Migration Challenges and The New Geopolitics of La - 231017 - 111339

Migration challenges and the new geopolitics of Latin
America–United States relations

Laurent Faret
In Hérodote Volume 171, Issue 4, 2018, pages 89 to 105
Publishers La Découverte
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Migration challenges and the new geopolitics
of Latin America–United States relations
Laurent Faret1
Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations2
Abstract
Based on a consideration of international migration dynamics between North and Central
America, this article aims to shed light on the current geopolitical issues of human mobility
in the region. In a context where border externalization and security posturing are becom-

ing increasingly conspicuous, the persistence of mobilities and their intertwining with
other contemporary issues have placed migration at the center of international relations as
rarely before. Beyond the rhetoric of the hypothetical wall at the United States–Mexico
border, this article focuses on recent reconfigurations of migratory dynamics and conten-
tion policies along the Central American migration corridor. Mexico’s southern border
is now at the heart of migratory issues, mirroring aspects of the situation at the northern
border. The vulnerabilities of populations in transit in increasingly violent environments
appear to be the main focus of political responses to migration.
Between the 2016 US presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s arrival in the

Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.
White House in early 2017, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s victory in the
Mexican presidential election of summer 2018, migration has been continuously
1. University of Paris and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) (Research
Institute for Development)/Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología
Social (CIESAS) (Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology), UMR Centre
d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (CESSMA) (Center
for Social Studies on African, American, and Asian Worlds). He is the author of Les territoires de
la mobilité: Migration et communautés transnationales entre le Mexique et les Etats-Unis (Paris:
CNRS Editions, 2020).
2. Translator: Ruth Grant, Editor: Matt Burden, Senior editor: Mark Mellor
I
HÉRODOTE
shunted into the political and media limelight in both countries and, by extension,
the world beyond. But just how influential is this issue when we try to place it in a
broader geopolitical perspective, one less in thrall to overblown rhetoric, unilateral-
ism, and attempts to make political capital of issues that are far more complex than
a glance at today’s Twittersphere would suggest? By exploring migration dynamics
between Central and North America, this article aims to shed light on the geopol-
itics of human mobility in this region. This is a context in which border external-
ization, security posturing, geostrategic ambitions, and areas of overlap between
migration and other contemporary issues are becoming more and more conspicu-
ous. For many observers, Mexico is at the epicenter of recent political seisms, as
reverberations ripple back and forth to unwonted effect between the northern border
with the United States and the southern border with Central America, now an unpre-
dictable political fault line where local, national, and regional dynamics converge.
Geopolitical tensions between North and Latin America have a long history,
shaped by multiple, nested forces: control over land and resources; military and
geostrategic influences; bids to impose an economic development model that cre-
ates dependence on the United States; issues around the regulation of international
trade, legal or illegal, and so on. Against this backdrop, questions of human mobil-
ity take center stage, as borders open, close, and open again in a region that, since

the mid-twentieth century, has been one of the world’s most active sites of migrant
interchange. Rarely have the geopolitics of migration been in sharper focus than in
recent decades, caught up in a tripartite momentum of neoliberal expansion, shifts
in migration patterns themselves, and the role of these patterns in the political agen-
das of the region’s various countries. The reality on the ground is defined by mul-
tiple, constantly intersecting agendas: states and their various agencies, those on
the front lines of the “migration industry” (from transport providers to coyotes3 to
money transfer companies), criminal gangs who prey on the vulnerabilities of pop-
ulations in transit, and civil society and community actors who see these issues as
lying at the crux of a transformation in living standards affecting millions of people.

From Tegucigalpa to Washington, the migration question moves back and forth
across the political stage, steering or even dictating positions that have a bearing on
other national and regional dynamics. The way we address it may therefore have
implications for the fight against poverty, for “homeland” and “hemispheric” secu-
rity, for border control, and for tackling violence, corruption, and drug trafficking.
These issues are all interlinked, in configurations that lend themselves to entrenched
positions in a region characterized by strengthening interdependencies.
3. Smugglers.
II
MIGRATION CHALLENGES AND THE NEW GEOPOLITICS
Complex and evolving migration dynamics
Today, migration dynamics in the regional space formed by North and Central
America are far more complex than we might glean from certain reductive narra-
tives aired in politics and the media. The United States continues to strongly attract
migrant flows, while the origins of new arrivals have grown more diverse. For exam-
ple, in 2017, the United States Border Patrol detained more would-be migrants from
Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) than
from Mexico, its immediate neighbor (165,000 versus 130,000).4 US immigration
data reveals that, in 2015, for the first time in recent history there were more arrivals
from China and India than from Mexico, illegal border crossings excluded. Yet, this
data cannot distract from the reality that migrant flows from all over the world now
enter the United States via its southern neighbors, seeking to circumvent the mount-
ing obstacles clogging official channels.
Mexico lies at the very heart of this system, part of an international landscape
displaying four (schematically) simultaneous dynamics: emigration, return, tran-
sit migration, and immigration. Traditional emigration from Mexico to the United
States, originating in rural areas in central and western parts of the country in the
early twentieth century, have been joined by other, more recent fluxes. Since the

mid-2000s, a significant number of migrants have returned to Mexico, in what some
observers regard as a reversal of the migratory dynamic between the two countries.
At the time of the 2010 Mexican census, some 980,000 people gave their country
of residence five years earlier as the United States. When we add the 770,000 peo-
ple born in the United States but registered as living in Mexico (predominantly the
offspring of returning families), it appears that almost 1.7 million people have relo-
cated from north of the border (Barros Nock and Escobar Latapí 2017). In 2018,
the uncertainty weighing on “dreamers,” young people born in Mexico who came
to the United States before the age of sixteen, has consolidated this dynamic. At
present, almost 800,000 young people benefit from the DACA program,5 a policy
launched by Barack Obama in 2012 that gives them temporary protection from
deportation. The Trump administration, however, has this program in its crosshairs,
and it remains in place only because judges have repeatedly thrown out arguments
for abolishing it. Viewed as a whole, the dynamics of return are driven by multi-
ple factors. For example, the economic and financial crisis that shook the United
States in 2008 destroyed many low-skilled jobs, particularly in construction and ser-
4. US Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol Nationwide Apprehensions by

Citizenship and Sector in FY2017, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats.
5. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
III
HÉRODOTE
vices, where migrants are overrepresented. Meanwhile, on a more modest scale, new
opportunities have arisen in Mexico, especially for migrants who have achieved a
certain level of economic success and retain close ties with their region of origin.
Many have returned to Mexico’s central and western regions, particularly to mid-
sized cities and rural communities, where initiatives like the 3 x 1 program6 have
been successful in enlisting the émigré community in support of local development.
Still, this remains a localized phenomenon, and its impact has been stymied by
spiraling violence. Finally, resentment toward immigrants has tightened its grip on
US society over the last ten years, particularly since Donald Trump’s inaugura-
tion in January 2017 and his efforts to use fear as a deterrent. More generally, the
Trump campaign’s unmistakably hostile rhetoric toward Mexican immigrants has
made their lives more difficult, while winning him the support of almost half of US
voters. A law introduced in Arizona in 2010, giving police the power to apprehend
undocumented migrants, is another step in this direction. In 2018, the scandal that
erupted around the separation of children from their undocumented parents domi-
nated headlines around the world, forcing the Trump administration to backpedal,
albeit without renouncing the rhetoric of “zero tolerance.”
Nevertheless, the reverse migration trend should not cause us to underestimate
the continued importance of immigration and its long-term effects. More than

11 million Mexicans now live in the United States, and almost 175,000 Mexicans
were granted legal status in 2016. Since the 1990s, this dynamic has expanded,
drawing in populations and regions that had been relatively unaffected, particu-
larly in cities and southern states, most markedly in Veracruz and Guerrero. Living
standards in many areas have improved thanks to remittances from abroad, and
many household budgets are dependent on periodic trips across the border for work
(Faret 2006). This is clearly apparent from the number of temporary contracts
issued to seasonal migrants from Mexico under the H-2A program.7 The number of
Mexican temporary agricultural workers has been heading upward again in recent
years, reaching some 412,000 in 2017.

6. The “3 x 1” programs grew out of a Mexican policy introduced at the national level in 2002
with the aim of capturing emigrant revenues to fund public spending. The underlying principle
was that projects to upgrade local infrastructure (health centers, roads, sanitation, schools, etc.)
would receive funding from each of the three levels of government, which would match every
dollar invested by migrants’ associations abroad.
7. The H-2A program allows US employers to recruit foreign workers under temporary con-
tracts for seasonal agricultural work, generally at harvest time. It is often associated with the H-2B
program, which applies to non-agricultural workers in sectors suffering labor shortages. However,
the latter is more restrictive in terms of eligible activities and the maximum numbers allowed
IV
Another major dynamic is the flow from Central America to the United States,
with most migrants traveling via Mexico. Sources indicate that between 200,000 and
500,000 Central American migrants cross Mexico every year,8 the overwhelming
majority without legal status. These estimates are difficult to verify, since undocu-
mented migrants do not tend to be captured in official statistics. In most cases, their
journey begins in Central America’s Northern Triangle. The immigrant population
from these three countries living in the United States amounted to almost 3 million
people in 2017—the second-largest immigrant group after Mexico. As border con-
trols between Mexico and the United States have hardened, and as anti-immigrant
sentiment has flared up north of the border, civil society organizations have noted
that the proportion of people who end up staying in Mexico is growing: almost one
in three, according to one recent study (REDODEM 2018). The scheduled winding
up of the Temporary Protected Status program, which offered a special migration
status for Hondurans and Salvadorans in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, is set
to compound the situation. In this context, Mexico is cast as an anteroom between
two locked doors: making it to the United States is difficult, but turning around is
unimaginable. In this case, Central American migration is a response to a chronic
lack of economic opportunities and a culture of violence, both rural and urban.
Between 2014 and 2016, the three Northern Triangle countries together recorded

50,000 homicides, mostly linked to gang violence and drug trafficking. A mass exo-
dus since the mid-1990s came mainly in waves of exiles during a period when the
region was consumed by civil war, between 1979 and 1996 (Faret 2015). The eco-
nomic impact of emigration on this scale, in countries of between 6 and 17 million
people (a fraction of Mexico’s 129 million), is immense. In 2017, remittances from
family members living abroad (remesas) represented between 11 and 19 percent of
the GDP9 of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and these sums are growing in
all three countries (Orozco 2018). To put this in perspective, in Mexico, where the
economy is more diversified, such payments equate to less than 3 percent of GDP.
In Central America, international migration has become a driver of societal change
in its own right, creating a structural dependence on a dynamic with a highly uncer-
tain outcome, since most of those who leave are undocumented, as well as political
instability that means that migration only rarely works in favor of development at
home. Today, more and more urban dwellers are fleeing the region in response to
8. On the evaluation of these flows, see Rodríguez Chávez (2016).

9. For context, GDP per capita in each country is: El Salvador, $3,880; Guatemala, $4,470;
Honduras, $2,480; and Mexico, $8,900 (according to World Bank data for 2017).
V
HÉRODOTE
the growing threat from the maras,10 who have extended their turf to areas flanking
migration routes, oblivious to national borders (see Fuentes-Carrera 2018).
The migration landscape is becoming more diverse, with new inflows from
Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, other parts of Central America, and Africa
keeping pace with a litany of convulsive events in the countries of origin. The
Mesoamerican space, then, is a bustling migration corridor, and one fraught with
vulnerabilities. Between 2015 and 2017, for example, Cuban migrants who reached
the Central American isthmus from Ecuador or Guyana found themselves at the
center of a geopolitical crisis that prompted Costa Rica to temporarily withdraw
from the Central American Integration System. Another expression of these flows
is the Haitian community that has made its mark on Tijuana, Mexico, since 2016.
Migration: At the heart of regional geopolitical relations
The centrality of migration issues in regional geopolitical relations came about in

a context of profound changes. Since 9/11, national security has been the dominant
theme in bilateral relations. Border control has become an essential pillar in rela-
tions, with a US-centric defense doctrine projected across the region in the name of

“hemispheric security.” Viewed from this perspective, the US policy of hardening
border controls and clamping down on immigration did not begin with the Trump
era. In quantitative terms, the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama
were the toughest on immigration in recent US history, with between 300,000 and
400,000 deportations recorded each year. Among other developments, the war on
terror led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003,
combining hitherto separate agencies into a single entity, its name indicative of a
novel vocabulary (Nieto Gómez 2009). This was swiftly followed by a move to
expand the US Border Patrol in the name of national security, the stated aim being to
prevent terrorist groups from using established migration routes to enter the United

States—the primary justification for a militarization of the border, which drew
significant criticism from migrant rights groups. The number of US Border Patrol
agents stationed at the Mexican border alone swelled from 9,100 in 2001 to more
than 18,500 in 2017, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
At the same time, the United States was pursuing a “smart border” program, making
increasingly liberal use of military technology to curb the flow of undocumented
10. Maras are violent urban gangs that originated in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
They were exported first to El Salvador in the 1990s and then to neighboring countries, where they
were able to grow and thrive due to local authorities’ weak capacity to enforce the rule of law.
VI
migrants into the country, including an extensive deployment of sensors, radars, and
aerial surveillance. It was argued that such investments were justified in the interest
of protecting the country from illegal goods, drug trafficking networks, and possible
terrorist cells, and so it is difficult to determine how heavily migration issues weighed
in these decisions. However, there is little doubt that the thousands of migrants to
make it across the border—legally or otherwise—bore the brunt of the crackdown,
which effectively criminalized entire groups of often socially and economically vul-
nerable people. Viewed in this context, Donald Trump’s campaign promise to build
a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico seems both to perpetuate
this dynamic and to partake of a rhetoric unique to his candidacy. Trump’s wall was
the flagship project of a “zero-tolerance” policy that played well with conservative
voters. Still, it seems unlikely to ever see the light of day. The construction cost has
been estimated at $21 billion, and that is before accounting for the fact that a lot of
land adjacent to the border is privately owned and would need to be appropriated.11
Trump’s vow to make Mexico pay for the wall directly is equally implausible in the
current context. The United States still has the option of imposing taxes on Mexican
imports, remittances, or visa applications, but such measures would face major polit-
ical and economic obstacles.
More generally, we can see how, in the aftermath of 9/11, security concerns and

the war on terror impeded the development of a unified regional stance, despite the
pervasiveness of a discourse of “global” threats. At one point, efforts to establish a
common vision on migration issues seemed to bear fruit in the form of the Security
and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), uniting Canada, the United
States, and Mexico (2005). However, in the absence of a genuine political will to
collaborate, its members soon reverted to bilateral negotiations, leaving migration
issues at the mercy of fluctuating national priorities and, in particular, US domestic
policy and regional clout. Here, the formidable influence of the US political class is
clear to see. From their perspective, violence and organized crime, both in Mexico
and in Central America, called for a new and robust response that was not dependent
on integrated forms of collaboration in which they had little faith. The first steps
toward a substantially revised US position focused on hemispheric security were
evident in the period between 2005 and 2015, as we will see shortly in our discussion
of the Mesoamerican space.
11. At some of the most technically complex sections of the proposed wall, illegal cross-
ings are actually very rare. Studies examining a section of the wall at Big Bend, Texas, esti-
mated that the cost of construction would be $10 million per mile, at a location where fewer than
7,000 migrants were intercepted in 2016: just twelve per mile.
VII
HÉRODOTE
Meanwhile, the situation around the application of international treaties for the
protection of at-risk populations is also evolving rapidly. The number of people
seeking asylum in Mexico has grown exponentially in recent years. The Comisión
Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados (COMAR) (Mexican Commission for Refugee
Assistance) reports that applications rose from fewer than 1,300 in 2013 to almost
15,000 in 2017—an eleven-fold increase in four years. In 2017, the majority of
claims were lodged by people arriving from Honduras, Venezuela, and El Salvador
(in descending order). Fewer than one in eight were granted refugee status. COMAR
has amassed a considerable backlog of unprocessed applications and is notoriously
understaffed.12 Demands from civil society for a genuine refugee reception policy
are gaining traction. Mexico’s proud tradition of hospitality toward exiles and forced
migrants, upheld throughout the twentieth century,13 has not been extended in the
same way to those fleeing escalating violence in its closest neighbors, particularly
the countries of the Northern Triangle (PEN 2016). The issue of asylum is also at
the center of a power struggle with the United States. During her most recent visit to
Mexico in July 2018, Kirstjen Nielsen, US secretary of homeland security, met with
Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She reaffirmed the Trump
administration’s position that migrants attempting to claim asylum in the United
States should seek protection in Mexico. This stemmed from a proposed bilateral

agreement presented to the Mexican authorities that would introduce a “first safe
country” policy, making Mexico responsible for handling asylum claims from all
applicants originating from countries that lie to its south. It seems highly improba-
ble that López Obrador’s team, or the Mexican Congress, will commit to any such
thing, but it serves to illustrate the pressure applied by the Trump administration
just as a new vision for NAFTA is being thrashed out.14 In the North American pol-
icy space, asylum is viewed as a matter of national sovereignty, reminding us that
region-building there is an economic process, immensely challenging and devoid of
an overarching political vision. A “Trumpian version” of what we in Europe call the
Dublin Regulation seems unlikely to succeed. During his own electoral campaign,

López Obrador declared that “Mexico is free and sovereign, and we won’t do the
dirty work of any foreign government.” Of course, this was the posturing of a pres-
idential candidate—known, incidentally, for his populist leanings—and so should
12. This is before accounting for the effects of the September 2017 earthquake, which dam-
aged COMAR facilities and meant that the processing of claims had to be temporarily suspended.
13. Most notably, the welcome shown to Spanish republicans and exiles from Latin American
countries under military dictatorships.
14. North American Free Trade Agreement. This agreement between the United States,
Mexico, and Canada came into force in 1994. In August 2018, US and Mexican negotiators
agreed on terms for a second phase.
VIII
be seen as only a very partial indication of the future direction of his administration,
which is set to take office in December 2018.
Mexico’s southern border: Ground zero for multiscalar forces
In this context, the geopolitical challenges posed by migration are now crystalliz-
ing in a very particular way at Mexico’s southern border, where the effects of a US
policy of “border externalization” are beginning to make themselves felt (Villafuerte
Solís 2018). The border extends to 1,150 km, most of it shared between Mexico
and Guatemala. In the northernmost section of the border, a 200-km stretch divides
Mexico from Belize. These frontier zones have long been the confines of these three
nation states, remote from capital cities and scarred by widespread poverty and per-
sistent socioeconomic marginality. Historically, other logics of division—agricul-
tural fronts, primarily—have mattered more than lines on a map. Between the late
nineteenth century and the 1970s, the spread of coffee farming from Guatemala was
the catalyst for a new plantation economy, which would soon become the region’s
main economic driver. Impoverished rural laborers followed the expansion of the

fincas, traveling down from the Mexican highlands in Chiapas or crossing over from
neighboring Guatemala. As huge coffee plantations took shape in Soconusco (south-
ern Chiapas), burgeoning banana, cotton, and sugarcane production also benefited
from this influx of labor. Guatemalan jornaleros embarked on a relentless back-and-
forth that remains a dominant pattern today, following a logic of regional proximity
largely attributable to the configurations of a Mayan cultural space that predates the
current boundaries of nation states. From this perspective, Mexico’s southern border
region is very different from its border with the United States to the north, where
there has been no such construction of a shared space, unless we count the strip of
urban development that snakes along each side. Another important dimension is
the very geography of the Mexican–Guatemalan region: between forests, checkered
valleys, and agricultural fronts, its morphology makes the border’s precise route
difficult to ascertain. This, in turn, hampers efforts to monitor who is crossing in and
out. While there are currently eight official crossing points, the true number almost
certainly exceeds fifty, most of them entirely unmonitored by migration authorities.
Historically speaking, the Mexican government’s preoccupation with its south-
ern border seems like a very recent turn of events. Various initiatives in the region
only got off the ground in the 1990s, each one reflecting the new factors that had
come into play. In 1998, the Mexican government launched operation Sellamiento
(sealing), aimed at suppressing the flow of illegal drugs into the south of the country.
In 2001, after Vicente Fox took over as president and the parliamentary arithmetic
IX
HÉRODOTE
shifted, the first “Southern Plan” was set in motion. Its reach, however, was lim-
ited. At that time, the Mexican state’s ambitions ran higher when it came to the
region’s geostrategic value. The Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) covered all seven
Central American countries and the nine southeast Mexican states15 and aspired
to further what it described as “holistic and sustainable” development objectives.
Specifically, it aimed to support initiatives to facilitate trade, promote tourism, link
up energy and communications networks, and guard against natural disasters. A
“human approach” based on reducing poverty, strengthening democracy, and cele-
brating local cultures was intended to run parallel to a strategy that was essentially
written from the standpoint of private investment. In 2008, under the presidency of
Felipe Calderón, the PPP was rebranded as the Mesoamerica Project, broadening
its scope to include Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Finding some way to
revitalize the original project seemed all the more necessary given that most of
its achievements involved upgrades to major infrastructure (roads and energy net-
works, for the most part) rather than the kind of socioeconomic progress needed to
bring economic security to communities across the region. In fact, since it had only
a very indirect effect on tackling deteriorating living standards and socioeconomic
exclusion, emigration patterns only became more firmly ingrained.
Paradoxically, migration featured far more prominently in the debate on tackling

drug trafficking and organized crime, which in Mexico had become an absolute
priority for the Calderón administration. It was noticeable that the United States
applied stronger pressure on this issue than on the vision for holistic development
espoused by the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue and Coordination, a framework for
Mesoamerican discussion that marked the end of years of civil war in the region.
The threats posed by drug trafficking and organized crime to regional security and,
by extension, to US national security, led to the formation of the Mérida Initiative in
2008. This was a support package delivered by various US agencies to help Mexico
address these problems, with an allocated budget of $2.9 billion. According to the
US Embassy in Mexico, by mid-2018 a total of $1.6 billion had been distributed to

the Mexican armed forces for helicopters, planes fitted with heat-sensing equipment,
IT systems, and radio communications. Meanwhile, training programs for Mexican
security forces were established to facilitate knowledge transfer in the field of coun-
ter-narcotics operations. This made the Mérida Initiative the United States’ most sig-
nificant cooperation treaty with a fellow American country since Plan Colombia. Of
course, the effect of these measures on migration issues is hard to quantify, but they
all have at least one point in common: an explicit focus on borders and cross-border
flows, and an increasingly decisive use of military surveillance techniques.
15. With a combined population of more than 60 million people.
X
However, it is the most recent of these regional programs that appears to have
had the most direct impact on migration: the Programa Frontera Sur (PFS) (Southern
Border Plan), launched in July 2014 by President Enrique Peña Nieto. Officially, the
plan was intended to serve two objectives: “to protect and safeguard the human rights
of migrants entering and passing through Mexico, and to regulate international border
crossings in the interests of regional development and security” (source: Mexican
government website16). Mexico allocated 102 million pesos (about $6.5 million) to
the PFS in 2015, and it received additional funding from the United States—as did
the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle (A4P), proposed a
few months later by the Obama administration, endorsed by Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador, and backed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).17 The
PFS sparked criticism in Mexico from the outset, due to its lack of transparency and
failure to specify a clear implementation strategy. Above all, it was the timing of these
two initiatives that provoked misgivings. For many observers, they were a knee-jerk
response to a “crisis” in the summer of 2014, when thousands of Central American
migrants tried to enter the United States through the Mexican border. The sight of the
gathering crowds, including many unaccompanied minors, sent shock waves through
US society and spurred Barack Obama into action. The sense that US pressure was the
main driver behind the program gave rise to more general fears that Mexico’s migra-

tion policy for its southern border could end up replicating the US model, with draco-
nian measures against undocumented migrants. Given Mexico’s political sway over
the Central American states, the theory that it would try to exert its influence by trans-
posing existing power dynamics to a new set of nested spheres was not unfounded.
While there is little evidence that the PFS has made a profound impact on regional
challenges, it has confirmed that the prevailing approach to tackling migrant abuse
(one of its stated objectives) is still gravely deficient. Its main effect has been to force
diversions to the main migration routes between Central America and the south of
Mexico, due to the deployment of police and immigration agents (INM)18 and the
proliferation of checkpoints. By compelling Central American migrants, in particu-
lar the poorest of them, to bypass official checkpoints (see map 1), the initiative
has driven them onto the most perilous routes (Leutert 2018). Thus, this “securi-
16. https://linkscan.io/scan/ux/aHR0cHM6Ly9sb3Blem9icmFkb3Iub3JnLm14L3Rlb-
WFzL2NhbWJpYXItbGEtZm9ybWEtZGUtaGFjZXItcG9saXRpY2EvIi4=/1CA0075AE-
2C617AE8841FB82908C19ADA61F811DD3589A913A39F11F19BC7EC9?c=1&i=1&docs=1
17. The United States budgeted 1 billion dollars for this plan in 2015, a sum that was later
reduced. President Trump has expressed a wish to see it cut by a further 30 percent.
18. The Instituto Nacional de Migración (National Institute of Migration) is a decentral-
ized federal government agency created in 1993 and overseen by the Secretaría de Gobernación
(SEGOB), the equivalent of the ministry of the interior in many other countries.
XI
HÉRODOTE
Map 1 – Patterns of migration and control in Mexico
UNITED STATES
Los Angeles
Phoenix
San Diego Mexicali Dallas
Tijuana Ciudad Juárez
Houston
New Orleans
Chihuahua
Monterrey Caribbean
Sea
MEXICO
San Luis
Tropic of Cancer Potosí Tampico
Mazatlan Isthmus
Guadalajara of Tehuantepec Merida
Cancún

Mexico Veracruz
Puebla
Tuxtla El Ceibo
Gutierrez BELIZE
Acapulco La Mesilla
HONDURAS
Tecún Umán
P a c i fi c
EL SALVADOR
Ocean NICARAGUA
COSTA RICA
Tecún Main entry points to Mexico

Umán
Main migration routes

through Mexico
from Central America
Primary
Secondary Équateur
Percentage of migrants
detained in 2016 by country
Map by Laurent Faret
1 3 6 9 12 40 or more Sources : www.politicamigratoria.gob.mx ;
500 km EMIF Sur ; Rodolfo Casillas (2007 )
HÉRODOTE
HÉRODOTE
XII
ty-first” approach to migration has pushed more and more migrants into the path
of organized criminals (Arriola Vega 2017). Here, we find a telling parallel with a
similar dynamic playing out at Mexico’s northern border. Measures to reinforce the
Mexico–United States border exposed migrants to multiple dangers, resulting in a
sharp rise in the number of border deaths, particularly from the mid-1990s. In south-
ern Mexico, the policies of recent years have resulted in a so-called “vertical bor-
der,” as border control operations have swept out across vast swathes of the country.
As a result, migrants are increasingly vulnerable to myriad forms of abuse, whether
at the hands of organized crime, gangs, government agents, or local populations
(Torre Cantalapiedra and Yee Quintero 2018). In fact, today we can point to a zone
of intense border control activity extending as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a
narrow strip of land far more conducive to such operations than the southern border
zone. The account of one coyote, related by a journalist in 2015, suggested that a
migrant might encounter twenty-two checkpoints between crossing the border at
Tecún Umán and reaching the southern Mexican city of Puebla. The overall goal, to
create a national cinturón de seguridad (security belt), speaks of a migrant contain-
ment strategy more stringent than anything Mexico has seen before.

The vulnerability of populations in transit and the frailties
of the political response
Unlike agricultural laborers who travel to the southern Mexican states on a tem-
porary basis and under a special visa,19 Central American migrants passing through
Mexico have no legal status, leaving them extremely vulnerable. This constant vul-
nerability immerses these men, women, and families in “worlds of clandestinity”
(Aragón 2014) as long as their journey lasts. Depending on their chosen route, they
will travel a distance of between 2,000 km and 4,000 km. Covering long distances
on foot, on successive buses, or at perpetual risk as stowaways on freight trains, the
way ahead uncertain, migrants are now increasingly likely to be intercepted by all
manner of actors, both legal and illegal. In August 2010, the discovery of the bodies
of seventy-two migrants executed by a drug cartel in San Fernando in the state of
Tamaulipas (less than 100 km from the Texas border) brought this reality into sharp
relief. Often ignored or hidden, it is always there if we care to look.
19. Residence permits in Mexico take the form of a tarjeta de visitante trabajador fronterizo
(cross-border guest worker card), which allows holders to cross in and out of Mexico multiple times
a year, provided they do not leave the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, and Quintana Roo.
XIII
HÉRODOTE
From a political and social perspective, the debate over protections for migrants
in transit has turned the tables on Mexico in a very particular way. Having long
experienced the discriminatory treatment meted out to Mexican migrants in the
United States and at the northern border, both the Mexican people and national and
local authorities must now confront similar or even more grievous situations on
home soil, this time directed at Central American migrants at the southern border
and throughout the country. The political response looks feeble given the gravity
of their plight, the reinvigorated bid to criminalize them, and the mounting risk
that they will fall prey to organized crime in a context of chronic impunity (París-
Pombo 2016). These scenarios betray a latent tension, one outcome of which is the
tendency to sweep migration under the rug on the national scene, passing the burden
to local civil society actors and the Church or, in some cases, to local authorities
with enough on their plates already. In 2013, the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights (IACHR) concluded that “the Mexican State’s response is far from
what it should be if it is to protect migrants and other persons in the context of
human mobility in Mexico and prosecute, punish and redress the crimes and human
violations committed against them” (IACHR 2013, 118).
Those who are both vulnerable and invisible are easy targets for extortion and
abuse, particularly in a context like contemporary Mexico, where violence contin-

ues to spiral (there were 31,000 homicides in 2017, the highest figure since records
began). A 2018 study by the University of Texas calculates that the activities of
criminal organizations along the main migration routes generate over $134 million
per year (excluding smugglers’ fees). In fact, the authors believe this to be an under-
estimate, due to victims’ reluctance to report these crimes (Leutert 2018). They set
this sum against the United States’ contribution to the Mérida Initiative, intended to
support the fight against organized crime: $139 million in 2017. Acts of aggression
against migrants on the part of government agents are another cause for concern.
A report published by REDODEM (Documentation Network of Migrant Rights’
Organizations) in 2015 indicates that 41 percent of crimes registered in a nation-

wide study on experiences of migration were committed by someone in a posi-
tion of public authority. The double scourge of violence and impunity thus reduces
Mexico to a legal desert for populations in transit.
Conclusion
In this context, what position will Mexico’s new president and Congress take on
migration? Will this political transition (López Obrador is the country’s first left-
wing president since the Mexican Revolution) also mark an inflection point in how
XIV
these issues are addressed in Mexico’s dealings with its northern and southern neigh-
bors? This seems doubtful, to say the least. On the one hand, a renewed commitment
to respect for migrants’ rights, which would require efforts to tackle the structural
causes of migration (poverty, income inequality, violence, etc.), would chime with
the values of MORENA,20 the party that López Obrador founded and that swept him
to power. On the other hand, it is easy to envisage the continuation of a realpolitik
that uses the issue of migration as leverage in all kinds of negotiations between
Mexico and the United States. López Obrador is a skilled political operator, and he
took care to tread a fine line between these two options during his election campaign.
He has continued to do so over the present transition period. He has argued for the
creation of a trilateral cooperation program between Mexico, the United States, and
the Central American states, and he opposes US proposals for a border wall. He has
also ruled out any suggestion that Mexico could receive payments from the United
States to deport undocumented migrants apprehended in transit. Yet, he has also
announced (through incoming Secretary of Public Safety Alfonso Durazo) plans for
a new border patrol tasked with monitoring flows of weapons, drugs, and migrants
into the country, seemingly based on the US model.
In broader terms, Mexico’s future approach to migration issues will speak vol-
umes about its position in the regional space. The development of a closer North

American alliance, a process underway since at least the 1990s, will draw Mexico
into bilateral negotiations with the United States and Canada. However, other nations
in Latin America (and especially Central America) will also be marking their posi-
tions. When it comes to securing its borders and tackling multiple forms of sociopo-
litical instability, will the Mexico of López Obrador blaze a new trail for others to
follow, or will it stick to the familiar path laid out for it, decades ago, by its powerful
neighbor to the north? Will it find a way to prevent its southern frontier from becom-
ing the “third border” of the United States, crackling with three incendiary dangers:
terrorism, drug trafficking, and migration?
20. MORENA (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, or National Regeneration Movement)

was founded in 2011 as a civil society organization. It later became a registered political party,
essentially an off-shoot of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) (Party of the
Democratic Revolution).
XV
HÉRODOTE
Reference list
Aragón, Argán. 2014. Migrations clandestines d’Amérique centrale vers les États-Unis.
Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Arriola Vega, Luis Alfredo. 2017. “Policy Adrift: Mexico’s Southern Border Program.”
Report from the Institute for Public Policy of Rice University. Houston, TX: Rice
University.
Barros Nock, Magdalena, and Augustín Escobar Latapí, eds. 2017. Migración: nuevos
actores, procesos y retos, vols. 1–2. Mexico: CIESAS.
Faret, Laurent. 2006. “Dynamiques transnationales et développement au Mexique: les
enjeux de la migration internationale.” Hérodote 123, no. 4: 182–98.
Faret, Laurent. 2015. “Mexique,” “Guatemala,” and “El Salvador.” In Dictionnaire géohis-
torique des migrations internationales, edited by Simon Gildas, 518–22, 530–8, and
550–4. Paris: Armand Colin.
Fuentes-Carrera, Julieta. 2018. “La municipalité frontalière de Tenosique, Tabasco, au
Mexique et la migration centraméricaine dans le cadre de la politique sécuritaire mexic-
aine.” Hérodote 171, no. 4: 107–18.
IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). 2013. Human Rights of Migrants
and Other Persons in the Context of Human Mobility in Mexico. Mexico: OAS, Doc. 48/13.
Leutert, Stephanie. 2018. “Organized Crime and Central American Migration in Mexico.”
Report from the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Austin: University of Texas.

Nieto Gómez, Rodrigo. 2009. “L’énigme de la Homeland Security pour l’administration
Obama: Quel scénario pour la sécurité et l’administration des frontières?” Hérodote 132,
no 1: 166–80.
Orozco, Manuel. 2018. “Las remesas a América Latina y el Caribe en 2017.” El Diálogo.
Available at: www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Remesas-a-ALC-2017.
pdf.
París-Pombo, María-Dolores. 2016. “Trayectos peligrosos: Inseguridad y movilidad humana
en México.” Papeles de Población 22, no. 90: 145–72.
PEN (Programa Estado de la Nación en Desarrollo Humano Sostenible). 2016. “Quinto
informe Estado de la región.” San José, Costa Rica: PEN Conare.
REDODEM (Red de Documentación de las Organizaciones Defensoras de Migrantes). 2017.
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Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes.
REDODEM (Red de Documentación de las Organizaciones Defensoras de Migrantes).
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de movilidad en México.” Informe 2017, Mexico: Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes.
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tera vertical? Políticas de control del tránsito migratorio irregular y sus resultados, 2007-
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XVI

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Migration challenges and the new geopolitics of Latin

America–United States relations

© La Découverte | Téléchargé le 10/10/2023 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 42.117.119.48)

Article available online at

Electronic distribution Cairn.info for La Découverte.

© La Découverte | Téléchargé le 10/10/2023 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 42.117.119.48)

Between the 2016 US presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s arrival in the

© La Découverte | Téléchargé le 10/10/2023 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 42.117.119.48)

Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

Complex and evolving migration dynamics

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4. US Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol Nationwide Apprehensions by

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Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

© La Découverte | Téléchargé le 10/10/2023 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 42.117.119.48)

8. On the evaluation of these flows, see Rodríguez Chávez (2016).

Migration: At the heart of regional geopolitical relations

The centrality of migration issues in regional geopolitical relations came about in

© La Découverte | Téléchargé le 10/10/2023 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 42.117.119.48)

Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

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Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

Mexico’s southern border: Ground zero for multiscalar forces

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Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

15. With a combined population of more than 60 million people.

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Map 1 – Patterns of migration and control in Mexico

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Tecún Main entry points to Mexico

Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

Main migration routes

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Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

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20. MORENA (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, or National Regeneration Movement)

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Hérodote, n° 171, La Découverte, 4th Quarter 2018.

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