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 permission to enter the areas.25 The Mexican government restricted the involvement of other NGOs in the camps, claiming that assistance was adequately provided by the UNHCR and COMAR. Maintaining national sovereignty was an equally important consideration, as was buffering the government from international criticism. “In Mexico we are not accepting either direct or bilateral assistance from another government or from the NGOs,” said COMAR coordinator Oscar González. “[The NGOs] wish to maintain a physical presence in the areas where refugees are assisted, and there's no reason for that. We function in a totally open manner and with an infrastructure that adequately allows the Mexican state to deal with the situation.”26
The camps and settlements were located in three principal areas: the first area extended from Tapachula to Comalapa; the second included the municipalities of La Trinitaria, Las Margaritas, and Independencia; and the third area, the most populous, consisted of the municipality of Ocosingo.27 The settlements in Las Margaritas and the Lancandón jungle were the most difficult to assist because of their geographic isolation. Aid was flown in by single-engine plane or transported by canoe, jeep, or pack mules. Conditions in all the settlements and camps were poor, reflecting the general poverty of Chiapas, the UNHCR's stretched budget, and to some extent, government policy. Refugee assistance personnel accused the Mexican government of deliberately making conditions as disagreeable as possible in order to discourage further migration. They also accused some COMAR officials of corruption, charging that UNHCR aid, especially food, was not reaching its intended destination (a charge that eventually contributed to a restructuring of the organization in 1983).28 Clearly, domestic policy considerations played some role in the amount of aid that was directed to the camps. Government officials wished to prevent the resentment and conflict that would inevitably follow if refugee aid exceeded the amount of social services available to the local population in Mexico's poorest state.29 At the same time, the government viewed repatriation as the long-term goal of refugee assistance, and thus little emphasis was given to projects that offered “durable solutions” or opportunities for long-term integration into Mexican society. Whatever the government's rationale, UNHCR personnel learned not to challenge the Mexican government. When Pierre Jambor, the UNHCR representative in Mexico, was viewed as too interfering, Mexico filed an official complaint with the UNHCR and soon after Jambor was replaced.
The refugees provided aid workers with a number of challenges. They arrived malnourished and with a host of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses. Infant mortality was estimated at two hundred deaths per thousand live births. Doctors, nurses, and midwives from regional clinics and hospitals volunteered and found a population in dire need of health care but distrustful of state-sponsored medicine. In order to halt the spread of disease, aid workers worked around the clock to build wells, sewers, and latrines in settlements that seemed to spring up virtually overnight.30
Refugees were directed to government-run camps, but COMAR also allowed refugees to establish their own settlements, usually consisting of individuals from the same village or language group, in order to encourage the survival of communities and traditional forms of self-government. Residents were allowed to play a role in planning and organizing schools, health care, and cultural and recreational activities.31 However, the camps and settlements offered few opportunities for wage-earning labor, land cultivation, or vocational training. The refugees did not qualify for work permits, but in some areas local authorities allowed them to engage in wageearning agricultural work, which unfortunately also exposed them to exploitation.32 The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas reported that over the years the generosity demonstrated by the local Mexican population began to wane, and some ejidatarios (members of cooperatives) began to treat the refugees as servants and peones, punishing them by withholding wages.33 Not surprisingly, the majority of Guatemalans who arrived in Mexico preferred to remain outside the government's