The bodies of three Central American youngsters found washed up within the past week on disparate Pacific Ocean beaches in southern Mexico could spur this country, which many observers call exceptionally oriented toward children, to implement recent constitutional changes establishing the right for outsiders to seek asylum here, say human rights specialists working in the area.
Reports say that the children, aged 7, 10 and 11, had fled El Salvador and Honduras with family members in boats that capsized in storms July 20. Mexican authorities in the state of Chiapas as well as Central American consulates responded to the incident, noting that the children’s parents emerged from the sea, having managed to survive the ordeal.
Staff at two United Nations refugee offices (UNHCR) in Mexico, located near its border with Guatemala, report seeing a dramatic increase recently in families, women and children, including unaccompanied children, fleeing El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala due to death threats from organized crime. These threats, along with the start in 2014 of border tightening by Mexico, have caused many people fleeing this area, dubbed the “Northern Triangle of Central America,” to leave by sea, a more dangerous route, as evidenced in the drownings of the three youngsters.
“In 2008, our surveys showed that 13 percent of the unaccompanied children we interviewed in southern Mexico left their homes because they were in danger and needed international protection. But a similar survey in 2014 showed 48 percent of these children needed protection,” said Mariana Echandi, the UNHCR communications associate in Mexico.
Likewise, a UNHCR discussion paper released as part of a high-level meeting in early July in Costa Rica, which addressed the increase in people fleeing the Triangle for their lives, emphasized that now “refugees may account for more than half of the population on the move.” Refugees are attempting to reach safer countries, such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize and the United States, often after first trying to flee to another part of their home country.
Humanitarian workers note that shelters that have existed for many years in southern Mexican have recently noticed a big difference in the profiles of people leaving the Triangle. While young men facing economic challenges and traveling alone used to predominate, in recent months a dramatic increase in the violent activities of organized crime have started to drive away women, children, families and LGBT individuals too. Organized gangs forcibly recruiting children as young as 11 into their ranks is a frequent reason for flight.
“Now, more Central Americans are being pushed away, because of fear for their lives, rather than pulled away for economic reasons,” Echandi emphasized.
The UNHCR paper noted that Northern Triangle countries now have some of the highest homicide rates ever recorded. While ten intentional homicides per 100,000 people annually is classified as “epidemic,” the rate in El Salvador in 2015 reached 103, over ten times higher. Organized crime in the Northern Triangle of Central America is at a level that people from developed countries such as the United States and Canada have trouble comprehending. Triangle countries are “home to tens of thousands of gang members” who “live from extortion and, increasingly, the local sale of drugs … well-armed rival gangs fight for territorial control, and engage in hostilities with the State, assassinating police and military personnel.”
A July 9 Guadalajara Reporter article noted that plentiful arms supplied to these countries by the United States during conflicts decades ago are a key cause of the current high level of danger.
The meeting in Costa Rica was only one example of international response to the humanitarian crisis, say human rights specialists. Another took place July 13 when a reform to Article 11 of the Mexican Constitution was approved by the legislature, recognizing the existence of refugees and their right to ask for asylum.
“So Mexico has a significant role to play in this regional crisis,” said Echandi. She added that UNHCR staff makes weekly visits to shelters and migration detention centers in Chiapas and Tabasco to tell residents of their right to ask for asylum if they are worried for their lives if sent back to their home countries.
Humanitarian workers also pointed out that their own offices have grown in recent months in response to the Central American refugee crisis and that the UNHCR opened another office in 2014 in the state of Tabasco, in addition to one in Tapachula, Chiapas, which was established in 2003.
The children’s drownings have so far received relatively scant attention in international media, but some observers wonder if the deaths could provoke an awareness similar to the reaction to the September 2015 photo of a drowned Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, on the coast of Turkey, which galvanized a worldwide response to refugees in that area.
Some media are criticizing the Mexican government’s South Border Plan (Plan Frontera Sur), implemented in July 2014, for its role in refugees’ deaths. The plan “increased risks for Central American migrants,” states the journal 7/24, adding that the drownings represent “the triumph of the discourse of Donald Trump” and the erection in southern Mexico of a “new wall, at the moment, virtual” like the one proposed by the Republican presidential candidate for Mexico’s northern border.
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