Mexican Officials Downplayed “State’s Responsibility” for Migrant Massacres

The U.S. Consulate (Matamoros) report on the August 22, 2010 San Fernando massacre.

A new post today at Migration Declassified shows that Mexican officials sought to minimize “the state’s responsibility” for the slayings of scores of migrants and other travelers kidnapped from intercity buses as part of a drug cartel turf war in the northern state of Tamaulipas. The documents bear directly on a parallel access to information case brought by Article 19 in Mexico, which is now in the hands of the state’s information commissioners (IFAI). At issue is the Mexican government’s investigative file on killings in and around the town of San Fernando (Tamaulipas).

In recent years, Mexican highways have become killing zones for the rival gangs that control both the drug trade and “the business of illegal migration,” according to a U.S. Embassy report written during the height of the violence in 2011. The Embassy cited information indicating that “migration authorities and local police” in Mexico “often turn a blind eye or collude in” the kidnappings and massacres carried out by the drug cartels.

Check out the new posting in English at Migration Declassified and in Spanish at Migración Abierta.

The full article also ran today on the Web site of the Mexican online magazine Animal Político.