, n.d.) (own translation).

References Álvarez Velasco, S. (2016) ¿Crisis migratoria contemporánea? Complejizando dos corredores migratorios globales. Ecuador Debate 97: 155–​171. Arturo Villa, A. (2022) Gustavo Banda Aceves: “Dios me escogió para los migrantes”. Zeta Libre como el viento, 3 enero, https://​zeta​tiju​ana.com/​2022/​01/​gust​avo-​banda-​ace​ves-​ dios-​me-​esco​gio-​para-​los-​migran​tes/​

88  Oscar Calderón Morillón et al. Bourdieu, P. (2010) La miseria del mundo. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Casillas, R. (2008) Las rutas de los centroamericanos por México, un ejercicio de caracterización, actores principales y complejidades. Migración y desarrollo 10: 157–​174. Castillo Ramirez, G. (2020) Migración forzada y procesos de violencia: Los migrantes centroamericanos en su paso por México. Revista Española de Educación Comparada 35: 14–​33. COLMEX (n.d.) Diccionario del Español de México [Online] | Pollero. Available at: https://​ dem.col​mex.mx/​Ver/​poll​ero (Accessed 29/​01/​2022). Giroux, S. and Tremblay, G. (2004) Metodología de las ciencias humanas: La investigación en acción. México, D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Kanno-​Youngs, Z., Shear, M. D. and Haberman, M. (2020) Citing Coronavirus, Trump Will Announce Strict New Border Controls. The New York Times, 17 March, www.nyti​mes. com/​2020/​03/​17/​us/​polit​ics/​trump-​coro​navi​rus-​mexi​can-​bor​der.html Morris, J. E. (2022) The Biden administration’s unfulfilled promise of humane border policies. Correspondence 399. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​S0140-​6736(22)00741-​3. Secretaría de Bienestar (2019) Con programa de Emergencia Social la Secretaría de Bienestar atiende a migrantes de diversas nacionalidades. Comunicado 25 September, www.gob. mx/​bienes​tar/​pre​nsa/​con-​progr​ama-​de-​eme​rgen​cia-​soc​ial-​la-​sec​reta​ria-​de-​bienes​tar-​atie​ nde-​a-​migran​tes-​de-​diver​sas-​nac​iona​lida​des Valerio, J. C. (2020) Policía municipal de #Chalchicomula de Sesma, brindó apoyo al personal del Instituto Nacional de Migración, para asegurar a 55 indocumentados originarios de #Honduras, entre los migrantes hay dos menores de edad. [Online] Available at: www. faceb​ook.com/​19334​8464​0239​103/​posts/​28214​7643​8106​581/​

6 Forced migration and organized violence between the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico Evidence from a 2020 survey Ludger Pries, Berna Şafak Zülfikar Savci, Ximena Alba Villalever, and Oscar Calderón Morillón

Mexico is a vibrant node of migration in the long corridor of the Americas. During the twentieth century, emigration toward Northern America prevailed. In the twenty-​first century, Mexico became an important country of transit migration, where many processes of human mobility come together and diverse factors are in play: forced internal displacement in Mexico (e.g., due to organized violence by cartels); emigration and commuting migration toward the US and Canada; return migration from the North, immigration, and transit migration.1 All these mobilities share an intersection of causal or conditioning factors, from the lack of basic economic conditions to increasingly violent situations and threats for sizable groups. Organized violence is especially strong in the region known as the Northern Triangle of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as in Mexico. On Mexico’s southern border, state authorities, in collaboration with and pressured by the US, have increased efforts to control and close the path for migrants trying to reach US territory. In addition, Mexico lacks the infrastructure to meet the basic needs of all of its own citizens, much less forced migrants; thus, for many, it is not a desired destination. Migrants are forced to carry out their lives without meeting their basic needs or receiving any form of protection. As a result, those fleeing violence in their home countries and trying to reach safe places are confronted with new kinds of violence. The concept of violence is complex and can have different meanings—​from a narrow approach limited to the execution of physical harm to Galtung’s very broad understanding of “violence as avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life, lowering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible” (Galtung, 1990: 292). Our understanding lies between these extremes; we define violence in general as the executed or convincing threat of physical and/​or mental harm against a person or group of persons.2 Organized DOI: 10.4324/9781032614052-8

90  Ludger Pries et al. violence then means using or convincingly threatening social action to physically and/​or mentally harm a person or group of persons in a collective, organized way in order to achieve collective and/​or corporative goals.3 In a “Guide for the Red Cross and Red Crescent,” organized violence is defined as “the purposeful and systematic use of terror and brutality to control individuals, groups and communities […] Its methods include causing severe pain and suffering, killing, intimidating, threatening and in some cases destroying a community, ethnic group or political opposition.” (Kane, 1995: 5). This is a valuable definition, but it is too narrow for the context of forced migration, where border control agencies, human traffickers, or professional smugglers might be active without high levels of brutality and terror.4 Organized violence might target specific groups of people, such as minorities, political dissidents, or LGBTQI+​persons, but it could also persecute anyone. In our study, we follow the various forms and locations in which forced migrants experience organized violence in their transit to a safe place of establishment, either temporary or permanent. These experiences might take place in their country of origin, in transit, or upon arrival; the forms of organized violence could be experienced either as short-​lived specific events or as long-​term and/​or conflict-​related conditions. Based on a survey of 359 forced and transit migrants from Central America in Mexico, this chapter offers insights into the social contexts in which they were living before leaving their countries of origin (mainly from Honduras but also from El Salvador and Guatemala). In particular, it sheds light on their experiences of violence before and during migration. It reveals the endemic and unpredictable situation of organized violence that leads to different migration dynamics from these countries. It analyzes socio-​demographic factors and identifies the most vulnerable groups according to the data set. The chapter also identifies the most important corridors for arriving in and transit through Mexico, focusing on the special challenges and threats that different groups of migrants continuously face.5 Scenarios of (organized) violence in the Northern Triangle Migration is always embedded in the complex combination of living conditions, experiences, expectations, and life projects of those who consider leaving their place of everyday life for a longer period of time. They might think of migrating for a limited time period and then returning (and end up never returning) or they might think of a definite emigration (and end up returning or moving on to other places). In the twenty-​first century, the classic distinction between voluntary labor migration and involuntary refugee migration has become increasingly inadequate: “the distinction between forced migration and economic migration is becoming blurred” (Castles, 2003: 17). All over the world, the consequences of climate change, like floods, drought, or tornados, force people to migrate, and the impact of these factors will further intensify in the near future (World Bank, 2018, 2021). Also, violence and herein organized violence impact much more on migration dynamics than is often realized in public debates. With situations of open (civil) wars or military conflicts, like Syria or the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the role of organized violence in forced migration is obvious. But in the case of latent or

Forced migration and organized violence  91 diffuse organized violence, it is more difficult to relate it to (forced) migration. The Northern Triangle in Central America is an example of this kind of violence and its relevance for migration. Organized violence has been almost endemic in Central American countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua for decades. In our definition of organized violence, we include harmful acts perpetrated by constituencies like nation-​states as well as collective or corporate actors, legal and illegal, with varying levels of legitimacy. Such an understanding is specific and broad enough to capture the particular situation in Central America. The exceptional context of Central America becomes clearer with some empirical data. For this, we can take as an—​obviously quite limited—​indicator for organized violence the number of fatalities caused by state-​based armed conflicts, non-​state conflicts, and one-​sided violence. For a long period of time, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) has collected data based on this definition of organized violence. Taking the UCDP data as a trustworthy source and considering the number of armed conflicts during the period from 1946 to 2018, the volume of conflicts more than doubled. Specifically, intrastate and internationalized intrastate conflicts increased. UCDP data on the number of fatalities attributed to organized violence cover the period from 1989 to 2018 and do not indicate a clear trend. But they do reveal a tendency of increasing relative relevance of non-​state-​based conflicts in the number of fatalities due to organized violence.6 Fatalities due to organized violence in conflicts are differentiated into three groups: state-​based, non-​state, and one-​sided conflicts. As Figure 6.1 demonstrates, in an international regional comparison, the Americas—​and this is mainly Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama)—​surpassed Africa in 2007. Since 2018—​and this is basically after the wave of killings due to armed conflicts in Syria—​the Americas have represented the highest volume of homicides in non-​state conflicts of all world regions.7 A differentiated look at countries and regions in the Americas reveals that it is mainly Central America, where non-​state organized violence as expressed in the volume of intentional homicides is traditionally high. From the 1990s until 2018, the estimated homicide rate in Central America has been around four times higher than that in all other regions under consideration (Figure 6.2). After a decreasing tendency, it almost doubled between 2008 and 2018. Since 2017, Mexico has caught up with Central America; nevertheless, El Salvador and Honduras still have substantially higher values than Mexico. Taking the rate of intentional homicides (number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants) in a globally comparative perspective, Central America stands out for its traditionally high numbers and especially for the increase since 2007 (Figure 6.2). As compared to other regions, we can characterize the northern part of Central America—​especially El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—​and Mexico as violence-​intensive social spaces.8 Much of this violence has to be considered as organized violence executed by state authorities but also by gangs like Mara Salvatrucha and Mara Barrio 18 (Castillo Ramírez, 2020: 24). “Violence and insecurity, poverty and family reunification remain important drivers of migration

92  Ludger Pries et al.

Figure 6.1 Fatalities in non-​state conflicts by region 1989–​2021. Source: https://​ucdp.uu.se/​downlo​ads/​index.html#nonst​ate based on studies of Davies et al. (2022) and Sundberg et al. (2012).

from Central America” (IOM, 2019: 104). In Mexico, the so-​called “war on drugs” triggered a wave of violence that began with Felipe Calderón’s war against drugs tactics after 2006; it has also had repercussions on the migrant population. As cartels have broken up and reorganized, they constantly fight for territorial control, as well as their need to find novel sources of income and labor. This has led to the increase of violence, extortion, forced labor, prostitution networks, abduction, and trafficking in persons, who are often forced to serve as mules for drugs and weapons transportation across borders (Casillas, 2017: 154–​155; París Pombo, 2017: 99; Torre Cantalapiedra and Yee Quintero, 2018: 91). Meanwhile, the trafficking industry in Mexico differentiated into complex networks and has a life in its own, at least partly separated from cartels (García, 2021a; Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021; Durand, 2022). This is not to say that cartels no longer deal in trafficking but to show that migrants in and through Mexico are facing profoundly complex challenges.9 The numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans arrested while trying to cross the border toward the US also reflect these dynamics. Although Mexicans long represented the majority of migrants apprehended while trying to cross the border, in recent years, the number of apprehensions of Central Americans, especially from the Northern Triangle, has exceeded those from Mexico. “Fleeing

Forced migration and organized violence  93

Figure 6.2 Rate of intentional homicides: world, regions, and countries. Source: Own elaboration ims%20wo​rldw​ide

based

on

https://​dataun​odc.un.org/​data/​homic​ide/​Homic​ide%20vict​

violence, persecution and poverty, thousands of migrants from Central America trekked for thousands of miles toward the Mexico–​United States border” (IOM, 2019: 104). The southern border of Mexico has been historically important for Central American migration to the United States, characterized by conditions of vulnerability and constant violations of human rights (see Rojas-​Wiesner in this volume). This has become more visible in the last 12 years. On the one hand, extreme measures have led to the militarization of the border since the 1990s (Castillo and Toussaint, 2015), which has made migration more dangerous for migrants and more expensive, especially for those who suffer from lack of legal status (París Pombo, 2016; Álvarez Velasco et al., 2021; Castro Neira, 2021; Heyman, 2021). In response to pressure from the United States, elements of the National Guard have been deployed to contain the migration of Central Americans (and others). On the other hand, drug gangs have found another more profitable activity: the kidnapping and extortion of migrants, as well as their use in forced labor (Álvarez Velasco, 2016). A majority of those who suffer these forms of violence come from Central America. It is enough to remember what happened in August 2010 in the

94  Ludger Pries et al. municipality of San Fernando in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where 72 migrants, mostly Central Americans, were murdered. Survey and socio-​demographic data of migrants The migrant population crossing Mexican territory is heterogenous and difficult to estimate. According to an extended survey and data analysis from 2005 to 2015, some 90 percent of non-​Mexicans in Mexico are from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala (Leyva-​Flores et al., 2019: 8). Some 30 percent indicated that they suffered some form of violence on their journey through Mexico, ranging from humiliation, threats, and rejection up to sexual and (other forms of) physical violence (ibid: 16). The OECD estimated an increase of registered immigration (including asylum applications) for 2018 that was above the average for the period 2008–​2017. In particular, citizens of Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia, and Guatemala arrived in higher numbers in 2018 than during the period 2008–​2017.10 Taking the numbers and countries of origin of persons detained at the Mexican borders in 2021, out of a total of more than 300,000, the majority (more than 40 percent) were from Honduras, followed by Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, and Brazil. Out of a total of 211,000 registered irregular entries to Mexico in the period January to September 2022, some 202,000 were from the Americas; Central America alone represented 121,000 (Gobierno de México, 2022: 122).11 The growth of immigration and transit migration in Mexico seems to be reflected even in incoming remittances. Whereas previously these came almost exclusively from Mexican labor migrants in the US, recent data suggest that transit migrants are also responsible for a remarkable amount of foreign exchange. “In particular, the spectacular increase in remittances in Mexico may reflect funds received by transit migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other nations” (KNOMAD, 2021: 44). In sum, migrants entering and passing through Mexico not only vary by country of citizenship but also by economic background, gender, reasons for migrating, and migration objectives, as will be presented in greater detail below. In order to shed light on the interrelation between organized violence and forced migration, during the second half of 2020, we surveyed 359 transit migrants from Central America in Mexico. This was done in cooperation with a research team (trained students in master’s degree programs) at the Social Sciences Faculty of the Benemerita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) coordinated by Oscar Calderón Morillón (see Chapter 5 of this volume). Because of the conditions in which migrants travel north to the US, especially since many had irregular status and all of them faced COVID-​19 pandemic restrictions, it was impossible to randomly select interviewees. As a result, we had to resort to different strategies to contact them, and primarily approached them on train tracks on their way north, as well as in migrant shelters directed by religious or other non-​governmental organizations. Therefore, one has to take into account that we did not include all possible migration routes from the southern to the northern border of Mexico but had to focus on specific places in the South, Center, Northeast, and Northwest,

Forced migration and organized violence  95 specifically in: Nazaret/​Puebla, Apizaco/​Tlaxcala, Mexico City, Ecatepec/State of Mexico, Caborca/​Sonora, Hermosillo/​Sonora, Altar/​Sonora, Matamoros/​ Tamaulipas, Tijuana/​Baja California, Acayucan/​Veracruz, Ixtepec/​Oaxaca, and Tapachula/​Chiapas. In the defined places, we asked random individuals whether they were willing to answer our questionnaire. Migrants entering Mexico from the southern border, most of them undocumented, have to be considered a highly vulnerable group. There is generally a high level of distrust when it comes to disclosing sensitive information, and due to the COVID-​19 pandemic, data collection was challenging. Wherever possible, we used gatekeepers to obtain access for our interviewers. The survey was conducted in places selected by considering the routes that Central American migrants follow to enter and transit through Mexico. These localities were key to obtaining first-​hand information. Taking into account that at the end of 2020 the world was trying to recover from a generalized “state of exception” due to the pandemic, with mobility still severely restricted, transit migration was also reduced. In the following section, we describe this migrant population traveling under even more restricted and difficult conditions from south to north across the vast Mexican territory, many using the train known as “La Bestia” as a means of transportation. This freight-​train is known as one of the most dangerous—​albeit cheapest and fastest—​ways to travel north. While in some cases we specifically arrived at the areas where migrants board or get off the train (Nazaret/​Puebla),12 in other cases, the team reached them directly thanks to access provided by gatekeepers in shelters or community kitchens. Here the team had to negotiate and adapt to the dynamics and accessibility of each place. Finally, some interviews were conducted in public places, for example, under bridges (Ecatepec/​ State of Mexico) or in places where migrants had access to temporary jobs (Ixtepec/​ Oaxaca). In sum, the sampling procedure was to define hotspots of transit migration in Mexico from the southern to the northern border (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1 Places of interviews in Mexico –​2020 Place of survey

n

Percent

Cumulated percent

Nazaret, Puebla Apizaco, Tlaxcala Mexico City Ecatepec, State of Mexico Caborca, Sonora Hermosillo, Sonora Altar, Sonora Matamoros, Tamaulipas Tijuana, Baja California Acayucan, Veracruz Ixtepec, Oaxaca Tapachula, Chiapas Total

61 42 15 13 47 12 9 24 22 57 41 16 359

17.0 11.7 4.2 3.6 13.1 3.3 2.5 6.7 6.1 15.9 11.4 4,5 100.0

17.0 28.7 32.9 36.5 49.6 52.9 55.4 62.1 68.2 84.1 95.5 100.0

Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data.

96  Ludger Pries et al. Although an effort was made to obtain a certain diversity in terms of gender identity and country of origin among the respondents, the vast majority were male (85 percent) and came from Honduras (71 percent). The pandemic restricted access to some shelters specifically destined for women, children, or families, which might explain the significant higher weight of the male migrant population; however, the pandemic itself might have hindered the migration of women and families. Other reports show a similar tendency among the migrant population, with 92 percent for 2018 (REDODEM, 2019) and 84 percent for 2019 (REDODEM, 2020) being male. In 2020, only 15,195 migrants were attended by the REDODEM, mainly due to COVID restrictions; more than 20 percent (3,136) were women (Torres, 2022). The LGBTQI+​population, although also in the rise in the last decade (REDODEM, 2019), was almost imperceptible in our survey. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those traveling north who were interviewed by our team had an irregular status in Mexico; however, some 23 percent already had either refugee status, a Tarjeta de Visitante por Razones Humanitarias (TVRH), or residence status; seven percent were still in the process of seeking asylum in Mexico. During the pandemic, in fact, the offices of the Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (COMAR) were closed for several months, preventing many migrants from acquiring a legal status that would also provide access to basic services in Mexico, such as healthcare and access to employment. Interestingly, although a majority of the survey respondents (55 percent) mentioned that their goal was to reach the United States, a little less than a third (30 percent) stated that they would like to stay in Mexico. Indeed, in recent years, the number of people looking at Mexico as a possible country of residence has increased, at least temporarily. Finally, 11 percent mentioned they would like to return to their countries. Concerning basic socio-​demographic data, Table 6.2 indicates the distribution of age groups, country of citizenship, and place of the interview. The latter was grouped into five regions: the southern region of Mexico with Guatemala (where migrants enter), two central regions (Puebla-​Tlaxcala and Valle de México), the northwestern region and border with the US, and the northeastern region and border with the US. Age groups were defined according to a balanced distribution of all interviewees over the five groups. Interviewees who were citizens of other countries (n =​13) are not represented in this chart because the numbers were so small. We analyzed the association between different variables (Chi-​square and Pearson coefficient) and found interesting and statistically significant interrelations. Significantly more young people (up to 17 years) than expected (p =​ 0.01 error probability) were from Guatemala and El Salvador, and fewer were from Honduras. Concerning the places of the interviews, significantly more young persons (up to 17 years) were concentrated on the southern border, and considerably more persons older than 25 were interviewed in the northern border regions near the US. Given that the journey to cross Mexico under normal conditions should not last more than several weeks, there are different interpretations. The result could be a sampling bias, but as in all regions, we followed the same sampling strategies and criteria; there are two alternative reasons. First, on average, forced migrants normally need years to cross Mexico, given the economic hardship or the fact that they

newgenrtpdf

Table 6.2 Age at date and place of interview by citizenship Age at interview date

Total

Honduras Guatemala El Salvador

< 18

18–​21

22–​25

26–​31

>31

Pue-​Tla

Valle Mex.

NorthWest

NorthEast

South. bord.

34 21 9 64

64 3 6 73

48 10 5 63

51 12 7 70

58 9 9 76

99 1 0 100

23 2 1 26

64 8 16 88

48 16 12 76

21 28 7 56

Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data.

Forced migration and organized violence  97

Citizenship

Place of interview

98  Ludger Pries et al. have been forcibly returned, etc. Second, there is a new movement of young forced migrants, especially from Guatemala and El Salvador, which began in the 2010s and has intensified since 2018. We actually found more migrants from Honduras in the Puebla-​Tlaxcala region than expected; we found fewer than expected from Honduras and more than expected from Guatemala in the southern border region; and we found more than expected from El Salvador in the Northeast and Northwest (p =​0.01). We also tested associations between the highest level of education, citizenship, and place of interview. Significantly more Hondurans than expected (although only p =​ 0.1) indicated primary school as their highest level of education, while Guatemalans frequently reported only a partial primary school education; the number of Salvadorans who indicated that they had at least some level of secondary education was above average. Migrants interviewed in the northern border regions had a higher probability (p =​0.02) of specifying higher educational levels than those in other regions. Further analysis should elaborate on these findings. Contexts and reasons for leaving the country of birth The historical background of the migration dynamics originating in Central America is widely known, especially since the upheavals of armed conflicts and political instability at the end of the 1970s. Countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala suffered armed conflicts that created violence in the overall societies. Many displaced people temporarily sought refuge in Belize, Costa Rica, and Honduras. By the end of the 1980s, a ceasefire ended much of the armed conflict in the region (Castillo, 2000). After the Esquipulas Peace Negotiations, some Guatemalan refugees were able to return to their place of origin. However, according to Sandoval García (2015), the general economic and social policies and politics continued to generate victims of violence throughout Central America. This continues until today. The precarious economic conditions derived from the crisis of the neoliberal economic model supported by governments in the region triggered inequality, economic instability, poverty, and the dismissal of workers (Castillo, 2000; Castillo Ramírez, 2020). Organized crime took advantage of weakened state institutions, and the civilian population was left defenseless (Márquez Covarrubias and Delgado Wise, 2011). These two aspects are among the strongest causes of the Central American exodus that make it a forced migration process. Given this background, it is not surprising that 80 percent of the migrants we interviewed considered economic factors as the most important reason for migrating and leaving behind their place of origin (Table 6.3). This is intrinsically embedded within a context of endemic poverty, as well as the fear of violence and criminal activity (60 percent) in the region. In addition, the fear of being forcibly recruited by a military or armed organization influenced in about a third of decisions to leave the country of origin. Poverty generates violent conditions, and these are exploited and fueled by criminal groups. As a result, extended activities are carried out by organized crime. Governments are unable to restore state control

Forced migration and organized violence  99 Table 6.3 Important reasons for leaving the country of origin (N =​359) Importance for leaving

Not important (percent)

Somewhat or very important (percent)

Total (percent)

Fear of violent conflict or war Fear of forced conscription into military/​armed organizations Fear of criminality/​violence Fear of domestic violence Poor economic life conditions Persecution/​discrimination Religion Ethnicity Sexuality Gender identification Political engagements Other Family-​related reasons

48.9 67.3

51.1 32.6

100 100

41.2 85.3 18.8 83.4 86.3 79.9 92.2 93.0 93.3 89.9 82.7

58.8 14.8 81.2 16.6 13.7 20 7.8 6.9 6.7 10.1 17.3

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data, including multiple responses. Note: The questionnaire includes mainly close-​ended questions, some of which allow interviewees to provide more than one response. This table was elaborated by using these types of questions.

and guarantee public safety; for civil society, there is a lack of accountable and secure living conditions; Central America is a region where violence and insecurity always challenge the everyday life. As demonstrated in the previous section, violence and especially organized violence were crucial for the interviewees in the decision to leave their countries. In order to analyze the nexus between (organized) violence and forced migration and its relationship with temporal and spatial conditions, we dedicated a specific section of the survey to the stages of the migration trajectory. We considered stays of a minimum of one month in specific localities and asked about the reasons for continuing the journeys. Although it was evident that the interviewees were in transit and therefore intended to continue their travels, our intention was to follow a migrant’s trajectory and understand the relationship between experiences with violence in specific localities and the decisions made to map out a specific path. Figure 6.3 shows the reasons that interviewees13 indicated for moving for the first time from their places of birth and habitual living toward another place for a minimum of one month. Almost half of all reasons were to move on, that is, the second migration step took place to continue onward with further movements. This seems to be typical: migration is not a single event that occurs once during a specific period but a sequence of episodes in a longer trajectory, which includes several stages, mobilities back and forth, changing plans, and changing courses. Whereas the main reasons our interviewees indicated—​“move forward,” “economic,” and “family/​personal”—​could be considered as mainly pull-​driven, “violence” is definitely a push-​driven reason that encompasses war and armed conflict, lack of security, and domestic violence. Violence-​related reasons represent almost 20–​30 percent of

100  Ludger Pries et al.

Figure 6.3 Reasons for leaving the place of birth by country of birth (n =​344). Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data.

responses; interviewees from El Salvador most frequently mentioned these motives for migrating. As studies have shown, when digging a little deeper into the reasons for leaving the place of origin, even when economic reasons are given as the primary reason for leaving, they are often intrinsically related to organized violence.14 Especially in the case of migrants from the Northern Triangle of Central America, people cite economic reasons for migrating because they have either lost their jobs or have been unable to find steady employment. However, when discussing this issue further, they often mention that because of their lack of income, they have been unable to pay the “war taxes” imposed in mara-​controlled neighborhoods (Cruz, 2010). As their debts increase, they are threatened and/​or assaulted, and their lives are endangered. For people fleeing rural contexts, economic issues are also on the top of the list of reasons to leave, as they can no longer support themselves or their families by working in their fields. These issues often result from the lack of state support for individual farmers or because of climate-​related issues that destroy crops and prevent farmers from earning a livelihood. In order to control for time effects on leaving the place of birth for the first time and given an average migration period of two to four years, we aggregated all interviewees into three groups: those who left in 2017 or earlier; those who left between 2018 and 2019; and those who left in 2020. The results show that for the earliest and the middle group of migrants (those having left until 2017 and those having left between 2018 and 2019), fewer than expected came from Honduras and Guatemala, and more came from El Salvador. Since 2020, more than expected said they were originally from Honduras and Guatemala, with fewer from El Salvador.

Forced migration and organized violence  101 This indicates the high volatility of migration dynamics from these countries, according to periods. Nevertheless, data that are more comprehensive would be necessary for further analysis. Whereas the relation between country of birth and reasons for leaving were not statistically significant (Table 6.4), the associations between country of birth and the year migrants left, as well as the associations between time and reasons for leaving, are statistically significant at 99 percent (Pearson chi-​square). A closer look at violence and economic reasons for leaving the country of birth reveals that this is in a statistically significant way more relevant for respondents who left their country in 2020 than for those who left earlier. Those, who left their country of origin for the first time in 2020, mentioned family and personal reasons only four times, when 9.6 were to expect. For the period 2017 and earlier, interviewees mentioned this reason six times, when less than two mentions would have been expected in case of independence of the variables (see Table 6.4). Most answers were concentrated in the group “move forward,” which represents everyone who from the very beginning had not planned to stay in a particular place but had a further migration goal. In sum, those who left in 2020, mentioned violence and economic reasons more often than expected and “family/​ personal” and “move forward” less than would have been expected in case of no association. Experiences of organized violence during the transit in Mexico Interestingly, in our survey, there is no significant association between reasons to leave the place of birth and the gender or educational level of interviewees. When we compare the reasons why people migrate the first time with the reasons they migrate the second time, violence becomes substantially less important: the number of respondents citing violence as a motive for migration declines from 20 percent for the first migration movement to less than one percent for the second. Similarly, the number of respondents who mention economic reasons for migrating also decreases substantially, while “continue the travel” takes on greater relevance. Therefore, once they are on the move for various reasons, the interviewees are increasingly driven by the pull-​factor of moving on to reach a specific goal or place (mainly in the US), even when they have stayed somewhere for at least a month. While this reflects the very mixed nature of the migration patterns of Central Americans in transit in Mexico, it also shows how certain factors gain or lose relevance depending on the stage of migration, the experiences on the road, and the specific localities in which migrants (are forced to) settle for a determined period of time. As the migration trajectory relates to the various reasons for leaving at each step (Table 6.5), the relevance of violence because of armed conflict or domestic violence decreases considerably as a reason to leave the second place of settlement, while general insecurity continues to be very relevant until the third place of settlement. This reflects a decrease in the significance of violence as a push factor and the relative increase of the desire to reach and cross the border as a driving factor and reason to leave a particular place.

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102  Ludger Pries et al.

Table 6.4 Reasons for leaving place of birth Reasons for leaving Time period for leaving place of birth

Violence 2017 and earlier 2018 and 2019 Since 2020

Total number

Number S.Resid. Number S.Resid. Number S.Resid.

10

Economic 7

0.0 4

6 –​0.9

7 –​1.8

61

Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data; S.Resid. =​standardized residuals.

3.3

–​0.9

0.8

–​0.3 32

1.0 4

0.8 75

Move forward 24

3

61

75

Family/​personal

47 46 46

1.4 137

–​1.8 13

Total number

263 –​0.5

193

356

Forced migration and organized violence  103 Table 6.5 Reasons for leaving the place of birth and subsequent residencesa

Violence Economic Family/​personal Move forward

War/​armed conflict General insecurity Domestic violence

Leaving birthplace

Leaving 2nd place

Leaving 3rd place

Leaving 4th place

59 62 14 157 31 193

3 41 3 133 24 193

1 2 0 19 6 266

0 0 0 5 3 200

Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data. Note: a   Minimum one month, multiple answers.

Figure 6.4 Spaces and forms of violence. Source: Own elaboration based on ForMOVe-​data including multiple responses.

Another battery of questions referred to the general experiences with different forms of violence. Figure 6.4 shows types of violence according to where they were experienced by the interviewees. We differentiate between (1) country of origin before forced migration (CO), (2) transit (on-​road), and (3) places of prolonged settlement (CA). The most common forms of violence among our sample respondents are robbery and threat of violence. While 43 percent of the migrants mention that they are sometimes exposed to robbery, and 36 percent are frequently exposed to robbery, nearly 40 percent often feel their security is

104  Ludger Pries et al. being threatened and more than one-​third mention that they sometimes think about the threat of violence. Almost one-​quarter of the migrants in the sample are frequently exposed to extortion, and 24 percent are occasionally exposed to extortion. Financial fraud, detention by state authorities, detention by gangs/​organized crime groups/​human traffickers, retention of documents, and physical attacks without weapons are the most commonly mentioned forms of violence among the migrants in Mexico. Although respondents did not often cite armed attack or imprisonment, almost 10 percent experienced these forms of violence at some point. Conflicts and violent situations in the country of origin cause residents to look for coping strategies. In addition to loyalty or voice, exit from a challenging situation is sometimes a strategy for dealing with organized violence (Hirschman, 1970). Figure 6.4 shows the interrelation between different stages of migration (country of origin before forced migration; transit; and places of prolonged settlement) and the forms of violence to which forced migrants are exposed. The white column shows the forms of violence experienced in the country of origin. The form most often cited is threat of violence (46 percent), followed by extortion (24 percent), which is cited about half as often. While almost one-​tenth of forced migrants mention retention of documents, imprisonment, armed attacks, accidents/​shipwreck as forms of violence to which they are exposed in the country of origin, almost 15 percent mention robbery, being captured by gangs/​organized crime groups, and physical attacks. The percentage distribution of the types of violence on the road differs from that for the country of origin: 54 percent of the forced migrants suffered robbery on the road, more than three times higher than in their place of living before migration. Detention by state authorities (38 percent) is a widespread experience for migrants on the road. Many (31 percent) also report experiencing the threat of violence on the road, a slightly lower percentage than they report having experienced in their localities before migration; extortion (25 percent) is mentioned by a similar percentage of forced migrants in the two phases of their trajectories. Financial fraud and exploitation, retention of documents, physical attacks without weapons, and armed attacks are also frequent types of violence on the road. Finally, robbery (29 percent), threat of violence (27 percent), and detention by state authorities (24 percent) are frequently cited as forms of violence experienced in the country of prolonged settlement. While some of these forms of violence could be easily categorized as “organized,” others are difficult to distinguish as such, as they could result from either individual or organized violence. In this regard, we re-​categorized the forms of violence by using two categories. Retention of documents, detention by state authorities, detention by gangs, organized crime groups, imprisonment, and armed attacks are all classified as explicit and specific forms of organized violence (SOV). Financial fraud/​exploitation, robbery, threat of violence, extortion, kidnapping, physical attacks without weapons, shipwreck/​accidents, sexual harassment, and rape are difficult to classify as forms of individual violence or organized violence,15 so they are named as unspecific forms of organized or individual violence (UOIV) in our study.

Forced migration and organized violence  105 Table 6.6 Socio-​demographic characteristics, aspirations, and type of organized violence Violence variable

Socio-​demographic variable

p-​value

Chi-​square statistic

SOV SOV SOV SOV UOIV UOIV UOIV UOIV

Country of citizenship Education level Legal status in Mexico The desire to return, to stay, or to follow the path Country of citizenship Education level Legal status in Mexico The desire to return, to stay, or to follow the path