deport_scum asked: In bloody detail, Mexico illustrates risks for migrants
Chris Hawley and Sergio Solache
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Apr. 19, 2008 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - One migrant gets his legs sliced off by a train’s wheels. Another is shot by bandits on the Arizona border. Others are beaten and robbed by crooked Mexican police.
In a new effort to dissuade would-be border crossers, Mexico’s top human-rights agency has published two comic books packed with tales about the horrors that migrants face. The tone is very different than previous government publications, which focused more on travel and safety tips.
One of the two Migrantes comics is aimed at Mexicans, while the other focuses on Central Americans traveling through Mexico on their way to the United States. The National Human Rights Commission began distributing 20,000 of them this month at migrant shelters and bus terminals. advertisement
“We could have made the stories a little softer, but the (commission) asked us to be very realistic,” said Domingo Perea, editorial director of Comics and Visual Arts, the company hired to produce the comic books. “That was the intention, to discourage people from migrating.”
In the past, several Mexican states have published booklets with advice for migrants. And in 2004, the Mexican Foreign Ministry published a comic-style Guide for the Mexican Migrant that offered safety tips for border crossers, information on their legal rights and advice for living unobtrusively in the United States.
The booklet outraged U.S. immigration-control groups, who said the comic style and frank advice trivialized the breaking of U.S. immigration laws.
The new comics have a more depressing tone, Perea said.
“We knew about that previous one, and both we and the Human Rights Commission felt it was too light,” Perea said.
The National Human Rights Commission is funded by Mexico’s federal government but operates independently. Its two Migrantes books are particularly harsh on Mexican authorities, portraying police and soldiers as corrupt.
In Issue No. 1 of Migrantes, a group of Mexicans is robbed by two Mexican police officers, abandoned by a smuggler and attacked by bandits on the Arizona-Mexico border. All the migrants turn back except one, who is seen dying in the desert on the last page.
Issue No. 2 follows a group of teenagers from Central America as they try to cross Mexico on their way to the United States.
They are harassed by Mexican soldiers, beaten up and robbed by Mexican police, kidnapped and beaten again by a machete-wielding gang, and suffer extortion by another gang member. Two teens are killed by a train, and only one continues onward.
Perea said there are no immediate plans for more comic books.
Not everyone is convinced the comic books will discourage would-be migrants. Guillermo Alonso, a demographer at the College of the Northern Border, said the commission should be giving out travel information if it really wants to save lives, especially as the Arizona-Mexico border approaches its hottest season.
“I think the National Human Rights Commission is using the wrong strategy,” Alonso said. “I don’t know who (the comic books) are aimed at, and that’s a problem. What the migrants need are maps or radio programs to tell them what the weather is like.”
the other “comics” mexico gave out, to illegals, told them EXACTLY how to sneak into this country,and what to do once thy got here!!! What do you think they’re up to??
