But by 1982 and the escalation of Ríos Montt's counterinsurgency campaign, such trips became impossible. Instead, out-migration increased dramatically. In July 1982, the first month of Ríos Montt's counterinsurgency campaign, nine thousand families fled to Chiapas. One report estimated that by 1983 thirty-five thousand Guatemalans had taken refuge just across the border of Mexico, with an additional seventy thousand believed to be living deeper within the country. Another report estimated as many as two hundred thousand Guatemalan refugees in Mexico.12 Most hid in the jungles of Guatemala until it was safe to cross the “armed curtain” of Guatemalan soldiers that by 1982 patrolled the Guatemala-Mexico border. With the support of Mexican villagers and small landholders who gave them tents, food, and clothing, they squatted on ejidos and private lands, creating their own makeshift settlements.
The historical, cultural, and commercial ties between Chiapas and Guatemala made this six-hundred-mile stretch of land an artificial border. Until 1824 Chiapas was Guatemalan territory, and its loss to Mexico wounded Guatemala's national psyche comparably to Mexico's 1848 loss of northern territories to the United States. Indeed, significant comparisons could be made between the two borderlands. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Guatemalans crossed easily into Mexico to work, trade, and intermarry, just as Mexicans crossed easily into the US Southwest. As in the United States, the migrants were either tolerated or deported, depending on economic conditions and pressure from local interest groups. However, Guatemalan migration differed in that it was a largely indigenous migration, and in Chiapas, migrants found a Maya and mestizo population that shared cultural similarities and a land that was not unlike that which they had left behind.13 Historically, the border between Guatemala and Mexico was poorly guarded, in part because of diplomatic policy considerations and limited manpower and resources, but also because of pressure from Mexican growers, who depended on this exploitable labor force.
Because of their small numbers, the first refugees from Guatemala were believed to be part of the usual seasonal migration of undocumented agricultural workers. The Roman Catholic clergy and missionaries were among the first to witness their trauma and to recognize and assist them as refugees. As new settlements emerged in Chiapas, creating a type of “refugee zone” along the border, the different state and federal agencies debated policy and what measures constituted an appropriate governmental response. As one Mexican official told the New York Times, “We've never had to face something like this before and it has taken time to adjust.”14
The refugees technically came under the jurisdiction of the Secretaría de Gobernación and its Servicios Migratorios (Migratory Services). Given the uniqueness of the situation, in July 1980 the López Portillo administration established a new interdepartmental office, the Mexican Committee for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), with a threefold mission: to oversee emergency assistance to the Central American refugees; to provide them with political representation; and to design temporary and long-term projects for employment and self-sufficiency.15 In theory, COMAR represented and coordinated the interests and policies of the Secretariats of Foreign Relations, Labor and Social Welfare, and the Interior, and consulted with the Secretariat of Defense. In practice, however, each of these secretariats had its own agenda and maintained contradictory policies that were impossible to coordinate.
The Secretaría de Gobernación and Servicios Migratorios took a more hard-line position than COMAR and the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Secretariat of Foreign Relations). Officials in the Secretaría de Gobernación acted on the assumption that the Central Americans were economic migrants, and routinely used the press to accuse the refugees of taking jobs and land away from Mexican citizens. Their position was starkly exemplified by Diana Torres Arcieniega, the director of Servicios Migratorios, who blamed all of Mexico's social problems on the refugees, including the social disintegration, poverty, promiscuity, ignorance, delinquency, and violence in Mexican society.16 COMAR, on the other hand, acted on the premise that the Central Americans were fleeing repressive conditions and deserved the generosity of the state. Likewise, officials in the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores argued that Mexico had “international responsibilities” and warned of the foreign policy implications of any official response.17 During the early 1980s, the hard-line position predominated, in part because of Mexico's economic crisis, which made immigration an unpopular topic. Two thousand refugees were expelled from Mexico in 1981 and thirty-five hundred in 1982, violating the principle of non-refoulement. Refugees suspected of being guerrillas were routinely handed over to Guatemalan authorities.18 By 1983, COMAR had been subsumed into the Secretaría de Gobernación, theoretically to better coordinate assistance to the refugees, but also to control any dissident voices that challenged official government policy.
The Mexican government initially resisted any involvement from the UNHCR and other international NGOs, citing its sovereign right to resolve its own domestic affairs. Financial pressures forced a reevaluation of this position, and in 1981, a cooperative agreement was signed stating that aid programs would be designed and financed with the assistance of the UNHCR but coordinated and channeled through COMAR.19 Soon after, the UNHCR established an official representation in Mexico City. Over the next decade, the UNHCR provided millions of dollars in aid (e.g. food, construction materials, housing supplies, educational materials, and salaries for refugee assistance personnel) to the Guatemalan refugees in Chiapas, and assisted Central Americans dispersed throughout the country, albeit indirectly, by assisting the Mexican NGOs that provided them assistance in rural and urban areas.20 But the UNHCR was careful not to speak against state policies, or challenge the government in any way, or sabotage the agency's already precarious position.
Mexico agreed to accept Guatemalans as long as they were approved and registered by COMAR, and remained in government-supervised camps and settlements in Chiapas. Those who did so were granted ninetyday renewable visas, the FM-8, which offered them the temporary, nonimmigrant status of “border visitor.” Under the terms of their negotiations, if the Guatemalans traveled beyond the 150-kilometer refugee zone, they received no official status and forfeited their rights to protection.21 Central Americans outside Chiapas who contacted the UNHCR for assistance in securing asylum were interviewed and evaluated according to Mexico's stricter criteria, but Mexican authorities ultimately made the final determination, and these decisions were highly subjective. Although the news media and church and NGO representatives commonly referred to the Guatemalans as refugees, Mexico did not have the legal mechanism by which to grant this official status. And despite the continual arrival of refugees each week, the administrations of José López Portillo and his successor, Miguel de la Madrid (1982-1988), resisted drafting new refugee or asylum legislation or signing the UN Convention and Protocol, arguing that the Mexican Constitution offered its “border visitors” sufficient rights and guarantees. Ironically, since the word refugee did not appear in Mexican law, Mexico officially had no refugees within its borders, only “border visitors” and “agricultural workers.”22 And since there were no refugees, these border visitors had little chance of regularizing their status and becoming permanent residents.
The one issue in which the UNHCR seems to have exerted the most influence during these early years concerned a proposed relocation to third countries. The UNHCR opposed such a policy, except when a refugee specifically requested it, because it made the eventual repatriation of the refugees difficult, if not impossible. Given the uniqueness of the Maya refugees—many of whom did not even identify themselves as members of a nation-state—the Mexican government agreed that it was in their interests to temporarily accommodate them in familiar surroundings until they were able to return to their ancestral lands. As one COMAR director stated, “I believe that receiving and protecting indigenous groups has, and will have, enormous historical significance for Mexico and Central America.”23 During the 1980s, the UNHCR relocated a few thousand Central Americans to third countries such as Canada and Australia, but only those that requested the transfer.24
By 1984, ninety-two camps and settlements housed forty-six thousand refugees in Chiapas. Access to the camps was restricted: armed agents of Servicios Migratorios patrolled each camp, and only church and UNHCR representatives were granted
