Migrants in Mexico Still in Great Danger

Wounded and dazed, Luis Fredy Lala Pomavilla stumbled to a near by highway checkpoint in Tamaulipas, Mexico where he alerted the authorities. Luis led Marines to a ranch. What they found was horrific. They found a ranch filled with the bodies of 72 massacred Central and South American migrants.

You may have heard about this horror earlier this week, which may be the biggest massacre so far in Mexico’s bloody drug war.  Apparently, members of the Zeta criminal organization asked the migrants for money and those who could not pay were murdered. This is one of the usual extortionary schemes criminal gangs perpetrate against migrants as they pass throug Mexico to the United States.  Other human rights abuses that migrants face are kidnapping, rape, and forced prostitution, as the National Commission on Human Rights of Mexico reported 9,758 kidnapped migrants between September 2008 and February 2009.

The plight of migrants and their journey through Mexico is so treacherous that Amnesty International released a report documenting their abuses called: Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico.

We are gravely concerned about the massacre of these 72 migrants and the Mexican government must act now to ensure that the human rights of migrants are protected, especially from extorsion, kidnapping, sexual abuse, forced prostitution, and torture.

AIUSA welcomes a lively and courteous discussion that follow our Community Guidelines. Comments are not pre-screened before they post but AIUSA reserves the right to remove any comments violating our guidelines.

8 thoughts on “Migrants in Mexico Still in Great Danger

  1. Having had the occasion to work with or alongside your organization for more years than I can recount, I have one the whole found your work to be thorough and competent. Thus it is with some sorrow that I feel that I must ask you that this same thoughtfulness and competent research being done(hopefully)on all of the cases you put before us asking for support be made available. While I don't often doubt your conclusions, in all cases, I would like to see the evidence. Please present the case in as much totality as possible if you want me to speak to it. As an example, although it is becoming difficult at times to be opposed to the death penalty in massive environmental crimes, or in the cases of horrific serial killers, I still am. In the case in Georgia, that applies, even though I have no idea what the young man was charged with. How this case is automatically linked to immigration laws bewilders me, unless facts are being kept from the public. There is an argument of some legitimacy that claims those who migrate for economic reasons are the same people who, if they stayed, might force change in human rights treatment and ultimately in the regime. I know this is not always possible. It certainly was not possible when I asked your people for help, after a second blundered attempt that I am aware of, to end my life. I understand that you cannot help everyone, but, I was also confronted with the question, do you wish to(?). What you wish to raise as an issue, and what you merely make motions seems to suffice for deeply troubles me. Why is Darfur not taken in at least its complete historical context, which would carry us back to the waning days of the British Empire, and their attempt to make of that region, a different type of Singapura. I have never seen mention of the role of the "religious right" in the secessionist movement, nor of how a people content to live on the edge of the Stone Age (in Southern Sudan) are suddenly in an arms race. Nor, to my great dismay, have I seen you link the genocide which in numbers, is larger than the Jewish genocide of West Eurasia, to the Western and South African mining companies which have brought it about that we might have inexpensive cell phones. Does the imagery of more than 6.5million Congolese deaths that we might chat when we please, bother the gloves on approach made to this problem? Would it be worse to say that no less than 15million Congolese have died, with a much more realistic number easily exceeding 30million in the past one hundred thirty years. Being at one time a demographer, I have always used very conservative numbers, as I would hope that death tolls are not contest. Please do something about the Congo. My liberal numbers for the whole period cited, exceeded 40-50 million several years ago. While the beatings and the torture, and what accompanied it, will, most likely, simply amount to an incurable and sped up death condition for me, there are so many in the Congo who remain forgotten it seems, by all who could do something about it. Thank you for letting me speak.

  2. Having had the occasion to work with or alongside your organization for more years than I can recount, I have one the whole found your work to be thorough and competent. Thus it is with some sorrow that I feel that I must ask you that this same thoughtfulness and competent research being done(hopefully)on all of the cases you put before us asking for support be made available. While I don’t often doubt your conclusions, in all cases, I would like to see the evidence. Please present the case in as much totality as possible if you want me to speak to it. As an example, although it is becoming difficult at times to be opposed to the death penalty in massive environmental crimes, or in the cases of horrific serial killers, I still am. In the case in Georgia, that applies, even though I have no idea what the young man was charged with. How this case is automatically linked to immigration laws bewilders me, unless facts are being kept from the public. There is an argument of some legitimacy that claims those who migrate for economic reasons are the same people who, if they stayed, might force change in human rights treatment and ultimately in the regime. I know this is not always possible. It certainly was not possible when I asked your people for help, after a second blundered attempt that I am aware of, to end my life. I understand that you cannot help everyone, but, I was also confronted with the question, do you wish to(?). What you wish to raise as an issue, and what you merely make motions seems to suffice for deeply troubles me. Why is Darfur not taken in at least its complete historical context, which would carry us back to the waning days of the British Empire, and their attempt to make of that region, a different type of Singapura. I have never seen mention of the role of the “religious right” in the secessionist movement, nor of how a people content to live on the edge of the Stone Age (in Southern Sudan) are suddenly in an arms race. Nor, to my great dismay, have I seen you link the genocide which in numbers, is larger than the Jewish genocide of West Eurasia, to the Western and South African mining companies which have brought it about that we might have inexpensive cell phones. Does the imagery of more than 6.5million Congolese deaths that we might chat when we please, bother the gloves on approach made to this problem? Would it be worse to say that no less than 15million Congolese have died, with a much more realistic number easily exceeding 30million in the past one hundred thirty years. Being at one time a demographer, I have always used very conservative numbers, as I would hope that death tolls are not contest. Please do something about the Congo. My liberal numbers for the whole period cited, exceeded 40-50 million several years ago. While the beatings and the torture, and what accompanied it, will, most likely, simply amount to an incurable and sped up death condition for me, there are so many in the Congo who remain forgotten it seems, by all who could do something about it. Thank you for letting me speak.

  3. This is really an alarming situation and I have to add another link to the mining industry is the genocide of the Boer nation in South Africa 100 years ago when 60% of the Boer children died in concentration camps of Gold Plunderers using the British Empire to reach their goal.

    And since Platinum or White gold came into the picture, it is the same situation all over again with Boers already in stage 5 of genocide and this time the UN is used to reach these goals!

    Striking is the website of David Biggings in UK on the Anglo Boer War. He mentions the following;

    "The camps were offered to the fighting Boers as an inducement to give up the struggle. Those Boers that did surrender were invited live in the camps with their families under British protection. The effect was probably the contrary because the camps released the fighting Boers from the responsibility of looking after their families."

    We all know this is a lie and that Boers who surrendered where transported to prison camps in foreign countries, yet this kind of moral problem is indeed evident today. I ask myself the question, "Does this means morality is modified in the lab"?

  4. This is really an alarming situation and I have to add another link to the mining industry is the genocide of the Boer nation in South Africa 100 years ago when 60% of the Boer children died in concentration camps of Gold Plunderers using the British Empire to reach their goal.

    And since Platinum or White gold came into the picture, it is the same situation all over again with Boers already in stage 5 of genocide and this time the UN is used to reach these goals!

    Striking is the website of David Biggings in UK on the Anglo Boer War. He mentions the following;

    “The camps were offered to the fighting Boers as an inducement to give up the struggle. Those Boers that did surrender were invited live in the camps with their families under British protection. The effect was probably the contrary because the camps released the fighting Boers from the responsibility of looking after their families.”

    We all know this is a lie and that Boers who surrendered where transported to prison camps in foreign countries, yet this kind of moral problem is indeed evident today. I ask myself the question, “Does this means morality is modified in the lab”?

Comments are closed.