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Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently visited four countries in Central America, plus Cuba, to discuss migration and development with various heads of state in the region. Among his goals was building a consensus between these governments to jointly criticize U.S. immigration policy and meddling in the region by forming an alternative model that better addresses the root causes of migration.
This comes at a time when many Central American governments are growing more authoritarian and increasingly giving the Biden Administration the cold shoulder.
“The cost of living has risen, there is not enough employment. And furthermore, this climate is one of permanent uncertainty.”
“They are different things, and they shouldn’t be compared categorically, but [the United States has] already approved $30 billion for the war in Ukraine, while we have been waiting since President Donald Trump, asking they donate $4 billion, and as of today, nothing, absolutely nothing,” López Obrador said. “For our part, we are going to continue to respectfully insist on the need for the United States to collaborate.”
López Obrador is continuing to promote his new plan that he suggests will provide jobs to unemployed young people along Mexico’s southern border. He previously touted similar policies, including one to plant trees in the same to create new jobs in the agricultural sector.
“This is not a new message,” Ursula Roldán, a researcher at the Jesuit Landivar University in Guatemala, tells The Progressive. “He has been saying this since the beginning of his administration.”
Despite these efforts, Mexico has continued to be abarrier that migrants must engage with as they seek to reach the United States.
While López Obrador continues to criticize the Biden Administration’s efforts, the United States has stated that it is working with private industries to create opportunities in the region. These efforts have been flawed, as they primarily went to industries like garment factories, which are notorious for paying subminimum wages and exploiting workers.“I believe there is more investment [in Guatemala from the United States],” Juan José Huratado, director of the migration advocacy group Pop No’j, tells The Progressive. “The challenge is how to do that effectively so that it reaches the communities.”
While both Mexico and the United States have sought to stem migration from the south, the promoted measures will not stop the movement of people, especially since none of the measures address the causes of this motion.
“These projects will not deter migration,” Roldán says. “The cost of living has risen, there is not enough employment. And furthermore, this climate is one of permanent uncertainty that exists in the face of politics, in the face of justice, in the face of social [issues].”
Hurtando agrees: “The problems are so big that even with the greatest, hopefully well-intentioned efforts, there is little that can be solved, honestly.”
As U.S. efforts to address the causes of migration flounder, each country in the region is becoming part of the U.S. border apparatus. The Guatemalan government has used heavy-handed tactics against migrants crossing through the country. Nearly every day, there are reports of the detention and expulsion by police units of migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and many other countries.
Traveling through Guatemala has become increasingly difficult, especially as police and military have set up far more immigration checkpoints than in previous years across the major routes that migrants take. Travellers can expect to be stopped multiple times while transiting the country on public transportation.
The checkpoints are being administered through the Inter-Institutional Council for the Prevention and Combat of Tax Fraud and Customs Smuggling. They bring together the state tax agency, the military, agents of the police’s border patrol known as DIPAFRONT, or La División de Puertos, Aeropuertos y Puestos Fronterizos, and the private business community to address the smuggling of contraband, among other law enforcement tasks. But their broader goal is to address irregular migration.
“[These checkpoints] reflect the repressive tendency of the Guatemalan government,” Hurtado says. “It is not only against migrants, [though] it also serves for that. But in general, we see the characteristic of this government has been the use of repression against the population.”
Since at least 2016, DIPAFRONT has received support and training from U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. In 2019, representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security engaged in unauthorized operations during training in Guatemala, picking up Honduran migrants into unmarked vans and returning them to the border.
The Inter-Institutional Council was originally established through Decree 20-2006 during the administration of Óscar Berger (2004-2008) and reactivated in 2016. Since January 2020, the Guatemalan government has begun to expand the council to establish checkpoints across the country. By the end of 2021, there were at least six such sites established with assistance from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala.
Migrants now face more challenges crossing through the country in their hopes of reaching the United States. Not only do they face being expelled, they also face extortion from authorities, especially the police.
“Authorities carry out this extortion of migrants,” Roldán says. “They demand bribes for passing through the territory.”
In August 2021, a video surfaced from the Guatemalan town of Las Cruces, El Petén, of police extorting alleged migrants in a collective bus traveling to the border. The National Civilian Police responded by stating that the agents were responding to a bus of what they say were people dressed like gang members who were inebriated.
But cases of extortion occur all too often throughout the region. In Mexico, new measures place migrants in an increased state of danger as well, as they seek to head north to the United States.
“This generates a certain fear and makes the routes they can take more difficult,” Roldán says. “They do not know the new routes. “We don’t know what new dangers they are going to face and they are easy prey for police extortion.”
“We have fallen into a black hole,” she adds. “Sadly, the whole region is like that.”