Seeking Refuge. Maria Cristina Garcia

immigration restriction was the Reagan administration, which feared not only the expansion of revolution into Mexico but also the Central American transmigration through Mexico to the United States.

      Defending refugee rights, in turn, were the more liberal sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas (the fourth oldest diocese in Mexico) and its bishop, Samuel Ruiz García. “Solidarity committees” such as the Movimiento Mexicano de Solidaridad con el Pueblo de Guatemala and the Comité Mexicano de Solidaridad con el Pueblo Salvadoreño emerged to lobby on behalf of the refugees. Four of Mexico's political parties made pronouncements in defense of refugee rights;⁵¹ and the moderate-to-liberal press, especially Mexico City's La Jornada, published sympathetic articles and editorials reminding the government of its international responsibilities.⁵²

      Given the Mexican government's critiques of right-wing regimes, many found its reserve toward Guatemala surprising, especially in light of the incursions into Mexican territory and attacks on Mexican citizens. However, policy was tempered by the reality of a six-hundred-mile shared border: any diplomatic or military response would have domestic consequences. A military response would also compromise Mexico's leadership role in the regional peace initiatives. A diplomatic solution was made particularly difficult by Guatemala's long-standing grievances about territorial boundaries, trade, commerce, and labor.⁵³ One editorial in the Mexican press warned:

      We need to be courteous and even affectionate with our brothers to the south, but we must also treat them with kid gloves. We must support them in all reasonable causes in the international arena. We must give them preferential treatment so they can sell the few surplus products that we need here. We must facilitate the entrance of their tourists and their students so that they can continue to educate themselves here. But we should not invest in Central America, and above all we should not try to influence their internal affairs. We should follow the precept that we so readily proclaim: nonintervention.⁵⁴

      At first, Mexican officials avoided any public condemnation of Guatemala. When asked to comment on the border raids, for example, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, the director of COMAR (1981-1983), simply noted, “We have established a causal relationship between reports of burnings of and attacks on villages and the arrival of refugees in Mexican territory.”⁵⁵ Likewise, the government's failure to draft new legislation to offer the Guatemalans refugee status or asylum was an attempt to remain neutral, because such refugee assistance would be interpreted as a condemnation of the Guatemalan state. Protests were largely symbolic. Twice López Portillo canceled goodwill trips to Guatemala (one of the trips after threats of assassination by ultra-right-wing groups in Guatemala), which the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores called “postponements” to allow for the possibility of renewed diplomacy.⁵⁶ And in 1982, Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda de la Rosa delivered seven official protests to the Guatemalan ambassador in Mexico City. In his fifth “state of the union” address, López Portillo commented on Mexican foreign policy, especially with regard to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, and a number of other countries, but conspicuously absent from his speech was any reference to the troubles with Guatemala.⁵⁷

      Officials in the Secretarías de Defensa and Gobernación sent equally mixed messages. At the same time that COMAR was establishing dozens of camps and settlements, Servicios Migratorios increased its deportation of undocumented Guatemalans, deporting between 250 to 1,000 each week via Talismán and Ciudad Hidalgo.⁵⁸ Under pressure from the governor of Chiapas, the Mexican army increased its helicopter surveillance of the region, but this offered the refugees and local population little protection or assurance.⁵⁹ Indeed, there was growing evidence that the Secretaría de Defensa was assisting the Guatemalan government in its hunt for subversives. In 1982, Guatemala's defense minister, General Oscar Mejía Víctores (who several months later replaced Ríos Montt), was invited to observe the Independence Day military parade, a gesture that supporters interpreted as cautious goodwill diplomacy and critics interpreted as complicity.⁶⁰

      In June 1983, partly in response to US pressure to improve its human rights record, the Guatemalan government announced an amnesty program and initiated a campaign to convince the refugees to return to Guatemala. Guatemalan radio stations broadcast news of the amnesty across the border, while the Guatemalan consul in Comitán broadcast his own messages on Mexican radio stations, assuring refugees that their safety would be guaranteed by the International Red Cross. Members of the Guatemalan civil patrols and missionaries of the fundamentalist sect Gospel Outreach (to which General Ríos Montt belonged) entered the camps and settlements to persuade the refugees to return home. However, there was no cessation of violence that might have persuaded the refugees to return. The kaibiles continued to intimidate, raid, and bomb on both sides of the border;⁶¹ and Ríos Montt himself warned that if the refugees did not take advantage of the amnesty program, the state would “come in and get them.” Not surprisingly, the campaign failed to convince any sizable number of refugees that Guatemala's “model villages” provided a safer alternative.

      By 1984 COMAR publicly advocated that the government relocate the refugees to other parts of Mexico as a means of protecting them from continued attacks. The Dioceses of San Cristóbal and Tapachula and Mexican campesino organizations also supported the idea of relocation, but only if the refugees accepted the idea, and only to other parts of Chiapas, more distant from the border. Relocation to other states, they argued, would undermine cultural identity and community networks of the refugees.⁶² In January 1984, COMAR secured government permission to relocate five thousand refugees from six border camps to the Ixcán camp in Ocosingo, and asked diocesan officials for help. These officials opposed the move on the grounds that the Ixcán population would grow to ten thousand: too large a concentration of people in a small and fairly inaccessible geographic area.⁶³ After months of debate between the different parties, COMAR abandoned this specific plan but continued to press the case for relocation.