• Derrière l’afflux de migrants au Nicaragua, le business des vols charters
    https://www.dakaractu.com/Derriere-l-afflux-de-migrants-au-Nicaragua-le-business-des-vols-charters_

    Derrière l’afflux de migrants au Nicaragua, le business des vols charters
    Derrière l’afflux de migrants au Nicaragua, le business des vols charters
    [Privacy Badger a remplacé ce bouton LinkedIn]
    L’afflux de migrants cubains et haïtiens au Nicaragua, d’où ils tentent ensuite de rallier les Etats-Unis, a provoqué ces derniers mois une forte hausse des vols charters vers Managua, poussant Washington à imposer des sanctions à leurs opérateurs. Irma Perez, une Cubaine de 28 ans, est arrivée le 9 octobre avec sa famille à Managua à bord d’un vol charter de la compagnie mexicaine Viva Aerobus parti de Holguin, à 700 km de La Havane."Nous avons fait escale à Cancun (port mexicain) 45 minutes, sans descendre de l’avion, et de là à Managua", a-t-elle raconté à l’AFP depuis Mexico où elle s’est ensuite rendue avec son mari et son fils après avoir payé les services d’un passeur. Elle espère de là pouvoir entrer aux Etats-Unis.Plusieurs migrants cubains interrogés par l’AFP ont raconté avoir voyagé avec la même compagnie, expliquant qu’il s’agissait de vols charters, affrétés par de petites agences de voyage.Interrogée par l’AFP, Viva Aerobus n’a pas donné suite, alors que sur son site aucun vol n’est proposé pour relier Cuba au Nicaragua.Irma Perez a expliqué avoir déboursé 1.250 dollars pour son billet, autant pour son mari et 350 dollars pour son fils d’un an, sans compter les 2.100 dollars payés au passeur.
    L’apparition de vols charters pour répondre aux besoins des migrants « est un phénomène relativement nouveau », explique à l’AFP Manuel Orozco, directeur des questions migratoires au Dialogue interaméricain, un groupe de réflexion basé à Washington. Le Nicaragua, allié de La Havane, n’exige plus de visa pour les Cubains depuis novembre 2021. Depuis lors, 421.000 Cubains, un record, sont entrés de manière irrégulière aux Etats-Unis, selon des chiffres officiels américains, en grande majorité par voie terrestre depuis le Nicaragua. En parallèle et face à un afflux croissant, le Panama et le Costa Rica leur ont imposé début 2022 un visa de transit. Les vols charters ont alors augmenté de Cuba vers le Nicaragua.
    Selon un rapport du Dialogue interaméricain, une moyenne mensuelle de 50 vols charters ont atterri à Managua depuis La Havane entre janvier et octobre 2023, tandis que ce type de vols est passé de 30 en août à 130 en octobre entre Port-au-Prince et la capitale du Nicaragua.
    « Le Nicaragua a représenté un pont pour près de 100.000 personnes » migrantes depuis janvier, évalue le rapport. Manuel Orozco estime que les opérateurs de ces lignes et les autorités aéroportuaires nicaraguayennes ont fait « un calcul économique » pour un « bénéfice mutuel ».Des petites compagnies régulières se sont même intégrées à ce marché. Un comptable cubain de 37 ans a raconté avoir payé en octobre 1.800 dollars pour un vol avec Aruba Airlines, dont la page internet propose la vente de billets à travers un numéro WhatsApp. Il a voyagé depuis La Havane jusqu’à Managua avec une escale à Aruba, île néerlandaise des Caraïbes.
    Les annonces pullulent sur Facebook : « Billets disponibles Havane-Nicaragua (...) prix pour les familles, vols charters et réguliers », dit l’une d’elles.
    Début novembre, Brian Nichols, le vice-secrétaire d’Etat américain, a fait part de sa préoccupation face à l’augmentation « spectaculaire » de ces vols, et mardi Washington a annoncé restreindre les visas pour les « propriétaires, directeurs et responsables » des entreprises opérant ces vols.
    Le vice-ministre cubain des Affaires étrangères, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, a cependant récemment assuré que le nombre de vols avait baissé. « Cette situation (...) n’est plus la même », a-t-il déclaré. Fin octobre, le Mexique a à son tour annoncé imposer un visa de transit aux Cubains dans ses aéroports, rendant plus difficiles les routes des charters qui ont peu à peu diminué.Un chauffeur de taxi de Managua, qui consulte tous les jours le site de l’aéroport pour son travail, a indiqué sous anonymat à l’AFP avoir constaté que « 22 à 23 avions quotidiens avec des migrants (arrivaient) il y a quelques semaines, contre six aujourd’hui ». Malgré le programme américain « Parole » qui vise à faciliter la migration légale, l’arrivée irrégulière de Cubains et d’Haïtiens aux Etats-Unis a connu un rebond depuis août. Entre janvier et octobre, 108.000 Cubains et 165.000 Haïtiens sont ainsi arrivés de manière irrégulière dans le pays. « Le programme +Parole+ ne couvre pas la demande migratoire », constate l’expert du Dialogue interaméricain.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#nicaragua#haiti#etatsunis#cuba#mexique#emigration#visas#transit#charters

  • Spotlight on the Borderlands: Mapping Human Rights

    The Spotlight initiative aims to create tools and resources to deepen the understanding of the border and animate social change.

    Through digital mapping, storytelling, and participatory popular education methodologies, we aim to highlight the complex topographies and cartographies of human rights at the border.

    The human rights map provides a visual narrative of the effects of militarization and deterrence on border communities and those migrating through the U.S.-Mexico border region. This map also displays a set of human rights indicators to facilitate monitoring, progress, and fulfilling governments’ obligations in protecting the rights of migrants, refugees, and communities along the borderlands.

    https://spotlight.nnirr.org/map/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=2a989d1c-8953-4ea1-bf32-b4c6c4242197

    #cartographie #visualisation #morts_aux_frontières #droits_humains #USA #Etats-Unis #Mexique #carte_interactive #checkpoints #rétention #détention_administrative #solidarité #hôpitaux
    ping @fil @reka

  • [source : https://piaille.fr/@ValK/111362206536389366]

    Cuarta Parte y Primera Alerta de Aproximación. Varias Muertes Necesarias. « Enlace Zapatista
    https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2023/11/05/cuarta-parte-y-primera-alerta-de-aproximacion-varias-muerte

    Cuarta Parte y Primera Alerta de Aproximación.
    Varias Muertes Necesarias.

    Noviembre del 2023.

    A las personas que suscriben la Declaración por la Vida:

    Les comunicamos lo siguiente:

    PRIMERO. – Desde hace algunos meses, después de un largo y profundo análisis crítico y autocrítico, y de consultar a todos los pueblos zapatistas, se decidió la desaparición de los Municipios Autónomos Rebeldes Zapatistas (MAREZ) y las Juntas de Buen Gobierno.

    SEGUNDO. – Todos los sellos, membretes, cargos, representaciones y acuerdos con el nombre de cualquier MAREZ o de cualquiera de las Juntas de Buen Gobierno, son inválidos a partir de este momento. Ninguna persona se puede presentar como miembro, autoridad o representante de cualquier MAREZ o Junta de Buen Gobierno. Los acuerdos sostenidos antes de esta fecha, con Organizaciones No Gubernamentales, organizaciones sociales, colectivos, grupos e instancias de solidaridad en México y el mundo se mantienen hasta la expiración de los mismos, pero no se podrán hacer nuevos acuerdos con estas instancias de la autonomía zapatista, por la simple razón de que ya no existen.

    TERCERO. – Se mantienen los Caracoles, pero permanecerán cerrados al exterior hasta nuevo aviso.

    CUARTO. – Las razones y el proceso por el que se tomó esta decisión, se las iremos platicando poco a poco en los escritos siguientes. Sólo les adelanto que esta valoración, en su fase final, se inició hace unos 3 años. También les iremos explicando cómo es y cómo se ha ido gestando la nueva estructura de la autonomía zapatista.

    Todo eso, y más cosas, irán apareciendo en el momento oportuno.

    QUINTO. – Les avisamos que haremos una celebración con motivo de los 30 años del inicio de la guerra contra el olvido. Esto en los meses de diciembre del 2023 y enero del 2024. Están invitadas todas las personas que firmaron la “Declaración por la Vida”.

    Sin embargo, es nuestro deber, al mismo tiempo que se les invita, desalentarles. Contrario a lo que informa y desinforma la prensa oficialista, autodenominada cool-progre-buena-ondita, las principales ciudades del suroriental estado mexicano de Chiapas están en un completo caos. Las presidencias municipales están ocupadas por lo que nosotros llamamos “sicarios legales” o “Crimen Desorganizado”. Hay bloqueos, asaltos, secuestros, cobro de piso, reclutamiento forzado, balaceras. Esto es efecto del padrinazgo del gobierno del estado y la disputa por los cargos que está en proceso. No son propuestas políticas las que se enfrentan, sino sociedades criminales.

    Entonces, pues claro les decimos que, a diferencia de otros años, no es seguro.

    San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, Las Margaritas y Palenque, por mencionar algunas cabeceras municipales, están en manos de uno de los cárteles del crimen desorganizado y en disputa con otro. Esto es constatado por la llamada industria hotelera, turística, restaurantera y de servicios. Quienes trabajan en estos lugares lo saben y no lo han denunciado porque están amenazados y, además, saben que es inútil cualquier petición, porque las autoridades estatales y municipales son las que delinquen y no tienen llenadera en la robadera que están haciendo.

    En las comunidades rurales el problema es más grave aún. Eso lo gritan quienes las habitan en todas las regiones de Chiapas, particularmente en toda la franja fronteriza con Guatemala.

    Lo que se lee, escucha y se ve en la mayoría de los medios locales y nacionales, es sólo un eco malo y sinvergüenza, de las redes sociales del gobierno del estado. La verdad es que las autoridades oficiales son el problema. Sí, como en el resto del país.

    Las fuerzas militares y policíacas federales, estatales y locales, no están en Chiapas para proteger a la población civil. Están con el único objetivo de frenar la migración. Ésa es la orden que vino desde el gobierno norteamericano. Como es su modo, han convertido la migración en un negocio. El tráfico y la trata de personas es un negocio de las autoridades que, mediante la extorsión, el secuestro y compraventa de migrantes, se enriquecen desvergonzadamente.

    Entonces, pues no les aconsejamos que vengan. A menos, claro, que se organicen muy bien para hacerlo.

    Entonces, aunque no les esperamos, les invitamos. Las fechas tentativas de las conmemoraciones son entre el 23 de diciembre del 2023 y el 7 de enero del 2024, siendo la celebración central los días 30-31 de diciembre y 1-2 de enero. Luego les diremos el lugar. O sea que sí queremos que vengan, aunque no lo recomendamos.

    Aunque no lleguen, no preocupar. Igual les mandaremos fotos y videos.

    Bueno, eso si todavía hay mundo para esas fechas.

    Ahí lo vean.

    Desde las montañas del Sureste Mexicano.

    Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
    México, noviembre del 2023.

  • A Ciudad Juarez, malgré le mur et les barbelés, les migrants passent toujours aux Etats-Unis
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/10/10/a-ciudad-juarez-malgre-le-mur-et-les-barbeles-les-migrants-passent-toujours-

    A Ciudad Juarez, malgré le mur et les barbelés, les migrants passent toujours aux Etats-Unis
    Par Anne Vigna (Ciudad Juarez (Mexique), El Paso (Etats-Unis), envoyée spéciale)
    Publié le 10 octobre 2023 à 19h00, modifié hier à 10h54
    eEnviron 2,2 millions de personnes ont franchi illégalement la frontière nord du Mexique depuis octobre 2022. Peu réactive, l’application créée par Washington pour déposer une demande d’asile à l’extérieur du pays n’a pas dissuadé un nouvel afflux de migrants, parmi lesquels figurent de nombreux Vénézuéliens.
    Les migrants et la garde nationale texane se livrent, jour et nuit, à un véritable jeu du chat et de la souris devant le mur frontalier à Ciudad Juarez, dans l’Etat mexicain de Chihuahua, juste en face de la ville d’El Paso, au Texas. Le « terrain de jeu » est une vaste étendue de sable où des rouleaux de barbelés sont entassés sur plusieurs mètres de haut, juste après un ruisseau sale et boueux dénommé Rio Bravo au Mexique et Rio Grande aux Etats-Unis – il marque la frontière officielle entre les deux pays. Depuis le début du mois de septembre, cette frontière connaît à nouveau un afflux ininterrompu de migrants venus, par le sud, de tout le continent américain et en particulier du Venezuela. Depuis 2013, 7 millions de Vénézuéliens ont fui leur pays et son économie en faillite.
    Par petits groupes, les migrants s’approchent des barbelés, les recouvrent de vêtements et creusent un trou dans le sable à toute vitesse pour essayer de se faufiler sans trop se blesser. Les enfants passent de bras en bras, emmitouflés dans des couvertures, les sacs à dos sont jetés en l’air ; certains restent coincés et abandonnés dans les fils de fer barbelés. Ces familles n’ont souvent que quelques minutes, avant que les gardes américains n’arrivent en courant et posent leurs pieds sur les barbelés afin d’empêcher le passage. Mais cinquante mètres plus loin, un autre groupe se faufile tandis que d’autres gardes se précipitent dans leur direction.
    Le manège dure ainsi toute la journée et malgré les efforts des forces de sécurité qui se déplacent en courant ou en voiture, des grappes de migrants parviennent bien sur le sol américain, les bras souvent ensanglantés par le passage de la clôture mais ne pouvant réprimer un sourire.
    Des migrants tentent d’entrer en rampant sous les barbelés de la frontière entre le Mexique et les États-Unis, en utilisant des vêtements pour minimiser le risque de blessure, à Ciudad Juarez (Mexique), le 4 octobre 2023.
    Du côté mexicain, le simple fait de voir des migrants passer sous cette ligne qui semble infranchissable, est un motif de joie pour les nouveaux arrivants. Ils passent plusieurs heures à étudier le manège avant de se lancer à leur tour. « En fait, on doit passer comme des crabes », dit en riant le Vénézuélien Eduardo Vasquez, qui lève le poing en voyant que le groupe, avec lequel il a voyagé sur le toit d’un train depuis l’Etat de Mexico ces derniers jours, vient de franchir les barbelés. Ce jeune homme de 26 ans, qui a mis deux mois à traverser le Mexique, hésite encore à franchir illégalement cette frontière alors qu’il voyage avec deux enfants de 2 et 4 ans. « Quand je vois que mes compagnons sont passés, j’ai aussi envie de me lancer », dit cet ancien chauffeur de bus à Caracas. A ses côtés, son épouse ouvre à nouveau son téléphone et l’application mobile CBP One (pour Customs and Border Protection, « douanes et protection des frontières »), qui permet de demander l’asile aux Etats-Unis. Deux mois après s’être inscrits, ils n’ont obtenu aucune réponse.
    Ces deux jeunes parents pèsent le pour et le contre et optent finalement pour ne pas franchir la ligne ce jeudi 5 octobre. Ils viennent d’apprendre que les Etats-Unis vont désormais reprendre les expulsions de migrants vénézuéliens. « Je ne veux pas prendre le risque de devoir refaire ce voyage. On va attendre encore un peu, nous aurons peut-être de la chance », lâche le père en jetant un dernier coup d’œil vers les Etats-Unis. Sans plus traîner, ils partent, toujours à pied, à la recherche d’un refuge où passer cette nuit et sans doute les prochaines. De l’autre côté de la frontière, après les barbelés, la file de migrants qui se forme devant le mur en acier s’allonge à vue d’œil. Après une journée d’attente sous un soleil de plomb, la garde texane ouvre enfin la porte du mur et les migrants sont emmenés en bus vers des centres de rétention dans la ville d’El Paso. Certains n’y resteront que quelques heures, d’autres plusieurs semaines, en fonction de l’affluence mais surtout de leur nationalité.« Les Mexicains sont systématiquement renvoyés le jour même à Ciudad Juarez, même s’ils peuvent avoir de bonnes raisons de demander l’asile. Les Vénézuéliens, les Haïtiens et les Nicaraguayens obtiennent en général un permis d’un an minimum avant que leur demande d’asile soit examinée par un juge », explique Maria Inés Barrios de la O, chercheuse spécialisée sur la migration au Collège de la frontière nord (Colef), à Ciudad Juarez. Mais la spécialiste précise aussitôt : « Les règles vont sans doute encore changer avec les élections l’an prochain aux Etats-Unis. La migration est toujours un thème de campagne et de dispute entre démocrates et républicains. C’est dans ce contexte qu’il faut comprendre l’annonce de Biden de relancer la construction du mur frontalier comme d’expulser les migrants vénézuéliens entrés illégalement. »
    Entre octobre 2022 et août 2023, 2,2 millions de personnes ont franchi illégalement cette frontière de 3 000 kilomètres de long. En août, les Vénézuéliens comptaient pour 13 % d’entre eux. « Il y a une nette augmentation du nombre de migrants ces derniers mois sur toute la portion nord du territoire mexicain. Et étant donné l’affluence actuelle à la frontière avec le Guatemala, au sud du pays, on peut s’attendre à ce que les prochains mois soient tout aussi compliqués », considère Rodolfo Cruz, professeur au Colef, à Tijuana.Pour faire face à cette énième « crise migratoire », les douaniers américains ont été assignés à la gestion des flux humains plutôt qu’aux transports de marchandises. Résultat : la fermeture de plusieurs ponts frontaliers, réservés aux camions, provoque des pertes économiques importantes à Ciudad Juarez, et des entreprises ont dû mettre leurs employés au chômage technique. « Ce goulet d’étranglement à la frontière est une punition des Etats-Unis, qui nous reproche de laisser notre frontière avec le Guatemala ouverte à la migration », juge Juan Acereto, le représentant du gouvernement municipal de Ciudad Juarez à El Paso.
    Pourtant, le Mexique ne fait pas preuve de laxisme sur ce dossier et a renvoyé ces dernières années les migrants vénézuéliens expulsés des Etats-Unis, qui n’avaient plus de relations diplomatiques avec Caracas. Mexico ne facilite pas non plus la traversée de son territoire : la plupart des migrants n’ont aucun laissez-passer, ce qui permet à la police migratoire de les repousser toujours plus au sud. « Le président Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador a beau plaider pour une migration plus humaine et répéter qu’il faut s’attaquer aux causes de la migration, il n’a rien fait dans ce sens, considère Eunice Rendon, qui coordonne l’organisation Agenda Migrante. La preuve, la migration des Mexicains, qui avait fortement diminué ces dix dernières années, a augmenté sous son mandat à cause de la violence. »
    En face de Ciudad Juarez, dans la ville d’El Paso au Texas, José Artigas profite de ses premiers instants de liberté, après cinq jours passés dans un centre de détention. Ce Vénézuélien de 20 ans, expulsé en juillet par le Mexique, a cette fois atteint son objectif. Il vient d’apprendre que sa première audience avec un juge à Detroit pour examiner sa demande d’asile aux Etats-Unis n’aura lieu qu’en 2027. José Artigas n’a pas l’autorisation de travailler et il a vingt-deux points de suture au pied droit, résultat du passage des barbelés à la frontière. Mais il plaisante en montant dans un bus qui va l’emmener gratuitement à New York. Il se moque de savoir que le Texas, gouverné par un républicain, Greg Abbott, a mis en place ces bus pour répartir les migrants sur tout le territoire américain et les envoyer en particulier vers des Etats dirigés par les démocrates, comme celui de New York. Il ne voit qu’une différence de taille avec le périple qu’il vient d’achever : « Ici on nous conduit, au Mexique on nous chassait. »

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#mexique#venezuela#frontiere#mur#sante#violence#mur#expulsion#guatemala#migrationirreguliere#politiquemigratoire

  • The State of #Chihuahua Is Building a 20-Story Tower in #Ciudad_Juarez to Surveil 13 Cities–and Texas Will Also Be Watching

    Chihuahua state officials and a notorious Mexican security contractor broke ground last summer on the #Torre_Centinela (Sentinel Tower), an ominous, 20-story high-rise in downtown Ciudad Juarez that will serve as the central node of a new AI-enhanced surveillance regime. With tentacles reaching into 13 Mexican cities and a data pipeline that will channel intelligence all the way to Austin, Texas, the monstrous project will be unlike anything seen before along the U.S.-Mexico border.

    And that’s saying a lot, considering the last 30-plus years of surging technology on the U.S side of the border.

    The Torre Centinela will stand in a former parking lot next to the city’s famous bullring, a mere half-mile south of where migrants and asylum seekers have camped and protested at the Paso del Norte International Bridge leading to El Paso. But its reach goes much further: the Torre Centinela is just one piece of the Plataforma Centinela (Sentinel Platform), an aggressive new technology strategy developed by Chihuahua’s Secretaria de Seguridad Pública Estatal (Secretary of State Public Security or SSPE) in collaboration with the company Seguritech.

    With its sprawling infrastructure, the Plataforma Centinela will create an atmosphere of surveillance and data-streams blanketing the entire region. The plan calls for nearly every cutting-edge technology system marketed at law enforcement: 10,000 surveillance cameras, face recognition, automated license plate recognition, real-time crime analytics, a fleet of mobile surveillance vehicles, drone teams and counter-drone teams, and more.

    If the project comes together as advertised in the Avengers-style trailer that SSPE released to influence public opinion, law enforcement personnel on site will be surrounded by wall-to-wall monitors (140 meters of screens per floor), while 2,000 officers in the field will be able to access live intelligence through handheld tablets.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKPuur6s4qg

    Texas law enforcement will also have “eyes on this side of the border” via the Plataforma Centinela, Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos publicly stated last year. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a memorandum of understanding confirming the partnership.

    Plataforma Centinela will transform public life and threaten human rights in the borderlands in ways that aren’t easy to assess. Regional newspapers and local advocates–especially Norte Digital and Frente Político Ciudadano para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (FPCDDH)—have raised significant concerns about the project, pointing to a low likelihood of success and high potential for waste and abuse.

    “It is a myopic approach to security; the full emphasis is placed on situational prevention, while the social causes of crime and violence are not addressed,” FPCDDH member and analyst Victor M. Quintana tells EFF, noting that the Plataforma Centinela’s budget is significantly higher than what the state devotes to social services. “There are no strategies for the prevention of addiction, neither for rebuilding the fabric of society nor attending to dropouts from school or young people at risk, which are social causes of insecurity.”

    Instead of providing access to unfiltered information about the project, the State of Chihuahua has launched a public relations blitz. In addition to press conferences and the highly-produced cinematic trailer, SSPE recently hosted a “Pabellón Centinel” (Sentinel Pavillion), a family-friendly carnival where the public was invited to check out a camera wall and drones, while children played with paintball guns, drove a toy ATV patrol vehicle around a model city, and colored in illustrations of a data center operator.

    Behind that smoke screen, state officials are doing almost everything they can to control the narrative around the project and avoid public scrutiny.

    According to news reports, the SSPE and the Secretaría de Hacienda (Finance Secretary) have simultaneously deemed most information about the project as classified and left dozens of public records requests unanswered. The Chihuahua State Congress also rejected a proposal to formally declassify the documents and stymied other oversight measures, including a proposed audit. Meanwhile, EFF has submitted public records requests to several Texas agencies and all have claimed they have no records related to the Plataforma Centinela.

    This is all the more troubling considering the relationship between the state and Seguritech, a company whose business practices in 22 other jurisdictions have been called into question by public officials.

    What we can be sure of is that the Plataforma Centinela project may serve as proof of concept of the kind of panopticon surveillance governments can get away with in both North America and Latin America.
    What Is the Plataforma Centinela?

    High-tech surveillance centers are not a new phenomenon on the Mexican side of the border. These facilities tend to use “C” distinctions to explain their functions and purposes. EFF has mapped out dozens of these in the six Mexican border states.

    https://www.eff.org/files/2023/09/14/c-centers_map.png
    https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1W73dMXnuXvPl5cSRGfi1x-BQAEivJH4&ll=25.210543464111723%2C-105.379

    They include:

    - C4 (Centro de Comunicación, Cómputo, Control y Comando) (Center for Communications, Calculation, Control, and Command),
    - C5 (Centro de Coordinación Integral, de Control, Comando, Comunicación y Cómputo del Estado) (Center for Integral Coordination for Control, Command, Communications, and State Calculation),
    - C5i (Centro de Control, Comando, Comunicación, Cómputo, Coordinación e Inteligencia) (Center for Control, Command, Communication, Calculation, Coordination and Intelligence).

    Typically, these centers focus as a cross between a 911 call center and a real-time crime center, with operators handling emergency calls, analyzing crime data, and controlling a network of surveillance cameras via a wall bank of monitors. In some cases, the Cs may be presented in different order or stand for slightly different words. For example, some C5s might alternately stand for “Centros de Comando, Control, Comunicación, Cómputo y Calidad” (Centers for Command, Control, Communication, Computation and Quality). These facilities also exist in other parts of Mexico. The number of Cs often indicate scale and responsibilities, but more often than not, it seems to be a political or marketing designation.

    The Plataforma Centinela however, goes far beyond the scope of previous projects and in fact will be known as the first C7 (Centro de Comando, Cómputo, Control, Coordinación, Contacto Ciudadano, Calidad, Comunicaciones e Inteligencia Artificial) (Center for Command, Calculation, Control, Coordination, Citizen Contact, Quality, Communications and Artificial Intelligence). The Torre Centinela in Ciudad Juarez will serve as the nerve center, with more than a dozen sub-centers throughout the state.

    According to statistics that Gov. Campos disclosed as part of negotiations with Texas and news reports, the Plataforma Centinela will include:

    - 1,791 automated license plate readers. These are cameras that photograph vehicles and their license plates, then upload that data along with the time and location where the vehicles were seen to a massive searchable database. Law enforcement can also create lists of license plates to track specific vehicles and receive alerts when those vehicles are seen.
    - 4,800 fixed cameras. These are your run-of-the-mill cameras, positioned to permanently surveil a particular location from one angle.
    - 3,065 pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. These are more sophisticated cameras. While they are affixed to a specific location, such as a street light or a telephone pole, these cameras can be controlled remotely. An operator can swivel the camera around 360-degrees and zoom in on subjects.
    - 2,000 tablets. Officers in the field will be issued handheld devices for accessing data directly from the Plataforma Centinela.
    - 102 security arches. This is a common form of surveillance in Mexico, but not the United States. These are structures built over highways and roads to capture data on passing vehicles and their passengers.
    - 74 drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/UAVs). While the Chihuahua government has not disclosed what surveillance payload will be attached to these drones, it is common for law enforcement drones to deploy video, infrared, and thermal imaging technology.
    - 40 mobile video surveillance trailers. While details on these systems are scant, it is likely these are camera towers that can be towed to and parked at targeted locations.
    - 15 anti-drone systems. These systems are designed to intercept and disable drones operated by criminal organizations.
    - Face recognition. The project calls for the application of “biometric filters” to be applied to camera feeds “to assist in the capture of cartel leaders,” and the collection of migrant biometrics. Such a system would require scanning the faces of the general public.
    - Artificial intelligence. So far, the administration has thrown around the term AI without fully explaining how it will be used. However, typically law enforcement agencies have used this technology to “predict” where crime might occur, identify individuals mostly likely to be connected to crime, and to surface potential connections between suspects that would not have been obvious to a human observer. However, all these technologies have a propensity for making errors or exacerbating existing bias.

    As of May, 60% of the Plataforma Centinela camera network had been installed, with an expected completion date of December, according to Norte Digital. However, the cameras were already being used in criminal investigations.

    All combined, this technology amounts to an unprecedented expansion of the surveillance state in Latin America, as SSPE brags in its promotional material. The threat to privacy may also be unprecedented: creating cities where people can no longer move freely in their communities without being watched, scanned, and tagged.

    But that’s assuming the system functions as advertised—and based on the main contractor’s history, that’s anything but guaranteed.
    Who Is Seguritech?

    The Plataforma Centinela project is being built by the megacorporation Seguritech, which has signed deals with more than a dozen government entities throughout Mexico. As of 2018, the company received no-bid contracts in at least 10 Mexican states and cities, which means it was able to sidestep the accountability process that requires companies to compete for projects.

    And when it comes to the Plataforma Centinela, the company isn’t simply a contractor: It will actually have ownership over the project, the Torre Centinela, and all its related assets, including cameras and drones, until August 2027.

    That’s what SSPE Secretary Gilberto Loya Chávez told the news organization Norte Digital, but the terms of the agreement between Seguritech and Chihuahua’s administration are not public. The SSPE’s Transparency Committee decided to classify the information “concerning the procedures for the acquisition of supplies, goods, and technology necessary for the development, implementation, and operation of the Platforma Centinela” for five years.

    In spite of the opacity shrouding the project, journalists have surfaced some information about the investment plan. According to statements from government officials, the Plataforma Centinela will cost 4.2 billion pesos, with Chihuahua’s administration paying regular installments to the company every three months (Chihuahua’s governor had previously said that these would be yearly payments in the amount of 700 million to 1 billion pesos per year). According to news reports, when the payments are completed in 2027, the ownership of the platform’s assets and infrastructure are expected to pass from Seguritech to the state of Chihuahua.

    The Plataforma Centinela project marks a new pinnacle in Seguritech’s trajectory as a Mexican security contractor. Founded in 1995 as a small business selling neighborhood alarms, SeguriTech Privada S.A de C.V. became a highly profitable brand, and currently operates in five areas: security, defense, telecommunications, aeronautics, and construction. According to Zeta Tijuana, Seguritech also secures contracts through its affiliated companies, including Comunicación Segura (focused on telecommunications and security) and Picorp S.A. de C.V. (focused on architecture and construction, including prisons and detention centers). Zeta also identified another SecuriTech company, Tres10 de C.V., as the contractor named in various C5i projects.

    Thorough reporting by Mexican outlets such as Proceso, Zeta Tijuana, Norte Digital, and Zona Free paint an unsettling picture of Seguritech’s activities over the years.

    Former President Felipe Calderón’s war on drug trafficking, initiated during his 2006-2012 term, marked an important turning point for surveillance in Mexico. As Proceso reported, Seguritech began to secure major government contracts beginning in 2007, receiving its first billion-peso deal in 2011 with Sinaloa’s state government. In 2013, avoiding the bidding process, the company secured a 6-billion peso contract assigned by Eruviel Ávila, then governor of the state of México (or Edomex, not to be confused with the country of Mexico). During Enrique Peña Nieto’s years as Edomex’s governor, and especially later, as Mexico’s president, Seguritech secured its status among Mexico’s top technology contractors.

    According to Zeta Tijuana, during the six years that Peña Nieto served as president (2012-2018), the company monopolized contracts for the country’s main surveillance and intelligence projects, specifically the C5i centers. As Zeta Tijuana writes:

    “More than 10 C5i units were opened or began construction during Peña Nieto’s six-year term. Federal entities committed budgets in the millions, amid opacity, violating parliamentary processes and administrative requirements. The purchase of obsolete technological equipment was authorized at an overpriced rate, hiding information under the pretext of protecting national security.”

    Zeta Tijuana further cites records from the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property showing that Seguritech registered the term “C5i” as its own brand, an apparent attempt to make it more difficult for other surveillance contractors to provide services under that name to the government.

    Despite promises from government officials that these huge investments in surveillance would improve public safety, the country’s number of violent deaths increased during Peña Nieto’s term in office.

    “What is most shocking is how ineffective Seguritech’s system is,” says Quintana, the spokesperson for FPCDDH. By his analysis, Quintana says, “In five out of six states where Seguritech entered into contracts and provided security services, the annual crime rate shot up in proportions ranging from 11% to 85%.”

    Seguritech has also been criticized for inflated prices, technical failures, and deploying obsolete equipment. According to Norte Digital, only 17% of surveillance cameras were working by the end of the company’s contract with Sinaloa’s state government. Proceso notes the rise of complaints about the malfunctioning of cameras in Cuauhtémoc Delegation (a borough of Mexico City) in 2016. Zeta Tijuana reported on the disproportionate amount the company charged for installing 200 obsolete 2-megapixel cameras in 2018.

    Seguritech’s track record led to formal complaints and judicial cases against the company. The company has responded to this negative attention by hiring services to take down and censor critical stories about its activities published online, according to investigative reports published as part of the Global Investigative Journalism Network’s Forbidden Stories project.

    Yet, none of this information dissuaded Chihuahua’s governor, Maru Campos, from closing a new no-bid contract with Seguritech to develop the Plataforma Centinela project.
    A Cross-Border Collaboration

    The Plataforma Centinela project presents a troubling escalation in cross-border partnerships between states, one that cuts out each nation’s respective federal governments. In April 2022, the states of Texas and Chihuahua signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on reducing “cartels’ human trafficking and smuggling of deadly fentanyl and other drugs” and to “stop the flow of migrants from over 100 countries who illegally enter Texas through Chihuahua.”

    https://www.eff.org/files/2023/09/14/a_new_border_model.png

    While much of the agreement centers around cargo at the points of entry, the document also specifically calls out the various technologies that make up the Plataforma Centinela. In attachments to the agreement, Gov. Campos promises Chihuahua is “willing to share that information with Texas State authorities and commercial partners directly.”

    During a press conference announcing the MOU, Gov. Abbot declared, “Governor Campos has provided me with the best border security plan that I have seen from any governor from Mexico.” He held up a three-page outline and a slide, which were also provided to the public, but also referenced the existence of “a much more extensive detailed memo that explains in nuance” all the aspects of the program.

    Abbott went on to read out a summary of Plataforma Centinela, adding, “This is a demonstration of commitment from a strong governor who is working collaboratively with the state of Texas.”

    Then Campos, in response to a reporter’s question, added: “We are talking about sharing information and intelligence among states, which means the state of Texas will have eyes on this side of the border.” She added that the data collected through the Plataforma Centinela will be analyzed by both the states of Chihuahua and Texas.

    Abbott provided an example of one way the collaboration will work: “We will identify hotspots where there will be an increase in the number of migrants showing up because it’s a location chosen by cartels to try to put people across the border at that particular location. The Chihuahua officials will work in collaboration with the Texas Department of Public Safety, where DPS has identified that hotspot and the Chihuahua side will work from a law enforcement side to disrupt that hotspot.”

    In order to learn more about the scope of the project, EFF sent public records requests to several Texas agencies, including the Governor’s Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the El Paso County Sheriff, and the El Paso Police Department. Not one of the agencies produced records related to the Plataforma Centinela project.

    Meanwhile, Texas is further beefing up its efforts to use technology at the border, including by enacting new laws that formally allow the Texas National Guard and State Guard to deploy drones at the border and authorize the governor to enter compacts with other states to share intelligence and resource to build “a comprehensive technological surveillance system” on state land to deter illegal activity at the border. In addition to the MOU with Chihuahua, Abbott also signed similar agreements with the states of Nuevo León and Coahuila in 2022.
    Two Sides, One Border

    The Plataforma Centinela has enormous potential to violate the rights of one of the largest cross-border populations along the U.S.-Mexico border. But while law enforcement officials are eager to collaborate and traffic data back and forth, advocacy efforts around surveillance too often are confined to their respective sides.

    The Spanish-language press in Mexico has devoted significant resources to investigating the Plataforma Centinela and raising the alarm over its lack of transparency and accountability, as well as its potential for corruption. Yet, the project has received virtually no attention or scrutiny in the United States.

    Fighting back against surveillance of cross-border communities requires cross-border efforts. EFF supports the efforts of advocacy groups in Ciudad Juarez and other regions of Chihuahua to expose the mistakes the Chihuahua government is making with the Plataforma Centinela and call out its mammoth surveillance approach for failing to address the root social issues. We also salute the efforts by local journalists to hold the government accountable. However, U.S-based journalists, activists, and policymakers—many of whom have done an excellent job surfacing criticism of Customs and Border Protection’s so-called virtual wall—must also turn their attention to the massive surveillance that is building up on the Mexican side.

    In reality, there really is no Mexican surveillance and U.S. surveillance. It’s one massive surveillance monster that, ironically, in the name of border enforcement, recognizes no borders itself.

    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/state-chihuahua-building-20-story-tower-ciudad-juarez-surveil-13-cities-and-sta
    #surveillance #tour #surveillance_de_masse #cartographie #visualisation #intelligence_artificielle #AI #IA #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #technologie #Plataforma_Centinela #données #reconnaissance_faciale #caméras_de_surveillance #drones #Seguritech #complexe_militaro-industriel #Mexique

  • L’administration #Biden annonce discrètement qu’elle va financer une section du mur à la frontière avec le #Mexique

    « Construire un mur massif sur toute la frontière sud n’est pas une solution politique sérieuse », avait proclamé Joe Biden lors de son accession à la présidence des Etats-Unis. Son administration a pourtant discrètement annoncé jeudi 5 octobre qu’elle comptait ajouter une nouvelle section au mur frontalier avec le Mexique pour tenter de limiter les arrivées de migrants, reprenant à son compte une mesure phare et controversée de l’ancien président Donald Trump.

    Cette décision a valu à Joe Biden d’être accusé de #volte-face, lui qui avait promis le jour de son entrée en fonction, en janvier 2021, que le contribuable ne payerait plus pour la construction d’un mur. Le démocrate de 80 ans, candidat à sa réélection, a assuré qu’il ne « pouvait pas interrompre » le #financement engagé par son prédécesseur, faute d’avoir pu convaincre le Congrès d’employer ces fonds pour d’autres mesures. Le même jour, la Maison Blanche a fait part de la reprise de vols directs d’expulsion vers le Venezuela pour les immigrés en situation irrégulière, interrompus depuis des années.

    Le ministre de la sécurité intérieure, Alejandro Mayorkas, a expliqué qu’une nouvelle portion de mur serait érigée dans la vallée du #Rio_Grande, à la frontière avec le Mexique. « Il existe actuellement un besoin aigu et immédiat de construire des barrières physiques et des routes à proximité de la frontière des Etats-Unis afin d’empêcher les entrées illégales », a-t-il déclaré dans un avis officiel publié par le registre fédéral des Etats-Unis. Plus de 245 000 tentatives d’entrées illégales ont été enregistrées sur une dizaine de mois jusqu’au début d’août, selon l’administration.

    Le ministre a ensuite assuré sur le réseau social X (ex-Twitter) que des passages de l’avis officiel avaient été « sortis de leur contexte » et a affirmé : « Il n’y a pas de nouvelle politique concernant le mur à la frontière. Nous avons toujours dit clairement qu’un mur n’était pas une solution. »

    Au Mexique, le président Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, qui rencontre jeudi le chef de la diplomatie américaine, Antony Blinken, a jugé qu’il s’agissait d’un « pas en arrière ». « Cette autorisation pour la construction du mur est un pas en arrière parce qu’elle ne résout pas le problème, nous devons nous attaquer aux causes » de l’immigration illégale, a réagi le président mexicain.

    Des fonds approuvés sous la présidence de Donald Trump

    « L’argent était prévu pour le mur frontalier. J’ai essayé de convaincre [les républicains au Congrès] d’allouer les fonds à autre chose, de les rediriger. Ils n’ont pas voulu », s’est défendu Joe Biden. « En attendant, il n’est pas possible légalement d’utiliser cet argent pour autre chose que ce pour quoi il a été prévu », a poursuivi le démocrate pour justifier une décision vivement critiquée par certains élus de son parti, en particulier dans l’aile gauche.

    M. Mayorkas a expliqué de son côté que les fonds pour « les barrières physiques supplémentaires » viendraient d’une dotation approuvée par le Congrès dans ce but précis en 2019, quand M. Trump était au pouvoir. L’immigration illégale est un problème politique croissant pour M. Biden, que les républicains accusent de laxisme.

    Donald Trump, son rival et favori de la droite pour la prochaine élection présidentielle, n’a pas manqué de réagir. L’annonce de l’administration Biden montre que « j’avais raison quand j’ai construit 900 km (…) d’un mur frontalier tout beau, tout neuf », a-t-il écrit sur sa plate-forme Truth Social. « Joe Biden s’excusera-t-il auprès de moi et de l’Amérique pour avoir mis si longtemps à bouger et avoir permis que notre pays soit inondé de 15 millions d’immigrants illégaux, venant de lieux inconnus ? », a-t-il ajouté.

    Les républicains ont fait de l’immigration l’un de leurs angles d’attaque favoris contre la Maison Blanche. L’aile droite du parti s’oppose par exemple au déblocage de fonds supplémentaires pour l’Ukraine, estimant que cet argent devrait plutôt servir à lutter contre la crise migratoire.

    Le sénateur conservateur Lindsey Graham a demandé de lier les deux sujets, alors que le Congrès américain doit voter sur un nouveau budget, et donc sur une éventuelle rallonge pour l’Ukraine, avant le 17 novembre, sous peine de paralysie de l’Etat fédéral.

    Reprise des expulsions vers le Venezuela

    La Maison Blanche s’est défendue d’utiliser la construction du mur pour marchander le soutien des parlementaires républicains à un nouvel effort financier en faveur des Ukrainiens : « Je ne ferais pas le lien entre les deux », a assuré Karine Jean-Pierre.

    Concernant le Venezuela, l’administration Biden va reprendre dans les prochains jours les expulsions directes par avion, suspendues depuis des années en raison de la situation sécuritaire très dégradée dans ce pays.

    Le département d’Etat a précisé que les autorités de Caracas avaient accepté de recevoir leurs ressortissants ainsi renvoyés. Le gouvernement vénézuélien a confirmé, dans un communiqué, que les deux pays avaient « conclu un accord permettant de rapatrier de manière organisée, sûre et légale des citoyens vénézuéliens depuis les Etats-Unis ».

    Les Vénézuéliens sont l’une des nationalités les plus représentées parmi les migrants qui arrivent régulièrement à la frontière sud des Etats-Unis. Cette reprise des expulsions directes vise des personnes entrées sur le territoire américain après le 31 juillet 2023. Pour ceux qui se trouvaient sur le sol américain avant cette date, Washington avait récemment annoncé l’octroi de 500 000 permis temporaires de séjour.

    Selon l’ONU, plus de sept millions de personnes ont fui le Venezuela depuis l’effondrement de son économie. Le régime du président Nicolas Maduro est visé par des sanctions de Washington, qui n’a pas reconnu sa réélection en 2018.

    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/10/05/l-administration-biden-annonce-discretement-qu-elle-va-financer-une-section-
    #Joe_Biden #frontières #USA #Etats-Unis #murs #barrières_frontalières #renvois #expulsions #Venezuela

    • ‘Stabbed in the back’ : Biden’s border wall U-turn leaves Indigenous and climate groups reeling

      Rio Grande communities feel like the ‘sacrificial lamb’ in a political war as climate activists and environmentalists call foul

      The Biden administration’s decision to waive environmental, public health and cultural protections to speed new border wall construction has enraged environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and community groups in the Rio Grande valley.

      “It was disheartening and unexpected,” said Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), amid concerns of the impact on essential corridors for wild cats and endangered plants in the area. “This is a new low, a horrific step backwards for the borderlands.”

      This is the first time a Democratic administration has issued such waivers for border wall construction, and for Joe Biden, it’s a marked departure from campaign promises and his efforts to be seen as a climate champion.

      “I see the Biden administration playing a strategic game for elections,” said Michelle Serrano, co-director of Voces Unidas RGV, an immigrants rights and community advocacy group based in the Rio Grande valley. The many rural, immigrant and Indigenous communities that live in the region have become “the sacrificial lamb” for politicians looking to score points, she added.

      As the climate crisis fuels ecological decline, extreme weather and mass migration, the administration’s move is especially upsetting, she added. “Building a border wall is counterproductive,” she said.

      “This is an inhumane response to immigration,” said Michele Weindling, the electoral director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate justice group. “The right thing to do would be to treat immigrants with compassion and address the root cause of what is forcing people to have to leave their countries, which is the climate crisis.”

      Following the administration’s decision to approve the Willow drilling project in Alaska and renege on a promise to end new drilling, the border wall construction will likely further alienate young voters, she said: “Biden has already caused distrust among young voters. This is another and horrendous reversal of promises he made on the campaign trail, which is a dangerous move to make ahead of 2024.”

      Among the 26 environmental and cultural protections the administration is waiving are the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

      The administration’s proposed 20 new miles of a “border barrier system” in Starr county, Texas, cuts near the lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuge. Construction would bisect fields where the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe and other tribes source peyote for sacramental use. It would also cut through or near old village sites and trails.

      “By developing this, they are furthering a genocide,” said Juan Mancias, the chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, who has been battling border wall construction though tribal cultural sites and graveyards through multiple US administrations. Colonizers “killed our people in the first place, and we had to bury – then you dig them up to build. It’s ongoing genocide”, he said.

      The new sections of border wall would cut through “some of the most rural, peaceful sections of the Rio Grande”, said Jordahl, who recently canoed down the stretch of river where the administration plans its construction. “It was one of the most serene experiences I have ever had on the border. There were orioles flapping their wings in the sky, kingfishers, great blue herons.”

      CBD believes the construction will set back the recovery of endangered ocelots, and cut off wildlife corridors essential to the spotted wildcats’ long-term survival. Two endangered plants, the Zapata bladderpod and prostrate milkweed, would also be threatened by wall construction, according to the CBD.

      The waivers were announced just a month after the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency, released a dire report finding that border wall construction during the Trump administration had destroyed towering saguaro cactuses in Arizona, threatened ocelots in Texas and dynamited Indigenous cultural sites and burial grounds. The report urged US Customs and Border Protection and the interior department to develop a plan to ease the damage.

      In fueling Donald Trump’s zeal to build a “big, beautiful wall” at the US-Mexico border, his administration issued waivers that suspended 84 federal laws including protections pertaining to clean air and water, endangered species, public lands and the rights of Native Americans. The Biden administration rescinded one of the prior administration’s waivers in June.

      In July, the federal government agreed in a settlement to pay $1.2bn to repair environmental damages and protect wildlife affected by sections of border wall construction. Several states as well as the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition had challenged Trump’s use of military construction and of treasury department forfeiture funds to build parts of the wall.

      Now, the president who once vowed that “not another foot of wall would be constructed” under his watch has had his administration issue further waivers to speed wall construction. He has argued that his administration is compelled to construct border barriers, because money to fund its construction was already allocated by Congress. “I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money. They didn’t,” Biden told reporters. Asked if he thought the border wall worked, he responded, “No.”

      Environmental advocates have disputed the president’s claim that there was no choice but to move ahead with border wall construction. The administration was not obligated to waive environmental and public health protections to speed the work, they argue.

      “It’s absolutely mystifying as to why they thought it was a good idea to issue these waivers,” Jordhal said. “They could have moved forward with the Endangered Species Act still intact, so endangered wildlife and these areas would have had protections.” Keeping environmental, health and cultural protections in place would also have allowed local communities to provide input on the proposed construction and its impact, he added.

      “I’m angry,” said Nayda Alvarez, who spent years fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to seize land that her family has held for at least five generations to build the border wall. “Biden didn’t keep his promises – what happened to his word?”

      Even after the lawsuit to take her property along the Rio Grande was dropped, Alvarez said, she remained uncertain and uneasy – and continued to voice her concerns about the ecological damage caused by border barriers. “We thought maybe we’d be OK with a Democrat as president, and now Biden did this. We’re being stabbed in the back.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/06/biden-border-wall-indigenous-climate-rio-grande
      #peuples_autochtones #nature

      –-

      A mettre en lien aussi avec les conséquences sur la #faune et la #nature de la construction de #barrières_frontalières :
      https://seenthis.net/messages/515608
      #wildlife

  • Au Mexique, 11 policiers reconnus coupables du meurtre de 17 migrants à la frontière avec les Etats-Unis
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/09/15/au-mexique-11-policiers-reconnus-coupables-du-meurtre-de-17-migrants-a-la-fr

    Au Mexique, 11 policiers reconnus coupables du meurtre de 17 migrants à la frontière avec les Etats-Unis
    Douze policiers, faisant partie d’une unité d’élite, ont été accusés de meurtre. Mais l’un d’entre eux a accepté de coopérer avec le bureau du procureur de l’Etat mexicain de Tamaulipas et a été reconnu coupable d’abus de pouvoir.
    Le Monde avec AFP
    A l’issue de trois mois de procès, le juge Patricio Lugo Jaramillo a déclaré coupable 11 policiers du meurtre de 17 migrants originaires d’Amérique centrale, « tués par balles et brûlés par la suite » à la frontière avec les Etats-Unis en 2021, a annoncé le bureau du procureur de l’Etat mexicain de Tamaulipas. Les peines doivent être prononcées dans les prochains jours et pourraient aller jusqu’à cinquante ans de réclusion. Un douzième fonctionnaire de police est reconnu coupable d’abus de pouvoir.
    Les faits remontent au 23 janvier 2021 quand les autorités découvrent une camionnette incendiée contenant les restes calcinés de 19 personnes. La quasi-totalité d’entre elles sont des migrants venus du Guatemala pour tenter d’entrer illégalement aux Etats-Unis via le Mexique. Leurs corps ont été retrouvés à Camargo, une commune de l’Etat de Tamaulipas, dans le nord-est du pays, le long de la frontière avec les Etats-Unis.
    Parmi les 19 victimes, les restes de deux Mexicains ont été identifiés comme étant ceux des passeurs ayant conduit les migrants jusqu’à la frontière avec les Etats-Unis, selon les autorités. Ce meurtre fait partie des plus sanglants jamais recensés au Mexique, où les exilés tentant de rejoindre les Etats-Unis s’exposent à de nombreux dangers. En août 2010, un groupe de 72 migrants avait été assassiné par des narcotrafiquants présumés, dans le même Etat de Tamaulipas.
    Sur les douze policiers accusés de meurtre, un a accepté de coopérer avec le bureau du procureur et a été reconnu coupable d’abus de pouvoir. Ils faisaient tous partie d’une unité d’élite de la police et avaient d’abord affirmé avoir trouvé les corps des migrants assassinés.
    C’est le fonctionnaire coopérant avec les autorités mexicaines qui a révélé que c’étaient eux qui avaient tiré sur les migrants avant d’incendier leurs corps retrouvés à Camargo. L’Etat de Taumalipas, situé sur la côte du golfe du Mexique, est le plus court chemin pour arriver aux Etats-Unis en venant du sud. Mais la région est dangereuse en raison de la présence de bandes, qui enlèvent, rançonnent et assassinent des migrants. Le Mexique est par ailleurs secoué par des violences qui ont fait plus de 420 000 morts depuis décembre 2006, date à laquelle le gouvernement fédéral a lancé une opération militaire controversée de lutte contre la drogue. La vague de violences a submergé le système judiciaire et les meurtres restent en majorité impunis.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#mexique#violence#sante#mortalite#droit#frontiere#routemigratoire#police#postcovid

  • Frontière entre États-Unis et Mexique : la route la plus meurtrière au monde pour les #migrants | ONU Info
    https://news.un.org/fr/story/2023/09/1138437

    Au moins 686 décès et disparitions de migrants ont été recensés à la frontière entre les #États-Unis et le #Mexique en 2022, a indiqué mardi l’Agence de l’ONU pour les migrations, relevant que cet itinéraire terrestre reste le plus meurtrier jamais enregistré pour les migrants dans le monde.

  • #Histoire du canicide
    https://laviedesidees.fr/Arnaud-Exbalin-La-grande-tuerie-des-chiens

    Du #Mexique à l’Europe, les massacres en masse de chiens indésirables au XIXe siècle apparaissent comme une répétition des holocaustes humains du XXe siècle. À propos de : Arnaud Exbalin, La grande tuerie des chiens. Mexico en Occident, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle, Champ Vallon

    #crime_organisé #civilisation #animaux
    https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/pdf/20230914_chiens.pdf
    https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/docx/20230914_chiens.docx

    • Le chien inuit canadien
      https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/fr/article/chien-inuit-du-canada

      Des années 1950 jusqu’aux années 1970, la Gendarmerie royale du Canada et d’autres autorités gouvernementales ont abattu des milliers de chiens de traîneau et pratiquement exterminé la race, sauvée depuis grâce à un programme de revitalisation.

      [...]

      Les chiens inuits canadiens descendent de ceux qu’utilisaient les gens de Thulé, les ancêtres des Inuits, il y a environ un millier d’années. On sait grâce à l’archéologie que les gens de Thulé, en attelant leurs chiens à des traîneaux, ont pu voyager et transporter des marchandises rapidement et efficacement dans tout l’Arctique et les régions subarctiques

      [...]

      Dans les années 1920, on estime qu’il y avait entre 10 000 et 20 000 chiens inuits dans le Grand Nord canadien. En 1963, un seul « chien esquimau canadien » figure au registre du Club Canin Canadien, et la race est déclarée éteinte.

      #canicide #inuits #Nunavut #Canada

  • GRAIN | Les avocats de la colère
    https://grain.org/fr/article/6986-les-avocats-de-la-colere

    Les entreprises californiennes ont créé des filiales au Mexique et ont commencé à s’approvisionner directement auprès des producteurs, allant jusqu’à installer leurs propres usines de conditionnement dans le Michoacán[31]. Une étude estime qu’en 2005, Mission Produce, Calavo Growers, West Pak, Del Monte, Fresh Directions, et Chiquita concentraient 80 % des importations étasuniennes d’avocats du Mexique[32].

    Actuellement, l’état fédéral du Michoacán représente 75 % de la production nationale, suivi du Jalisco avec 10 % et de l’Edomex, avec 5%[33]. En 2019, on pouvait déjà voir comment l’agrobusiness d’exportation était l’acteur central du champ autour duquel se sont articulées les politiques publiques. S’ils ont réussi à rentabiliser cette entreprise, c’est en obéissant aux stratégies de domination de l’agro-industrie de l’avocat et à ses impacts sur le territoire, en particulier sur les modes de vie paysans et communautaires[34]. Le boom de l’avocat au Mexique dépend aujourd’hui de l’abattage de forêts entières et a souvent recours à des incendies ou à des coupes sauvages pour faire de la place à d’autres vergers d’avocats, engloutissant les ressources en eau de localités et de régions entières. Les coûts sociaux aussi sont extrêmement élevés.

    #agroalimentaire #mexique #usa #néolibéralisme #consommation #agriculture

  • How US Immigration Policy Foments Organized Crime on the US-Mexico Border
    https://insightcrime.org/investigations/unintended-consequences-us-immigration-policy-foments-organized-crime-

    Since the mid-1990s, the US government has relied on an immigration strategy deemed “prevention through deterrence.” The idea was simple: If you make it more difficult for people to cross into the United States, then the number who tried would dwindle.

    However, the policies have had numerous unintended consequences, including bolstering criminal organizations along the US-Mexico border. Today, human smuggling has transformed into one of the most lucrative industries for crime groups, which have diversified beyond their traditional criminal activities of smuggling drugs and weapons.

    But the powerful organized crime groups operating along the US-Mexico border have also taken advantage in other ways, particularly through extorting migrants and targeted kidnappings for ransom. Official corruption also expanded as the US government increased its reliance on third countries like #Mexico for enforcement and pushed migrants to remain in these countries.

    #USA #ÉtatsUnis #Mexique #migration

  • Mexique (Chiapas) : Déclaration nationale et internationale face à l’agression de la communauté Moisés Gandhi // Mobilisation du 8 juin 2023 | Solidaires
    https://solidaires.org/sinformer-et-agir/actualites-et-mobilisations/internationales/mexique-chiapas-declaration-nationale-et-internationale-face-a-lagressio

    Juin 2023

    Aux peuples du Mexique et du monde,

    Aux personnes, collectifs et peuples qui défendent la Vie,

    À celleux qui ressentent l’urgence d’agir face à l’embrasement du Sud-Est mexicain.

    En ce jour, en cet instant, le Mexique est à la limite, cette limite qui semble toujours lointaine jusqu’à ce qu’une balle arrivée d’en haut serve de détonateur à la colère du Mexique d’en bas. Le compagnon zapatiste Jorge López Santíz est entre la vie et la mort, à cause d’une attaque paramilitaire de l’Organisation Régionale des Caféiculteurs d’Ocosingo (ORCAO), la même organisation qui a attaqué et harcelé les communautés zapatistes. Le Chiapas est au bord de la guerre civile, entre les paramilitaires et les assassins des divers cartels (de narcotrafic) qui se disputent le contrôle du territoire et les groupes d’autodéfense, avec la complicité active ou passive des gouvernements (du Chiapas) de Rutilio Escandón Cadenas et (fédéral) de Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

    L’Armée Zapatiste de Libération Nationale (#EZLN), qui a maintenu la paix et a développé son projet autonome dans ses territoires, qui s’est efforcée d’éviter l’affrontement violent avec les paramilitaires et avec d’autres forces de l’État mexicain, est sans cesse harcelée, agressée et provoquée. Depuis la fin du XXème siècle, et jusqu’à maintenant, l’EZLN a choisi la lutte politique par des voies civiles et pacifiques, malgré les attaques à balles réelles contre ses communautés, malgré les incendies de ses cultures et l’empoisonnement de son bétail. Malgré le fait que les zapatistes, au lieu de consacrer leurs efforts à la guerre, ont monté des hôpitaux, des écoles et des gouvernements autonomes qui ont bénéficié tant aux zapatistes qu’aux non-zapatistes, les gouvernements depuis Carlos Salinas jusqu’à López Obrador ont tenté de les isoler, de les délégitimer et de les exterminer. Aujourd’hui, à quelques mois de l’anniversaire des 40 années d’existence de la lutte de l’EZLN, l’attaque paramilitaire de l’ORCAO a fait que la vie d’un homme ne tient plus qu’à un fil, comme plus grand-chose ne retient l’éruption du Mexique, qui en bas ne supporte plus la pression sur sa dignité ni la guerre contre ses communautés et territoires.

    #Chiapas #Mexique

  • Au Mexique, découverte de 45 sacs contenant des restes humains
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/06/03/au-mexique-decouverte-de-45-sacs-contenant-des-restes-humains_6176015_3210.h

    Quarante-cinq sacs contenant des restes humains ont été découverts dans un ravin de l’Etat de Jalisco, dans l’ouest du #Mexique, au cours de recherches menées pour retrouver huit jeunes travailleurs d’un centre d’appels portés disparus depuis une dizaine de jours, selon les autorités locales.
    [...]
    Ces dernières années, des restes humains ont été retrouvés dans des sacs ou dans des tombes clandestines dans différentes zones de l’Etat de Jalisco, où plus de 15 000 personnes ont disparu depuis 1962. En 2021, 70 sacs contenant les restes humains appartenant à 11 personnes avaient été découverts à Tonala, près de Guadalajara.

    Le Mexique a enregistré plus de 340 000 meurtres et quelque 100 000 #disparitions, principalement attribués à des organisations criminelles, depuis le lancement, en décembre 2006, d’une vaste opération militaire controversée destinée à lutter contre le narcotrafic.

  • Il costo nascosto dell’avocado e le nuove “zone di sacrificio” nelle mire dei grandi produttori

    La produzione globale del frutto viaggia verso le 12 milioni di tonnellate nel 2030. Le monocolture intensive interessano sempre più Paesi, compromettendo falde e biodiversità. Dalla Colombia allo Sri Lanka, dal Vietnam al Malawi. Grain ha analizzato la paradigmatica situazione del Messico, dove si concentra il 40% della produzione.

    “La salsa guacamole che viene consumata durante il Super bowl potrebbe riempire 30 milioni di caschi da football”. La stima è di Armando López, direttore esecutivo dell’Associazione messicana dei coltivatori, confezionatori ed esportatori di avocado, che in occasione della finale del campionato di football americano del 12 febbraio scorso ha pagato quasi sette miliardi di dollari per avere uno spazio pubblicitario in occasione dell’evento sportivo più seguito degli Stati Uniti.

    Solo pochi giorni prima, il 2 febbraio, era stata presentata una denuncia contro il governo del Messico presso la Commissione trilaterale per la cooperazione ambientale (organismo istituito nell’ambito dell’accoro di libero scambio tra il Paese, Stati Uniti e Canada) per non aver fatto rispettare le proprie leggi sulla deforestazione, la conservazione delle acque e l’uso del suolo.

    La notizia ha trovato spazio per qualche giorno sui media statunitensi proprio per la concomitanza con il Super bowl, il momento in cui il consumo della salsa a base di avocado tocca il picco. Ed è anche il punto partenza del report “The avocados of wrath” curato da Grain, rete di organizzazioni che lavorano per sostenere i piccoli agricoltori e i movimenti sociali, e dall’organizzazione messicana Colectivo por la autonomia, che torna a lanciare l’allarme sull’altissimo costo ambientale di questo frutto.

    La denuncia presentata alla Commissione trilaterale si concentra sulla situazione nello Stato del Michoacán, che produce il 75% degli avocado messicani. Qui tra il 2000 e il 2020 la superficie dedicata alla coltura è passata da 78mila a 169mila ettari a scapito delle foreste di abeti locali. Oltre alla deforestazione, il documento pone in rilievo lo sfruttamento selvaggio delle risorse idriche, oltre a un uso eccessivo di fertilizzanti e pesticidi che compromettono le falde sotterranee, i fiumi e i torrenti nelle aree limitrofe alle piantagioni.

    “Il Messico non riesce ad applicare efficacemente le sue leggi ambientali per proteggere gli ecosistemi forestali e la qualità dell’acqua dagli impatti ambientali negativi della produzione di avocado nel Michoacán”, denunciano i curatori. Il Paese nordamericano “non sta rispettando le disposizioni della Costituzione messicana e le varie leggi federali sulla valutazione dell’impatto ambientale, la conservazione delle foreste, lo sviluppo sostenibile, la qualità dell’acqua, il cambiamento climatico e la protezione dell’ambiente”.

    Questa vicenda giudiziaria, di cui non si conoscono ancora gli esiti, rappresenta per Grain un’occasione per guardare più da vicino il Paese e la produzione dell’avocado, diventato negli ultimi anni il terzo frutto più commercializzato al mondo, dopo banana e ananas: nel 2021 la produzione globale di questo frutto, infatti, ha raggiunto quota 8,8 milioni di tonnellate (si stima che possa raggiungere le 12 milioni di tonnellate nel 2030) e il 40% si concentra proprio in Messico, una quota che secondo le stime della Fao potrebbe arrivare al 63% entro il 2030.

    Statunitensi ed europei importano circa il 70% della produzione globale e la domanda è in continua crescita anche per effetto di intense campagne di marketing che ne promuovono i benefici nutrizionali. Di conseguenza dal 2011 a oggi le piantagioni di avocado hanno moltiplicato per quattro la loro superficie in Paesi come Colombia, Haiti, Marocco e Repubblica Dominicana. In Sri Lanka la superficie è aumentata di cinque volte. La produzione intensiva è stata avviata anche in Vietnam e Malawi che oggi rientrano tra i primi venti produttori a livello globale.

    Il mercato di questo frutto vale circa 14 miliardi di dollari e potrebbe toccare i 30 miliardi nel 2030: “La maggiore quota di profitti -riporta Grain- vanno a una manciata di gruppi imprenditoriali, fortemente integrati verticalmente e che continuano a espandersi in nuovi Paesi, dove stanno aprendo succursali”. È il caso, ad esempio, delle società californiane Misison Produce e Calvaro Growers. La prima ha aumentato costantemente le sue vendite nel corso degli ultimi anni, fino a superare di poco il miliardo dollari nel 2022, mentre la seconda ha registrato nello stesso anno vendite per 1,1 miliardi.

    “Queste aziende hanno basato la loro espansione su investimenti da parte di pesi massimi del mondo della finanza -scrive Grain-. Mission Produce e Calavo Growers sono quotate alla Borsa di New York e stanno attirando investimenti da parte di fondi hedge come BlackRock e Vanguard. Stiamo assistendo all’ingresso di fondi di private equity e fondi pensione nel settore degli avocado. Mission Produce, ad esempio, si è unita alla società di private equity Criterion Africa partners per lanciare la produzione di oltre mille ettari di avocado a Selokwe, in Sudafrica”.

    Per Grain guardare da vicino a quello che è accaduto in Messico e al modello produttivo messo in atto dalle aziende dell’agribusiness californiane è utile per comprendere a pieno i rischi che incombono sui Paesi che solo in anni recenti hanno avviato la coltivazione del frutto. Lo sguardo si concentra in particolare sullo Stato del Michoacán dove il boom delle piantagioni è avvenuto a scapito della distruzione delle foreste locali, consumando le risorse idriche di intere regioni e a un costo sociale altissimo.

    Secondo i dati di Grain, ogni ettaro coltivato ad avocado in Messico consuma circa 100mila litri di acqua al mese. Si stima che Perù, Sudafrica, Cile, Israele e Spagna utilizzino 25 milioni di metri cubi d’acqua, l’equivalente di 10mila piscine olimpioniche, per produrre gli avocado importati nel Regno Unito. “Mentre continua a spremere le ultime falde già esaurite in Messico, California e Cile, l’industria del settore sta migrando verso altre ‘zone di sacrificio’ -si legge nel report-. Per irrigare l’arida Valle di Olmos in Perù, dove operano le aziende californiane, il governo locale ha realizzato uno dei megaprogetti più contestati e segnati dalla corruzione del Paese: un tunnel di venti chilometri che attraversa la cordigliera delle Ande per portare l’acqua deviata dal fiume Huancabamba a Olmos”. All’eccessivo sfruttamento delle risorse idriche si aggiunge poi il massiccio utilizzo di prodotti chimici nelle piantagioni: nel solo Michoacán, la coltura dell’avocado si porta dietro ogni anno 450mila litri di insetticidi, 900mila tonnellate di fungicidi e 30mila tonnellate di fertilizzanti.

    https://altreconomia.it/il-costo-nascosto-dellavocado-e-le-nuove-zone-di-sacrificio-nelle-mire-
    #avocat #agriculture #Mexique #globalisation #mondialisation #cartographie #visualisation #Michoacán #déforestation #produits_phytosanitaires #fertilisants #pesticides #plantation #fruits #Misison_Produce #Calvaro_Growers #multinationales #financiarisation #bourse #hedge_funds #private_equity #Criterion_Africa #industrie_agro-alimentaire #eau #Pérou #Huancabamba #Olmos #exploitation #insecticides

    • The Avocados of Wrath

      This little orchard will be part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner. This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries too... Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten… In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

      So wrote John Steinbeck when, perhaps for the first time, the immense devastation provoked by capitalist agribusiness, the subsequent expulsion of peasant families from the Midwest, and their arrival in California in the 1930s became visible.[1] Perhaps, if he were writing today, he would replace grapes with avocados. The business model for this popular tropical fruit is the epitome of agribusiness recrudescent, causing rampant deforestation and water diversion, the eradication of other modes of agriculture, and the expulsion of entire communities from the land.

      Avocados are, after bananas and pineapples, the world’s third-largest fruit commodity. Their production is taking up an ever-growing area and continually expanding into new countries. What are the implications of this worldwide expansion? What forces are driving it? How does this model, working on both global and local scales, manage to keep prices high? How did the current boom, with avocados featured at major sporting events and celebrations of all kinds, come to pass? What are the social repercussions of this opaque business?

      We begin the story on 12 February 2023 in Kansas City at the 57th Super Bowl, American football’s premier annual event. A month earlier, more than 2000 km away in Michoacán, Mexico, tens of thousands of tons of avocados were being packed for shipping. The United States imports 40% of global avocado production and the Super Bowl is when consumption peaks. “The guacamole eaten during the Super Bowl alone would fill 30 million football helmets,” says Armando López, executive director of the Mexican Association of Avocado Growers, Packers, and Exporters (APEAM), which paid nearly $7 million for a Super Bowl ad.[2]

      Despite its limited coverage in US media, the dark side of avocado production was the unwelcome guest at this year’s event. A complaint against the Government of Mexico had recently been filed with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation under the USMCA, accusing the government of tolerating the ecocidal impacts of avocado production in Michoacán.[3]

      Mexico can be seen as a proving ground for today’s avocado industry. Focusing on this country helps tell the story of how the avocado tree went from being a relic of evolutionary history to its current status as an upstart commodity characterized by violence and media-driven consumerism.

      Booming world production

      For a decade now, avocados have been the growth leaders among tropical fruit commodities.[4] Mexico, the world’s largest exporter, accounts for 40% of total production. According to OECD and FAO projections, this proportion could reach 63% in 2030. The United States absorbs 80% of Mexican avocado exports, but production is ramping up in many other countries.

      In 2021, global production reached 8.8 million tons, one third of which was exported, for a value of $7.4 billion. By 2030, production is expected to reach 12 million tons. Within a decade, the average area under cultivation doubled in the world’s ten largest producer countries (see Figure 1). It quadrupled in Colombia, Haiti, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic, and quintupled in Zimbabwe. Production has taken off at a gallop in Malawi and Vietnam as well, with both countries now ranking among the top 20 avocado producers.

      The top 10 countries account for 80% of total production. In some of these, such as Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Kenya (see Table 1), the crop is largely grown for export. Its main markets are the United States and Europe, which together make up 70% of global imports. While Mexico supplies its neighbour to the north all year long, the avocados going to Europe come from Peru, South Africa, and Kenya in the summer and from Chile, Mexico, Israel, and Spain in the winter.[5] The Netherlands, as the main port of entry for the European Union, has become the world’s third-leading exporter.

      Other markets are rapidly opening up in Asia. Kenya, Ethiopia, and recently Tanzania have begun exporting to India and China,[6] while Chinese imports from Peru, Mexico, and Chile are also on the rise. In 2021, despite the pandemic, these imports surpassed 41,000 tons.[7] In addition, US avocado companies have begun cutting costs by sourcing from China, Yunnan province in particular.[8]

      The multimillion dollar “#green_gold” industry

      According to some estimates, the global avocado market was worth $14 billion in 2021 and could reach $30 billion by 2030.[10] The biggest profits go to a handful of vertically integrated groups that are continuing to fan out to new countries, where they are setting up subsidiaries. They have also tightened their control over importers in the main global hubs.
      For two examples, consider the California-based Mission Produce and Calavo Growers. In 2021, Mission Produce reported sales equivalent to 3% of global production,[11] and its sales have risen steadily over the last decade, reaching $1.045 billion in 2022.[12] The United States buys 80% of the company’s volume, with Europe, Japan, and China being other large customers, and it imports from Peru, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, and Israel. It controls 8600 hectares in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia.[13]

      Calavo Growers, for its part, had total sales of $1.191 billion in 2022.[14] More than half its revenues came from packing and distribution of Mexican, US, Peruvian, and Colombian avocados.[15] The United States is far and away its biggest market, but in 2021 it began stepping up Mexican exports to Europe and Asia.[16]

      South Africa-based Westfalia Fruits is another relevant company in the sector. It has 1200 hectares in South Africa and is expanding to other African and Latin American countries. It controls 1400 hectares in Mozambique and has taken over large exporters such as Aztecavo (Mexico), Camet (Peru), and Agricom (Chile).[17] Its main markets are Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia.[18] Some of its subsidiaries are incorporated in the tax haven of Delaware, and it has acquired importers in the UK and Germany.[19]

      These companies have based their expansion on investment from heavyweight players in the world of finance. Mission Produce and Calavo Growers are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and are attracting investment from such concerns as BlackRock and The Vanguard Group.[20] We are also seeing private equity, endowment, and pension funds moving into avocados; Mission Produce, for example, joined with private equity firm Criterion Africa Partners to launch production of over 1000 hectares of avocados in Selokwe (South Africa).[21]

      In 2020, Westfalia sold shares in Harvard Management Company, the company that manages Harvard University’s endowment fund.[22] Also involved is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which in 2017 acquired Australia’s second-largest avocado grower, Jasper Farms. PSP Investments, which manages Canada’s public service sector pensions, made a controversial acquisition of 16,500 hectares in Hawaii for production of avocado, among other crops, and faces grave accusations deriving from its efforts to monopolize the region’s water supply.[23]

      Finally, it has to be emphasized that the expansion enjoyed by these companies has been aided by public funding. For example, South Africa’s publicly owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) have supported Westfalia’s incursions into Africa and Latin America under the guise of international development.[24]

      A proving ground for profit and devastation

      To take the full measure of the risks looming over the new areas being brought under the industrial avocado model, it is important to read Mexico as a proving ground of sorts. The country has become the world’s largest producer through a process bound up with the dynamics of agribusiness in California, where avocado production took its first steps in the early twentieth century. The US market grew rapidly, protected from Mexican imports by a 1914 ban predicated on an alleged threat of pests coming into the country.

      This was the genesis of Calavo Growers (1924) and Henry Avocado (1925). California began exporting to Europe and expanding the area under cultivation, reaching a peak of 30,000 hectares in the mid-1980s, when Chile began competing for the same markets.[29] It was then that consortia of California avocado producers founded West Pak and Mission Produce, and the latter of these soon began operations as an importer of Chilean avocados. In 1997, 60% of US avocado purchases came from Chile, but the business collapsed with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[30] Lobbying by APEAM and the US companies then led to the lifting of the ban on Mexican imports. With liberalization under NAFTA, Mexican avocado exports multiplied by a factor of 13, and their commercial value by a factor of 40, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

      The California corporations set up subsidiaries in Mexico and began buying directly from growers, going as far as to build their own packing plants in Michoacán.[31] One study found that by 2005, Mission Produce, Calavo Growers, West Pak, Del Monte, Fresh Directions, and Chiquita had cornered 80% of US avocado imports from Mexico.[32]

      Today, the state of Michoacán monopolizes 75% of the nation’s production, followed by Jalisco with 10% and Mexico state with 5%.[33] In 2019, export-oriented agriculture was a high-profile player in the industry, with public policies being structured around its needs. And if the business had become so profitable, it was because of the strategies of domination that had been deployed by avocado agribusiness and the impacts of these strategies on peasant and community ways of life.[34] The Mexican avocado boom is now reliant on the felling of whole forests. In many cases these are burned down or clear-cut to make way for avocado groves, using up the water supply of localities or even whole regions. The societal costs are enormous.

      In 2021, Mexico produced some 2.5 million tons of avocados; within the preceding decade, nearly 100,000 hectares had been directly or indirectly deforested for the purpose.[35] In Michoacán alone, between 2000 and 2020, the area under avocados more than doubled, from 78,530.25 to 169,939.45 ha.[36] And reforestation cannot easily repair the damage caused by forest destruction: the ecological relationships on which biodiversity depends take a long time to evolve, and the recovery period is even longer after removal of vegetation, spraying of agrotoxins, and drying of the soil.

      In Jalisco, the last decade has seen a tripling of the area under avocado, agave, and berries, competing not only with peasants and the forests stewarded by original peoples, but also with cattle ranchers.[37] “Last year alone,” says Adalberto Velasco Antillón, president of the Jalisco ranchers’ association, “10,000 cattlemen (dairy and beef) went out of business.”[38]

      According to Dr. Ruth Ornelas, who studies the avocado phenomenon in Mexico, the business’s expansion has come in spite of its relative cost-inefficiency. “This is apparent in the price of the product. Extortion garners 1.4% of total revenues,… or 4 to 6 pesos per kilogram of avocados.” It is a tax of sorts, but one that is collected by the groups that control the business, not by the government.[39] According to Francisco Mayorga, minister of agriculture under Vicente Fox and Enrique Calderón, “they collect not only from the farmer but from the packer, the loggers, the logging trucks and the road builders. And they decide, depending on the payments, who gets to ship to Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán and Jalisco. That’s because they have a monopoly on what is shipped to the world’s largest buyer, the United States.”[40]

      By collecting this toll at every link in the chain, they control the whole process, from grower to warehouse to packer to shipper, including refrigeration and the various modes of distribution. And not only do they collect at every step, but they also keep prices high by synchronizing supply from warehouse to consumer.

      Dr. Ornelas says, “They may try to persuade people, but where that doesn’t work, bribes and bullets do the trick. Organized crime functions like a police force in that it plays a certain role in protecting the players within the industry. It is the regulatory authority. It is the tax collector, the customs authority, and the just-in-time supplier. Sadly, the cartels have become a source of employment, hiring halcones [taxi drivers or shoeshine boys working as spies], chemists, and contract killers as required. It seems that they even have economists advising them on how to make the rules.” Mayorga adds: “When these groups are intermingled with governmental structures, there is a symbiosis among growers, criminals, vendors, and input suppliers. If somebody tries to opt out of the system, he may lose his phytosanitary certification and hence his ability to export.” Mayorga stresses that the criminals administer the market and impose a degree of order on it; they oversee the process at the domestic and international levels, “regulating the flow of product so that there is never a glut and prices stay high.” Investment and extortion are also conducive to money laundering. It is very hard to monitor who is investing in the product, how it is produced, and where it is going. Yet the government trumpets avocados as an agri-food success.

      Official data indicate that there are 27,712 farms under 10 hectares in Michoacán, involving 310,000 people and also employing 78,000 temporary workers.[41] These small farms have become enmeshed in avocado capitalism and the pressures it places on forests and water; more importantly, however, the climate of violence keeps the growers in line. In the absence of public policy and governmental controls, and with organized crime having a tight grip on supply chains and world prices, violence certainly plays a role in governance of the industry. But these groups are not the ones who run the show, for they themselves are vertically integrated into multidimensional relationships of violence. It is the investors and large suppliers, leveraged by the endowment, pension, and private equity funds, who keep avocado production expanding around the world.[42]

      A headlong rush down multiple paths

      The Mexican example alerts us to one of the main problems associated with avocado growing, and that is water use. In Mexico, each hectare consumes 100,000 litres per month, on top of the destruction of the biodiverse forests that help preserve the water cycle.[46] A whole other study ought to be devoted to the indiscriminate use of agrotoxins and the resulting groundwater contamination. In Michoacán alone, the avocado crop receives 450,000 litres of insecticides, 900,000 tons of fungicides, and 30,000 tons of fertilizers annually.[47]

      Wherever they are grown, avocados consume an astonishing volume of water. An estimated 25 million m³, or the equivalent of 10,000 Olympic swimming pools, are estimated to be used by Peru, South Africa, Chile, Israel, and Spain to produce the avocados imported into the UK.[48]

      California has maintained its 90% share of the US avocado market, but this situation is not predicted to endure beyond 2050.[49] California’s dire water crisis has been driven to a significant extent by the industrial production of avocados and other fruits, with climate change exacerbating the problem.[50]
      In the Chilean province of Petorca, which accounts for 60% of Chile’s avocado exports, the production of one kilogram of avocados requires 1280 litres of water. Water privatization by the Pinochet dictatorship in 1981 coincided with the rise of the country’s export industry and abetted the development of large plantations, which have drained the rivers and driven out peasant farming.[51] This appears to be one of the reasons why Chile is no longer self-sufficient in this commodity. “We import more than we export now,” said the director of Mission Produce, Steve Barnard, two years ago, stating that avocados were being brought in not only from Peru but also from California.[52]

      Even as it continues to squeeze the last drops of water out of depleted aquifers in Mexico, California, and Chile, the industry is migrating into other sacrifice zones.[53] To water the arid Olmos Valley in Peru, where California’s avocado companies operate, the Peruvian government developed one of the country’s most corrupt and conflict-ridden megaprojects: a 20-km tunnel through the Andes range, built in 2014, to deliver water diverted from the Huancabamba River to Olmos. The project was sold as an “opportunity to acquire farmland with water rights in Peru.”[54]

      Colombia was the next stop on the avocado train, with the crop spreading out across Antioquia and the coffee-growing region, and with even large mining interests joining forces with agribusiness.[55] “Peru is destined to replace much of its avocado land with citrus fruit, which is less water-intensive,” said Pedro Aguilar, manager of Westfalia Fruit Colombia, in 2020, although “water is becoming an absolutely marvelous investment draw, since it is cost-free in Colombia.”[56]

      Sowing the seeds of resistance

      If Mexico has been an experiment in devastation, it has also been an experiment in resistance, as witness the inspiring saga of the Purépecha community of Cherán, Michoacán. In 2012, the community played host to a preliminary hearing of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal that condemned land grabbing, deforestation, land conversion, agrotoxin spraying, water depletion, fires, and the widespread violence wielded against the population. It laid the blame for these plagues squarely on timber theft, the avocado industry, berry greenhouses, and agave production.

      –—

      One year earlier, the population had decided to take matters in hand. They were fed up with this litany of injustices and with the violence being inflicted on them by the paramilitary forces of organized crime. Led by the women, the community took up the arduous task of establishing checkpoints marked out by bonfires (which were also used for cooking) throughout the area. Any institution or group that questioned their collective authority was immediately confronted. The newly created community police force is answerable to the general assembly, which in turn reports to the neighbourhood assemblies. A few years ago, the community gated itself to outsiders while working on restoring the forest and establishing its own horizontal form of government with respect for women, men, children, and elders.

      The community then took another step forward, opting for municipal and community autonomy. This was not a straightforward process, but it did finally lead to approval by the National Electoral Institute for elections to take place under customary law and outside the party system. This example spread to other communities such as Angahuan that are also grappling with agribusiness, corruption, and organized crime.[57]

      Clearly, this struggle for tradition-rooted self-determination is just beginning. The cartels, after all, are pursuing their efforts to subdue whole regions. Meanwhile, for their own defence, the people are continuing to follow these role models and declaring self-government.

      An unsustainable model

      “The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but … men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.”[58]

      Per capita consumption of avocados has kept on growing in the importing countries, driven by intense marketing campaigns promoting the nutritional benefits of this food. In the United States alone, consumption has tripled in 20 years.[59] While avocados are sold as a superfood, a convenient veil remains thrown over what is actually happening at the local level, where the farmers are not the ones benefiting. While this global trend continues, various false solutions are proposed, such as water-saving innovations or so-called “zero deforestation” initiatives.

      In this exploitative model, small- and medium-sized growers are forced to take on all the risk while also bearing the burden of the environmental externalities. The big companies and their investors are largely shielded from the public health and environmental impacts.

      As we have said, the growers are not the ones who control the process; not even organized crime has that power. They are both just cogs in the industrial agri-food system, assisting the destruction it wreaks in order to eke out a share of the colossal dividends it offers. To truly understand the workings of the system, one has to study the supply chain as a whole.

      Given these realities, it is urgent for us to step up our efforts to denounce agribusiness and its corrupting, devastating model. The people must organize to find ways out of this nightmare.

      * Mexico-based Colectivo por la Autonomía works on issues related to territorial defence and peasant affairs, through coordination with other Mexican and Latin American social movement organizations, as well as legal defence and research on the environmental and social impacts experienced by indigenous and rural territories and communities.

      Banner image: Mural in Cherán that tells the story of their struggle. This mural is inside the Casa Comunal and is part of a mural revival throughout the city, where there are collective and individual works in many streets and public buildings. This mural is the work of Marco Hugo Guardián Lemus and Giovanni Fabián Gutiérrez.

      [1] John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath Penguin Classics, 1939, 2006.
      [2] Guillermina Ayala, “López: “Un Súper Bowl con guacamole,” Milenio, 11 February 2023, https://www.milenio.com/negocios/financial-times/exportaciones-de-toneladas-de-aguacate-para-la-final-de-la-nfl.
      [3] The USMCA is the trade agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. See also Isabella González, “Una denuncia lleva a la producción mexicana de aguacate ante la comisión ambiental del T-MEC por ecocidio,” El País, 8 February 2023, https://elpais.com/mexico/2023-02-08/una-denuncia-lleva-a-la-produccion-mexicana-de-aguacate-ante-la-comision-amb.
      [4] In what follows, the sources for production volumes, areas under cultivation, and sales are the FAOSTAT and UN Comtrade databases [viewed 25 January 2023]. The source for 2030 projections is OECD/FAO, OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021–2030, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1787/19428846-en.
      [5] Ruben Sommaruga and Honor May Eldridge, “Avocado Production: Water Footprint and Socio-economic Implications,” EuroChoices 20(2), 13 December 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-692X.12289.
      [6] See George Munene, “Chinese traders plan on increasing Kenyan avocado imports,” Farmbiz Africa, 1 August 2022, https://farmbizafrica.com/market/3792-chinese-traders-plan-on-increasing-kenyan-avocado-imports; Tanzania Invest, “Tanzania sign 15 strategic agreements with China, including avocado exports,” 5 November 2022, https://www.tanzaniainvest.com/economy/trade/strategic-agreements-with-china-samia.
      [7] USDA, "China: 2022 Fresh Avocado Report, 14 November 2022, https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/china-2022-fresh-avocado-report.
      [8] Global AgInvesting, “US-based Mission Produce is developing its first domestic avocado farm in China,” 8 June 2018, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/28223-us-based-mission-produce-is-developing-its-first-domestic-avocad.
      [9] Wageningen University & Research, “Improved mango and avocado chain helps small farmers in Haiti,” 2022, https://www.wur.nl/en/project/improved-mango-and-avocado-chain-helps-small-farmers-in-haiti-1.htm.
      [10] See Grand View Research, “Avocado market size, share & trends analysis report by form (fresh, processed), by distribution channel (B2B, B2C), by region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America, MEA), and segment forecasts, 2022–2030,” 2022, https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/fresh-avocado-market-report; Straits Research, “Fresh avocado market,” 2022, https://straitsresearch.com/report/fresh-avocado-market.
      [11] Mission Produce, “Mission Produce announces fiscal 2021 fourth quarter financial results,” 22 December 2021, https://investors.missionproduce.com/news-releases/news-release-details/mission-produce-announces-fiscal-2021-fourth-quarter-finan.
      [12] Sources: Capital IQ and United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Mission Produce: Form 10-K,” 22 December 2022, https://investors.missionproduce.com/financial-information/sec-filings?items_per_page=10&page=.
      [13] The company reports that it has had avocado plantations since 2011 on three Peruvian farms covering 3900 ha, in addition to producing blueberries on 400 hectares (including greenhouses) as part of a joint venture called Moruga. See Mission Produce, “Investor relations,” December 2022, https://investors.missionproduce.com; United States Securities and Exchange Commission, “Mission Produce: Form 10-K,” 22 December 2022, https://investors.missionproduce.com/financial-information/sec-filings?items_per_page=10&page=1, and https://missionproduce.com/peru.
      [14] Sources: https://ir.calavo.com; Calavo Growers, “Calavo Growers, Inc. announces fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 financial results,” 20 December 2021, https://ir.calavo.com/news-releases/news-release-details/calavo-growers-inc-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2021
      [15] Its main subsidiaries in Mexico are Calavo de México and Avocados de Jalisco; see Calavo Growers, Calavo Growers, Inc. Investor Presentation, 12 December 2022, https://ir.calavo.com/static-files/f4ee2e5a-0221-4b48-9b82-7aad7ca69ea7; United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Calavo Growers, Inc. form 10-K, December 2022, https://ir.calavo.com/static-files/9c13da31-3239-4843-8d91-6cff65c6bbf7.
      [16] Among its main US clients are Kroger (15% of 2022 total sales), Trader Joe’s (11%), and Wal-Mart (10%) Source: Capital IQ. See also “Calavo quiere exportar aguacate mexicano a Europa y Asia,” El Financiero, 8 January 2021, https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/de-jefes/calavo-quiere-exportar-aguacate-mexicano-a-europa-y-asia.
      [17] See IDC, “Westfalia grows an empire,” 2018, https://www.idc.co.za/westfalia-grows-an-empire; IFC, Creating Markets in Mozambique, June 2021, https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/a7accfa5-f36b-4e24-9999-63cffa96df4d/CPSD-Mozambique-v2.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=nMNH.3E; https://www.westfaliafruit.com/about-us/our-operations/westfalia-fruto-mocambique; “Agricom y Westfalia Fruit concretan asociación en Latinoamérica,” Agraria.pe, 9 January 2018, https://agraria.pe/noticias/agricom-y-westfalia-fruit-concretan-asociacion-en-latinoamer-15664.
      [18] Marta del Moral Arroyo, “Prevemos crecer este año un 20% en nuestras exportaciones de palta a Asia y Estados Unidos,” Fresh Plaza, 27 May 2022, https://www.freshplaza.es/article/9431020/prevemos-crecer-este-ano-un-20-en-nuestras-exportaciones-de-palta-a-asia-.
      [19] See https://opencorporates.com/companies?jurisdiction_code=&q=westfalia+fruit&utf8=%E2%9C%93.
      [20] For example, in the case of Calavo Growers, BlackRock controls 16%, Vanguard Group 8%, and five other investment 20%; see Capital IQ, “Nuance Investments increases position in Calavo Growers (CVGW),” Nasdaq, 8 February 2023, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/nuance-investments-increases-position-in-calavo-growers-cvgw; “Vanguard Group increases position in Calavo Growers (CVGW),” Nasdaq, 9 February 2023, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/vanguard-group-increases-position-in-calavo-growers-cvgw.
      [21] Liam O’Callaghan, “Mission announces South African expansion,” Eurofruit, 8 February 2023, https://www.fruitnet.com/eurofruit/mission-announces-south-african-expansion/248273.article. Criterion Africa Partners invests with funds from the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, and the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO) (Source: Preqin).
      [22] Harvard Management Company subsequently spun out its holdings in Westfalia to the private equity fund Solum Partners; see Lynda Kiernan, “HMC investment in Westfalia Fruit International to drive global expansion for avocados,” Global AgInvesting, 17 January 2020, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/29422-hmc-investment-in-westfalia-fruit-international-to-drive-global-; Michael McDonald, “Harvard spins off natural resources team, to remain partner,” Bloomberg, 8 October 2020, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/29894-harvard-spins-off-natural-resources-team-to-remain-partner.
      [23] See “Ontario Teachers’ acquires Australian avocado grower Jasper Farms,” OTPP, 19 December 2017, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/27774-ontario-teachers-acquires-australian-avocado-grower-jasper-farms; “Canadian pension fund invests in ex-plantation privatizing Hawaii’s water,” The Breach, 23 February 2022, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/30782-canadian-pension-fund-invests-in-ex-plantation-privatizing-hawai.
      [24] See https://disclosures.ifc.org/enterprise-search-results-home/42280; https://disclosures.ifc.org/project-detail/SII/40091/westfalia-intl. Westfalia is a subsidiary of the South African logging company Hans Merensky Holdings (HMH), whose main shareholders are the Hans Merensky Foundation (40%), IDC (30%), and CFI (20%) (see https://disclosures.ifc.org/project-detail/SII/42280/westfalia-moz-ii).
      [25] Amanda Landon, “Domestication and significance of Persea americana, the avocado, in Mesoamerica,” Nebraska Anthropologist, 47 (2009), https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/&httpsredir=1&article=1046&context=nebanthro.
      [26] Ibid., 70.
      [27] Jeff Miller, Avocado: A Global History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo50552476.html.
      [28] Maria Popova, “A ghost of evolution: The curious case of the avocado, which should be extinct but still exists,” The Marginalian, https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/12/04/avocado-ghosts-of-evolution/?mc_cid=ca28345b4d&mc_eid=469e833a4d, citing Connie Barlow, The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms, https://books.google.com.mx/books/about/The_Ghosts_Of_Evolution.html?id=TnU4DgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y.
      [29] Patricia Lazicki, Daniel Geisseler, and Willliam R. Horwath, “Avocado production in California,” UC Davis, 2016, https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Avocado_Production_CA.pdf.
      [30] Flavia Echánove Huacuja, “Abriendo fronteras: el auge exportador del aguacate mexicano a United States,” Anales de Geografía de la Universidad Complutense, 2008, Vol. 28, N° 1, https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/aguc/article/download/aguc0808110009a/30850.
      [31] Calavo Growers, Calavo Growers, Inc. Investor Presentation, 12 December 2022, https://ir.calavo.com/static-files/f4ee2e5a-0221-4b48-9b82-7aad7ca69ea7.
      [32] Flavia Echánove Huacuja, op cit., the evolution of these companies in the sector was different. Chiquita withdrew from the avocado industry in 2012, while for Del Monte, this fruit accounts for a steadily declining share of its sales, reaching 8% ($320 million) in 2021 (see https://seekingalpha.com/article/1489692-chiquita-brands-restructuring-for-value; United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. Form 10-K, 2022; Del Monte Quality, A Brighter World Tomorrow, https://freshdelmonte.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/FDM_2021_SustainabilityReportFINAL.pdf. )
      [33] Source: SIAP (http://infosiap.siap.gob.mx/gobmx/datosAbiertos_a.php) [viewed 27 November 2022].
      [34] María Adelina Toribio Morales, César Adrián Ramírez Miranda, and Miriam Aidé Núñez Vera, “Expansión del agronegocio aguacatero sobre los territorios campesinos en Michoacán, México,” Eutopía, Revista de Desarrollo Económico Territorial, no. 16, December 2019, pp. 51–72, https://revistas.flacsoandes.edu.ec/eutopia/article/download/4117/3311?inline=1.
      [35] Enrique Espinosa Gasca states: “The Ministry of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Climate Change (Semadet) in Michoacán acknowledged in March 2019 that in the first twenty years of the millennium, Michoacán has lost a million hectares of its forests, some due to clandestine logging and some due to forest fires set for purposes of land conversion”; “Berries, frutos rojos, puntos rojos,” in Colectivo por la Autonomía and GRAIN, eds, Invernaderos: Controvertido modelo de agroexportación (Ceccam, 2021).
      [36] Gobierno de México, SIACON (2020), https://www.gob.mx/siap/documentos/siacon-ng-161430; idem, Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera (SIAP), http://infosiap.siap.gob.mx/gobmx/datosAbiertos_a.php.
      [37] “Se triplica cosecha de agave, berries y aguacate en Jalisco,” El Informador, 23 December 2021, https://www.informador.mx/Se-triplica-cosecha-de-agave-berries-y-aguacate-en-Jalisco-l202112230001..
      [38] María Ramírez Blanco, “Agave, berries y aguacate encarece precio de la tierra en Jalisco, roba terreno al maíz y al ganado,” UDG TV, 31 January 2023, https://udgtv.com/noticias/agave-berries-aguacate-encarece-precio-tierra-jalisco-roba-maiz.
      [39] Agustín del Castillo, Territorio Reportaje, part 8, “Negocio, ecocidio y crimen,” Canal 44tv, Universidad de Guadalajara, October 2022, https://youtu.be/WfH3M22rrK8

      .
      [40] Agustín del Castillo, Territorio Reportaje, part 7, “La huella criminal en el fruto más valioso del mundo: la palta, el avocado, el aguacate,” Canal 44tv, Universidad de Guadalajara, September 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSz8xihdsTI
      .
      [41] Gobierno de México, Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural, “Productores de pequeña escala, los principales exportadores de aguacate a Estados Unidos: Agricultura,” 29 January 2020, https://www.gob.mx/agricultura/prensa/productores-de-pequena-escala-los-principales-exportadores-de-aguacate-a-estados.
      [42] Our results and arguments coincide with those found in Alexander Curry, “Violencia y capitalismo aguacatero en Michoacán,” in Jayson Maurice Porter and Alexander Aviña, eds, Land, Markets and Power in Rural Mexico, Noria Research. Curry is skeptical of analyses in which violence can be understood in terms of its results, such as the coercive control of a market square or highway. “Such analyses forget that violence is part of a social process, with its own temporal framework,” he writes. It is therefore necessary to frame the process within a broader field of relations of inequality of all kinds, in which the paradox is that legal and illegal actors intermingle at the local, national, and international levels, but in spheres that rarely intersect. The avocado industry cannot be explained by the cartels but by the tangled web of international capitalism.
      [43] See https://www.netafim.com.mx/cultivos/aguacate and https://es.rivulis.com/crop/aguacates.
      [44] Jennifer Kite-Powell, “Using Drip Irrigation To Make New Sustainable Growing Regions For Avocados”, Forbes, 29 March 2022: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2022/03/29/using-drip-irrigation-to-make-new-sustainable-growing-regions-for-avocados .
      [45] See Pat Mooney, La Insostenible Agricultura 4.0: Digitalización y Poder Corporativo en la Cadena Alimentaria, ETC Group, 2019, https://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/la_insostenible_agricultura_4.0_web26oct.pdf. See also Colectivo por la Autonomía and GRAIN, eds, Invernaderos: controvertido modelo de agroexportación.
      [46] Colectivo por la Autonomía, Evangelina Robles, José Godoy, and Eduardo Villalpando, “Nocividad del metabolismo agroindustrial en el Occidente de México,” in Eduardo Enrique Aguilar, ed., Agroecología y Organización Social: Estudios Críticos sobre Prácticas y Saberes (Monterrey: Universidad de Monterrey, Editorial Ítaca, 2022), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365173284_Agroecologia_y_organizacion_social_Estudios_criticos_sobre_p.
      [47] Metapolítica, “La guerra por el aguacate: deforestación y contaminación imparables,” BiodiversidadLA, 24 June 2019, https://www.biodiversidadla.org/Noticias/La-guerra-por-el-Aguacate-deforestacion-y-contaminacion-imparables.
      [48] Chloe Sutcliffe and Tim Hess, “The global avocado crisis and resilience in the UK’s fresh fruit and vegetable supply system,” Global Food Security, 19 June 2017, https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/global-avocado-crisis-resilience-uks-fresh-fruit-vegetable-supply-sy.
      [49] Nathanael Johnson, “Are avocados toast? California farmers bet on what we’ll be eating in 2050,” The Guardian, 30 May 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/30/avocado-california-climate-change-affecting-crops-2050.
      [50] GRAIN, “The well is running dry on irrigated agriculture,” 20 February 2023, https://grain.org/en/article/6958-the-well-is-running-dry-on-irrigated-agriculture.
      [51] Danwatch, “Paltas y agua robada,” 2017, http://old.danwatch.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Paltas-y-agua-robada.pdf.
      [52] Fresh Fruit Portal, “Steve Barnard, founder and CEO of Mission Produce: We now import more to Chile than we export,” 23 August 2021, https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2021/08/23/steve-barnard-founder-and-ceo-of-mission-produce-we-now-import-mor.
      [53] Sacrifice zones are “places with high levels of environmental contamination and degradation, where profits have been given priority over people, causing human rights abuses or violations”: Elizabeth Bravo, “Zonas de sacrificio y violación de derechos,” Naturaleza con Derechos, Boletín 26, 1 September 2021, https://www.naturalezaconderechos.org/2021/09/01/boletin-26-zonas-de-sacrificio-y-violacion-de-derechos.
      [54] See Catalina Wallace, “La obra de ingeniería que cambió el desierto peruano,” Visión, March 2022, https://www.visionfruticola.com/2022/03/la-obra-de-ingenieria-que-cambio-el-desierto-peruano; “Proyecto de irrigación Olmos,” Landmatrix, 2012, https://landmatrix.org/media/uploads/embajadadelperucloficinacomercialimagesstoriesproyectoirrigacionolmos201. The costly project was part of the Odebrecht corruption case fought in the context of the “Lava Jato” operation: Jacqueline Fowks, “El ‘caso Odebrecht’ acorrala a cuatro expresidentes peruanos,” El País, 17 April 2019, https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/04/16/america/1555435510_660612.html.
      [55] Liga contra el Silencio, “Los aguacates de AngloGold dividen a Cajamarca,” 30 October 2020, https://www.biodiversidadla.org/Documentos/Los-aguacates-de-AngloGold-dividen-a-Cajamarca.
      [56] “Colombia: Los aguacates de AngloGold dividen a Cajamarca,” La Cola de Rata,16 October 2020, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/29921-colombia-los-aguacates-de-anglogold-dividen-a-cajamarca.
      [57] See Las luchas de Cherán desde la memoria de los jóvenes (Cherán Ireteri Juramukua, Cherán K’eri, 2021); Daniela Tico Straffon and Edgars Martínez Navarrete, Las raíces del despojo, U-Tópicas, https://www.u-topicas.com/libro/las-raices-del-despojo_15988; Mark Stevenson, “Mexican town protects forest from avocado growers and drug cartels,” Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-01-31/mexican-town-protects-forest-from-avocado-growers-cartels; Monica Pellicia, “Indigenous agroforestry dying of thirst amid a sea of avocados in Mexico,” https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/indigenous-agroforestry-dying-of-thirst-amid-a-sea-of-avocados-in-mex
      [58] The Grapes of Wrath, op. cit.
      [59] USDA, “Imports play dominant role as U.S. demand for avocados climbs,” 2 May 2022, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=103810.

      https://grain.org/e/6985#_edn36

      #rapport #Grain #land_grabbing #accaparement_des_terres

  • Seeking asylum and work, migrants bused out of NYC find hostility | AP News
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    Seeking asylum and work, migrants bused out of NYC find hostility
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    NEWBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Before he left Mauritania, the West African nation of his birth, Mohamed thought of New York as a place of “open arms,” a refuge for immigrants fleeing dire circumstances.Now that he’s here, seeking political asylum from a government he feared would kill him, he doesn’t feel welcome. The 19-year-old has become a pawn in an escalating stand-off between New York City and suburban and upstate communities, which are using lawsuits, emergency orders and political pressure to keep people like him out. Mohamed is one of about 400 international migrants the city has been putting up in a small number of hotels in other parts of the state this month to relieve pressure on its overtaxed homeless shelter system.
    Some of the relocated asylum seekers say they now regret leaving the city, pointing to a lack of job opportunities and resources to pursue their asylum cases, as well as a hostile reception.
    The Associated Press is withholding Mohamed’s full name at his request to protect the safety of his family in Mauritania. In his home country, Mohamed said he had joined a group of young people to decry the government’s corruption and human rights abuses, including allegations of ongoing slavery. Days later, he said a group of men threw him in an unmarked car, took him to a secret room, and beat him viciously for two days.After a journey that took him across the U.S. border with Mexico, he landed in a shelter system in New York City he found frightening and overcrowded. In one Brooklyn shelter, a room with 40 beds, someone stole his few remaining possessions as he slept.So when outreach workers offered him the chance to relocate earlier this month, promising more space and chances to work, Mohamed took it. He joined other asylum seekers at two hotels a few miles outside the small Hudson River Valley city of Newburgh, about two hours north of the city.
    Republican county officials there have accused the city of dumping its problems on its neighbors, while insinuating that the new arrivals pose a danger.
    Last week, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus won a temporary restraining order barring the city from sending additional migrants. More than two dozen other counties across New York state have declared emergencies in an attempt to block migrant arrivals, even in places where none are planned.As far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) north of the city, Niagara County officials have warned of an imminent safety threat, vowing criminal penalties for hotels found to be housing asylum seekers.
    New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, says he will continue his efforts to disperse some of the more than 40,000 asylum seekers currently in the city’s care.Meanwhile, some who joined the initial wave of relocations have since returned to New York City’s shelter system. Those who don’t have money for transportation, such as Mohamed, say they are stuck.
    “It’s like the desert,” lamented Mohamed, who studied law and taught himself English in Mauritania. “There’s nothing here for us.”
    Some asylum seekers described a sense of being lured upstate on false pretenses, saying outreach workers described local economies in need of off-the-books migrant labor. Instead they have suffered a stream of harassment.“There are people driving by pretty constantly in big pickup trucks telling them to go back to their country,” said Amy Belsher, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, describing a phenomenon also witnessed by an AP journalist.“It’s a completely predictable outcome of the local county executives jumping on the migrant ban bandwagon,” she added. The NYCLU has brought a lawsuit against Orange and Rockland counties alleging discrimination against migrants. An attorney for Orange County, Richard Golden, said it was “utterly ridiculous” to accuse the county of fostering xenophobia. The county’s lawsuit against the city, he said, rests on a 2006 state administrative directive requiring municipalities to meet certain requirements before transferring homeless individuals.
    Misinformation among local residents has not helped, including a false allegation that migrants displaced homeless veterans inside the hotels — a widely-circulated story that has fallen apart.Peruvian Jhonny Neira offered a more mixed assessment of his time in Newburgh. The 39-year-old asylum seeker described a recent Sunday visit to a church where he felt welcomed by the congregation, even if he couldn’t understand the English sermon.
    “I’m a respectful, hard-working person,” he said in Spanish. “I think after getting to know me, they would trust me.” The number of U.S.-Mexico border crossings has declined since May 11, when the Biden administration put new rules in place intended to encourage migrants to apply for asylum online rather than enter the country illegally. But New York and other migrant destination cities are still dealing with thousands of people who entered the U.S. before the new rules.The Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh is now home to men from South and Central America, Senegal, Egypt, Mauritania, and Russia. They speak in French and English and Spanish, as they kick a soccer ball in the hotel parking lot, beside a diner and a tangle of highways. A few yards away, a man who once worked as a barber in Venezuela offers haircuts for $5, as another sweeps up.In order to gain asylum in the United States, they will have to prove they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” over their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
    Mohamed’s experience tracks with a report by the U.S. State Department, which found Mauritania has overseen an expanded crackdown on political dissidents since 2021 and cites allegations of torture in unofficial detention centers.If his story passes a credibility check, it would likely constitute a legitimate asylum claim, according to Jaya Ramji-Nogales, an asylum law professor at Temple University. But getting to that stage will require navigating an immigration system under severe strain.“It was always an under-resourced system but now it’s really at a breaking point,” Ramji-Nogales said. “There’s not the political will to put aside the money it needs to function.”Mohamed said his goal is building his asylum case — something he’s come to believe is not possible in Newburgh. A few days ago, he missed a key immigration appointment after a car that was supposed to take him to the city never showed up. “You can’t stay here just sleeping, eating, after that going back to sleeping,” he said. “If you make no progress in your case, they will send you back home. For me, that would be very bad.”

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#mexique#afrique#immigration#asile#politiquemigratoire#frontiere#refoulement#newyork

  • #Mexique : #AMLO ne remettra pas la présidence de l’Alliance du Pacifique au #Pérou - Bolivar Infos

    Le président Manuel López Obrador a déclaré qu’il ne pouvait pas donner ce mandat à Dina Boluarte parce qu’elle n’est pas légalement la présidente du Pérou, qu’elle est "une usurpatrice ».
    Le président du Mexique, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a confirmé lundi qu’il ne remettrait pas la présidence tournante de l’Alliance du Pacifique au Gouvernement du Pérou.
    Obrador a fait valoir que Dina Boluarte n’est ni légalement ni légitimement présidente de cette nation, mais une usurpatrice.
    Au Pérou, ils sont contre la volonté du peuple en imposant Boluarte et elle, en acceptant bien qu’elle ait conscience de sa situation qui viole la Constitution de son propre pays.
    Que la dame le sache : en 2024 je prends ma retraite, je ferme déjà mon cycle et je ne participerai plus à la politique, en rien, a-t-il répondu à Boluarte qui l’accuse d’ingérence politique.
    Elle, a souligné à nouveau le président mexicain, usurpe la charge qui revient constitutionnellement à Pedro Castillo qu’ils ont injustement emprisonné.

    http://bolivarinfos.over-blog.com/2023/05/mexique-amlo-ne-remettra-pas-la-presidence-de-l-alliance-du-

  • Il vous reste peu de temps pour regarder Nuit de feu
    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/083852-000-A/nuit-de-feu

    Ce résumé ne rend pas justice au film dont il est question, réalisé par #Tatiana_Huezo
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatiana_Huezo

    Dans un hameau de montagne de l’État mexicain du Guerrero, Ana, 8 ans, vit seule avec sa mère, Rita, depuis que son père est parti tenter sa chance aux États-Unis. Cette dernière gagne sa vie en travaillant dans les champs d’opium qui alimentent le business des trafiquants de drogue. Alors que le cartel fait régner la terreur dans toute la région, Rita a appris à sa fille à repérer le danger et, en cas d’urgence, à se cacher dans un trou creusé derrière leur maison. Cinq ans plus tard, Ana et ses deux amies doivent redoubler de prudence...

    #mexique

  • Mexique - Un mouvement anarchiste méconnu - PARTAGE NOIR
    https://www.partage-noir.fr/un-mouvement-anarchiste-meconnu

    De 1865 à 1880, le rôle des anarchistes dans la naissance et le développement d’un syndicalisme révolutionnaire au Mexique est primordial. Ils ont su développer l’idée de révolution sociale, aussi bien parmi les ouvriers qu’au sein de la paysannerie.

    #mexique #anarchisme #syndicalisme

  • Migrants Died In Detention Fire Because They Couldn’t Pay $200 Bribe to Be Released
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bmk4/ciudad-juarez-jail-fire-migrants-died-failed-to-pay-bribe-for-release

    Thirty-nine migrants died locked in that cell as the immigration detention center burned on the night of March 27, and another died later at the hospital. At least one migrant in the cell allegedly started the fire in protest at not being given food and water by the guards for 10 hours.

    Survivors say those who died did so for one reason: they could not or did not pay a $200 bribe to security guards to be released.

    Three survivors and two guards at the facility told VICE World News that the immigration jail at the center of the tragedy was a defacto “extortion center,” where only migrants with the means to pay were released. Others would have to stay in jail and be sent to Mexico City or deported back to their origin country.

    #Mexique #Mexico #CiudadJuárez #migration

  • Plantations de palmiers à huile au Chiapas : femmes en lutte contre le contrôle territorial et la violence

    Le Mouvement Mondial pour les Forêts Tropicales expose le contexte mexicain de résistance féministe aux monocultures de palmier à huile

    Nous partageons ci-dessous un texte produit par le Mouvement mondial pour les forêts tropicales (World Rainforest Mouvement – WRM) sur les luttes des femmes contre les plantations de monoculture de palmiers à huile au Chiapas, au Mexique. Ce texte a été initialement publié dans le bulletin 264 du WRM en janvier 2023. Au Mexique, au Brésil, en Sierra Leone, au Cameroun, en Côte d’Ivoire et dans plusieurs autres pays du Sud global, la résistance aux plantations de palmiers à huile en monoculture est une résistance à la déforestation, à l’agrobusiness, à la militarisation, à l’exploitation du travail et de la nature, à la violence dans les campagnes. Dans ce texte, WRM expose le contexte mexicain de cette lutte et interviewe la militante Guadalupe Núñez Salazar, coordinatrice du Réseau des femmes de la côte en rébellion, sur l’organisation des femmes en défense de leurs territoires au fil des années.

    https://entreleslignesentrelesmots.wordpress.com/2023/03/11/plantations-de-palmiers-a-huile-au-chiapas-fem

    #international #mexique

  • Immigration aux Etats-Unis : Joe Biden restreint l’accès au droit d’asile
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/02/25/immigration-aux-etats-unis-joe-biden-restreint-l-acces-au-droit-d-asile_6163

    Immigration aux Etats-Unis : Joe Biden restreint l’accès au droit d’asile
    Près de 300 associations ont protesté contre une réglementation qui vise à empêcher les migrants de venir demander protection à la frontière mexicaine.
    Par Corine Lesnes(San Francisco, correspondante)
    Dans l’un de ses premiers décrets, le 2 février 2021, le nouvel élu Joe Biden avait ordonné à son administration de « restaurer et améliorer » le processus de demande d’asile aux Etats-Unis. Celui-ci avait été « gravement détérioré », estimait-il, par son prédécesseur, Donald Trump, architecte d’une politique « contrevenant à [leurs] valeurs et causant des souffrances humaines inutiles ». (...) A la déception des organisations humanitaires, l’administration Biden a effectué un revirement de politique complet. En janvier, elle a annoncé que 30 000 candidats à l’asile originaires de Cuba, d’Haïti, du Venezuela et du Nicaragua seraient admis chaque mois, et pour une durée de deux ans, à condition qu’ils ne se présentent pas à la frontière et qu’ils aient un parrain aux Etats-Unis. Cette approche dite « de la carotte et du bâton » a abouti à une chute spectaculaire – 95 % – du nombre d’arrestations de ressortissants de ces pays. Toutes nationalités confondues, le nombre de migrants interpellés est passé de 251 487 en décembre 2022 à 150 000 en janvier, le plus faible depuis l’entrée en fonctions du président démocrate.
    Le 21 février, l’administration Biden a jugé le test suffisamment concluant pour en étendre le principe à l’ensemble des migrants. Selon la nouvelle réglementation, qui entrera en vigueur fin mars, les migrants seront déclarés inéligibles pour obtenir l’asile s’ils ont franchi illégalement la frontière ou s’ils ont transité par des pays tiers – par exemple, le Mexique – sans y avoir d’abord demandé protection. Ils devront recourir à des mécanismes « légaux, sûrs et ordonnés » pour déposer leur demande : prendre rendez-vous par l’intermédiaire d’une application sur smartphone ou s’inscrire dans l’un des programmes spécifiques annoncés en janvier pour les pays d’Amérique centrale. Des exceptions sont prévues pour les cas d’urgence médicale, les personnes victimes de menaces « extrêmes » ou « imminentes » ou de trafic d’êtres humains. Les enfants non accompagnés sont également dispensés de ces règles. Le projet a suscité l’indignation des associations de défense des migrants, qui déplorent que le droit d’asile soit conditionné à la manière dont les migrants sont entrés dans le pays et de facto réservé à ceux qui peuvent arriver en avion. (...)
    L’administration Biden est sous la pression du calendrier. Le 11 mai, doit expirer ce qui tenait lieu de politique migratoire depuis le début de la pandémie de Covid-19 : le dispositif dit « Title 42 », du nom d’un article du code de santé publique. Invoqué le 21 mars 2020 par Donald Trump, ce mécanisme a depuis pris le pas sur le droit de l’immigration et permis de refouler 2,6 millions de migrants. Le gouvernement souhaitait y mettre fin en 2022, mais plusieurs Etats républicains se sont pourvus en justice pour l’en empêcher, craignant une « invasion » à la frontière. La Cour suprême, qui devait arbitrer le contentieux le 1er mars, a renoncé : les autorités sanitaires ayant fixé au 11 mai la fin de l’état d’urgence sanitaire dû au Covid-19, le Title 42 devrait prendre automatiquement fin. L’administration Biden s’efforce aussi d’agir avant le printemps, lorsque des groupes de centaines de migrants quittent l’Amérique centrale pour traverser le Mexique sur la route du Texas ou de l’Arizona. (...).

    #Covod-19#migrant#migration#etatsunis#postcovid#politiquemigratoire#frontiere#mexique#ameriquecentrale#droitdasile#protection#etatdurgencesanitaire

  • Tacos à la viande hachée
    https://www.cuisine-libre.org/tacos-a-la-viande-hachee

    Égoutter le maïs. Peler et émincer finement l’oignon. Dans une poêle chaude huilée, faire revenir l’oignon quelques minutes jusqu’à ce qu’il devienne translucide. Ajouter la viande hachée et la saisir 3 min pour qu’elle colore. Ajouter ensuite la sauce tomate, le maïs, les épices et saler. Poursuivre la cuisson 10 min en mélangeant pour émietter la viande. En fin de cuisson ajouter les épices mexicaines. Presser un filet de citron vert si désiré. Mélanger avec le persil haché. Garnir chaque #Tortilla de cette… #Tortillas_fourrées, Tortilla, #Mexique, Bœuf haché / #Sans œuf, Mijoté

    #Bœuf_haché #Mijoté

  • Mélange d’épices mexicaines
    https://www.cuisine-libre.org/melange-epices-mexicaines

    Mélange bien équilibré, plutôt piquant mais savoureux, pour les viandes à burritos ou fajitas et pour les chilis. Mélanger ensemble tous les ingrédients dans un sol à l’aide d’une spatule en bois pour bien homogénéiser. Conserver dans un pot hermétique à l’abri de la lumière, de l’humidité et de la chaleur. #Cumin, #Origan, #Paprika, #Mélanges_d'épices, #Mexique, #Chili / #Sans gluten, Végétalien (vegan), #Sans viande, #Végétarien, #Sans œuf, #Sans lactose

    #Végétalien_vegan_

  • En #Arizona, le mur de #conteneurs à la #frontière avec le #Mexique en cours de #démantèlement

    Sur une route poussiéreuse de l’Arizona, un pick-up fonce et emporte au loin un grand caisson métallique. A la frontière entre les Etats-Unis et le Mexique, un mur de conteneurs, installé pour plusieurs dizaines de millions de dollars il y a seulement quelques mois, était en cours de démantèlement ce week-end.

    Sur une route poussiéreuse de l’Arizona, un pick-up fonce et emporte au loin un grand caisson métallique. A la frontière entre les Etats-Unis et le Mexique, un mur de conteneurs, installé pour plusieurs dizaines de millions de dollars il y a seulement quelques mois, était en cours de démantèlement ce week-end.

    Dans les mois précédant la fin de son mandat, le gouverneur républicain de l’Arizona, dans le sud-ouest des Etats-Unis, avait ordonné qu’une gigantesque enfilade de conteneurs soient placés à la frontière avec le Mexique, afin, selon lui, d’endiguer l’immigration illégale.

    Mais après avoir été poursuivi devant la justice par l’Etat fédéral pour avoir placé les conteneurs sur des terres fédérales, dans la forêt nationale de #Coronado, le gouverneur #Greg_Ducey, remplacé depuis par la démocrate #Katie_Hobbs, a accepté en décembre de les retirer.

    « Je n’arrive pas à croire que le gouverneur Ducey puisse penser que c’était une bonne idée », souligne à l’AFP Debbie McGuire une ancienne habitante de l’Arizona venue assister aux opérations de démantèlement.

    « C’est complètement absurde de mettre des conteneurs qui n’allaient jamais réussir à empêcher les gens de passer », dit-elle. « C’est ridicule et un gaspillage complet de l’argent du contribuable ».

    L’édification du mur de conteneurs a commencé mi-2022 et a rapidement fait face à une puissante fronde. Ses détracteurs estiment que l’assemblage n’est rien d’autre qu’une manoeuvre politique cynique qui endommage l’#environnement et n’a aucun impact sur le nombre de traversées illégales de la frontière.

    Relief escarpé

    Ils affirment que le mur de conteneurs, qui s’étire sur près de sept kilomètres à travers les terres fédérales, empiète sur une zone importante de conservation environnementale.

    Le relief y est également tellement escarpé que selon eux, les passeurs de migrants n’ont jamais vraiment utilisé cette zone.

    En pratique, les conteneurs étaient inadéquats pour empêcher les migrants de les franchir : leur forme rigide faisait qu’ils n’étaient pas toujours alignés en fonction du relief, laissant des trous béants entre les boîtes.

    « C’est une #mascarade et un #gaspillage de l’#argent_public », estime Bill Wilson, un habitant de la ville voisine venu voir vendredi le démantèlement du mur de conteneurs.

    Le septuagénaire dénonce aussi « une #stratégie_politicienne ».

    L’Arizona partage quelque 600 kilomètres de frontière avec le Mexique, passant par des aires protégées, des parcs nationaux, des zones militaires et des réserves amérindiennes.

    Les arrivées illégales de migrants venant de pays d’Amérique du sud et centrale sont un thème récurrent dans les attaques des républicains contre Joe Biden, qui a promis d’augmenter les expulsions immédiates.

    Plus de 230.000 arrestations ont encore été enregistrées en novembre à la frontière sud des Etats-Unis, un niveau record.

    Jusqu’à l’arrivée à la Maison Blanche en 2017 de Donald Trump - qui avait fait campagne sur le slogan « Construisons le mur » - il n’existait pas réellement de barrière physique entre l’Arizona et le Mexique.

    A présent, de larges portions de la frontière sont dotées d’une grille qui s’élève par endroits jusqu’à neuf mètres de haut.

    Dans la forêt nationale de Coronado, qui ne peut être atteinte que par des petites routes de terre, la frontière n’était démarquée avant l’arrivée des conteneurs que par un grillage barbelé.

    https://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/en-arizona-le-mur-de-conteneurs-la-frontiere-avec-le-mexique-

    #containers #frontières #barrières_frontalières #USA #Etats-Unis #walls_don't_work #asile #migrations #réfugiés #murs