The first days of the presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum have been tarnished by the Mexican soldiers who killed six migrants from Egypt, El Salvador and Peru on Mexico’s southern borderreflecting the country’s controversial militarization and migration policies.
The massacre took place on Tuesday, the first day of Sheinbaum’s mandate, in Chiapasa state on the southern border of Mexico, where activists and migrants expressed to EFE this Friday that they fear the continuity of the former president’s strategy Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), who deployed 36,000 soldiers for immigration tasks.
The soldiers involved, now at the disposal of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), were patrolling in the midst of the struggle between drug trafficking cartels to control the flow of people and drugs from the border between Mexico and Central America.
For this reason, Enrique Vidal Olascoaga, general director of the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, demanded to recognize the seriousness of the generalized violence in Chiapas and the involvement of organized crime in these human trafficking networks.
And, on the other hand, he pointed out that an immigration policy must be implemented based on the effective protection of people, not just on speech.
Sheinbaum, between human rights and militarization
“An approach is needed that truly combats corruption and impunity that in the last six years has not been able to be combated within the National Migration Institute (INM) and that, unfortunately, has already affected and also contaminated the National Guard,” he stated in an interview.
The president He stated this Friday that the Army denounced the soldiers who shot, but he has also defended that the Armed Forces respect human rights and recognized that there is a strategy to stop the arrival of migrants in Mexico and prevent their crossing into the United States.
«What is always at the forefront is respect for human rights»said the president.
Héctor Martín Méndez Estrada, representative of the Collective of Human Rights Defenders in Tapachula, questioned that the Government has not yet clarified the details of the Army shots.
“The reality is that they have to have a lot of training on the subject and their protocols have to establish them perfectly well, in this case I am talking about protocols and, unfortunately, it is complicated, which protocols to use, since there are weapons. “When, how, why and to what extent should we use them?” he told EFE.
Migrants in fear
The daily detention of migrants at the United States border has fallen 66% from December to September, according to the Mexican government, but irregular migration through Mexico rose 193% year-on-year in the first half of the year to exceed 712,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.
José, a Venezuelan stranded in Tapachula, the largest city on Mexico’s southern border, acknowledged that they are afraid of making the journey to cross Mexican territory.
“If they are going to be on the road (the soldiers), I make a call that it is not violence, because we are not going with any type of weapon, or anything, we are just going to walk, I make the call to them to support us , that they let us go up, that they support us along the way in terms of surveillance, but not with lead,” he told EFE.
Leobal Vélez Monteoca, from Ecuador, denounced that in Mexico they face many risks, but the desperation that exists in their countries due to the lack of employment forces them to migrate.
«I’m leaving here legally, if I get the ‘CBP One’ appointment (the application to request asylum in the US), I will leave. Meanwhile, I cannot leave illegally, neither with a coyote (trafficker), nor on foot. “I respect the people who are going to leave here, (but) I try to seek all legal measures, I prefer to safeguard my life,” he narrated. EFE
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