▲ Hundreds of Haitians have suffered multiple forms of violence in Mexico in their eagerness to reach the United States.Photo App
Fernando Camacho Servin
Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday February 12, 2022, p. 8
The unsanitary conditions in which people held in the country’s immigration detention centers are part of a strategy to strip the victims of their dignity and self-esteem, and to ease
the mistreatment they receive in said places, which violates various agreements signed by Mexico to protect said vulnerable population.
This was warned by Alethia Fernández de la Reguera, researcher at UNAM and author of the book Migratory Detention. Practices of humiliation, disgust and contempt, in which not only the abuses suffered by undocumented migrants in the country are explored, but also the difficult working conditions of the personnel in charge of guarding them.
During the presentation of the volume, held virtually yesterday, the expert indicated that with her fieldwork she was able to document the way in which people held in the detention centers of the National Migration Institute live, such as the Siglo XXI station, located in Tapachula, Chiapas.
An example of the state of dirt that prevails in these places, Fernández de la Reguera pointed out, is the fact that migrants are forced to urinate in a bucket that is left permanently in the places where they have to be, with the strong odors that this causes, despite the fact that there are toilets in the station where they could go.
In addition to the process of dehumanization
of which migrants are victims in these centers, the academic’s research described the conditions of discrimination, vulnerability and exploitation also suffered by guards, cleaners and other workers who occupy lower-ranking positions, without access to training or conditions decent jobs.
Marisa Belausteguigoitia, director of the Center for Research and Gender Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, highlighted that the book documents the more subtle forms of violence
against migrants, who seek anesthetize your personality
and make them the target of emotions such as shame and disgust, due to the lack of hygiene and sleep they suffer, since these feelings are used as a method of social control.
In turn, Amarela Varela, academic and researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, agreed that negative emotions are used to depersonalize and animalize
migrants, as part of a scenario in which the guards and other INM workers are also victims of exploitation and violence.
