Mexico's
Southern Front
Guatemala
and the Search for Security
by
Kate Doyle
During Guatemala's protracted and savage internal conflict, which
raged from 1963 to 1996, tens of thousands of Guatemalan citizens
fled the violence in their country for the safety of Mexico. Whether
they arrived as refugees, illegal immigrants, exiled political
activists or members of one of the four guerrilla groups, most
of them found safe haven on Mexican soil. Having survived the
war, many of them today cherish a strong and enduring affection
for Mexico.
No one has expressed that sentiment more eloquently than Rigoberta
Menchú Tum - Guatemala's Nobel Peace Prize winner and renowned
activist for human rights and the rights of indigenous people
everywhere. Upon the occasion of receiving her award from the
Nobel Foundation in Oslo, Norway in 1992, Menchú noted
- with "satisfaction and gratitude" - that she would
place the medal given to her in the museum of the Templo Mayor
in Mexico City.
Calling Mexico "our wonderful neighbor country," Menchú
declared her admiration for the nation "that has been so
dedicated and interested, that has made such great efforts in
respect to the negotiations that are being conducted to achieve
peace, [and] that has received and admitted so many refugees and
exiled Guatemalans. . ."
The emerging record of that era, however, is a complicated one.
Files recently released in Mexican and U.S. government archives
document Mexico's ambivalent and at times contradictory policy
toward the Guatemalan conflict.
On the one hand, the Mexican government criticized the political
violence employed by decades of successive regimes in Guatemala,
and extended a life-saving welcome to Guatemalans fleeing the
brutality in their homeland.
On the other hand, Mexico harbored profound concerns about the
implications of the violence for its own internal security.
Those concerns led the Mexican government to collaborate - secretly
and selectively - with the same repressive forces it opposed.
On the border, Mexican troops at times supported counterinsurgency
operations launched by the Guatemalan army. In the refugee camps
in the south, Mexico alternated its policy of granting asylum
to the massive tide of fleeing peasants with deportations, harassment,
and, in 1984, forced relocation. And in Mexico City, where many
of the opposition's militantes had fled, the Mexican state
maintained intensive surveillance and conducted sporadic operations
to detain, torture and expel them.
New evidence of Mexico's ambiguous posture toward Guatemala does
not alter its historical record of responding to human rights
crises in Latin America by opposing state violence and providing
a vital haven to political refugees - from Spain, Chile, Argentina,
and Uruguay, among other countries. But it serves as a reminder
that Mexico's traditional rhetoric about the hemisphere always
coexisted with the cold calculus of its own security considerations.
With the appearance of the first armed opposition groups in Guatemala
in the early 1960s, the militaries of Mexico and Guatemala forged
a mostly cooperative relationship. Guatemalan army officers, along
with other foreign military personnel, attended Mexican military
schools for training, encouraging direct communication between
the two institutions.
One of the most notorious graduates of the Mexican system was
Oscar Mejía Víctores, who attended a command and
general staff course in Mexico for three years, beginning in January
1966. In 1983, Mejía Víctores took power in Guatemala
through a military coup. Under his leadership, the security forces
favored the use of "disappearance" as a tactic to dismantle
guerrilla networks and murder suspected subversives in Guatemala
City.
American documents indicate that as the internal conflict brewed
inside Guatemala during the 1960s and 70s, U.S. and Guatemalan
officials repeatedly expressed concerns about the security and
permeability of Mexico's southern border. When the question arose,
the U.S. embassy in Mexico City was confident that the Mexican
government would back Guatemalan counterinsurgency efforts. In
1966, in response to a query from a senior level planning group
in the State Department about Mexico's willingness to stop the
movement of subversives across the border, the embassy assured
Washington that it believed the government would close the border,
if need be, as well as "place surveillance on known and more
dangerous subversives and take steps to prevent their approaching
border area."
The spirit of cooperation at times extended to Mexican support
for Guatemalan counterinsurgency operations. In late 1972, the
Guatemalan government under Carlos Arana Osorio began preparing
a major operation along the country's southwestern border with
Mexico. The Guatemalan military sought the assistance of the Mexican
army. In response, Secretary of Defense Hermenegildo Cuenca Díaz
sent a telegram to the operations section of the General Staff
(Estado Mayor) to "increase number troops at border,
intensify patrol with priority area indicated, activate intelligence
units, and adopt other measures designed prohibit criminals and
guerrillas from crossing border and penetrating national territory."
As the insurgency gained momentum during the early 1980s, Guatemala's
war intensified - and suspicions spread within the successively
brutal and paranoid regimes of Fernando Romeo Lucas García,
Efraín Ríos Montt and Mejía Víctores
that the Mexican government was aiding and abetting the guerrillas.
Mexico's decision in 1981 to join France in recognizing the Salvadoran
insurgents as a legitimate political force - as well as increasing
flows of Guatemalan refugees and political activists fleeing the
violence into Mexico - set off alarm bells inside the new Reagan
administration as well. "Reports suggest a disturbing level
of Mexican official accommodation to Guatemalan guerrillas, despite
Mexican army's apparent desire to clamp down," cabled the
State Department anxiously in 1982.
On the ground, however, the U.S. embassy in Mexico City downplayed
these concerns. In a confidential telegram dated March 30, 1982,
U.S. Ambassador John Gavin reviewed the available evidence and
concluded that while the government might "look the other
way" when insurgents used Mexican territory for political
or even limited operational activities, the United States had
no hard intelligence that there was a deliberate policy of aid
to Guatemala's opposition.
"Mexico is divided on support to insurgents in Central America,"
wrote Gavin. The political left and some church leaders favored
assistance, but the private sector and the military opposed it.
"The PRI and the GOM [Government of Mexico] traditionally
seek the middle way between such political poles, and in this
case have not surprisingly adopted an ambiguous stance."
The ambassador painted a picture of a policy of pragmatism, one
which granted the left relative freedom to operate in the capital,
but limited their activities to political agitation rather than
operational. "There are frequent and open contacts between
Salvadoran and Guatemalan insurgent representatives and Mexico
City's very large academic community. Similarly, there are no
restrictions on contact between the diplomatic corps and insurgent
representatives. We assume that financial support to the left
also passes through these channels."
Exiled Guatemalan activists who worked from Mexico City during
the 1980s confirm Gavin's analysis. In a telephone interview from
Austin, Texas, one former militante described an atmosphere
of freedom mixed with extreme caution. "The Mexicans had
a very sophisticated intelligence approach to us," he explained.
"We knew they were watching us every moment. And they knew
we knew they were watching us. But it was more than vigilancia.
If someone inept operated too openly, they arrested and deported
him."
Mexico's pragmatism was a product of the government's ever-present
concerns about the dangers posed by the Guatemalan conflict to
Mexican stability. The nations' long and porous shared border
meant that the violence burning inside Guatemala could - and often
did - spill into the mostly poor and indigenous southern state
of Chiapas, where the regime had its own security problems. Insurgents
used Chiapas as a haven for rest and recuperation, as well as
a conduit for food and medical supplies back into Guatemala. And
the Guatemalan army regularly crossed the border in pursuit of
fleeing guerrillas and civilians, to gather intelligence, monitor
and intimidate the refugee camps, and to abduct and kill.
As the tide of terrified refugees entering Mexico swelled, the
government established temporary camps along the border inside
the state of Chiapas. Guatemala was convinced that Mexico was
permitting the use of the camps for subversion - Ríos Montt
told President Reagan in a meeting in December 1982, "there
were no refugees in Mexico," only guerrillas. At the same
time, Mexico was launching the Contadora group as part of its
regional peace efforts and needed Guatemala's support. The combined
pressures of security problems on the border and Mexico's most
important foreign policy initiative in years prompted the government
to decide to forcibly relocate the refugee camps out of Chiapas
and into the Yucatan.
The decision caused uproar over Mexico's refugee policy. Many
of the Guatemalans residing in the camps objected to leaving Chiapas,
where the largely Mayan population shared social, political and
cultural traditions with the refugees. As the move got underway,
Americas Watch, among other human rights organizations (as well
as the Mexican press), documented numerous violations committed
by the government, including "arrests, burning of camps and
cut-offs of food and services to those refugees who do not want
to relocate" (Guatemalan Refugees in Mexico: 1980-1984,
1984). International refugee advocates urged the De la Madrid
administration to reconsider.
Mexico, however, would not budge. Recently declassified records
from the Defense Secretariat - produced during 1984-86 and now
open to the public in the Archivo General de la Nación
- help explain why.
The documents are clear on several points. The Mexican defense
establishment agreed with the Guatemalan government that the refugee
camps were being used by insurgents. As the policy got underway,
the military identified people within the camps supporting the
move as genuinely in need of refuge, "people who really fled
the country to save their lives"; and those who opposed relocation,
stated a defense document, "are in contact with the subversives
or the guerrillas."
It is also clear that in 1984 the Defense Secretariat was furious
about the opposition of church leaders in Chiapas to the government's
relocation plan. In one study by the intelligence section (S-2)
of the Estado Mayor from late 1984, SEDENA accused clergymen
such as Samuel Ruiz García and Arturo Lona Reyes to be
flagrantly in support of the Guatemalan guerrilla movement and,
in turn, of the radicalization of Mexico's own peasant sector.
Calling on the southern military zones to mobilize army intelligence
to spy on the bishops, the study warned darkly that "Guatemala's
socio-political crisis is being exploited to the maximum by the
progressive clergy," and that in order to coerce the local
population into opposing the relocation, the bishops "resort
to the method most convenient to them, the use of moral blackmail
through religion."
Out of this mix of concerns about Mexico's international image,
regional peace efforts, bilateral relations with Guatemala, and
its traditional support for Latin American political exiles, the
government's preoccupation for internal security and stability
emerged as the most significant and urgent reason to relocate
the refugees. The presence of the refugees in Chiapas, in short,
could radicalize Mexico's own peasants, something the regime was
determined to avoid.
In a document apparently written in May 1984, SEDENA observed:
"Taking into consideration that the Guatemalan refugee camps
in Mexico constitute a threat to national security - given that
organic cells of subversive Guatemalan organizations very probably
operate inside the camps, [groups] which are undoubtedly connected
to international Central American organizations, and that in the
near future given the economic crisis our country is suffering
[these groups] will be able to operate in Mexico through the indoctrination
of the economically weak popular masses, encouraging them to join
the subversive movement with an eye to the destabilization of
the country - it is recommended that strict measures of control
be taken, such as breaking the social structures of the Guatemalan
refugee population in Mexico [. . .] for this structure is currently
being preserved pratically intact through the ties of family,
language and culture, as well as due to pressure from the subversive
organizations."
It is indisputable that Mexico's policy to permit Guatemalans
fleeing the scorched earth campaign in their country to find refuge
on Mexican territory saved many lives. But even while Mexico offered
aid and comfort to those most in need, the government found ways
to temper its progressive stance with measures that ensured continued
cooperation and collaboration with the Guatemalan regime. The
state perceived that Mexico's own internal security needs required
such duplicity - as it had in the past, as it will again in the
future.
Surviving
Exile
Edwin
Quiñónes Morales, 45, has been living in
exile from Guatemala for almost twenty years. When he
left in 1984, he was a comerciante, a new father
and a member of the clandestine political opposition.
His
decision to flee Guatemala came on the heels of the abduction
and murder by security forces of a relative of his wife,
Lucrecia. It was the third attack on her family - in 1981,
at the height of the violence of the Lucas García
regime, Lucrecia's 21-year-old sister, Emma, was kidnapped
and held on a military base in Quezaltenango. She managed
to escape with her life. Their brother Marco Antonio,
14, was not so fortunate. One day later, he was disappeared
by members of the security forces. He has never been seen
since.
Edwin
and Lucrecia decided to take their infant son Julio and
flee by foot into Mexico. They chose Mexico, Edwin recalls,
because of its reputation as a tolerant and democratic
nation. The country had opened refugee camps in the south
for the waves of mostly Mayan Indians escaping the violence
in Guatemala, and permitted members of the country's political
opposition to live safely in the capital.
But
less than three months after arriving in Mexico City with
his family, Edwin and two of his compañeros
were arrested by Mexican security forces. The men were
held incommunicado for days in a clandestine cell in the
Federal Security Directorate (DFS, the Interior Secretariat's
domestic intelligence apparatus) and tortured. DFS chief
José Antonio Zorrilla Pérez himself directed
the interrogation sessions. After three weeks of detention,
Quiñónes and his companions were deported
to Cuba and told not to return to Mexico for ten years.
His wife and child rejoined him eight months later, when
they managed a rendezvous in Nicaragua.
Edwin
Quiñónes Morales spoke to Proceso by telephone
from Costa Rica, where he now lives with Lucrecia and
Julio. It is the first time he has ever spoken publicly
of his experience at the hands of the Mexicans.
*
* * *
DFS
agents captured our group on July 3, 1984, including my
wife and son, who was one year old at the time. After
they took me away, they threatened my wife by telling
her that if she said anything in public about me they
would hurt me. Lucrecia and Julio were held incommunicado
until July 9th.
They
were released thanks to the intervention of the PSUM [Partido
Socialista Unificado de México]. When she got
out, Lucrecia denounced our capture. Proceso magazine
published the story that month [no. 402]. You can look
it up, all our names will be there.
The
DFS had always monitored the compañeros,
that was routine. They were watching them, tapping their
telephones, but then they started rounding them up - they
began to capture Guatemalans indiscriminately. They caught
many exiles and interrogated them to gather intelligence.
This was time when the Guatemalan government was pressuring
Mexico a lot about the refugees, and about the militantes
coming over the border.
There
were a lot of people in Guatemala then who were supporting
the opposition. We were helping some of them get out,
so they could come to Mexico. Before I was arrested, I
had gone to Tapachula [on the border with Guatemala] to
meet some compañeros and take them to the D.F.
We reached the capital. There were two of them staying
with Lucrecia and Julio and me in the apartment. On the
morning of July 3rd, Lucrecia went out with Julio to buy
bread for breakfast. Someone whom we were supposed to
meet in the street called me and said, "let's meet
at 9." I was worried. I didn't think the telephone
was secure. Ten minutes later, the police arrived. They
knocked - and I just opened the door, I didn't even think
about it. I would never have done that in Guatemala.
Men
in civilian clothing pushed their way inside, and pointed
their guns at me - one at my head and the other at my
chest. Then a third entered and began to search the apartment.
He found the two compañeros who were with
us. Lucrecia and Julio arrived. At that moment, someone
called me on the phone. The agents wanted me to arrange
a meeting with him so I could give him up to them, but
I didn't want to give him up. We talked in code on the
phone and the police grabbed the phone and started to
beat me. They ordered me to tell them where I was going
to meet him and what time, but I wouldn't say.
They
took us out of the apartment and forced us into a car,
and they brought us to one of the DFS stations, near the
Monument of the Revolution. They blindfolded us so we
couldn't see where were going. While we were in the car,
they robbed us of everything - our watches, our wallets.
They took all our money from the apartment, too. These
guys had pistols, radios. One car drove in front, one
behind, the usual. When we got to the station, they put
us in the basement. They had clandestine cells there,
where we and others were held. I remember the sound of
huge air machines going all the time - it covered the
sound of screaming.
The
person who directed my interrogations was José
Antonio Zorrilla Pérez. They called him "el
coronel." He beat me, too. I still have problems
in my spinal column because of his beatings, and he fractured
several of my ribs.
The
"colonel" would say to me, to scare me: "We're
bastards, you know." He told me that the Mexican
security people had executed Guatemalan opposition leaders.
They
would beat me - my interrogator would say, "Whack
him!" They threatened to throw me in the Gulf of
Mexico, or to turn me over to the Guatemalan government.
They would put a pistol to my head and say, "Aren't
you afraid to die?" They would insult me in their
Mexican slang, they hit me with the butt of their pistols.
They wanted to make me understand that they were in control
and that my life depended completely on them. You never
knew when they would hit you or kick you. I realized during
these sessions that anything could happen to me. I never
gave them the information they wanted, even though they
told me everyone else had collaborated with them, including
some who had betrayed me.
In
my cell there was always a light on, you couldn't tell
whether it was day or night. The only way I knew time
was passing was when the meals would arrive. I tried not
to eat the food, I didn't want to eat. But they managed
to drug me once. One day the "colonel" took
me out of my cell to interrogate me, but he didn't hit
me while he asked his questions. He interrogated me calmly,
without any beating. I felt suspicious. I was nervous,
my mouth was dry. The "colonel" asked me if
I wanted a drink of water, so I had some. Then I began
to feel faint, I started to blackout. I felt very strange,
it was hard to talk. They brought me back to my cell and
a little while later they came back for me and left me
with the "colonel" again. I forced myself to
answer his questions in exactly the same way as I had
before. That made him furious, and he beat me.
There
were two kinds of torture they used on me: the beatings,
which I received on my chest, my abdomen, my back. And
the water barrel. Four of the six men would force me into
a barrel of water and try to drown me. While my head was
in the water they would kick my stomach to push the air
out; that's how some of my ribs were broken once. They
would shout at me, "Are you going to talk?"
I would move my hands so they would take me out, but then
I would shake my head no. So they put me back again. They
did that repeatedly. Once one of them got angry with me
when I didn't talk - he kicked me right in the face and
split my nose open, then he grabbed me by the hair and
put his cigarette out in the wound on my nose.
The
worst of the interrogation and torture lasted about 10
days. It wasn't only physical torture, but mental torture.
They showed me photos of my baby and said, "Do it
for him." One time they made me stand in a room in
front of a wall for an entire day listening to the screams
of someone else being tortured. Another time they brought
a doctor in to see me. I guess he was checking if I could
be questioned anymore - would I survive more abuse. He
asked me, "Man, what did you do to deserve this?"
I told him, "nothing," and I asked him if he
was going to give the ok for them to keep torturing me.
When
we fled Guatemala, we thought Mexico would be safe. One
time during my interrogations, Zorrilla told me, "We're
after you people." I told him that I had always thought
Mexico stood for human rights and respected the human
rights of others. He laughed and said, "That's just
a lot of stupid babble!"
The
Mexican people have always been in solidarity with us.
The Mexican government is something else. I will be always
grateful to the Mexican people - but not to the Mexican
state. They detained me, they tortured me. There was absolutely
no difference between them and the torturers of Guatemala,
El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil. The Mexicans behaved exactly
the same way - they wore different clothes, but the repression
was the same.
-From
an interview conducted October 23, 2003
|
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Documents
Document 1
January 6, 1966
Military Assistance Study
Defense Intelligence Agency, [classification excised] intelligence
information report
A list of Guatemalan military officers who have been accepted
for training in foreign military schools. The list includes the
name of Oscar Mejía Víctores - the army officer
who would later ride a coup to power in Guatemala, and whose government
would become notorious for its use of "disappearances"
against the opposition during 1982-85. According to the DIA, Mejía
Víctores will go to Mexico in January 1966 to begin a three-year
course in command and general staff skills.
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act
July 1994, Archive Request No. 9530
Document 2
March 4, 1966
[Query About Mexican Cooperation Against Guatemalan Subversives]
State Department, secret telegram
The emergence of armed opposition groups inside Guatemalan prompted
this query from the State Department regarding the willingness
of the Mexican government to militarize its border with Guatemala
in order to aid Guatemalan counterinsurgency efforts. "Question
arose in discussion of contingency that political situation in
Guatemala might deteriorate to a point where there is widespread
violence which depends in part for its continuance on outside
support."
Source: National Archives, RG 59, 1964-66
Pol 23-10 Mex, Box 2478
Document 3
March 5, 1966
[Response to Query on Mexican Cooperation with Guatemala]
U.S. Embassy in Mexico, secret telegram
In response, the Embassy opines that Mexico would likely cooperate
in sealing its border to guerrillas fleeing from the south. However
the cable also presages future events by noting that a totally
sealed border is an unrealistic expectation. "Border would
probably be closed effectively at regular or established crossing
points, but determined efforts to carry out limited clandestine
movement, in more remote areas, would undoubtedly succeed."
Source: National Archives, RG 59, 1964-66
Pol 23-10 Mex, Box 2478
Document 4
March 12, 1969
[Infiltration of Mexican Border by Guatemalan Rebels]
State Department, secret letter
Despite indications that Mexico is providing support to Guatemalan
counterinsurgency campaigns, the State Department voices some
doubts as to the seriousness of Mexican efforts. In a letter to
the U.S. embassy in Mexico, a department officer questions the
Mexico's dedication to preventing the transfer of "men, money
and arms from Cuba" to Guatemala. He notes that he met the
officers of the CIA ("our colleagues up the river")
to ask "if something couldn't possibly be done to persuade
Mexicans to tighten up on their side, not only down around Chiapas
and its long jungle border with Guatemala, but up in Mexico City,
the bottle neck through which this illicit traffic apparently
funnels."
Source: National Archives, RG 286
OPS, Box 70
Document 5
April 10, 1970
Border Control Between Mexico and Guatemala
State Department, confidential telegram
Guatemalan officials request help from the United States in convincing
Mexico to cooperate more closely in their campaign against the
insurgents. "GOG [Government of Guatemala] should determine
what it is it seeks from GOM [Government of Mexico] in way of
cooperation and then make high level demarche. USG [United States
Government] would then be willing give strong support with GOM."
Source: National Archives, RG 286
OPS, Box 70
Document 6
September 25, 1970
Observations During Visit to Quezaltenango Military Base
Defense Intelligence Agency, [classification excised] intelligence
information report
This report by a U.S. defense attaché in Guatemala discusses
the Guatemalan army's presence on the Mexican border under the
command of future President Fernando Romeo Lucas García.
Already by 1970, the army is conducting major counter-guerrilla
sweeps along the border and foresees establishing a permanent
presence in the region (San Marcos).
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, July 1994, Archive Request No. 9530
Document 7
November 28, 1972
[Guatemalan Counterinsurgency Operation on Border with Mexico
Is Planned]
Secretaría de la Defensa, telegram
After a report from the Mexican military attaché that
Guatemala's counterinsurgency operations would increase in northern
border areas, Mexican Secretary of Defense Hermenegildo Cuenca
Díaz orders military forces to increase their activity
on the border. ". . .Increase number troops at border, intensify
patrol with priority area indicated, activate intelligence units,
and adopt other measures designed prohibit criminals and guerrillas
from crossing border and penetrating national territory."
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 98, expediente 292, hoja 56
Document 8
December 29, 1972
Order of Battle Summary, Foreign Ground Forces-Guatemala
Defense Intelligence Agency, [classification excised] intelligence
information report
In response to a "general state of uneasiness and a burgeoning
crime rate" near the southwestern Mexican border, the Guatemalan
army begins a series of battalion-strength sweeps through the
area. This DIA report corresponds to the counterinsurgency operation
referred to by the Mexican Defense Secretariat in Document 7.
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act
July 1994, Archive Request No. 9530
Document 9
September 1981
Latin America
Defense Intelligence Agency, secret military intelligence summary
[extract]
Assessing the situation in Guatemala, this DIA secret intelligence
summary describes President Fernando Lucas García as "unimpressive"
and "far more repressive" than his predecessors. The
report argues that the regime has inspired intensified guerrilla
activity throughout the country which, in turn, has increased
Guatemalan suspicions of Mexican official involvement. "Reports
have
been received indicating that Mexico provides some discreet
financial, political, and moral support to Guatemalan guerrillas,
as well as sanctuary for the nation's political exiles
.Most
Guatemalan military officers are convinced that Mexico is also
funneling arms to the guerrillas and serves as a route of infiltration."
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, April 1996, Archive Request No.13381
Document 10
March 25, 1982
Assistance to Insurgents in El Salvador and Guatemala from
Mexican Territory
State Department, secret telegram
As the situation in Central America becomes increasingly polarized,
the State Department requests information from the embassy regarding
the extent of Mexican Government involvement in aiding guerrilla
movements in the region. "Reports suggest a disturbing level
of Mexican official accommodation to Guatemalan guerrillas, despite
Mexican army's apparent desire to clamp down."
Source: U.S. Department of State Reading Room
Declassified May 1994
Document 11
March 30, 1982
Assistance to Insurgents in El Salvador and Guatemala from
Mexican Territory
U.S. Embassy in Mexico, confidential telegram
The U.S. embassy argues that Mexico's approach to the insurgents
is pragmatic. On the one hand, the López Portillo administration
permits political representatives of the insurgencies to keep
offices and maneuver relatively freely in Mexico City. However
this permissiveness does not likely extend to providing material
support to the guerrillas. On the border, armed insurgents operate
within Mexican territory, but the ambassador doubts that there
is deliberate government support for their presence.
Source: U.S. Department of State Reading Room
Declassified May 1994
Document 12
September 1982
Mexican Policy Toward Central America
CIA, [classification excised] intelligence assessment
Near the end of the López Portillo administration, the
CIA produces an intelligence assessment of Mexico's policy in
Central America. This heavily-censored report emphasizes Mexico's
accommodating stance toward left-wing revolutionary movements
in the region as well as its various initiatives for peace, and
points out that the policy has resulted in political dividends
for the government. "In the midst of Mexico's most serious
economic crisis in modern history, López Portillo continues
to be buoyed by the international acclaim given his prescription
for easing tension in the region."
Source: Released to Scott Armstrong under the Freedom of Information
Act, March 1987
Document 13
September 14, 1982
MOD Visits México
Defense Intelligence Agency, [classification excised] intelligence
information report
On the eve of Mexico's Independence Day, the DIA reports that
General Oscar Mejía Víctores, Guatemalan Minister
of Defense, will attend the celebrations and "avail himself
of this opportunity to solicit information regarding the thousands
of Guatemalan refugees who have fled to Mexico, as well as to
discuss with Mexican military authorities the matter of alleged
Guatemalan military incursions into Mexico."
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act
July 1994, Archive Request No. 9530
Document 14
December 6, 1982
Draft Memorandum of Conversation-Bilateral Between President
Reagan and the President of Guatemala, General Efraín Ríos
Montt
U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, confidential cable
While on a visit to Honduras, Ronald Reagan takes the opportunity
to meet with Guatemalan President Efrain Ríos Montt. After
calling Belize a major source of communist subversion, Ríos
Montt accuses Mexico of harboring guerrillas. "He then went
on to describe the Mexican role in supplying the guerrillas across
the extensive Guatemalan/Mexican border. He asserted that Mexico
was being used as a rest area and a place for training and indoctrination
of guerrillas."
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, January 2000, Archive Request No.13503
Document 15
February 23, 1983
Embassy Report on Villages in El Quiché
U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, unclassified cable
In mid-February an officer from the U.S. Embassy visits some
of the more besieged areas near the Mexico-Guatemala border. Local
accounts here describe a situation where villagers are caught
between the guerrillas and the army. Fearing the consequences
of contact with either force, many people have fled into Mexico.
Meanwhile, military officials continue to emphasize the role of
Mexican territory as a base for guerrilla attacks. "The commander
briefed us on the military situation in the area, noting with
special emphasis the problem of continuing guerrilla raids from
Mexico."
Source: Commission for Historical Clarification in Guatemala
U.S. Department of State, Box 1
Released January 1998
Document 16
March 3, 1983
Guatemala's Guerrillas Retreating in the Face of Government
Pressure
State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, secret assessment
[extract]
Another intelligence assessment points to Mexico as a regular
source of supply and refuge for Guatemala's various insurgencies.
While the analysis attributes this support in large part to the
simple convenience that Mexico's proximity affords, ideology is
also cited as a contributing factor. "Ideology also helps
explain guerrilla use of Mexican territory. For several years,
Mexico has supported Central American 'liberation movements' in
international forums; recent information indicates that this policy
will continue under President de la Madrid."
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, October 1999, Archive Request No. 13296
Document 17
Circa May 1984
[Why Relocate the Refugee Camps?]
Secretaría de la Defensa, slides
This collection of slides and text from Mexico's Secretariat
of Defense (SEDENA) reviews how moving the mass of Guatemalan
refugees away fro the border and into the Mexican state of Campeche
might affect the various parties involved. Using a cold war analysis
to explain the problem, the document explores how the move might
affect the Soviet Union, the United States, Guatemala and Mexico
itself. The continued existence of the refugee camps on the border
is characterized as a threat to Mexican national security, "given
that organic cells of subversive Guatemalan organizations very
probably operate inside the camps, [groups] which are undoubtedly
connected to international Central American organizations, and
that in the near future given the economic crisis our country
is suffering [these groups] will be able to operate in Mexico
through the indoctrination of the economically weak popular masses,
encouraging them to join the subversive movement with an eye to
the destabilization of the country. . ."
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hojas 605-625
Document 18
July 11, 1984
Problematica Existente en el Sureste del País
Secretaría de la Defensa, report
In reaction to the problems bedeviling efforts to move the refugee
camps out of the border region and into theYucatán Peninsula,
Mexico's Defense Secretariat analyzes what went wrong and what
must be done to achieve a more favorable situation. While acknowledging
incompetence on the part of the military authorities involved
in the operation as well as widespread mistreatment of the refugees,
the report nonetheless characterizes resistance to the plan as
the work of guerrillas and their supporters. "The refugee
population remains divided between those who support the relocation
initiated by the government and who can be considered as having
really fled their country in order to save their lives, and those
who disapprove of the government's measure, arguing that it places
them far away from their country and that they are not familiar
with the place where they will be relocated; it can be assumed
that these [refugees] are in contact with the subversives or the
geurrillas."
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hojas 494-96
Document 19
Circa July 16, 1984
Estudio de Estado Mayor
Secretaría de la Defensa, study
This report explicitly emphasizes the growing dangers to Mexican
stability of the refugee crisis. The dismal social and economic
conditions of the region's residents, the document argues, have
long made them vulnerable to manipulation by both the local progressive
clergy and leftist political groups. The addition of the Guatemalan
refugees to the mix only increases the potential problems for
the Mexican Government. "From the moment they were established
in our country, the Guatemalan refugee camps have created a series
of problems of a political, economic, social and military nature,
which in turn have provoked frictions between our government and
that of Guatemala
"
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hojas 533-541
Document 20
Circa November 15, 1984
Estudio de Estado Mayor
Secretaría de la Defensa, study
In this SEDENA study of the refugee crisis, the analysis focuses
on the role of the progressive clergy in the region. Citing the
geographic and cultural familiarity that Chiapas provides the
refugees, the local bishops have gone on record in opposition
to the Mexican Government's plan to transfer the Guatemalans to
the Yucatán. However in the view of SEDENA, this rational
is a smokescreen for the clergy's ulterior religious and leftist
political motives. In addition, their objectives threaten the
national security of Mexico. "Guatemala's socio-political
crisis is being exploited to the maximum by the progressive clergy
in order to justify the immigrant flow of refugees into our country,
nevertheless this ignores the real reasons they are being persecuted
by their own government, with the additional aggravating circumstance
that the children born in our country will aquire Mexican nationality
and with the passage of time will form important groups with possible
separatist tendencies. . ."
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hojas 542-548
Document 21
November 23, 1984
Guatemala: Reluctant Central American Partner
CIA, secret analysis
The CIA analyzes Guatemala's foreign policy toward Central America,
and in particular the government's posture vis-á-vis the
Contadora peace effort. In the view of the agency, chief of state
Oscar Mejía Víctores intends to try and force concessions
out of Mexico on border issues in exchange for Guatemalan support
in Contadora. In particular, Mejía seeks the removal of
all Guatemalan refugee camps away from the border as a way of
cutting off what he perceives as a major source of propaganda
and support for the guerrillas.
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, March 1998, Archive Request No. 15468
Document 22
June 14, 1985
MZ #18, San Marcos, Briefing on Military Situation
Defense Intelligence Agency, confidential cable
In another DIA report, the situation of Guatemala's San Marcos
region is analyzed. Once again the importance of Mexico in sustaining
the guerrillas is emphasized. "A continuing area of concern
is
the use of Mexican territory as an insurgent safehaven. Military
authorities are convinced that the guerrillas gain at least passive
acquiescence from Mexican authorities, if not outright support."
Source: Released to National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act, August 1996, Archive Request No. 13397
Document 23
July 31 1985
[Intercepted Guatemalan Radio Transmission]
Secretaría de la Defensa, confidential cable
A telegram from the Mexican army's "Listening Center"
transmits to the Defense Secretariat the content of a radio transmission
intercepted by the Mexicans while monitoring Guatemalan military
communications. The transmission came from the military zone commander
in the Quiché, Byron Lima Estrada, for the head of the
army general staff and tells of an encounter by a military patrol
unit with armed insurgents. The clash resulted in "six terrorists
dead and a trail of blood."
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hoja 626
Document 24
June 30, 1986
Para Informar a la Superioridad
Secretaría de la Defensa, memorandum
Memorandum written in anticipation of an upcoming meeting between
President Miguel de la Madrid and the newly-elected President
Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala to discuss the situation in Central
America, the Guatemalan refugees in Mexico, and bilateral economic
issues. The other reason for Cerezo's trip to Mexico is to meet
privately with Guatemalan guerrilla leaders .
Source: Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación, SEDENA
Caja 19, expediente 62, hojas 603-604