“The army will never be a solution. The militarization of migration was an element of territorial control that the State generated,” says the organization Voces Mesoamericanas, which works with “migrant peoples” in Chiapas. The handing over of control of migrants to organized crime, it says, was a decision of the army in agreement with the federal government to maintain the “legitimacy” with which Lopez Obrador government adorned the criminal work of the uniformed men.
Below is a summary of the conversation held two days after the last massacre of migrants, at the hands of the armed forces, precidely on October 2nd.
How do you interpret this way of starting the new government with a massacre of six migrants?
It is an expected and normalized effect of militarization. If we look back at the death of this guy, the coyote who jumps over the military control and opens fire on cars with migrants, we can count more than twenty cases in which sometimes 20 or 25 migrants have died. This is the greatest effect of the army’s free rein to hold and shoot a weapon.
In the last three months there has been a territorial dispute between organized crime in Chiapas that has intensified, because they are fighting over human trafficking. It is very well defined who is in charge of drug trafficking, who is in charge of forced displacement due to mining and migration. This Pacific corridor that goes from Ciudad Hidalgo to Arreaga, which connects with Tuxtla Gutiérrez, has historically had this situation.
The president defines herself as a daughter of 68, but if she is, she should know that the army will never be a solution. The militarization of migration was an element of territorial control that the State generated that began with Calderón’s war, when a stigma began to be generated against migrants because it was said that they swelled the groups of hitmen in crime. In reality, migrants occupy the production lines in organized crime, they pack the drugs, they make the monster (armored) cars, they take care of the cleaning. They are kidnapped according to the needs of crime and are always at the bottom of the list in terms of servitude and slavery.
The media criminalization made many people justify military intervention to deter them, something that never worked, because the proposal was to create a border that was concretized in the immigration control belts with military units that failed to deter because the routes kept changing.
What does the López Obrador administration add to the militarization of Chiapas and Mexico?
Legitimacy before society, by presenting the military as servants. This is related, for example, to the construction of the Mayan Train. In those territories, there is an evident gratitude for work, housing, and people see the army in these undertakings. In these six years, there has been a clear cleanup of the image of the military.
There would be a grateful part of society and another part persecuted and criminalized that suffers the consequences of dispossession and militarization. In this half of society there are migrants, those who live in the “zone of non-being,” as Fanon would say.
But there is something else. A significant part of those who make up the armed forces are indigenous because it was the only option for work and because since Calderón they began to have better salaries. In the armed forces there is an impoverished part of the Mexicans and this is part of the complex social polarization that we live in: they gave power to the army because it is the people and on the other hand they launch themselves against the judicial power that is detested by broad popular sectors.
Is it true that the greater the militarization, the greater the profits from crime?
Because they have more controls with which to negotiate. We are no longer dealing with the drug traffickers that we knew in the past, because there is also a generational change. The sons of Chapo and Mayo went to universities like Princeton and Harvard, they mix with the old bourgeoisie and they propose to professionalize the business. The central element is how to launder the money. San Cristóbal is one of the places where it is laundered, in hotels, restaurants and bars, for example, which already belong to crime through the rich of San Cristóbal.
You must have an x-ray of migration, which is very diverse.
Some have the resources to get directly to the border, while those who walk are the most impoverished. Half of the migrants manage to enter the United States, although these figures are approximate. The other half are victims of crime and disappear because even if they are alive they are condemned to death. Some have been able to establish themselves in Mexico, but with great precariousness.
When we go to the migrant shelters here in Chiapas, we see young people who have been through Darien, who have crossed very hard areas, they come with a lot of energy, they have crossed borders, they come back forged. But they are not prepared for what violence in Mexico implies. This is where the big problem is for those millions. They are frightened by this level of violence.
What will happen in this six-year term regarding migration in Mexico?
I think there will be no fundamental changes and much will depend on the result of the elections in the United States, which is what defines the migration agenda, because we do not expect anything from here. In American society there is more and more rejection of migrants, there is annoyance and they are often identified with criminals.
What is the relationship between organized crime and the army?
The army is essential for organized crime. It is proven that the army has a level of lethality and tactics that could be used to stop organized crime in a month. We have scenes like those that occurred in Culiacán four years ago, where the capacity for annihilation that they have was shown. In other words, if the military player is not involved in some way, organized crime could not operate.
But in terms of migration, I was struck by what I saw in Tapachula a few days ago. Now you no longer see migrants walking on the highway, which left me very shocked because a year ago there were many people walking north. After each National Guard checkpoint there is another one for crime that takes migrants down and checks their documents, and takes them away. They tell them that walking is prohibited.
That surprises me because when the El Sur Resiste caravan was held, less than two years ago, the lines of migrants walking were enormous. What happened?
You no longer see the army or the guard chasing migrants. Apparently, they have given the power to control the chaos to organized crime, because organized crime is also a black hole in which everything fits…
Like climate change, which serves to justify anything.
Of course, because when there were clashes between migrant caravans and the National Guard, it was always televised, and now by passing the responsibility to organized crime, of course supervised by the army, the legitimacy of the military institution is protected. What happened in Tapachula could not be controlled, for example, and now they are avoiding wear and tear with this turn.
That means that the State/army are changing their tactics so as not to lose legitimacy, regardless of the human costs.
That is why since López Obrador won, it was said that if the project were in decline, we should not be surprised if in a fourth period of the 4T it was a colonel who ran for president. Because in that logic, “who knows how to fix things is the army.”
To finish, how do you see the relationship between organized crime and popular movements?
Criminal groups make a reading of historical conflicts, of existing organizations, and this reading of reality allows them to position themselves as references by supporting those who suit them. Today, you see the cartels in Chiapas in the form of peasant-indigenous organizations, like Maíz, created by them and which generates enormous confusion. So, it is the people of the communities themselves, not those who come from outside.
There are families with whom we have worked in workshops that have now turned to human or drug trafficking and there are communities that we can no longer go to for these reasons. There are those who say that today there are more rich people in some indigenous communities than in the municipal capitals, both because of remittances and because of participation in crime. We know families that receive, only from remittances, up to 350 thousand pesos per month for years.
All the imaginable diversity is today in the communities, from the most brutal capitalist mentality to those who continue in the struggle.
Original article by Raúl Zibechi, Desinformémonos, Ocober 7th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.