San Fernando Migrant Massacre: How US, Mexican and Latin American Governments Share Responsibility

[Judi Lynn]

San Fernando Migrant Massacre: How US, Mexican and Latin American Governments Share Responsibility
Tuesday, 07 October 2014 10:35
By Camilo Perez Bustillo and Azadeh N. Shahshahani, Truthout | News Analysis

Mexico is the leading case in Latin America of the devastating effects of US policies related to migration, free trade and the so-called "drug war." The victims include tens of thousands of migrants who undertake the long, difficult journey toward the United States through Mexican territory from Central America and beyond. An international tribunal has recently concluded that the San Fernando Massacre of August 2010 is a crucial example underlining the convergent responsibilities of the governments of Mexico, the United States and countries of origin.

Migrant rights defenders throughout Mexico recently commemorated the fourth anniversary of the massacre, which resulted in the death of 72 migrants in transit, including 13 women, en route to the United States from six countries. Of those killed, 24 were originally from Honduras, 14 from El Salvador, 13 from Guatemala, five from Ecuador, four from Brazil and one from India. Eleven have yet to be identified, due to the mishandling of evidence from the site of the crime and the bodies as a result of flawed forensic procedures. At least two survivors (from Ecuador and Honduras) are currently in witness protection programs, due to recurrent threats to their lives. San Fernando is located in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, about an hour and a half from the United States border.

The massacre was immediately blamed on Mexico's most violent drug cartel, a shadowy group with paramilitary origins, known as Los Zetas. But human rights advocates have long alleged that Mexican civilian, police and military authorities at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) shared responsibility for this and similar incidents ultimately attributable to Mexico's role in US-promoted efforts to contain and reduce the flow of migrants heading to the United States through Mexican territory.

This massacre is the worst single incident in Mexico's bloody US-backed "drug war," which has ravaged the country in the last seven years, producing over 125,000 civilian victims, some 25,000 forced disappearances and more than 250,000 people who have been internally displaced or forced into exile. The victims during this period also include an estimated 20,000 migrants who have been kidnapped each year since 2007 and countless others who have been extorted, assaulted and raped (estimates indicate that 80 percent of all migrant women and girls are victims of sexual abuse or rape). The San Fernando Massacre is also the worst single human rights crime in Mexican history since the October 2, 1968, massacre of students in Tlatelolco, in Mexico City in 1968.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26658-san-fernando-migrant-massacre-how-us-mexican-and-latin-american-governments-share-responsibility

[Judi Lynn]

1. GUATEMALA 1982

From a post by "oberliner" posted this evening at D.U.:

oberliner Tue Oct 7, 2014, 09:40 PM

Working methodically across the Mayan region, the army and its paramilitary teams, including 'civil patrols' of forcibly conscripted local men, attacked 626 villages. Each community was rounded up, or seized when gathered already for a celebration or a market day. The villagers, if they didn't escape to become hunted refugees, were then brutally murdered; others were forced to watch, and sometimes to take part. Buildings were vandalised and demolished, and a 'scorched earth' policy applied: the killers destroyed crops, slaughtered livestock, fouled water supplies, and violated sacred places and cultural symbols.

Children were often beaten against walls, or thrown alive into pits where the bodies of adults were later thrown; they were also tortured and raped. Victims of all ages often had their limbs amputated, or were impaled and left to die slowly. Others were doused in petrol and set alight, or disembowelled while still alive. Yet others were shot repeatedly, or tortured and shut up alone to die in pain. The wombs of pregnant women were cut open. Women were routinely raped while being tortured. Women - now widows - who lived could scarcely survive the trauma: 'the presence of sexual violence in the social memory of the communities has become a source of collective shame'.

More:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_guatemala1.html

Also, from the same article:

Throughout the period of the genocide, the USA continued to provide military support to the Guatemalan government, mainly in the form of arms and equipment. The infamous guerrilla training school, the School of the Americas in Georgia USA, continued to train Guatemalan officers notorious for human rights abuses; the CIA worked with Guatemalan intelligence officers, some of whom were on the CIA payroll despite known human rights violations. US involvement was understood to be strategic - or, put another way, indifferent to the fate of a bunch of Indians - in the wider context of the Cold War and anti-Communist action.