Last week, about 3,000 migrants, including about 500 minors, were attacked by the Mexican National Guard as they arrived in the town of Juchitán, the capital of Oaxaca state. The migrant workers, who had been walking across the continent for three weeks from the Guatemalan border, used overwhelming numbers to push through lines of soldiers and reach the city.
The caravan was formed during Easter week near the border with Guatemala under the name “Migrant Via Crucis.” They march behind wooden crosses and large signs reading “Those who kill poor immigrants”, protesting the brutal measures that stand in their way.
The migrant caravan, which calls itself “International Workers,” comes from at least 20 countries spanning every habitable continent, including Mexicans heading for the U.S. border.
The caravan phenomenon began in 2018 as a means for migrants to use their numbers to protect themselves from government forces and gangs (often working together) and to garner greater support from local communities on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. It started in .
The caravan is a barometer of society and a common rallying cry for workers of all nationalities and backgrounds in opposition to the irrational capitalist nation-state system that drags all humanity into the same dire misery and mass violence. It has become a form of collective protest expressing class interests. , the repression and war of the state from which the immigrants seek to escape.
The caravan members hope to first pass just south of Mexico City and reach the 19th parallel, 19 degrees north of the equator. The Biden administration is drawing this as a hypothetical line through which asylum seekers can download the CBP One mobile app. The CBP One mobile app was established last year to provide incremental appointments for asylum applications at the U.S.-Mexico border. This is just a new version of the Trump administration's “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Although there is still 560 miles to hike from the Pacific coast to the country's capital, 7,400 feet above sea level, it is not fatigue, hunger, or disease that determines the fate of the “immigrants by cross” but rather the fate of Mexico's modern state. military repression. -Sun Pontius Pilate, President Andres Manuel López Obrador.
In recent weeks, the pseudo-leftist AMLO has claimed that his increased enforcement efforts led to a more than 50 percent drop in encounters between migrants and U.S. Border Patrol agents between December and January of last year, and that the numbers have remained low ever since. I have repeatedly boasted about it.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) reported that this is the steepest monthly decline in the existing 25-year record of official data. As a result, all U.S. deterrence from 2021 onwards will involve building walls, mass arrests of crossers, deploying U.S. troops, “buoy walls” on the Rio Grande, piles of concertina wire, or It turns out to be the first approval of the SB4 “Immigrant Hunting” law (which is still in effect). (Court Consideration)—all had an “ineffective effect” in discouraging desperate immigrants.
The significant reduction was achieved by a “sharp increase in the tempo of operations by Mexican security forces and migration forces to interdict migration,” accompanied by record insecurity. Mexico detained 125,005 migrants in January and 119,943 in February, falling to fewer than 25,000 in early 2022.
This includes deploying hundreds of soldiers and immigration agents across the northern border, which CNN's David Culver said is “the most I've seen on the U.S.-Mexico border. This is a severe level of crackdown and is currently being carried out by Mexico.”
WOLA cited an increase in abuses by immigration authorities, including several reports since April of extortion, illegal detention, assault, robbery, and threats by soldiers against humanitarian workers assisting migrants.
However, Mexico has deported only 6,555 migrants this year out of all detainees. The majority are returning to southern Mexico by bus. “The policy is basically to wear people down, to send them from the north to the south and throw them back there so they have to get back on their feet,” explained Gretchen Kooner of the human rights group Immi. financial times.
The brutal and blatant criminal practice of holding workers against their will in Mexico, where they face extremely unstable and dangerous conditions, is the official policy not only of the AMLO government but of the Mexican establishment as a whole.
Statements from the two leading candidates in the June 2 presidential election make it clear that this policy will do more than appease US imperialism.
In Mexico, Xocitl Gálvez of the right-wing Heart and Strength for Mexico coalition has pledged to work closely with the United States to stop migration. But her main proposal, which she has repeated many times in this regard, is to use immigrants as cheap labor. “Mexico has a labor shortage, so why not find an opportunity for South American immigrants to get that labor?” she said last month.
AMLO's handpicked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has proposed discouraging immigration through “investment for development,” but this is just a euphemism for the same policy.
During an interview with bloomberg He said in the paper, published Friday, that Mexicans should serve to fill “the workforce needs of the United States,” but that within Mexico he would “create jobs. This development in southeastern Mexico “It's very important for the department itself and it's very important for Mexico.” This is to contain immigration for the sake of Mexicans and the possibility of employment within Mexico. ”
She also spoke out against President Trump, even as the fascist Republican vowed to act as a “dictator” and send in hundreds of thousands of troops to carry out mass detentions and deportations of immigrants. They promised to maintain a very good relationship. Biden, meanwhile, has consistently adapted to the anti-immigrant policies demanded by the far right, even announcing her intention to “shut down” the southern border.
The ruthless profit-driven calculations behind Mexico's immigration policy have far-reaching effects. Last November, social researcher Dr. Matteo Crossa-Niel wrote in an editorial: el universal The rapid increase in immigration is a “huge attraction for multinational companies to settle in Mexico in search of low wages,” he said. He added that “maquiladora sweatshops are betting on the vulnerability, vulnerability and criminalization of Mexican immigrants to incorporate them into the industrial workforce.” All this with the full support of the Mexican state. ”
With the process of globalization, Mexico's maquiladora sweatshops have been supported since the 1970s by cheap labor from rural migrants within Mexico who have moved to the vast cities near the U.S.-Mexico border. Dr. Crossa explains that immigrants currently provide employers with a “vent valve” for workers' increasing demands for better pay and conditions.
The future of “nearshoring” to Mexico, which is strategically important to U.S. imperialism's war plans, may become “dependent” on this policy, he argues.
The main conclusion that workers must draw is that nationalist xenophobia is their greatest enemy. The defense of migrant caravans and the right of all migrants to live and work wherever they choose shall be carried on the banner of the workers of all countries as an integral part of the struggle against capitalist exploitation and imperialist war. There must be.
