Borderline

Guatemalan exiles stir tension

Mexico, the source of an annual flow of about 3 million people to the U.S., faces its own "silent invasion" of illegal immigrants. Over the past four years, 100,000 Guatemalans have fled their country to settle in the south Mexican state of Chiapas. The influx has caused serious tensions with Guatemala, brutally reminding Mexico that it cannot remain immune to the violence and instability that pervade Central America. To alleviate the problem, the Mexican government last week began to move 4,500 refugees from camps in the border area to federal lands in Campeche, some 120 miles to the north.

The influx began in 1980, when the Guatemalan government of President Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia intensified its campaign to wipe out leftist guerrillas based in the mountains of Huehuetenango and Quiche. In the process, the army indiscriminately killed thousands of Chuj, Kanjobal and Mam Indians, whom they suspected of supporting the insurgents. Many of those who survived sought sanctuary across the border in Mexico. Some 46,000 of them are now in government-created refugee camps. But, according to Roman Catholic Church authorities, an additional 50,000 Guatemalans are roaming the south Mexican countryside in search of work or hiding out in cities to avoid being caught by the migra (immigration authorities).

The Guatemalan government considers the refugee camps, which are several miles from the border, to be staging areas for the guerrillas, a charge that Mexico indignantly denies. Dozens of times over the past four years Guatemalan troops have crossed the border to kill and kidnap refugees. The most recent attack occurred last month, when some 200 Guatemalan soldiers attacked a camp at El Chupadero, four miles north of the border. According to the examining doctor, four men, a pregnant woman and a six-year-old child were tortured and killed.

To lure the Indians back home, the Guatemalan government has announced plans to build a series of "model villages" that will provide housing, schools and health clinics. "We offer clear guarantees to those who desire to return," President Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores declared at the inauguration of the first model village, Chacaj, last March. But no more than 300 refugees have accepted the offer. Most remain skeptical of the regime's intentions: they note that returning families must register with the army and answer questions about why they left and where they went.

The Mexicans have only grudgingly accepted the refugees into Chiapas, one of the country's poorest regions. The government has allowed them to stay because mass deportations would harm Mexico's reputation as a haven for exiles.

Many of the Indians who fled to Mexico do not speak Spanish. Conditions in the camps are such that they continually suffer from malnutrition, tuberculosis and gastrointestinal disease. Mexican officials have been known to beat, rape or otherwise abuse the refugees; often the officials extort bribes in exchange for a promise not to send refugees back across the border. Landowners pay Guatemalans $1 a day for their labor, vs. a Mexican minimum daily wage of $3.80.

The first refugees to arrive at their new home in Campeche last week found inadequate housing and almost no water. Being accustomed to breezy higher altitudes, they worried about whether they could survive in Campeche's torrid jungle. Conditions were so bad that a group of Mexico's Catholic bishops condemned the transfer, saying that the refugees were being "abandoned to their luck." The Mexican government responded by naming a new director for the agency responsible for refugees, its third in two years. The move was not expected to ease the problem. qed