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FMR 64
66 Trafficking and smuggling
www.fmreview.org/issue64 June 2020

Migrant ‘caravans’ in Mexico and the fight against
smuggling

Eduardo Torre Cantalapiedra

The treatment of the migrant and asylum seeker caravans travelling through Mexico shows
the negative consequences that the fight against people smuggling has had for those
making these journeys and their defenders.

Several migrant and asylum seeker ‘caravans’ who participated, and those activists who
have arrived in Mexico since the end of supported and accompanied the caravans.
2018. These gatherings of groups of people
travelling together are largely made up Criminalising caravans and defenders
of people from Honduras, El Salvador Throughout the first half of 2019, leading
and Guatemala who are aiming to reach government representatives made several
the US. Different caravans have met with statements in which they implied that the
different fates on arrival in Mexico. Those caravans had been organised at least in
arriving at the end of 2018 faced Mexican part by people smugglers. These included
authorities who were initially reluctant a press release issued by the Ministry of
to allow their free transit through the Finance and Public Credit announcing
country, although did finally do so. Those that the bank accounts of several people
arriving at the beginning of 2019 were given had been frozen because of transactions
temporary documentation that allowed that suggested they were involved in
them to remain in the country or to move people smuggling operations; in a poorly
freely through it for a period of one year. founded argument it suggested that these
However, subsequent caravans – including same people were illegally promoting the
the one that originated in the southern caravans. This statement and others like it
Mexican city of Tapachula in October 2019 promoted the association of migrant and
and the one that left Honduras in January asylum seeker caravans with illegal acts.
2020 – have been resolutely suppressed. Migrant human rights defenders were also
The way these caravans have been criminalised. Several Mexican government
managed by the Mexican government representatives suggested that the activists
raises key questions about the reasons for supporting the caravans were involved in
their formation and for State responses to people smuggling, and particularly singled
them. Although this new form of mobility out the organisation Pueblos Sin Fronteras.
is largely an alternative to crossing borders In addition, two prominent defenders of the
and territories via the use of smugglers rights of migrants in Mexico were arrested on
(known in Mexico as coyotes), the Mexican charges of people smuggling during Mexico–
government maintained that among the US negotiations over migrant mobility
caravan organisers were people smugglers because of their activism and the role they
whose activities presented a serious danger had played as human rights defenders.
to individuals in the caravan. In Mexico,
people smuggling carries a potential prison Caravans as an alternative to coyotaje
sentence of between eight and sixteen years, In contrast to the negative view that
plus substantial fines. By linking the arrival of governments have of coyotaje services,
these caravans with the war that it is waging migrants from low-wage regions use their
on people smuggling, the government sought services as a survival strategy. Data from a
to legitimise its control and containment survey on migration in the southern border
of the caravans, while at the same time region of Mexico confirm that using coyotes
criminalising this type of mobility, those has been a very widespread strategy among