Task Force on Central America
INTRODUCTION
To leave one's country in search of refuge, to save one's family, one's community, meant facing the unknown, and not knowing what would happen tomorrow or whether the place one had chosen as temporary refuge would open its doors and warmly welcome those fleeing terror and death.
RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ TUM
The political upheaval in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala in the last decades of the twentieth century had a devastating human toll. A quarter of a million people died during the period 1974-96, and over one million people were internally displaced, forced to find refuge in other areas of their own countries. Many of those who survived the warfare and the human rights abuses chose temporary refuge in neighboring countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras, living anonymously as illegal immigrants or as documented refugees in government-run camps. When the camps filled up, or when their safety or economic survival was once again threatened, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans traveled further north, to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Over two million of those who fled Central America during this period settled in these three countries.
This book tells the story of that migration and how these governments responded to the refugees' presence. It also tells the story of the individuals, groups, and organizations that responded to the refugee crisis and worked within and across national borders to shape a more responsive refugee policy. During this period Mexico, the United States, and Canada were engaged in discussions of free trade but were more interested in facilitating the free movement of capital than in addressing the human migration that inevitably followed from such policies. Likewise, they and other nations in the Northern Hemisphere ignored the refugee crisis created by the revolutions in Central America until fairly late in the i980s, even though some had played a role in exacerbating the political conflict and had become unwilling hosts to thousands of refugees. By the time regional leaders sat down to address possible solutions to the crisis, over three million people had fled their homes, crossed national boundaries, and stretched charitable resources in hundreds of communities. It was the pressure exerted by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the grassroots organizations that worked firsthand with the victims, as well as the refugees themselves, that forced these states to address the crisis.1 Collectively these individuals and organizations established domestic and transnational advocacy networks that collected testimonies, documented the abuses of states, reframed national debates about immigration, pressed for changes in policy, and ultimately provided a voice for the displaced and the excluded.
The Central American refugee crisis highlighted the bureaucratic inconsistencies in the immigration policies of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Each country politicized the refugee determination system or failed to offer a legal status that adequately addressed the refugee crisis, in large part to discourage further migration to its territory. Instead of crafting a regional response that collectively shared the burdens of relocating and supporting the refugees, each government reacted to the crisis on the basis of its own state interests. Each was then forced to readjust its policies to deal with the consequences of its neighbors' policies. Passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in the United States, for example, created a “border rush” of Salvadorans who sought refuge in Canada to avoid deportation, and then forced Canada to redesign its refugee determination system. Likewise, the Mexican government's very different responses to the illegal Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Mexico influenced the character of the migration to the United States and forced the United States to redefine its border policies.
Surveys and public opinion polls conducted at the time showed that the Central American refugees did not rank high in domestic political agendas. However, in all three countries, a small, vocal, and disproportionately influential segment of the population successfully lobbied for a more humanitarian response. These individuals—students, academics, lawyers, trade unionists, journalists, religious and secular aid workers—created organizations and networks to defend the rights of the refugees and to demand an end to their countries' complicity in the political upheaval. Wherever they worked—in comunidades de base (faith communities), refugee camps, legal aid offices, sanctuaries, universities, or nonprofit organizations in Central or North America—refugee advocates relied on the information and support provided by each of the network's constituent parts. Human rights activists in Central America, for example, relied on journalists and NGOs to publicize their cause, mobilize support, and secure protection for the displaced. Likewise, lobbyists working in Mexico City, Washington, and Ottawa depended on the refugees and human rights activists for the evidence that might help them argue their case.
By 1980, advocacy networks existed in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, working within and across national borders to protest not only human rights abuses in Central America but also state policies that militarized the region, exacerbated the civil wars, and discriminated against the wars' victims.2 Some groups operated solely at the grassroots level, informing and providing assistance to communities and lobbying local legislators. Others, like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Americas Watch, and the Church World Service, worked on a broader scale, collecting evidence, providing testimony at hearings and tribunals, and using their moral authority to press for policy changes from government bureaucracies. Whether at the local, national, or international level, these actors were bound together by their common concern about the social upheaval in Central America. They used international norms to criticize individual state behavior, collected and disseminated information that challenged official state discourses, forced accountability, and ultimately changed policy.3
Clergymen, missionaries, and aid workers in Central America played key roles in these networks; indeed, much of
