MEXICO CITY: On April 15, a march of 293 Central American immigrants broke through police lines blocking their entry into the city of Ixtepec, in Mexico’s Oaxaca state. Ixtepec is the location of an immigrant shelter administered by the Catholic Brothers of the Path (Hermanos en el Camino), headed by Father Alejandro Solainde, a well-respected immigration advocate, and leader of this Easter season protest March.
Two weeks before, on March 24, the immigrants and refugees had crossed the Suchiate River, the border between Guatemala and Mexico, into the state of Chiapas on foot, marching 380 kilometers (230 miles) across that state. They were set to board buses in Oaxaca on their way to Mexico City as part of a campaign for the rights of immigrants and refugees in Mexico.
Thirty people were injured in a confrontation with the Federal Police and agents of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) before the authorities gave way. The immigrants are being helped by human rights organizations, the Hermanos and the dissident Oaxaca teachers union (Section 22 of the SNTE), many of whose members formed a human shield between the immigrants and police. Also in support are the National Human Rights Commission, the Oaxaca Human Rights Defenders, Amnesty International, and the International Peace Brigades.
The annual Easter protest called “Viacrucis, Fronterals Aliadas” (path of the cross, allied frontiers) usually takes place in a peaceful manner. Immigrant rights advocates and Central Americans are allowed safe passage. This year recent anti-immigrant legislation was used as a pretext to block the march. Marchers were held up, allegedly, so that their legal status could be “checked”.
Via Crusis every year follows one of the routes that immigrants take in southern and central Mexico with the purpose of drawing attention to the ongoing and continuous violations of human rights that immigrants are subject to both by federal and state authorities and by organized crime.
This year the demonstrators also directed their fire against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Southern Border Program, designed to block the movement of immigrants, no matter what their motives are for traveling north.
Coupled with the economic misery and constant threat of criminal gangs, Central Americans now face the expulsion from their lands to benefit mining and agricultural transnational corporations.
Alberto Donis, spokesperson for the Hermanos, denounced the “unconstitutional and illegal” repression by the federal police. According to the Mexico City newsweekly Proceso, Donis credited the SNTE support and the solidarity of Mexicans for the groups’ success against the police and the INM.
Against the police barricade, human chains of activists and SNTE members surrounded the refugees and pushed the police back.
“If they touch us again, the consequences will be serious,” said Donis. The INM and police, however, intimidated the bus owners into not lending or renting the marchers any buses. The marchers are proceeding on foot this weekend.
The government of President Peña Nieto introduced last year the Southern Frontier Program, which grants limited rights to Guatemalans to cross the border into southern Mexico and provides substandard shelters along the border for migrant women and children.