Thread: Mexico Hunts Central Americans

This is long but worth reading..

How dare the Mexican government ask us to treat their Mexican
people humanely!!!

Let's go, quickly, hold on tight to the gangway". Luis
Valle listened to his friend Jorge and started to run.
In less than five seconds he was able to get on the
train which traveled at high speed. He was beginning
another 8 hour day, standing in between wagon and
wagon, as part of his long journey from his native
Nicaragua to his envisioned final destiny, Miami.
"Those trains will take us to Manzanillo, and from
there we look for others to take us higher up", said
Francisco Ruiz, a 17 year old Salvadorian. "I have
caught six trains from the Chiapas border. They don't
travel very far. When you get to a station, you have
to disappear to avoid extortion from the police.
That's why we have to catch the train while it's
moving. One night I stood up for 12 hours. The rain
helped me not to fall asleep".

Luis Valle knows that catching a train in this manner
is very dangerous. "You risk your life, but we have no
choice. Some conductors, when they see us, they
accelerate, and think it's funny when somebody falls
underneath the train. They have no conscience.
Sometimes they look for us and threaten to throw us
off the train head first", he explained.

Once on the train, they settle the best they can in
the gangway. They can't travel in the wagons because
they close them and they would die of asphyxiation.
The adventure is dangerous. The undocumented know
this. Minutes before the train is scheduled to pass,
they warm up their muscles in order to run beside the
train, jump and grab on.

Nearby Lecherias - some 30 kilometers north of the
City of Mexico - you can always hear the whistles of
locomotives. Daybreak is coming; it's 6:15 in the
morning. A train whistles in the distance. The
undocumented begin to move, first they walk and then
they run some 100 meters to gain momentum that will
help them grab on to the train.

The hardest part of the journey is not climbing on a
fast moving train, but facing the continuous
extortions from the Mexican police. Classified and
treated as delinquents by the Mexican authorities, the
immigrants are afraid of being arrested, raped, or
robbed.

The police and the military look for them in trains,
bus stations, and cheap hotels. The ones who don't
have dollars to pay extortion are deported.

Bread and water.
Jose Sanabria, a Honduran national, asks for bread and
water, because the police took everything from him.
"They point a gun at you to force you to pull your
pants down, they strip you completely naked and they
throw your clothes far away. They even touch our
testicles. They search everything. They destroy our
shoes in case there are hidden compartments where we
can hide money. I ask the government of Mexico that we
be treated like human beings; we don't do any harm to
anybody. The police don't ask us for documents, all
they want is money. 'Give us your money or we will
deport you', is all they say", explains Jose.

Nearby Lecherias, dozens of young Central American
people hide in filthy places in order to evade police.
Jose Ramos, an adolescent from El Salvador, says that
"after t he police empties your pockets, they say:
'get out of here'". The extortion, theft, or hold-up,
or however you want to call it, is methodical,
systematic. No immigrant will escape it. In each
control post, in each train station, they have to pay
the corresponding extortion fee. The agents abuse the
poorest of the poor - they hardly have the equivalent
of 15 euros, even less - young people who don't have
the resources to pay "polleros" (undocumented
traffickers) who for a large amount of money they will
transport them to the North American border.

Even the Mexican citizens are indignant at the abuse
of the immigrants. As a matter of fact, the Mexicans
also suffer the abuse of the super corrupt police.
Luis Pedroza, a teacher from Tultitlan (where the
Lecherias station is located), points out: "The police
are not the ones to blame for the extortion of these
Central Americans, but the authorities who permit
these practices".

Tultitlan is not in the far away jungles of Chiapas,
in the intricate forests of Veracruz, or in the
inaccessible sierras of Oaxaca. It is located only
half an hour from the City of Mexico next to a modern
Ford factory. While Mexico demands human treatment for
their countrymen in the United States, the Mexican
government seems incapable to guarantee those same
rights to the undocumented Central Americans.

Roberto Milan, a Tultitlan county police official,
condemns the extortions of the Central Americans. "A
lot of co-workers of mine try to extort money from
them. This is the way they are treated everywhere. But
more will come, there is no stopping this", he says.
Chancellors, governors, high officials, nobody can
claim ignorance about what is happening all over the
country. It has been years since the Mexican press has
been harshly denouncing the extortions without getting
any reaction from anyone. In the editorial Deuda con
emigrantes de Centro America, the newspaper La Jornada
points out: "Extortions, thefts, and aggressions are
habitual practices in all of the national territory,
it is a phenomenon that all Central Americans are
aware of: in their journey to the American dream they
know that some of the dangers they have to face are
the police checkpoints and the Instituto Nacional de
Migracion (National Institute of Immigration)".

While the Mexicans these days are holding multious
marches in the United States to demand rights and
better treatment for the undocumented, the hundreds of
thousands that enter Mexico without papers are subject
to theft, aggressions, extortion, and in some cases,
rape. Mexico complains o mistreatment that the border
patrol infringes upon its Mexican nationals, however,
for any Honduran, Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, or
Salvadorian, a Mexican agent is the worse enemy with
which they can come face to face to in their attempt
to reach the border.

Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the Commision
Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Commission of
Human Rights) - who disclosed a report in December in
which he documents the many abuses to the immigrants -
assures us that "one of the saddest national
insufficiencies that the migratory phenomenon faces is
the contradiction in that the Mexican government
demands from the North (the U.S.) respect for the
rights of the undocumented Mexicans without Mexico
being incapable of offering the same to the South
(Central America).

Raped seven times.
The Mexican movie producer Tin Dirdamal shot the
documentary De Nadie, as a testimonial of the inhumane
treatment that the immigrants suffer. "I knew a woman
who traveled with her two daughters: they had been
raped seven times. But they all took birth control
pills and they were still trying to get to the border.
They have no option, this or die of starvation in
their countries", he explained.

The level of brutality and violation of human rights
that the undocumented face manifested itself just a
few days ago near the Tultitlan train station, in a
police operation against immigrants, when a young
Mexican, Roberto Lugo Hernandez, a 20 year old
construction worker, received a bullet from an agent
that mistook him for an undocumented immigrant. The
shooter ran away to avoid being lynched by the
neighbors of the young man in the barrio La
Concepcion. "We were going to buy corn tortillas for
lunch".

Lecherias, detention point.
The Lecherias train station and its zone of operations
is a major point of detention for undocumented
immigrants in the metropolitan zone of the city of
Mexico. Dozens of Central Americans arrive as
stowaways in trains originating from the south and
there they wait for a train to take them to the North.
Most will remain two or three days nearby.

The first thing they do is look for food and water,
and a place to sleep, always outside with a piece of
plastic as a mattress. The neighbors cannot offer them
lodging or help because they would be accused of being
polleros (traffickers of undocumented immigrants).
They all stay near the railroad tracks, they are
afraid to go any further. "We lend them mattresses or
big plastics. Most people here support them, we give
them clothing, water, and food", explain Mariana
Jimenez, a neighbor.

"We are tired of the police abusing these defenseless
people. We help them all we can. The police captures
them only because they have darker skin, like if us
Mexicans are all light skinned", affirms Juana
Salterio, a Ford worker who resides in Tultitlan.

"Us girls, they only capture us to rape us. They force
us to take off our clothes, they say it's just to
check, but they only want to abuse us", says an angry
Eva Sanchis, a Nicaraguan who longs to reach Chicago,
where a sister awaits for her. Felix Galva, a 23 year
old Guatemalan who is hiding in a foul smelling camp
waiting for a train, says that the police rob them
daily. In the 15 days that he has been in Mexico he
has had to pay 9 extortion fees. He remembers how he
was mistreated the minute he set foot in the country.
"We crossed by the Rio Suchiate and when we entered
Chiapas the soldiers were already waiting for us, they
said 'You can't cross unless you leave us something'.
In Tapachula I took a cargo train to go towards the
North. Then I had to take another, and another. Six,
until I got here. The abuses are part of the rule. I
had to pay each policeman that detained me along the
way. They didn't want to see papers, they wanted
money. The extortion is never ending, in each
checkpoint they ask for money, until I ran out and now
I have to beg so that I can eat", says Galva. The
numbers don't leave any room for doubt: 100% of the
Salvadorians that enter Mexico are victims of
mistreatment and the majority suffers theft,
extortion, beatings, arbitrary detentions, and sexual
abuse. The data is contributed by the migrant
organization El Rescate, from Los Angeles, as an
example of the situation suffered by the Central
Americans who cross the Mexican territory without
documents. It also coincides with the report from the
Relatora Especial Para los Derechos Humanos de los
Emigrantes de la ONU, Gabriela Rodriguez, who points
out that in Mexico exists "a generalized climate of
harassment and generally taking advantage of the
vulnerability of the immigrant".

bearpaw, what paper is this from? I would like to copy the original and send it to Oregonians for Immigration Reform, and also to the Mexican Consulate here in Portland. If you could just post the link here I'd appreciate it.

maybe these Latin American countries should sue Mexico

AmericanElizabeth,

what paper is this from? I would like to copy the original and send it to Oregonians for Immigration Reform, and also to the Mexican Consulate here in Portland. If you could just post the link here I'd appreciate it.

My San Diego Minuteman contact emailed the story to me.

There was a documentary similar to this on one of the Discovery channels called "Chasing Del Norte", while quite interesting i wondered while watching why these American media members were able to document this without jeapordizing themselves for aiding and abetting...then i remembered that our government doesn't care