Dimensions of vulnerability to human trafficking in Tapachula, Chiapas

Evidence shows the conditions of vulnerability for a large portion of the population in Tapachula are linked to poverty and violence, as well as the fact that it is a hotspot for human trafficking for the purpose of sexual and labor exploitation (^{CNDH & Centro de Estudios e Investigación en Desarrollo y Asistencia Social, 2009}; ^{Casillas, 2015}).

What can be observed in the specialized literature is that varying conditions of vulnerability to human trafficking have been present in Tapachula throughout its history and over diverse migratory dynamics and human mobility, both of which are traditional practices in the region (^{Johnsson, 2014}; ^{Kauffer & Francoise, 2005}).

These dynamics are framed in the so-called Mexico-Guatemala Cross-Border Region (^{Región Transfronteriza México-Guatemala: Dimensión Regional y Bases para su Desarrollo Integral, n.d., n.p.}). This region is made up of a local economy revolving around labor and social dynamics that have resulted from the mobility of workers from bordering states in Guatemala, many of whom enter Mexico on a regular basis. The labor dynamics of this region are characterized by irregular labor markets and low-skilled activities, such as agricultural work, informal trade, or domestic work, which perpetuate the conditions of poverty and disadvantage for the Tapachula natives, or those who come from other places but work there (^{Johnsson, 2014}).

At the same time, Tapachula has been one of the most important points of entry for irregular migrants (people whose cross-border mobility occurs outside the laws, regulations, or international agreements ruling entry into or exit from the country of origin, transit, or destination (^{OIM, n.d.}) headed to the U.S. The undocumented migrant population in transit has historically been exposed, even before the caravans, to being detained and deported by Mexican immigration authorities.

A remarkable phenomenon at this juncture has not only been the high number of admissions, but also the high number of refugee applications. Albeit the number of refugee applicants had increased since 2014, and more and more people from countries other than Central America were identified, in 2019 a record 45 583 refugee applications were registered, six times more than the 7 209 registered in 2017 (^{Comar, 2019}).

During their stay in Mexico, while waiting to regularize their legal status, refugee applicants face a series of risks, mainly due to the imposition of uncertain and prolonged waiting periods, the absence of income during said period, and consequently, the impossibility of meeting essential needs for food, health, and housing among others.

Some of the refugee applicants receive economic support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is usually a small amount of money, barely allowing them to buy some food. According to El ^{Colef (2020)}, however, more than 60 percent of the refugee applicants who entered Mexico through Tapachula during the 2018 and 2019 caravans had no support from any entity, less than 50 percent had access to at least temporary jobs, and 6 percent were homeless.

All of this is worth thinking about considering the data on poverty status of people living in this municipality. In 2015, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), 42 percent of the population lived in poverty and 12 percent in extreme poverty, while six out of ten people living there earned an income below the standard of living (^{Coneval, 2015}).

In this sense, it is possible to state that most of the resident population faces risks associated with poverty, marginalization, inequality, and widespread labor precariousness. Testimonies show that public officials have identified cases of people from Chiapas who have been deceitfully transferred to and exploited across the country, mainly for agriculture and other activities linked to forced begging, as well as cases of adolescents being engaged by means of deceptive affection through social media. Even though the interviewees referred to various forms of victimization, public policy actions aimed at the protection and assistance of the population in Chiapas in vulnerable conditions were null and void:

It is work... I also worked as an agricultural laborer in the north for a long time, and all these kidnappings of day laborer trucks that organized crime pulled off to take them to the poppy and marijuana crops, etcetera... and indigenous day laborers from Oaxaca, Guerrero disappear; and the same thing was happening in San Quintín, etcetera. Where I worked that they seized trucks with the highest concentration [of] marijuana [was] in San Quintín, and one of the most important tomato producers in the northwest also moves cocaine, and there the migration flows are always linked, and that is in this regional migration system, including Central America, Mexico, the United States and Canada (Informant 6. Male, Mexican, Tapachula native, 47 years old. Tapachula, personal communication, March 19, 2019).

Futhermore, Tapachula is one of the most violent municipalities in Chiapas. According to the Chiapas Citizen Observatory, in September 2020 this municipality had the highest crime incidence rate in the entire country (^{OCCh, 2020}). According to ^{Cruz (2009)}, the situation of social violence in Tapachula derives from a deteriorated social cohesion (expressed, for example, in social and community divisiveness, drug dealing, and crimes such as robbery targeting pedestrians), which has specific repercussions for the mobile population, which is, on many occasions, a victim.

The report titled “Human Rights of Migrants and Other Persons in the Context of Human Mobility in Mexico” by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (^{CIDH, 2013}) points out how this population is vulnerable to persecution by government agencies and multiple forms of violence in Mexican territory. For the specific case of Tapachula, it mentions that:

[...] between August and September 2012, the bodies of 73 unidentified persons – presumably Central American migrants– were exhumed. These were the bodies of persons who died crossing Mexico’s southern border into Chiapas and who, being identified, were buried in common graves in the Jardín de Tapachula Cemetery in Chiapas. The remains found were those of 61 men, 10 women and two whose sex was not determined (^{CIDH, 2013, p. 93}).

It can be noted that conditions of vulnerability to human trafficking have historically prevailed in Tapachula, both for the population living there or those who find themselves in that municipality for various reasons, as is the case of the mobile population. This is because, as mentioned above, the vulnerability of becoming a human trafficking victim responds to a context in which different risk factors, such as poverty and violence, converge, and that affects both populations.

Implications of tightening of Mexican immigration policy in response to migrant caravans

According to ^{Varela and McLean (2019)}, these migrant caravans emerged as a mobility and survival strategy in the face of persecution caused by immigration policy, as well as by criminal groups dedicated to kidnapping or smuggling migrants (which is not the same as human trafficking); in other words, organized crime networks that took advantage of the vulnerable conditions of migrants to exert violence and victimize them.

However, the formation of the first caravan in 2018 originating in Honduras provoked the U.S. government, then under the Donald Trump administration, to place mass deportations at the center of its immigration policy, as well as detentions in immigration control centers and the separation of migrant families (^{Swanson, 2019}).

The Donald Trump administration also began to demand that the Mexican government participate in restraining the mobile population, both upon arrival and during their transit through Mexican territory. This demand was expressed in an open threat in May 2019: if the Mexican government failed to stop the flow of migrants and displaced persons across its territory in their way to the U.S. border, they would impose a 5 percent tariff on the importation of Mexican products (^{Arreola, 2019}).

On June 7, 2019, the “Remain in Mexico” policy (officially Migration Protection Protocols) was signed between Mexico and the U.S., which among other objectives authorized the deployment of the National Guard in Mexico to protect the undocumented migrant population and so that asylum seekers in the U.S. could wait for a response to their immigration status in Mexican territory (^{Imumi, 2019}; ^{Ruiz, 2020}; ^{SRE, 2019}).

From the signing of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, by the U.S. and Mexican governments, there was a reinforcement of security actions on the southern border by the Mexican government, and more than 10,000 elements of the National Guard, as well as the Army and the Navy were deployed (^{Secretaría de Gobernación, 2019}). This action expressed the radical change in immigration policy promoted in the transition period between the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) and that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), as observed in this testimony:

The promotion of humanitarian visas by AMLO’s government was a star attraction for migrants. There is an ambiguous policy on the part of this government: on the one hand, I let you in, and on the other, I catch you. There are migratory raids all over the city, at the [international] bridge there are checkpoints, they make them go around it (Anonymous Informant 1. Male, Mexican, professor, 37 years old. Tapachula, personal communication, May 18, 2019).

The tightening of the Mexican immigration policy increased the vulnerability of the mobile population, but also that of the resident population. First, regarding the mobile population, it forced migrants and displaced persons to look for other –sometimes even more dangerous– routes to be able to move within the Mexican territory, highly exposing them to criminal groups.

Second, the increase of National Guard agents (Mexican civilian public security agency) on the southern border caused the migrant population to concentrate mainly in the municipality of Tapachula, waiting to regularize their immigration status (although they “did not want to stay in Mexico”). Most of the migrant population concentrated in Tapachula was sheltered in the Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI, in civil society shelters, or outdoors, outside organizations such as the National Institute of Immigration (INM) and the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar). We observed entire families (including children) spending the night, urinating, defecating, washing their clothes, and improvising makeshift beds in the main square in the municipality of Tapachula, or in the streets surrounding this site.

The prolonged stay of these migrants in this municipality, most of whom had no resources or means to satisfy their basic needs, caused them to face survival situations, forcing them to wait with practically no institutional, family, or social support:

I have been here for one month and seventeen days, and I can’t move forward because Immigration [the INM] doesn’t give you a chance to move forward. We are left outside. Not having a place to sleep, having to make sacrifices, asking family to pay for a hotel, and Immigration doesn’t make houses for us. I arrived here with my family, I have two children, one is a three-year-old and the other a six-month-old, but one has to struggle sometimes going through life, sometimes going hungry to live here [...] If you complain, the police mistreat you here (Informant 2. Woman, displaced Honduran, 29 years old. Tapachula, personal communication, May 26, 2019).

Yet, it is possible to think that the some of the consequences of the immigration emergency are the invisibility and lack of attention to other present and rooted issues in Tapachula, such as gender-based violence (expressed in its most extreme form in femicides), and human trafficking itself, which constitutes a dimension of vulnerability to this problem, both for the mobile and resident populations.

According to crime incidence data for Chiapas⁸ provided by the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP), reports of femicides, sexual abuse, and human trafficking had had significant decreases between 2017 –the year prior to the caravans–, and 2019: 37.5, 47.9 and 85.7 percent, respectively (^{SESNSP, 2016}, ²⁰¹⁷, ²⁰¹⁸, ²⁰¹⁹).

A testimony gathered during our research refers to this problem in this way:

I see the local authority [in Tapachula] focused only on immigration, but it is not taking care of the security of the city of Tapachula, violence against women and girls, and in this region, there is a lot... the situation of the new system at this juncture has brought us many disadvantages. Tapachula has always ranked highest in [human] trafficking, femicides, rapes, teen pregnancy, but with this situation and this new system it is very difficult to get justice (Informant 3, Woman, Mexican, member of a Civil Society Organization, 64 years old, Tapachula resident, March 18, 2019).

Another testimony refers to the fact that the emergency overflowed the historically insufficient capacities of agencies at the three levels of government operating in Tapachula:

The government does not turn to see us, fellow nationals. Many of us can make ends meet, but others do not, they are poor, they go to the hospital and do not find medicines or equipment to help people in need. When the first migration came, everything was full, everyone was insured and our people were dying in the hospital, without medicine (Informant 4. Male, Mexican, Tapachula resident, 66 years old. Tapachula, June 26, 2019).

In addition to the above, institutions with an obligation to care for people vulnerable to human trafficking or human trafficking victims (either from mobile or resident populations), were overwhelmed responding to the immigration emergency. One of the emblematic cases we observed during the fieldwork was that of the regional and state delegation of the National System for Integral Family Development (SN-DIF), which specifically has the obligation to provide protection to migrant and native children in Chiapas to prevent them from becoming victims of human trafficking and other crimes. We noticed that a team of around seven people from the delegation had to assist hundreds of Mexican and foreign children and adolescents every day, with more limited resources than ever (ranging from electricity to gas) and with an unprecedented demand for services.

Implications of the republican austerity policy

In November 2019, the Federal Law of Republican Austerity was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF). It is the legal framework of what has been at the core of President López Obrador’s proposal, which is based on critiquing the squandering of public money displayed in previous governments. In numeral VI of Article 3 of this law, one of the objectives it establishes is to “create the mechanism for the operation and evaluation of the republican austerity of the State policy” (^{Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión, Diario Oficial de la Federación, Last reform: 2019, November 19, p. 2}), therefore, this policy is referred to herein in this paper.

In May of that same year, this policy was announced by the Ministry of Civil Service (SFP) as one that did not imply “a reduction of government spending, but a reorientation of it towards those who have less” (^{SFP, 2019, May 30, s. n.}).

During the fieldwork, we were able to witness the conditions in which the offices of relevant institutions (e.g., the SN-DIF Regional Delegation at Soconusco, Chiapas) work. The facilities are inadequate and visibly deteriorated, with scant and old supplies, as well as deficiencies that add to the fatigue of the staff, who are used to handling work overload and who recognize that they feel overwhelmed in the context of the immigration emergency.

Likewise, the government agencies had basic supplies available for caring for the population. An example of this was that outside the Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI, where a large group of Haitian and extracontinental migrants (from African and Asian countries) were waiting to be assisted by the Mexican immigration authority, they were doing so in extremely precarious conditions, without water or bathrooms, and receiving only some support from civil society organizations in the region. It is worth noting that, historically, CSOs and ecclesiastical networks have been the main providers of basic needs for the migrant population in Tapachula.

Another impact of the austerity policy was the reduction of staff hiring. On this issue, institutions sought to tackle this problem by incorporating, through the Jóvenes construyendo el futuro (Youths Building the Future) program, personnel to perform specialized functions and work eight-hour shifts. In other words, they were not paid a formal salary, they received a stipend as a replacement for wages without legal benefits or remuneration in accordance with the provisions of the Mexican Federal Labor Law.

The testimonies collected also showed that the suspension of government funding for civil society organizations dedicated to assisting women victims of gender-based violence, family violence, sexual crimes, and human trafficking (^{Ramos, 2019}) reduced their capacities to assist and protect the victims. This was the case of the nonprofit organization Por la Superación de la Mujer, A. C., which for the first time since 1994 did not receive federal government funding for its operation. Despite this, the organization continued to assist the victims that were directed to them by the state and local institutions (for instance, the INM delegation in Tapachula).

Implications of the institutional design

It is the State Policy, as established in the General Law in Trafficking in Persons, to mandate the coordinated participation of different agencies at the three levels of government, as well as the executive and judicial branches. It also establishes the need for civil society organizations and academic experts to participate in it.

For the coordination of this policy and of the tasks incumbent upon each of its participants, an Inter-Ministerial Commission (in the case of the federal government) and Inter-Institutional Committees (in the case of the states) must be formed, as well as bodies with the directive to coordinate its enforcement through a National Program (at the federal level) and state programs or strategies (for the states) that bear the same name as the Law. It should be noted that since this is a general law, it determines that the legislative power of all the states must reconcile their legal frameworks and issue a law on human trafficking that conforms with the General Law in Trafficking in Persons.

Despite the fact that the General Law in Trafficking in Persons went into force in June 2012 (and therefore, since then the state legal framework should have been reconciled with this legal instrument), the actions aimed at addressing human trafficking in Chiapas respond to the provisions of the Law to Combat, Prevent and Punish Human Trafficking for that entity signed in 2009 (hereinafter, “Law 2009”). This made clear that the guidelines for the state agencies that wield powers over human trafficking policies in the state are not aligned with the provisions of the General Law in Trafficking in Persons and, in this sense, it is not clear how they coordinate with the institutions operating at the federal level.

Moreover, Article 2 of Law 2009 established the creation of an inter-institutional commission to combat human trafficking in Chiapas. However, no information was found regarding this commission or its work, neither in what was documented in empirical works prior to this investigation, nor during the fieldwork. What could be identified was the formation and operation of an Inter-Institutional Committee for Attention to Trafficking in Persons Victims which, according to the testimonies we obtained, in practice operates as the coordinating body for public actions carried out in the state of Chiapas, with special emphasis on the municipality of Tapachula, not only for assisting and protecting the victims, but also for preventing and prosecuting the crime.

The fieldwork allowed us to discover that this committee is coordinated by the Department of Immigration Management of the National Institute of Immigration’s Regional Delegation in Chiapas. This makes evident why the interventions aimed at addressing human trafficking in Tapachula are subordinated to the immigration strategy. Figure 1 shows an outline of how the Inter-Institutional Committee for Attention to Trafficking in Persons Victims in Chiapas is formed.⁹

Source: Based on field diary, Hernández & Alcay, March 15 to June 29, 2019.

Figure 1. Institutions that comprise the Inter-Institutional Committee for Attention to Trafficking in Persons Victims in Chiapas  

Several aspects are striking in this institutional arrangement. The first is that the INM delegation conducts most of the functions that would correspond to the Committee as a whole. A second aspect is that this institutional design has no parallel in any other state at the southern or northern borders of the country. And finally, it is not in accordance with either the General Law in Trafficking in Persons or the Law 2009, which is the law in effect in Chiapas. Although the reasons for this are not clear, it is possible it has to do with the fact that, in practice, human trafficking in Tapachula is directly associated with the dynamics of human mobility, so it is assumed that the INM should implement both an immigration policy and a human trafficking policy.

With this institutional design in mind, it is necessary to analyze what different diagnoses on human trafficking in the country show regarding the scope of public policy to prevent and punish this crime. The prevailing complaint is that the government’s action has been limited in all these areas (^{CNDH, 2019}; ^{ONUDD, 2014}; ^{Senado de la República, 2017}).

It is necessary to note that during the period when the 2018 and 2019 caravans arrived, the INM –which, as previously mentioned, coordinates the actions to address human trafficking in that municipality and across the state of Chiapas– was devoting the entirety of its capacities to respond to the immigration emergency that until then had shown unprecedented proportions. Therefore, the institutional disorder described above and its non-adherence to the legal framework in effect, are presented here as factors that influenced the shaping of new situations of vulnerability to human trafficking for the migrant population, but also for the resident population, since all of them are exposed to human trafficking in absence of the capacity to enforce actions against this crime.

As a result of the austerity policy, these circumstances were exacerbated by the lack of resources of all kinds, despite the major efforts that public officials made as first line workers in contact with the mobile population, even with the very limited resources they had at hand and their own, which caused a deep chronic fatigue:

They left us without resources and then this situation [the caravans] happened... I am overwhelmed, there is a lot of work, I am drowning in all of it. We have not been able to take vacations, neither myself nor my staff. We work until the wee hours of the morning. I have already told them that I am going to resign.

[...] We had to do more with less, we had no choice but to double or even triple shifts, and this work schedule also makes people extremely tired. [...] There are 24-hour shifts; we know that working 24 hours is quite heavy and it wears a person out, physically and mentally [...] especially in such a complex situation [the situation of the caravans], which requires us to be alert, to be aware of the situation. Of course, to be fresh to be able to understand the cases and to find them (s.f. Sevilla, personal communication, June 27, 2019).

Situations for the mobile population

Situations for the resident population

Situations for both populations