Nor did the Mexican Constitution offer a legal mechanism for granting refugee status. Mexican legislation only recognized the category of “persons granted asylum,” but asylum was rarely granted—and then only to those who applied from outside the country and could demonstrate that they had been persecuted strictly for political reasons. None of the other UN categories—persecution based on race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group—qualified an applicant for asylum as they did in other countries. In the early 1980s, only one hundred Central Americans were granted the FM-10 visa (asylee), but none were granted this status from 1986 to 1990.8 An endorsement from the UNHCR (or any other international NGO) did not automatically secure recognition and protection. In 1982, for example, the UNHCR recommended 242 Central Americans for asylum, using Mexico's stricter criteria; of these the Secretaría de Gobernación (Secretariat of the Interior) allowed only 73 to legalize their status, and then mostly through the nonimmigrant FM-3 (visitor visa) or the FM-9 (student visa). Nor did Mexico's support for the Contadora peace proposal and the Declaration of Cartagena, which recommended adherence to the UN Convention and Protocol as a means of addressing the problems of refugees and displaced persons, lead to remedial legislation. However, despite Mexico's exclusionary policies, it accommodated one of the largest numbers of UNHCR-recognized refugees.9
It was the Central American refugee crisis—the questions it raised at all levels of society, as well as the pressure directed against the government by the church, the NGOs, and the news media—that forced Mexico's reexamination of its role as a country of safe haven. For decades, the United States—Mexico border and out-migration to the United States had dominated all national discussions of migratory issues. Bilateral diplomatic and trade negotiations always inserted some discussion of work visas, illegal immigrants, detention and deportation policies, and/or border control. However, the Central American refugee crisis—and specifically, the criticisms directed at Mexico for human rights violations—forced a reexamination of state policies. Mexico's credibility and moral authority in the Central American peace initiatives, as well as in migratory issues related to its northern boundary, became dependent on its response to the migration across its southern border.
REFUGEES, “BORDER VISITORS,” OR ILLEGAL ALIENS?
The first group of Central Americans to arrive in Mexico during the 1970s, albeit in comparatively small numbers, was the Nicaraguans fleeing the Somoza dictatorship and the Sandinista war. Most of those who comprised this first wave returned to their homeland. A second wave arrived after 1979, fleeing Sandinista policies and the Contra war, but like their predecessors they received no official recognition or assistance from the Mexican government. Most sources claim that they were simply transiting through Mexico on their way to the United States. By 1990, however, a few thousand Nicaraguans were believed to be living and working without documentation in Mexico, particularly in Mexico City, relying on church groups and their networks of family and friends for assistance.10
According to UNHCR sources, the Guatemalan refugee migration to Mexico began in 1980. The refugees were mostly Maya Indians, especially Kanjobal, Chuj, Jacalteca, and Mam. They came from the heavily populated departments of El Quiché and Huehuetenango, but also from Petén, San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapan, Solola, Chimaltenango, Alta Verapaz, and Baja Verapaz. These departments were regarded by the government as the seat of the guerrilla movement, and thus targeted by the counterinsurgency campaign. It was a communal migration: the surviving members of families and communities migrated and settled together just across the six-hundred-mile Guatemala-Mexico border.11
During the first months, it was not uncommon for Guatemalan refugees to travel back and forth from their Mexican settlements to their villages (or what remained of them) to determine if it was safe to return to their homeland. But by 1982 and the escalation of Ríos Montt's counterinsurgency campaign, such trips became impossible. Instead, out-migration increased dramatically. In July 1982, the first month of Ríos Montt's counterinsurgency campaign, nine thousand families fled to Chiapas. One report estimated that by 1983 thirty-five thousand Guatemalans had taken refuge just across the border of Mexico, with an additional seventy thousand believed to be living deeper within the country. Another report estimated as many as two hundred thousand Guatemalan refugees in Mexico.12 Most hid in the jungles of Guatemala until it was safe to cross the “armed curtain” of Guatemalan soldiers that by 1982 patrolled the Guatemala-Mexico border. With the support of Mexican villagers and small landholders who gave them tents, food, and clothing, they squatted on ejidos and private lands, creating their own makeshift settlements.
The historical, cultural, and commercial ties between Chiapas and Guatemala made this six-hundred-mile stretch of land an artificial border. Until 1824 Chiapas was Guatemalan territory, and its loss to Mexico wounded Guatemala's national psyche comparably to Mexico's 1848 loss of northern territories to the United States. Indeed, significant comparisons could be made between the two borderlands. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Guatemalans crossed easily into Mexico to work, trade, and intermarry, just as Mexicans crossed easily into the US Southwest. As in the United States, the migrants were either tolerated or deported, depending on economic conditions and pressure from local interest groups. However, Guatemalan migration differed in that it was a largely indigenous migration, and in Chiapas, migrants found a Maya and mestizo population that shared cultural similarities and a land that was not unlike that which they had left behind.13 Historically, the border between Guatemala and Mexico was poorly guarded, in part because of diplomatic policy considerations and limited manpower and resources, but also because of pressure from Mexican growers, who depended on this exploitable labor force.
Because of their small numbers, the first refugees from Guatemala were believed to be part of the usual seasonal migration of undocumented agricultural workers. The Roman Catholic clergy and missionaries were among the first to witness their trauma and to recognize and assist them as refugees. As new settlements emerged in Chiapas, creating a type of “refugee zone” along the border, the different state and federal agencies debated policy and what measures constituted an appropriate governmental response. As one Mexican official told the New York Times, “We've never had to face something like this before and it has taken time to adjust.”14
The refugees technically came under the jurisdiction of the Secretaría de Gobernación and its Servicios Migratorios (Migratory Services). Given the uniqueness of the situation, in July 1980 the López Portillo administration established a new interdepartmental office, the Mexican Committee for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), with a threefold mission: to oversee emergency assistance to the Central American refugees; to provide them with political representation; and to design temporary and long-term projects for employment and self-sufficiency.15 In theory, COMAR represented and coordinated the interests and policies of the Secretariats of Foreign Relations, Labor and Social Welfare, and the Interior, and consulted with the Secretariat of Defense. In practice, however, each of these secretariats had its own agenda and maintained contradictory policies that were impossible to coordinate.
The Secretaría de Gobernación and Servicios Migratorios took a more hard-line position than COMAR and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretariat of Foreign Relations). Officials in the Secretaría de Gobernación acted on the assumption that the Central Americans were economic migrants, and routinely used the press to accuse the refugees of taking jobs and land away from Mexican citizens. Their position was starkly exemplified